"About the second half of the Snake," he replied.

"Have the men eaten?"

"I gave orders to eat quickly while we were halted."

"Then we can move on right away. Start the men now; I'll ride back and tell the captains and my wife. I'll join you when I've spoken to them."

He turned his horse's head, but before he moved off he gazed briefly at the sky, the forest, and the valley.

"It's a beautiful day," he said quietly.

I knew what he meant: a good day to die. But neither he nor I was destined to die that day, though many others were.

I cantered back along the line of resting men, giving the orders to move on and telling their leaders our plan. They got to their feet eagerly, especially when I told them who our main enemy was; they shouted mightily at the prospect of punishing the Tohan for the defeat at Yaegahara, the loss of Yamagata, and the years of oppression.

Kaede and the other women were waiting in a small grove of trees, Amano as usual with them.

"We are going into battle," I said to Kaede. "Iida Nariaki's army crossed the border ahead of us. Kahei has ridden around the side of them, where we hope he will meet up with his brother and Sugita. Amano will take you into the forest, where you must stay until I come for you."

Amano bowed his head. Kaede looked as if she were going to speak, but then she, too, inclined her head. "May the All-Merciful One be with you," she whispered, her eyes on my face. She leaned forward slightly and said, "One day I will ride into battle beside you!"

'If I know you are safe, I can give all my concentration to the nght," I replied. "Besides, you must protect the records."

"A battlefield is no place for a woman!" Manami said, her face drawn with anxiety.

"No," Kaede replied, "I would only be in the way. But how I wish I had been born a man!"

Her fierceness made me laugh. "Tonight we will sleep in Maruyama!" I told her.

I kept the image of her vivid, courageous face in my mind all day. Before we left the temple, Kaede and Manami had made banners of the Otori heron, the white river of the Shirakawa, and the hill of the Maruyama, and we unfurled them now as we rode through the valley. Even though we were going into battle, I still checked out the state of the countryside. The fields looked fertile enough, and should already have been flooded and planted, but the dikes were broken and the channels clogged with weeds and mud.

Apart from the signs of neglect, the army ahead of us had stripped the land and farms of whatever they could find. Children cried by the roadside, houses burned, and here and there dead men lay, killed casually, for no reason, their bodies left where they'd fallen.

From time to time when we pa.s.sed a farm or hamlet, the surviving men and boys came out to question us. Once they learned that we were pursuing the Tohan and that I would allow them to fight, they joined us eagerly, swelling our ranks by about a hundred.

About two hours later, when it was well past noon, maybe coming into the hour of the Goat, I heard from ahead the sounds I had been listening for: the clash of steel, the whinnying of horses, the shouts of battle, the cries of the wounded. I made a sign to Makoto and he gave the order to halt.

Shun stood still, ears p.r.i.c.ked forward, listening as attentively as I did. He did not whinny in response, as though he knew the need for silence. "Sugita must have met them here, as the boy said," Makoto murmured. "But can Kahei have reached him already?"

"Whoever it is, it is a major battle," I replied.

The road ahead disappeared downhill into the ravine. The tops of the trees waved their new green leaves in the spring sunshine. The noise of battle was not so great that I could not also hear birdsong.

"The bannermen will ride forward with me," I said.

"You should not go ahead. Stay in the center, where it is safer. You will be too easy a target for bowmen."

"It is my war," I replied. "It's only right that I should be the first to engage in it." The words may have sounded calm and measured; in truth I was tense, anxious to begin the fight and anxious to end it.

"Yes, it is your war, and every one of us is in it because of you. All the more reason for us to try and preserve you!"

I turned my horse and faced the men. I felt a surge of regret for those who would die, but at least I had given them the chance to die like men, to fight for their land and families. I called to the bannermen and they rode forward, the banners streaming in the breeze. I looked at the white heron and prayed to Shigeru's spirit. I felt it possess me, sliding beneath my skin, aligning itself with my sinews and bones. I drew Jato and the blade flashed in the sun. The men responded with shouts and cheers.

I turned Shun and put him into a canter. He went forward calmly and eagerly, as though we were riding together through a meadow. The horse to my left was overexcited, pulling against the bit and trying to buck. I could feel all the muscular tension in the rider's body as he controlled the horse with one hand while keeping the banner erect in the other.

The road darkened as it descended between the trees. The surface worsened, as Hiroshi had predicted, the soft, muddy sand giving way to rocks, then boulders, with many potholes gouged out by the recent floods. The road itself would have turned into a river every time it rained.

We slowed to a trot. Above all the sounds of battle I could hear the real river. Ahead of us a bright gap in the foliage showed where the road emerged from under the trees to run along its bank for a few hundred feet before the ford. Silhouetted against the brightness were dark shapes, like the shadows against paper screens that amuse children, writhing and clashing in the contortions of slaughter.

