The Tengu's Game of Go by Lian Hearn

Author:Lian Hearn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

12

MASACHIKA

Lord Aritomo traveled to Matsutani by palanquin, his favorite horse led behind by grooms, his bow and his sword carried by high-ranking warriors. Two falconers followed with his hawks on wooden perches. A monk from Ryusonji carried a bamboo cage containing the two young werehawks, which squawked and flapped their wings incessantly. The priests had managed to capture them and had presented them to Aritomo. The lord spoke to them every day and tended them with his own hands. The hawks disliked them intensely.

Aritomo’s companions were all heavily armed and more than usually vigilant. Casting his eye over the procession as they rode out, Masachika, who had gone back to Miyako to escort his lord to his home, noticed that many warriors were absent, not from the highest caste, but from the ambitious middle ranks, and particularly those from the coastal estates who had some knowledge of boats and the sea. So the planned attack on the Kakizuki was going ahead, and, while Aritomo was entertained by the hunt, his old enemies would be taken by surprise and wiped out.

Yet there was little sense of celebration. Drought and famine had ravaged the land. The dead lay unburied along the roadsides and on the banks of the shrunken rivers. Crows stalked among them, the only creatures to look plump and sleek. Survivors threw stones at the birds; Masachika knew only too well how easily their aim could be turned on him and Aritomo’s retinue.

Sometimes women knelt in the road, holding out starving children, begging the men for food, or, if they would give them nothing, pleading with them to put an end to their wretched lives and their children’s suffering. The grooms chased them away with whips.

The mood among the warriors was somber. Death was everywhere, ignoble, insignificant, and inevitable. The wasted corpses, carrion for birds, mocked their own strength and vitality.

Look at us. You, too, will be reduced to bones like us. You, too, are no more than meat that will rot and putrefy.

At night, in the private homes or temples used as lodging places, Aritomo could not sleep, and those closest to him were summoned to sit up with him and listen to his thoughts on the way to live and the way to die.

“A warrior must choose his own death. Even on the battlefield, if he is defeated, it is better to die by his own hand than surrender to an opponent.”

Death for him was another enemy, like drought and famine. He would defeat all three of them. A smile played on his lips as he regarded his men, as though he knew a secret they did not. He brewed and drank the strange-smelling tea all night, but never offered it to anyone else. Watching him closely, as he did all the time, Masachika could not help thinking how easy it would be to poison him. The more he tried to put the thought from him, the more he found himself dwelling on it.

Sometimes Aritomo spoke of Takaakira, with grudging respect.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.