That next day, the daimyo slit his stomach and died, and Yoshi raised his katana once more back up, and then he began his walk home. The castle attendants bowed to him as he stepped out of the northern gate. Then two castle guards fell in step a pace behind him. He crossed a wooden bridge, the water beneath tranquil, a mirror of the sky, a sky which rippled as a leaf fell upon it, silent sound-waves expanding outward. The wind sighed in the bamboo trees. At Yoshi’s castle, the servants hurried hither and yon to prepare for his arrival. In Akahana’s bed chambers, the female servants rushed with pillows and wash-cloths. Akahana lay in bed, and she moaned in labor, and the child kicked inside of her, about to be born. A young servant girl looked up, to see three silhouettes of samurai etched against the paper of the screen. Yoshi approached the back gates. They stood open. He entered and there were no servants to greet him. He paused a moment, his senses shrieking, then went on. He stepped into the next room, and began to remove his katana from his sash. He held it loose in his hand and stepped forward and then he saw the dead strewn about the floor. The servants had been sliced into corpses. Yoshi stood stunned. His right eye twitched involuntarily. He ran into the next room. In the next room, all of the young servant girls were sliced open, sprawled dead on the floor amid the buckets of over turned water and the towels. The sliding screens lay broken about the floor. Yoshi ran past the dead and left them to the dark. He rushed into his wife’s bed chambers. And then he saw her. She had been stabbed through the breastbone, and she lay face down on the blood soaked sheets. “No!” Yoshi screamed. “AKAHANA!” He ran into the bed chambers and picked her up, or rather picked up what had once been her. He picked up what could not be picked up, what had already gone. “Akahanaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” He hugged what was not her, what had returned to the realm of the unborn. He hugged her and he cried. And then he saw what lay beneath her, what she had in her dying tried to protect. It was their child. A boy child. Akatsuki. He had been delivered by his murderers and then stabbed through the heart with a katana, and his throat had been slit, and he had bled all his new born life away and the umbilical cord was still attached to his mother. Yoshi’s right eye twitched involuntarily. He screamed. Later, he had repaired the room. He had cut the umbilical cord with a short-sword and had washed his wife and combed her hair and changed her kimono and laid her down on clean sheets and covered her. He washed the dead child and wrapped him in silk sheets. And he laid their murdered son beside her. He lit incense. He eased her head to the side and took her cold hand and laid it on the dead child. He said, “It’s him. Or son.” He said, “Akatsuki. Our son.” He all but collapsed, overwhelmed with a despair greater than any he had ever known. A completely black misery, one which he knew he would never reach the rock bottom of, one he knew would always be worse. He held his face in his hands and he shrieked and sobbed. The day slowly died and then all was dark in the castle. Their figures were darkened. “They will pay,” he said in the dark. “In rivers of blood! I will avenge this! I will search the ends of this earth! I don’t care if I must part the grasses to their roots!” Later he said, “Who are you?” He sat in the dark with the dead. He had lit a candle and it burned atop the candle-stick. The candle light made a shadow-show in the room. He sat with his back upright, and his dead wife and dead child lay in the sheets, the glow on their faces. Yoshi was silhouetted against the paper of the screen. The sun began to rise. The silhouettes of two birds perched on a tree branch could be seen against the paper of the screen. Then the silhouettes flew away, to be replaced by the silhouettes of seven men. Yoshi gripped the scabbard of his Owazimono. “Inspector Akechi Endo!” the silhouette announced. “I come on official business!” The screen slid fast open. Akechi Endo stood with six Akechi samurai, yet only he wore the official metal helmet, not a battle helmet, but round shaped with curved plates at the sides of it, secured to his head by white ties. The crest on the helmet was two helmets within a circle. Akechi Endo studied gravely the scene before him. Yoshi bowed his head. “Akechi Dono,” he said. “An honor.” Endo knelt down beside the dead. “Tragic,” he said. Yoshi lowered his head. “This morning three men committed seppuku at the gates of the Akechi clan,” Endo said. “I am here because of a confession that they left behind.” “A confession?” inquired Yoshi. “To what?” Endo reached into the fold of his kimono and brought out a long, folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and read: “‘To avenge our Lord Hirotada and bring piece to his departed soul, we the undersigned, seek to destroy utterly and completely the Yoshi family, the clan of The Shogun’s Official Decapitator. Knowing