The Oni, page 13
Ashika sits. His back is to the screen by which he entered. “We may be enough. Perhaps it is better there are so few; all the fewer will find self-strangulation necessary.”
“Must we suicide afterwards?” Ichiro asks nervously.
Ashika scowls. “When trusted retainers turn against their lord, honor demands no less.”
Ichiro bows his head. Long, stringy black hair falls across his face.
“I mean no disrespect, Ashika. Only …”
“Yes?”
“When Uto … was like other men, even then, his cruelty and rapaciousness were such that we’d not have been blamed for turning against him. Surely it is unnatural for men to follow a demon!”
“Unnatural, yes, but whatever his shape, Uto is our lord. We have sworn fealty to him. His transformation cannot wipe out the blackness of our conspiring to assassinate him.”
“In a sense,” Ichiro continues bleakly, “he already is dead.”
Mateo snorts. “The choosy man ends up grasping garbage, Ichiro. If you join us, you must accept the consequences. You cannot have it both ways!”
Ichiro touches forehead to floor, in apology. “Forgive me, comrade. The enormity of our crime addles my wits.”
Ashika’s iron tone softens slightly. “All people live in fear, Ichiro. Only those who recognize their terror can master it. If we must eat poison, let us lick the dish.” His ice-gray eyes pass over the other five warriors. “More to the point, can we assassinate Lord Uto? Can a demon be slain by mortals without the aid of sorcery?”
“I believe so,” Mateo replies slowly. “I know something of demon-lore. I received my education at a Buddhist monastery, although I did not forsake the Way of the Gods. An oni is a creature of remarkable vitality and strange powers, but he is not unkillable. The elemental touch of iron is supposed to be efficacious. I trust the blade of every man here is forged, to some degree, of iron?”
“My blade is good steel!” Ichiro states with pride.
“Which contains iron,” responds Ashika drily. “For your sake, for all our sakes, I hope it proves enough.”
The rest of the night is devoted to careful examination of their plans, to insure that no ant hole remains to collapse the embankment of their intrigue.
CHAPTER 25
Fourteenth day.
Lord Uto is dissatisfied with his tree-limb club. The bark is bruised, discolored, missing in chunks. Twigs jut unevenly and splinter at every use. Such a weapon is good enough for an ordinary demon, but not for the lord of Imuri province. So, after a perfunctory dawn audience with the pathetic Monaga, Lord Uto stumbles into the armory and begins to rummage.
An hour of clattering, cursing, and casting aside finally brings to light a handsomely-wrought double-headed axe with a handle that is longer than most men are tall. Rust scales cling to the blades. Uto tests it on his makeshift club. A single, clean cut is sufficient. The edges remain keen.
Uto’s mouth writhes into the familiar, disconcerting grin. Well and good, but chopping firewood is not enough. One does not often battle a forest.
He must test this weapon properly, and at once, for Uto the oni has even less patience than did Uto the man.
A stroll to the village will serve his purposes neatly. The first dozen peasants to cross his path shall have the honor of losing their heads in this experiment. Warriors often enjoy this method of trying new blades. It is understandably unpopular with the lower classes.
Lord Uto steps from the armory, his free hand raised to shield his eyes from the winter sun.
Ashika and his fellows launch their attack from a bamboo grove a few paces outside the entrance gate of the residence. Dressed in white to blend with the previous night’s fresh snowfall, they startle the oni. Uto has almost forgotten he ever had a bodyguard.
With speed and skill, Ashika presses his advantage.
Despite his bulk, the oni moves swiftly when he must. He twists his brick-red torso as Ashika thrusts at the abdomen. The weapon strikes a mortal blow—but Lord Uto is no longer mortal. The blade turns aside, scraping horny hide without penetrating. Ashika staggers, off balance.
Uto’s axe descends.
Ashika rolls forward in the snow until he is too near Uto’s feet for an axe-blow. A pair of warriors racing to their leader’s aid are less fortunate. A honed edge takes off one’s sword arm at the shoulder. The flat of the blade swings back to crush the other’s skull. The snow steams with crimson.
Ashika rises up on one knee, preparing to stab again. The demon kicks his side. Ribs snap like rotten twigs. Ashika lands on his back, still managing to retain his sword.
