Whistling Past the Graveyard (43 page)

Kangyu made a small, soft gagging sound.

Ito closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them and the old man’s eyes were hard and steady. “My sons were samurai of the old traditions. Good men, dedicated to
bushido
; men who deserved to die on a battlefield, or in a duel, or as old men at the end of a life lived to its fullest. Now they are denied that and even denied the mercy of committing seppuku. It is not right, Ōtoro-san. This plague destroys more than flesh. It is a blasphemous thing. I do not know if ghosts or demons are at work here, but the very nature of the disease is an insult to the very nature of honor. It removes any chance of beauty in death. I am an old man and I no longer have the strength, otherwise I would go myself. I would make of it my last battle, and it would be one worth fighting. If I found all of my family infected and roaming the earth like monsters, I would cut them down and in doing so would free them from dishonor and horror. With every cut I would ease their pain while giving them the clean and honorable death that they deserve.” He paused. “My nephew is a good swordsman for all that he is brash and young, but he is the last male of my house. I cannot spend his life as if it was a coin in my pocket. And I am unable to see this done myself. As for others…there are few who would undertake the mission and fewer still that I would trust to accomplish it with skill and honor and compassion. And that, my friend, is why I come to you, to the sword master Sensei Ōtoro.”

Kangyu shook his head. “But Uncle...you would send him to certain death…”

“Of course,” said Ito. “And what a wonderful death it would be. Filled with purpose and honor…”

“And beauty,” said Ōtoro.

Ōtoro drank some saké as blossoms fell from the trees.

“Very well, Ito-sama,” Ōtoro said in a voice that was very quiet and calm, “it will be my honor to serve you in this matter.”

-Shi-

Ito’s war galley set sail on the next outgoing tide. Ito was aboard, as was Kangyu. The plan was to sail to within twenty miles of the island and drop Ōtoro over the side in a small fishing boat. Then the ship would make a wide circle of the island, returning to the drop-off point at sunrise. If, after that time, Ōtoro had not returned, then the ship would sail back to the mainland.

Ōtoro knew that there was little chance that he would make that rendezvous, and he figured that this part of the plan was there more to soothe Kangyu’s conflicted feelings than to offer him a hope of rescue.

As the ship sailed on, Ōtoro sat by himself in a posture of meditation, listening inside his body for the places where the bone cancer had weakened him. He was still strong enough to compensate for anything he was aware of. At least he had not yet reached the point where his bones would become brittle. With luck, he would never experience that level of sickness and humiliation.

For a time, Ito and Kangyu knelt on either side of him, all three of their faces turned toward the setting sun. Much was said without words during that time. Between Ōtoro and Ito, and perhaps between both older samurai and the young man who would one day become a lord of men.

The trip was without incident.

Later, when the captain told them that they were in position, Ōtoro and Ito exchanged a bow, and Kangyu helped Ōtoro into the boat.

Once Ōtoro was settled in the thwarts, Kangyu placed one foot on the ship-side ladder, but then he paused and turned.

“I…I would have done this for my uncle,” he said. “I would have done this for my family.”

Ōtoro smiled at him. “I know you would,” he replied.

Kangyu glanced up at the rail of the ship far above and then thoughtfully back at Ōtoro. “Sensei…even if you manage to do what my uncle wants…there are so many of the infected on the island...too many for one man to fight. You know that they’ll get you. They’ll infect you.”

Ōtoro nodded.

“And then you’ll become one of them.”

“There is always
seppuku
,” said Ōtoro.

“How, though? In the midst of an army of infected dead, how will you have time to prepare yourself and read your death poem and cut your stomach? How?”

But Ōtoro did not reply to that.

“I could come with you and act as
your
second and—”

“And then who would be there for you?” asked Ōtoro. “No, young samurai, your strength is needed for a different fight than this one. Be strong, be alive, and be what your uncle needs you to be.”

The boy studied him for a long moment, then nodded.

“I hope I see you again,” said Kangyu.