that it was an act of goverance to sanction the clan of our Lord, we do not presume to turn our vengeance upon our Lord the Shogun. We only wish death on upon Yoshi Onimura, he who wielded the sword that beheaded our Lord.” Yoshi listened, shocked. “‘Though he serves in the post of the highest kaishakunin: The Shogun’s Official Decapitator,’” Endo continued reading, “‘Yoshi Onimura has abused his authority for personal gain. He is a savage who daily curses the name of the Shogun and plots his overthrow. Know that you will find proof in the Yoshi family temple. So, deprived of our Lord, falsely accused of treason, we hereby punish the Yoshi clan, and follow our Lord in death.’” Endo refolded the letter. “Signed in blood,” he said. “I do not understand,” said Yoshi. Endo stood. “Three samurai have signed this with their lives. As Inspector, I must do my duty. Lord Yoshi, I must see your temple.” “What is this?” stammered Yoshi. “You belive the words of these men who slaughtered my family? You would inspect the temple of The Shogun’s Official Decapitator himself?” “That is not what I said! I say only that if we do not act quickly and close this matter, it will damage the authority of the Shogunate. It is my duty as Inspector General.” Yoshi said nothing. “We must show that this confession is without grounds. We must put a stop to any rumors about the Shogunate. We will say that your honored wife and son and retainers were felled by illness. Please understand, we rushed here this morning to help you in your time of adversity.” Yoshi said nothing. “We must avoid any stain on the reputation of The Shogun’s Official Decapitator, as well as the Yoshi clan.” Yoshi stood and put his katana in his sash. He led them to his temple and stood at the entrance with Endo and his six men. “This is the temple where I pray for salvation for the souls of the daimyo I have decapitated in the name of the Shogun,” Yoshi said. “Most honorable, Lord Yoshi,” said Endo. “I am impressed.” Yoshi eased the wooden door of the temple open and entered. They entered behind him. The men began to search the perimeters. Immediately one of them uncovered the secret document that the ninja had hid there, and handed it to Endo, who unfolded it hurriedly and read. “What is this?” he demanded. “A plot to overthrow the Shogun! Lord Yoshi! What is this? How dare you curse the Shogun himself!” Yoshi stepped back, sweating and afraid. He could not comprehend what was going on. Endo pressed his body against Yoshi. “What is it that you pray for here?” “I do not understand,” Yoshi said. “I have never seen that document before in my life.” “Did the confession speak true?” “I don’t understand! I have never seen it before! Never!” “Pathetic!” shouted Endo. He shouted, “Disgraceful! You make excuses? As Inspector, it is my duty to interrogate you! We must give you an inquisition! Come with us!” Yoshi trembled and placed his hand on the alter to steady himself. “Seize him!” Endo ordered. “Arrest Lord Yoshi!” The six men quickly took off their outer jackets and threw them to the floor and encircled Yoshi. Yoshi jerked up in alarm. He looked at the samurai who had surrounded him. He turned his head toward Endo. “Strange,” he said. He said, “Is this not strange? Why all of these preperations, Lord Akechi? You come prepared to take me by force?” Endo became flustered. “It is of course necessary to prepare!” Yoshi turned to face him. “Then you would have come armed to start with. Why would you hide your intention? And more…” He dashed forward and grabbed a samurai by the arm and twisted it, then moved to the man’s back and held him in a half nelson, and with his left hand he pulled the man’s kimono open. The man wore metal armor beneath it. “Chain-mail!” Yoshi yelled. “How do you explain this? If you had to rush here, how did you have time to don this?” “No questions!” Endo yelled. “We will hear you out at your trial!” Yoshi pressed himself against the wall, enraged. “You set me up, Akechi!” His right eye twitched involuntarily. “What?” demanded Endo. “If you Akechi are behind this then everything makes sense,” Yoshi said. “You have gone mad, Yoshi Onimura!” “Why would three men cut their bellies for something I cannot even remember? But if you arranged it to bring me down, then it fits only too well!” Endo stood speechless. His samurai, too, were stunned. “I know that the Shadow-Akechi lust for the post of The Shogun’s Official Decapitator,” Yoshi said. “That is what is behind this.” “What is this ‘Shadow-Akechi’ that you speak of?” stammered Endo. “You talk as if our clan had two heads, one light, and one dark.” “Stupid!” Yoshi shrieked. “There is the public face of the Akechi! But there was one more child! Goto Ekei! By other name, Imagawa! He is Shadow-Akechi!” Endo cursed. His samurai were in a cold sweat, furious at being uncovered. “He is your father,” Yoshi continued. “I know that the true Akechi is the Shadow-Akechi, controlled in shadow by Akechi Imagawa. He manipulates the government. He uses the Kage Shinobi for his own ends. So now he