The axe rises.
Uto is distracted by a pricking at his back, like the bite of a mosquito. He kicks snow in Ashika’s face, then turns, swinging the axe level with his waist. Two heads roll into a ditch beside the road, one severed neatly, the other accompanied by a neck and part of one shoulder.
Over half their number slain with but two strokes! Were Ashika less disciplined, he would give up now in despair. The conspiracy is doomed. Their deaths accomplish nothing but dishonor. Yet they must follow through to the end. The die is cast. Uto would not pardon them, anyway.
“Hai-eee!” shouts Mateo. He rushes forward, sunlight glinting from his polished skull. He must distract Uto until Ashika regains his footing.
Ashika’s side is aflame as he stumbles erect. He watches as Mateo’s blade, like his own, is turned aside by the thick red skin. Lord Uto’s axe swings, cutting the air. Mateo, though, is prepared for his failure. His stocky legs carry him beyond the oni’s reach. Ashika waits for Mateo to charge again. Perhaps if they attack Lord Uto from two sides at once…
Mateo sinks to his knees without a sound. His chest sags forward, horribly, impossibly. He seems to be folding like a sheet of paper. Lord Uto did strike true, before the bald warrior could elude him. Mateo’s spine is sliced through, his torso cut so deep that only skin and muscle keeps it together. Too late, Mateo’s dead legs carry him beyond that fatal range.
And what of Ichiro? Has the youngest conspirator fled in the face of disaster?
No! Even as Lord Uto turns once more on his bodyguard, Ashika sees a white hillock rise from the snowy ground. Ichiro is the only conspirator clever enough to keep using his kimono’s camouflage. The young man leaps to his feet within a hand’s breadth of the foul monster, and with both hands thrusts his blade upward to the creature’s heart!
Ashika plunges forward, sword raised, to help deliver the final blow.
Ichiro staggers back, eyes wide with shock. His hands are locked about the cold, slick hilt. The blade is jagged, snapped in half.
Lord Uto grins. His free hand extracts the sword tip from his gut. A thin thread of black ichor seeps from the wound, dries, and flakes off. The cut is healed.
The axe divides Ichiro from head to crotch. As the two halves fall, the oni spins about. He slices through Ashika’s thrusting blade before it can touch him.
The awful grin widens. A three-toed foot again smashes into Ashika, pinning the bodyguard to the blood-spattered ground. Uto digs down with his heel. More bones snap. Ashika cries out in pain.
“Fools,” Lord Uto says. His breath hangs thick and grayish-white in the cold air. “But it was a good test, eh, Ashika? You’ve saved me a walk.”
Sweat drips from the dying man’s face, freezing to icicles. “You … unholy … argghh!”
“You’re quite right,” Uto says, black eyes glittering. “I should check that this exercise has not dulled my edge.”
He cuts through Ashika’s right wrist.
Then the left.
The right ankle.
The left.
Lord Uto takes his time with the leader of the rebellion, killing him piecemeal, slicing a bit from each limb in turn. So much blood from one man! The traitor still dies too quickly to suit the oni.
The sun reaches its zenith. Six heads bask in its faint warmth, atop tall road posts where all can see. To make sure that all do see, Lord Uto orders the entire village to march past the display. Twice.
The seventh skull, that of young Ichiro, is cloven and will not stay in place. It sags. It drips. Finally, it tumbles into a ditch by the road, where it becomes the plaything of a stray dog pack. In lieu, Ichiro’s broken corpse is displayed in the village square.
That evening, the scent of death still hangs heavy in Imuri province.
Burly Kujo slips out of his sake shop. The road is empty. The villagers have retired earlier than usual. No guard is posted over the corpse in the square. Surely no one will be foolish enough to interfere with Lord Uto’s exhibit.
Foolish? The word doesn’t begin to describe how Kujo feels. Nevertheless, a man can take only so much horror, so much abuse, without striking back in some way. He studies the shuttered doors and windows facing the square. No eyes peer from them. Village eyes have seen enough this day.