Ōtoro cast off the line and used his oar to fend his boat away from the ship. He turned the boat and found the current. A few minutes later he raised his sail and bore away toward Keito Island. He did not look back to see how long Kangyu remained there on the side of the ship, watching him.

-Go-

Ōtoro made landfall in the middle of the afternoon. Keito Island was a lush crescent-shaped hump of green rising from the blue waters, the remnants of the volcano it had once been visible in the spikes of black rock that showed here and there through the foliage. The far side of the island was shadowed under a pall of smoke. Something big had burned but Ōtoro judged the fire to be at least half a day old. A fire last night.

Ito had given him a small French telescope and Ōtoro extended it and examined the coastline. The beach was littered with boats, and each one was a wreck, their hulls smashed in, broken oars scattered on the sand. He lowered the glass and frowned. It was too regular and too thorough to have been storm damage. Could the local militia have done that to prevent the infected people from fleeing? He thought it likely. A desperate act, but a smart one.

He scanned the island for an hour and saw little else of value. Just the lingering smoke and the corners of the walls of a few compounds amid the trees. He did not see a single person, alive or dead. He folded the telescope and sailed toward Keito Island, ran the boat up onto the sand, and hid it among the reeds of a small lagoon. He slung his katana across his back, which was better for running. Various knives and weapons were secured in pockets throughout his garments, cushioned with silk to prevent clanking.

A three-quarter moon rose above the island and it gave him enough light to read his map and pick his way through the woods, following clearly marked paths that had once been neatly edged and swept, but which were now being reclaimed by creeper vines and broadleaf plants. No one had tended these paths in weeks. Insects screamed at him and owls mocked him as he ran.

The Ito compound was at the east end of the island, but Ito had been right about the lack of a useful beach and the sheer height of the towering cliffs. While resting in the boat, Ōtoro had committed the map of Keito to memory. There was a main road that linked all of the estates to the only harbor; however there were dozens of small paths cut through the forest. Some were for use by servants, others for the patrolling guards—a cadre made up of four samurai from each of the households on the island—and a few private walking paths that wandered through the beautiful woods. Ōtoro took one of these, partly because it was unlikely anyone would be out for a casual stroll during a plague outbreak, and partly because it took him to within a hundred yards of the eastern-most edge of the Ito estate, and less than two hundred yards from a small goat path that lead up along the rocky face of the cliffs.

He made excellent progress across Keito, though, but when he was nearly halfway there he saw another samurai standing in the woods directly ahead.

Ōtoro froze.

The man wore the light turtle-shell armor of a sea-going trade guard, and he stood with his back to the path. Ōtoro could see that the man wore a single sword—a low-ranking guard, and that there was a symbol painted on the back-plate of his armor which Ōtoro recognized as the crossed feathers of the Asano family, one of the Tokugawa retainer clans. The Asano compound was next to Ito’s, so this was either a household guard or one they had lent to the island’s security force.

Ōtoro crept closer to the man, making no sound on the path as he closed to ten yards, then to five. The Asano guard turned. Ōtoro was sure he had made no noise, but still the guard swung around as if something had drawn his attention, his head tilted like a dog’s as he sniffed the air.

In the off chance that the guard was uninfected and was actually patrolling these woods, Ōtoro whispered the island’s current call-sign, provided for him by Ito. “Tiger.”

The response was supposed to be: ‘Eagle.’

The guard opened his mouth, but not to speak. Instead he let out a low and inarticulate moan that somehow spoke eloquently of an inhuman and aching hunger. A wordless, nearly toneless groan that chilled Ōtoro to the marrow. The clouds passed from in front of the moon and the white light showed the Asano guard’s face in all its horrific clarity.

The man had no nose. There was just a ragged hole in which maggots writhed. One eye hung from its tendril of nerve, rolling against the bloodless cheek. The man’s mouth was open, the lips torn and pasted with some viscous gore that had to be old blood. Inside the mouth broken teeth nipped at the air in Ōtoro’s direction.

Ōtoro gagged and staggered backward as the Asano guard lurched forward, arms reaching to grab and tear.