would destroy me and take the post of The Shogun’s Official Decapitator as well.” Yoshi pointed his finger in accusation. He pointed at the crest on Endo’s helmet. He said, “That deceives the nation.” He spat. Endo stood silent. Then he said, “How like you, Yoshi Onimura. You have studied well. Now it seems that we dare not leave you alive. Yoshi Onimura resists arrest, and perishes under the blades of three men, who later commit seppuku at my gates. How perfect.” “You forced those men to commit seppuku,” Yoshi snarled. “You forced them to write that confession. There is nothing you would not stoop to for greed!” Endo shrieked, “Kill him! He shrieked, “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!” The six samurai jerked their katanas out from their scabbards and each warrior took a different stance, about to lunge. Yoshi pressed his thumb against the guard of his katana and the yellow iron portion, called the blade cover, clacked out of the scabbard. Four of the samurai charged Yoshi head on at once--“Hyaaaah!”--“Yataaah!”--“Aaaaah!”--“Hyaaah!” Yoshi swept his katana out and in that same motion slashed to the right. He cut one man’s stomach just beneath where he held his katana fully extended. The blood of the man’s bowels defecated out. Yoshi then spun and slashed diagonally across another man’s neck and the arterial blood squirted out then sprayed out as a mist with a hissing sound. The first man to be cut now fell to the floor dead. The second man fell backward, pumping clots of blood, gargling. The third man leapt past his dead clansmen and stabbed forward. Yoshi, with the tip of his katana at the floor, blade facing up, slashed diagonally and upward, then the tip of his katana was in the air, the blade up, and the man spun on his heel like a ballerina, washed in blood, then fell to the floor a corpse. The fourth man jumped forward screaming, and the slash motion of Yoshi’s katana sped down the man’s head through to his pelvis, and a line of blood divided his body into two parts, and then that bloody line turned into empty space, and the man’s stomach became un-stacked and piled to the floor, and the man had been cut in half. Yoshi sped past him with his katana held in reverse hand draw. Both halves of the corpse thudded to the floorboards. The corpse fell there, and over there, too. Three of the men grouped themselves together and Yoshi ran into their midst. They formed into a quick circle with Yoshi in the center of them, and Yoshi slashed fast in a crescent across one man’s heart, blood sloshing, spun and slashed a quick arc across a man’s throat, blood hosing out, then, still spinning, he slashed down across a man’s ribcage, into his lungs, the black blood pouring out. The floor was slick with blood. Then Yoshi ran as each man fell, as if synchronized, down to the floor at once. Yoshi ran out of the temple, kicking up dust and shattering clay pots as if he were in a new form of locomotion, charging into the courtyard where the bamboo trees grew, and another samurai who had been concealed in ambush shot up, and Yoshi slashed down across him. A bamboo tree slid in half. The man’s chest wound exploded blood. Yoshi ran on. Endo, filled with rage, burst out of the temple and pointed at Yoshi as he ran. “Kill him!” he shrieked. “No escape!” Yoshi sprinted out of the garden, onto the grass, and another samurai leapt out of ambush, katana on high, perusing. Yoshi jumped off the stone wall, and as he did he slashed the back of the man’s neck deep, killing him instantly. Yoshi landed hard on both feet, his knees bent, to the dust just before a small forest, and many samurai hopped out of the woods, their katanas drawn and poised. They furiously attacked. All at once. Furiously. But their numbers were not enough to contain him and he ran on. At last only Endo remained. He had taken off his helmet, and he stood with his right foot forward, his katana held with both hands over his head. Yoshi turned to face him, the dead in his wake, and he held his katana out to the side at his waist in his left hand. He lowered his shoulders and gripped his katana with his other hand. Endo took one pace forward. “Not that!” Imagawa had been watching from the woods. Four of his samurai were with him. He began to run through the woods, stricken with panic. He screamed: “The Kito-ryu air slicing stroke! My idiot son! Never take the high guard stance against Kito-ryu!” He ran fast, followed by his samurai, through the woods. Endo stood with his katana held over his head. He slowly lowered the handle down in front of his face. Yoshi crouched with his katana held down at his knees. Endo struck down. Yoshi struck up. The samurai crossed. They stood back to back in their finished stances. “Too late!” screamed Imagawa. He had come to a halt on top of the stone wall. “Goodbye, my son!” The two samurai stood back to back. Suddenly blood surged from Endo’s stomach and chest. His face flushed. The end of his life. Here in this spot. The clouds and the mountains in the distance. Black blood spewed out of him and took