Sowing Ghosts 12.2

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[continuing chapter 12]

Hiroki clenched his jaws and tried to put his mind beyond all sensation. I’m sure I will feel better for this, he thought. Any time now.

Jiro had found a stream not twenty paces away from the clearing in which he had tied the horses, and Hiroki had taken it into his mind that an immersion in the fast-running snow-melt waters would ease the pain in his injured knee. Finding a large, flat rock on which he could sit, Hiroki had stripped down to his fundoshi and waded into the stream to reach it. Only now, with one leg in the swift-flowing water and the other awkwardly bent to keep it dry, had he realized that a sunny mid-day in the second month was much warmer when you were dressed than it was when you were naked save for a loin-cloth.


I have spent much more time treating the wounds of others than I have looking after myself, he thought. I suppose I should be grateful that this has been the case.

At least he didn’t feel much pain in the knee now. That’s because your whole leg is numb with the cold, he reminded himself. And how do you propose to get back to dry land now, much less dry yourself off?

He was still trying to answer that question when he heard voices. Voices that did not belong to Jiro, Tetsuo or Shiro.

Without thinking he rolled into the stream.

They’re coming closer, he thought. And I couldn’t use my sword even if I had it with me. Even his staff was out of reach, tucked with the rest of his clothes under the overhang of the bank on the near side of the stream. And that’s where you should be, he told himself. Keeping his weight off his bad leg, Hiroki got up into a crouch and scrambled across the rocky bed of the stream to the bank. At least the rush of the water was loud enough that his splashing and floundering blended in with nature’s sounds.

There was enough of an overhang to the bank that he felt at least a little confidence that he couldn’t be seen by the mysterious intruders — at least so long as they were given no cause to look down. Gripping his staff tightly with both hands, he pressed himself as far into the bank as he could, ignoring the stones and exposed roots that poked and tore at the skin on his back. Keep still, he told himself, and think about the bath you’ll have when you get home.

He trusted that Jiro had had enough warning of the strangers’ approach that he had been able to lead the horses away — and that the strangers would be gone before Shiro and Tetsuo returned.

“I don’t really care about your reasons for refusing,” a harsh voice said. “Nor do I care that you refuse to help, really. So long as you treat everyone equally. If I find that you have been offering assistance to the Miyoshi while refusing it to me — well, I wouldn’t want to be you if that were the case.”

“Do not distress yourself, my lord.” This voice was cultured, mellow. Hiroki had heard many like it: it belonged to a man of wealth, education and power who had affected the tonsure as a means of self-protection while continuing to wield that power. Another fat, hypocritical monk, he thought. With a voice that smooth and accomplished, quite possibly an abbot.

“You may be at ease,” the voice continued, “because we have anticipated your objections. Which are the same as those of Miyoshi Motonaga, and Hosokawa Takakuni, and for that matter his nephew Katsunata. There are too many sides to this quarrel, and they are so much in balance, that it would invite disaster for we of Tendai to join any one of you.”

“Instead of which you will sit, smug and safe on your mountain, until we have managed to destroy ourselves,” the harsh voice said, “and then you’ll sweep down and destroy the winner.”

“You dishonour us, Lord Yanagimoto.” Hiroki felt his body jerk at the name. The voices sounded as if they were directly above him now. “We have no desire to interfere, so long as we are not interfered with.” A twig snapped under a sandal-clad foot. “And your insistence on our support would definitely qualify as interference, which is why I urge you to withdraw the request before matters become — embarrassing.”

“And at the same time as you urge me to withdraw your friend Banzan is indulging in conspiracy with that abomination Togashi. Is that not interference?”

“My dear Lord Yanagimoto, the two circumstances are not at all similar. What you ask is a military alliance. What Miyoshi Motonaga asks of Banzan and his nephew is a personal favour that is only distantly connected to the struggle between you and Miyoshi.”

“A personal favour that just happens to encompass the removal of an obstacle to the Miyoshi.”

“But also an obstacle to you, my lord.” Now the voices were receding and Hiroki let himself expel the breath he had been holding in.

“After all,” the self-satisfied monk said, “Hosokawa Katsunata is as much a threat to you as he is to the Miyoshi. And, for that matter, to his uncle Takakuni in Sakai.”

“I have taken my own steps to deal with him,” said Lord Yanagimoto, “as well as with his new friends.”

“So you may, for all we care. Our sole concern, lord, is that we manage to remain as neutral in this affair as in the greater conflict. I have been saying so since you arrived this morning: you may rest easy and trust that we will do nothing against you.”

The last thing Hiroki heard before the sounds of the stream overwhelmed the conversation was the monk’s adjuration to Yanagimoto to get himself away from the temple grounds without being seen by Miyoshi Motonaga.

Who must be meeting with Togashi today, Hiroki thought, which means Miidera will be surrounded by Miyoshi’s guards.

Next    Characters    Chapter 1    Chapter 2    Chapter 3    Chapter 4    Chapter 5    Chapter 6
Chapter 7    Chapter 8    Chapter 9    Chapter 10    Chapter 11    Chapter 12