Shock may paralyze the mind but it is training that rules the muscles. Ōtoro’s hand jerked up and grabbed the handle of his sword just as the thing staggered toward him. There was a silver rasp of metal and then both of the Asano guard’s hands went flying off into the brush beside the path. Ōtoro stood poised, his sword raised at the apex of the cut, his body shifted out of line of the natural spray of blood.

But there was no spray of blood, and the man kept coming toward him.

This time the shock nearly froze Ōtoro in place for good, but as the guard took two more lumbering steps toward him, the samurai spun and slashed sideways with a vertical cut that disemboweled the man, spilling his intestines onto the path.

And yet the guard did not stop.

This is madness!
thought Ōtoro.

With awkward feet slipping and tripping on his own guts, the Asano guard lumbered forward, relentless in his search for something to quench that awful hunger.

Ōtoro felt the world spin and reel around him. This was truly madness. No plague could do this. Ōtoro had killed a hundred men on battlefields, in duels, and in private feuds. No one could withstand such a body cut. Nothing human could keep coming.

“
Jikininki
,” he whispered, backing away.

Hungry ghost.

Hearing Ito talk about it was one thing; Ōtoro had not truly believed it then and could barely accept it now.

The man took another step. One more and he would be close enough to wrap those handless arms around Ōtoro and gather him in toward that snapping mouth.

Hissing with fear, Ōtoro brought his sword around in a heavy lateral cut, higher this time, faster, and the Asano guard’s head leapt from his shoulders, landing with a crunch on the gnarled root of a tree.

The body simply collapsed.

No staggering steps, no pause: it just crumpled to the ground.

Ōtoro stood frozen at the end of the cut, the sword blade pointing away from his own pounding heart. This sudden drop was as eerie as the attack. With any ordinary person there was a moment or two when even a headless body tried to function as if life still persisted. Some even took a step, however artless. Severed heads blinked, mouths worked. As grotesque as those things were they were proof of life even at its end.

But this…

The abruptness from which it went from unnatural life to total lifelessness was so completely…
wrong
.

Ōtoro held his blade away from him. The steel was black with blood that was as thick as paste. He snapped the sword downward once, twice, three times before the ichor fell from the oiled steel.

Then Ōtoro turned in a slow, full circle, staring at the murky forest, aware that he had stepped into a new world, some outer ring of hell. Is that what the Spanish Plague was? Could it truly turn men into demons?

All around him the forest seemed suddenly immense, and as he began to move once more down the path he was aware—all too aware—that there were fifty estates here. Each with at least two dozen servants as well as the families of each daimyo. Plus the local militia, the fishermen, the tradesmen. And the samurai from Ito’s ship.

If the plague had them all then what chance could he have of completing his mission—of finding Ito’s family and restoring their honor through the purification of a clean death?

Ōtoro set his jaw and started to run toward the Ito compound.

-Roku-

Ōtoro met three more of the creatures in the forest.

The first was a skinny old fisherman who lay legless beside the road, his stick-thin arms reaching in vain for Ōtoro as he passed, his toothless gums biting with infinite futility. Ōtoro cut off his head with a deft downward slash, hardly breaking stride. The second was a fat naked woman with a dagger shoved to the hilt between her bloodless breasts. She rushed at Ōtoro and he split her skull from hairline to chin.

He no longer tried disemboweling cuts. He cut the head off and cut the brain in half. Both methods seemed to work and offered him a small cup of comfort. At least he was not fighting something that could never die. That thought was worth holding onto. It seemed to connect these horrors to the physical world rather than allowing them to slide irrevocably into madness and magic.

When he encountered the third creature—a distinguished looking man of about his own age—Ōtoro shook out an iron throwing spike and with a flick of his arm hurled it into the man’s forehead. The creature was able to take a single staggering step before it fell. Not as fast as a decapitation, but still effective.

He retrieved the spike. It was coated with a black ichor that no longer resembled blood. Tiny white things wriggled in the goo—threadlike worms almost too small to see. Ōtoro cursed with disgust and wiped the spike on the man’s kimono, and slipped it back into its holster under his sash.