with it the visible world, and then the flow of blood doubled, cascading out of him in a current, then the blood ceased all together, and rained down. In that rain of blood Endo turned sharply to the side and fell to one knee, then collapsed to the earth not breathing, and the blood showered down on him and speckled his face and his body, then ceased to rain. Yoshi turned. “Imagawa!” he shouted. “Of the Akechi! Or rather of the Shadow-Akechi! Your men are worthless! Even more worthless in great number!” Imagawa gazed down at his dead son. “You use treachery!” Yoshi shouted. His right eye twitched involuntarily. “I will not permit this! By my eternal vow I will destroy you!” “Yoshi Onimura!” yelled Imagawa. “The Akechi is the Shogunate, the Shogunate is the Akechi! Forget it not!” Imagawa said, “Your destiny is decided. The work of the Akechi is done legitimately. By decree of the Shogun.” “Fight me, Akechi!” Yoshi held out his katana. “Your Kito-ryu is child’s play to me. Yet with Endo felled, there is no victory here. You must await your death sentence. Wash the back of your neck, and await our return.” Imagawa turned and so turned his men and they all walked away. “Come back! Cowards! Fight me!” Yoshi held his katana out. His right eye twitched involuntarily. “Come back!” He lowered his katana. They were gone. He steadied his breathing. “You will pay,” he said. “This I swear.” He said, “I shall take the path of light between the river of fire, and the river of water. Use all of your trickery against me, I will stay the white way. Though I become a corpse. Though my bones be burned to ash. I shall have vengeance. I shall kill you all!” “It is my will that I defy the Shogun himself!” Yoshi shouted. The naked Owazimono had been placed with its blade facing up on a small table. It sat before Yoshi. He had dressed himself in white silk death robes. He was alone in his home, and he was prepared. Incense for the dead burned. Scented smoke aspired through the air. The legend of the white path between the river of water and the river of fire: With but one heart, walk the path of light between the river of fire, and the river of water. In water one would drown, in fire one would burn, but to he who defies, and walks with pure heart the path of light between the river of water and the river of fire, to him the shores of Jodo, the Land of Paradise. Yoshi said, “To avenge my clan, I abandon the Way of the Samurai! I journey to Hell! A living demon of Hell itself! I will walk the way of the assassin! The white path between the river of fire and the river of water! There is no way other to avenge my fallen wife and child, denied Buddhahood! No way other to have revenge on the Akechi clan!” Naraka was the Buddhist Hell. The way of demons and damnation. Yoshi began to cry. He sat upright and tears streamed down his face. There was silence in the room. He said, “To be an assassin. Such is my karma.” Outside his home, two elite samurai guards stood their post, as ordered by the Akechi. They wore the katana and short-sword, and they held bow-staffs. They wore white headbands tied in a bow at the front. They had barred the gate with two pieces of bamboo crossed and tied together. Soon a party of the Shogunate approached the gates. Two samurai rode horseback. Beside them four more samurai stepped on foot. The first rider had an official document of the Shogunate in his ceremonial vest. The samurai at the gates bowed to this procession and opened the side door next to the barred gate. The riders dismounted and the procession entered the residence. They soon stood before Yoshi, who knelt on the floor before them, his katana set blade up on the table in front of him. The samurai with the official document took it out and unfolded it. He read it loudly: “‘Swordsman Yoshi Onimura! Even though you serve in the high rank of The Shogun’s Official Decapitator, your countless insults and threats to our Lord and Ruler the Shogun leave us appalled! You are hereby stripped of your post, your family name abolished from the records, and you sentenced to death by seppuku!’” The samurai lowered the official document. “You welcome us in death robes,” he said. “Your resolve is most commendable. How like you. I would expect nothing less from the Shogun’s Official Decapitator, Yoshi Onimura, whose sword arm is revered throughout the land. Superb determination.” Yoshi laughed. The two official samurai were aghast. “I do not wear these death robes to open my stomach,” Yoshi said, his head bowed. “These are the robes of a new birth. From this day forward, I journey to Hell.” “What is this?” one of the samurai gasped. Yoshi rose and took up his katana. The two samurai backed away. The one with the official document held it out. “You dare defy the will of the Shogun?” he demanded. Yoshi said: “One who walks the demon’s path is no longer samurai. The will of the Shogun? Laughable!” Yoshi slashed forward with his katana. The document fell in half. “Treachery!” one samurai screamed. “You have gone mad! Guards!” “Guards!” the other samurai