Kujo moves quickly through the darkness. He shoulders the broken body, staggering under its awkward weight. Avoiding the road, moving through harvested fields, Kujo carries Ichiro’s remains to a nearby bamboo groove. There he digs a shallow grave in the rock-hard earth.
From his hidden post on the thatch roof of his own home, the farmer Echi watches this with interest. After, he hurries to Lord Uto’s residence. As his reward, he is allowed to live.
Headman Kujo is dragged from his bed. He faces the demonic ruler with sullen resignation. Uto orders him boiled alive. Keeping the flame low, the lord’s retainers afford their master over an hour of amusement before the headman expires.
CHAPTER 26
Fifteenth day.
The villagers are in shock. If Uto’s own warriors cannot slay him from ambush, who can?
Several elders gather at the sake shop to comfort Kujo’s widow and discuss, in low tones, the problem. One patriarch, bolder than the others, finally mentions Emperor Kotoku.
“If the Son of Heaven knew this hell-spawn ruled Imuri, he would not permit it!”
Heads bow in hesitant agreement.
“It is rumored,” says another, encouraged, “that the present emperor is sensitive to his subjects’ needs. If we send a petition explaining the situation.”
Three young men are chosen as runners to carry petitions to the imperial court in Naniwa. The village scribe begins the first copy at once. The rest of the peasants quickly disperse, to avoid the appearance of conspiracy.
Lord Uto sits alone in his audience chamber. A deep scowl etches his face. It is not accurate to say that his dull, inhuman mind is developing a plan by which he can usurp the imperial throne, strip the emperor of his divinity, and become absolute ruler of the islands. At the moment, Lord Uto only begins to perceive the possibility. Is not a living demon as proper an object of awe and worship as a mere descendant of the gods?
This line of reasoning can not escape Emperor Kotoku himself, once that worthy learns of the transformation of the lord of Imuri province. As he must, eventually.
The oni growls and scratches a scabrous kneecap. How will an emperor who is trying to bring the warring clans and provinces of Nihon together under his rule react to such a threat? The same way Lord Uto will. Strike first. Strike hard.
Lord Uto slaps the floor with the palm of a hand. The polished wood is deeply scored already from his steely nails, and the boards badly warped from his ponderous weight. He is not yet ready to challenge the man in Naniwa. He needs time to consolidate his lands, reaffirm his rule, conquer a few neighboring provinces, and accustom himself to his new abilities. He has much to learn about being an oni. He does not understand, for instance, his recent compulsion to rip up the planking in his bedchamber and dig a pit in the dirt below. Why should walls of stone and soil suddenly seem more comfortable than those of wood and paper?
Lord Uto is pondering this need for secrecy when Echi arrives to tell him of the runners.
CHAPTER 27
Sixteenth day.
The first runner is met by Lord Uto himself.
Half of the body is buried on the right bank of a local stream, the other half on the left. Years later, people swear that the murmur of rushing water is actually the groaning of this unfortunate crying to be made whole in death.
Three of Uto’s warriors, more loyal or less brave than Ashika and his six comrades, corner the second runner. They permit him to commit suicide. When the weathered rope snaps too soon, the senior warrior lends him another. Lord Uto later condemns the lender to be crushed under a pile of rocks, along with his family, for aiding a traitor. His two companions are beheaded. Lord Uto is merciful in his impatience.
These slayings outrage the warrior class, though no one dares to protest in Uto’s presence. Privately, the soldiers agree that Ashika struck too soon. Now he would have found many willing arms. Alas. That brave man’s example remains fresh, his head still nailed to a bloodstained road post, attracting the first insects of approaching spring. No leader steps forward to take his place.
CHAPTER 28
Seventeenth day.
The third runner is captured and brought alive to the audience chamber of Lord Uto.
The oni interrogates him personally, starting with the fingers of the right hand. He has grown more skilled with his axe since playing this game with Ashika. A dozen irons are kept heated on a blazing irori, to cauterize each wound as new slices are removed. The ebon eyes sparkle.
The peasant has the soul of a warrior. Feeling his will weaken, he bites off his own tongue to keep from speaking. He soon chokes to death, swallowing his own blood. Lord Uto continues hacking, unaware he is tormenting a corpse. His aides are too terrified to point this out.
