and sullen as the storm clouds. “Why have you come? My son is gone. There is no one else here to fight you.”
“I have not come to duel. I come to heal.”
“I’m in no need of healing—”
Oda cut himself short. For the first time he noticed Goemon’s seeping bandages. Then, aided by a flash of lightning, he saw the mix of blood and rain dribbling out of a leaky corner of the wheelbarrow.
He took hold of the tarpaulin, pulled it aside, and looked in horror at the bloody form it sheltered. He would have no reason to recognize Daigoro in his current state, but the massive Inazuma blade was familiar enough. He had seen it before, about a year ago, when he and his son Yoshitomo rode all the way to Izu. They had come to test House Okuma’s kenjutsu against their own. Since then, Oda must have seen the blade ten thousand times in his mind. Yoshitomo had died on its edge.
Goemon had not been there to see the duels, but by all accounts they were shameful, childish affairs. Daigoro’s brother Ichiro was as obnoxious and belligerent as only an eighteen-year-old can be. He provoked Yoshitomo so sorely that he’d forced an escalation from bokken to live steel. It very nearly cost him his head. A few months after that they fought again, a loud, ugly affair in the middle of the Tokaido. Ichiro died at Yoshitomo’s hand, but then Yoshitomo made his fatal mistake. Like Ichiro, he was a braggart, and when he sang his own praises and insulted his fallen foe, Daigoro had no choice but to avenge his elder brother.
Now Lord Oda looked down at his son’s killer awash in blood. The weapon that took Yoshitomo’s life lay across his lifeless form. “Have you come looking for a bounty?” asked Oda. “I never put a price on this boy’s head. Even if I had, I could not pay it. You can see for yourself: mine is a ruined house.”
Goemon peered past him and was shocked by what he saw. The Oda compound was overrun with its own detritus. Creeping vines threatened to pull down the walls. Dead leaves mounded in every corner. Where there was paint, it was peeling. There was standing water everywhere.
“What . . . ? What happened?”
“This boy. These Okumas. They are ‘what happened.’” Oda sneered, and for a moment he looked like he might spit in the wheelbarrow. If he did that, Goemon would have to kill him.
But the father showed more restraint than his loudmouthed son. “You’re a swordsman,” he said. “You should understand. My Yoshitomo was our clan’s champion. His Hawk and Phoenix style was indomitable. Had he lost a duel here, out of the public eye, we might someday have recovered. Not in my lifetime, but someday.”
Goemon nodded. He would not make a bereaved father say the rest. His son’s arrogance not only cost him his life; it ensured that everyone would remember the Hawk and Phoenix of House Oda—and remember how they’d failed, to fatal effect. Yoshitomo had nailed the doors shut on the Oda dojo for ever after.
But his father blamed the wrong man. “This boy cost me everything,” Lord Oda said. “Everything. Go bury him somewhere else. I won’t do him the honor of a decent funeral.”
“He did as much for your son,” Goemon said. “And you will do more for him. He is not dead. Not yet. You will muster your healers, and you will do everything you can to keep him alive.”
Oda backed away from the wheelbarrow as if he saw a ghost in it. “No. Never. This boy is the ruin of me.”
No, that honor goes to your idiotic son, Goemon thought. It was so tempting to say it. But he needed this man to step aside. “You owe House Okuma a blood debt.”
“No! An Okuma died. An Oda died. The ledgers are balanced.”
“Wrong. They were balanced when your son won his duel and walked away. Then he provoked a defeated foe, murdered him, and boasted about it to anyone who would listen.”
There was much more to be said. Because Ichiro died, Daigoro’s mother lost her wits. She’d lost a husband and a son in less than a year, and in her madness she nearly lost everything else. She’d spoiled delicate negotiations, which then forced Daigoro’s hand in marriage. That had distracted Daigoro from dealing with his beloved abbot, whose bald head Goemon should have put in a box ages ago. Then came