shouted. “Yoshi Onimura resists arrest! Guards!” “Guards!” “Guards! Guards!” All of the screens in the room slid open and over a dozen elite samurai barged in. “Insurrectionist!” the samurai who had read the document shrieked. “He mocks the will of the Shogun! Cut him down!” A circle of drawn katanas surrounded Yoshi. He wheeled on them. The ring of katanas swept backward. “Attack!” the other official samurai screamed. “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!” Two samurai slashed forward. Yoshi slashed twice through the air in crossing crescents. The two katanas were sliced apart. The shard with the tip of the katana flew upward and stuck into the ceiling. The second shard with the tip flew through the air and stabbed the samurai through the throat and he gushed blood, holding his broken katana, murdered by the other one. The second samurai stood with his broken katana, then had a seizure as blood pumped out in an arterial spew from his shoulder, and he collapsed, no longer in the land of the living. The blood of the dead man sprayed through the air and doused Yoshi. His white death robes became stained with blood. He walked forward, his katana down, and blood slid across the blade of it, then dripped from the tip. One drop, another. Then he sliced up and directly down. A samurai split in half from the head to the groin. Both halves fell to the floor and blood splattered. The samurai in the room seemed to dance backward. Then two of them charged, followed by two more, their katanas on high. Yoshi spun and cut fast in four lines. The samurai’s head came apart in four pieces. He fell, sloshing blood as his head became un-stacked to the floor. Yoshi continued to attack. A severed head flew up from the charging body, the face backwards. Two arms sliced off at the wrists, the hands still gripped tight to the handle of the katana, flew through the air, too. The headless man finished his slash then tumbled to the floor. The man without wrists twirled head over heels then plummeted down, the blood of his arms a spring of red. A torso, covered in blood, spun around and the legs beneath walked forward, not connected, and the man still held his katana poised. A head flew up into the air and the headless samurai sliced to the side. Yoshi stood in a puddle of blood in his finished stance with his back to the murdered, his katana held in the end motion of his cut, down at his side. The guards stayed motionless and did not attack. Yoshi stepped down the hallway then out into the courtyard. The two wooden doors of the gate creaked open. The two pieces of bamboo that had served as a blockade clacked to the ground, cut neatly apart. Yoshi snarled. His right eye twitched involuntarily. Akechi Imagawa, Lord of the Akechi, The Shogun’s Official Samurai, stood at the gates. He held a long wooden staff. Five Akechi samurai stood at either side of him. The official samurai who had read the document breathed a long sigh. “Lord Akechi,” he sighed, relieved. “Yoshi Onimura!” shouted Imagawa. “Cut open your stomach with honor!” Yoshi stood ready to fight, ready to die. “If you do not cut your belly now we the Akechi will be your opponents,” Imagawa said. “The swords of the Akechi rule throughout the sixty states of Japan. You are no match for us.” “I wonder…” said Yoshi. He laughed. Imagawa faced Yoshi, Yoshi faced Imagawa. Imagawa lifted his staff from off the ground slightly, then slammed it down. Yoshi readied his katana. Several Akechi samurai charged forward, then stopped, and each one jerked out their katana fast from the scabbard. Yoshi quickly moved his free arm in then out of his white silk death robes and they fell off him to reveal what he wore beneath. The Akechi samurai were stunned. The official samurai and the samurai guards were, too, stunned. Yoshi wore now the holy Decapitator robes. The robes that had the symbol of the Tokugawa clan itself sown on the sleeve. The Akechi samurai quickly flipped their katanas behind their backs and bowed their heads. Imagawa was enraged. Yoshi said: “I have faithfully served this holy crest for twenty-three years. You for more than sixty, Imagawa. All of Japan lives under this crest. The Way of the Warrior defers to this alone. Though now it serves me. Out of my way!” “Wait!” Imagawa held up his hand. “Take off your holy robes. Do that, and the Akechi shall challenge you to a formal duel. Should victory be yours, I will not longer challenge you to combat. I will let you go anywhere you please, live anywhere you please, so long as you never set foot in Edo again.” “Lord Akechi!” The official samurai ran toward Imagawa. “You must not pervert the Shogun’s will!” “Silence!” Imagawa yelled at the man. “All responsibility is mine! If he abuses this crest, the scandal will spread, it will damage the authority of the Shogunate itself!” Imagawa glared at Yoshi. Yoshi glared at Imagawa. “Do you accept?” said Imagawa. “I accept,” Yoshi said.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 01:06:20 +0000
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