Finally, in disgust. Lord Uto tramples the torso beneath his callused feet.
This last runner was seized while running toward Imuri. Even an oni’s sluggish wits deduce that capture came too late. The man never intended to reach Naniwa himself. The petition he bore must be in the hands of a runner in the next province. It will certainly pass through other hands before it reaches the Imperial Palace.
There is no chance of intercepting it now.
What the emperor actually can or will do on receiving the petition, Lord Uto cannot guess. As Supreme High Priest of the Eight Islands, however, as well as a Buddhist convert, the Son of Heaven possesses the resources to make Uto’s lordship disagreeable.
Lord Uto orders his retainers to leave him in solitude and take what is left of the runner to be displayed in the village square. The bloodstains on the polished planks will not wash clean. Well, leave them, then! Another reminder to Imuri mortals of the penalty for betraying their demonic ruler.
Uto douses the irori’s fire with a slap of his enormous hand. Flames do not scorch the rough-scarred palm. With a growl, he retires to his cavern den, carved from the frozen earth beneath his bedchamber with his own thick, blunt fingers.
There Lord Uto sits and broods and plans.
CHAPTER 29
Twentieth day.
Monaga decides to greet this dawn from the hillside shrine he tends, rather than shiver in the shadow of the oni’s residence, begging admission. He stands on the low wooden steps that lead to the inner shrine. The sky is deep blue, a promise of good weather—for today, anyway. A crisp, dry wind swirls powdery snow laid down the previous evening. Monaga breathes deep. Tangy air fills his lungs. It feels good; almost good enough for him to put aside his qualms at disobeying Lord Uto’s command.
This defiance is not arrived at lightly. If the priest is to be of any help to the people of Imuri, he must test limits, learn how far the demon-lord will let out his tether. The timing seems propitious. For the past three days, Monaga has presented himself at the residence and been denied admission. On the first day, Lord Uto was occupied with matters of state. After that, not even an attempt at an excuse. Likely the original order is forgotten. Oni are not noted for long memories.
In any case, Lord Uto knows where to find him should he feel a desire to gloat.
A step creaks when he shifts his weight. Monaga moves back to view the building. It is a small shrine in the Shinmei style. From chigi to chigi—the curved projecting beams at either end—only three katsuogi, short logs, are necessary to hold the steep-pitched thatch roof in place. The doors of the inner compartment are kept closed and locked, housing the shintai, the sacred symbol. For this shrine, as for many others, the shintai is a mirror.
The mirror is cracked. This happened the day Lord Uto took power over his father’s cooling corpse—poisoned, it is believed, though none would say so aloud. This crack is the sign by which Monaga knows that territorial kami no longer dwell in Imuri province.
Monaga shakes his head vigorously, as though to dislodge memories and misgivings. A corner of the pitched roof sags. Warped cypress boards bend outward. In spots, the thatch is thin enough to admit sunlight at noon. The shrine is several years overdue for its ritual rebuilding. Small wonder the kami left, if this is the best home Imuri can offer them.
The priest takes a pine branch out of his sleeve. It serves as a brush to clear snow from the sando, the approach to the shrine. Walking slowly, bending frequently, Monaga clears a narrow strip in the center of the dirt path. When he accidentally dislodges some small stones strewn on the path, he carefully replaces them. He does not consider the futility of his caretaking, or the infrequent visits of worshippers. This is his responsibility. He performs his duties.
At the bend in the sando, Monaga comes to the temizuya, the open pavilion where worshippers perform ritual ablutions. One does not approach the kami in an impure state. The night before, Monaga used one of the wooden dippers to break the ice topping the water in the stone basin. Now it is newly frozen over. Monaga again uses a dipper in this non-ritualistic fashion, and pauses to warm his hands in his armpits. When he can flex his fingers, he continues clearing the approach.
Now the torii is in view—the entrance to the shrine compound. A simple structure of unfinished wood, formed of two pillars and two crossbeams, the torii marks the gateway between the mundane world without and that of the kami within, between the secular and the spiritual. Strung between the pillars, parallel to the crossbeams, is a tattered straw rope called a shimenawa, which symbolically indicates a place of sanctity.
