That was his best strategy before. It was the only idea he had left. The alternative was to fight a running battle all the way back to the valley mouth. Somewhere along the way, Shichio would get lucky and Daigoro would fall.
With a great kiai, Daigoro pressed the attack. Huge overhead swings should have cut his opponent in two. Each time Shichio turned them away. Ringing steel sang in the vale, scaring the birds from their roosts. Daigoro hacked and stabbed, and Shichio parried every blow. Deep in the trees now, Daigoro put everything he had into one last slash. He let the blade do what it wanted to do.
More than anything, he wanted Shichio dead. Glorious Victory knew it. It pulled him off balance. Shichio ducked, and the Inazuma blade sailed harmlessly over his head. It buried itself in a dead tree trunk. Daigoro could not pull it free.
When Shichio came for him, Daigoro met his assault. Unarmed, he grabbed Shichio’s sword arm, then raked the demon mask down over his eyes. Then he yanked Shichio’s wakizashi out of its sheath and gutted the son of a bitch with his own weapon.
Shichio cried and bent double. His katana rolled rustling through the underbrush. He fell to his knees. His hands, suddenly weak, pawed at the sword in his gut. His fingers rolled bonelessly off its grip.
Daigoro peeled the mask off his face so the two of them could see eye to eye. Shichio was pale, quivering like a leaf. “Ironic,” Daigoro said. “You’re unworthy of the twin swords, and now, because you’re wearing both, you’ll die on the one you never deserved.”
Shichio sobbed. Pain wracked him, twisting his whole body around the blade. “I’d like to leave this sword in your belly,” Daigoro said. “You’d be a long time in dying. Probably all night. But a man spared me from dying a dog’s death tonight, and so it’s my karma to spare you.”
He stepped around Shichio and kneeled down behind him. “If you want to be samurai, you should die like a samurai,” he said. “I will help you.”
He reached around, took the wakizashi in both hands, and pulled it all the way in to the hilt. Shichio’s screams reached the heavens. Daigoro rolled the blade over, turning it spineward. With agonizing slowness, he drew it across Shichio’s belly.
Performed correctly, seppuku required a second. When the condemned man plunged the blade into his gut, the second stood with sword raised, ready to behead him. That way the condemned could not disgrace himself by crying out in his final moments. Shichio did not have the luxury of a second. He left this world screaming like a lamb at the slaughter, and died facedown in his own entrails.
48
The Green Cliff stood as strong as ever, its verdant moss glistening in the westering sun. A persistent drizzle hung over Izu, never quite turning to rain, never quite fading away. The horses bore it miserably, but Daigoro found it soothing. The teahouse fire had given him the equivalent of a whole-body sunburn, and though full-fledged raindrops would have stung like needles, the misty sprinkling came as cool relief.
“We’ve made it,” Daigoro said, shooting his friend a worried look. Katsushima’s arms ended in ugly stumps, for both hands were swaddled halfway to the elbow in dirty, bloodstained bandages. He claimed he could still feel his fingers. That was good, but Daigoro misliked the smell. Those bandages needed replacing, and soon. Daigoro hoped Old Yagyu was still at Lord Yasuda’s bedside, because if anyone could save Katsushima’s hands, it was Yagyu. The worst-case scenario did not bear thinking about. Katsushima had wedded himself to the sword; if his kenjutsu days were over . . . Daigoro could not even bring himself to finish the thought.
Getting out of the Obyo valley had not been easy. On his way in, Daigoro spied the platoon Shichio had stationed at the mouth of the vale. If their commander did not return, sooner or later they would have to send a scout to look for him. Daigoro had planned for this possibility; Katsushima had carried a knotted rope with him, which he could have bound to a tree if only he had two good hands. In the end he’d managed to tie a knot using his teeth and the crooks of his elbows, and found an angle to toss down the rope where the spray of the falls wouldn’t soak it through. It had taken Daigoro the better part of