I had thought to use bowmen first, but as soon as I saw the conflict ahead I realized they would kill as many allies as enemies. Sugita's men had driven the invading army back from the plain and were pushing them foot by foot along the river. Even as we approached, some were trying to break ranks and flee; they saw us and ran back in the other direction, shouting to alert their commanders.

Makoto had raised the conch sh.e.l.l and now blew into it, its haunting, eerie note echoing from the wall of the ravine on the far side of the river. Then the echo itself was echoed as a reply came from way ahead, too far away for us to see the man blowing it. There was a moment of stillness, the moment before the wave breaks, and then we were among them and the fight had begun.

Only the chroniclers writing afterward can tell you what happens in battle, and then they usually tell only the tale of the victor. There is no way of knowing when you are locked in the midst of it which way the fighting is going. Even if you could see it from above, with eagle's eyes, all you would see would be a quilt of pulsating color, crests and banners, blood and steel-beautiful and nightmarish. All men on the battlefield go mad: How else could we do the things we do and bear to see the things we see?

I realized immediately that our skirrmsh with the bandits had been nothing. These were the hardened troops of theTohan and the Seishuu, well armed, ferocious, cunning. They saw the heron crest and knew at once who was at their rear.To revenge lick Sadamu by killing me was the instant goal of half their army. Makoto had been being sensible when hed suggested I stay protected in the center. Id fought off three warriors, saved from the third only by Shuns sense of timing, before my friend caught up with me. Wielding his staff like a lance, he caught a fourth man under the chin, knocking him from the saddle. One of our farmers leaped on the fallen warrior and severed his head with his sickle.

I urged Shun forward. He seemed instinctively to find a path through the crush, always turning at the right moment to give me the advantage. And Jato leaped in my hand, as Shigeru had once said it would, until it streamed with blood from the point to the hilt.

There was a thick knot of men around Makoto and me as we fought side by side, and I became aware of another similar cl.u.s.ter ahead. I could see the Tohan banner fluttering above it. The two cl.u.s.ters surged and swirled as men rose and fell around them, until they were so close I could see my counterpart in the center of the other.

I felt a rush of recognition. This man wore black armor with a horned helmet, the same as Iida Sadamu had worn when I had looked up at him from beneath his horses feet in Mino. Across his breast gleamed a string of gold prayer beads. Our eyes met above the sea of struggling men, and Nariaki gave a shout of rage. Wrenching at his horse's head and urging it forward, he broke through the protective circle around him and rode at me.

"OtoriTakeo is mine!" he yelled. "Let no one touch him but me!" As he repeated this over and over again, the men attacking me fell back a little and we found ourselves face to face a few paces apart.

I make it sound as if there was time to think it all through, but in reality there was none. These scenes return to me in flashes. He was in front of me; he shouted again insultingly, but I barely heard the words. He dropped the reins on his horse's neck and lifted his sword with both hands. His horse was bigger than Shun, and he, like Iida, much larger than me. I was watching the sword for the moment it began to move, and Shun was watching it too.

The blade flashed. Shun jumped sideways and the sword hit only air. The impetus of the huge blow dislodged the rider momentarily. As he fell awkwardly against his horse's neck, it bucked, enough to unseat him further. He had to either fall or drop his sword. Sliding his feet free of the stirrups, he held the horse's mane with one hand and with surprising agility swung himself to the ground. He fell onto his knees but still held the sword. Then he leaped to his feet and in the same movement rushed at me with a stroke that would have taken off my leg, if Shun had stood still long enough for it to connect. My men pressed forward and could easily have overcome him. "Stay back!" I shouted. I was determined now to kill him myself. I was possessed by fury like nothing I had ever known, as different from the cold murders of the Tribe as day is from night. I let the reins fall and leaped from Shuns back. I heard him snort behind me and knew he would stand as still as a rock until I needed him again.

I stood facing Iida's cousin as I'd wished I'd faced Iida himself. I knew Nariaki despised me, and with reason: I did not have his training or his skills, but in his scorn I saw his weakness. He rushed forward, the sword whirling: His plan was to try to cut me down with his longer reach. I suddenly saw myself in the hall at Terayama, practicing with Matsuda. I saw Kaede's image as I had seen it then; she was my life and my strength. Tonight we will sleep in Maruyama Tonight we will sleep in Maruyama, I promised her again, and the same move came to me.

Black blood, I thought; maybe I even shouted it aloud to Nariaki. You have it and I have it. We are of the same cla.s.s You have it and I have it. We are of the same cla.s.s. I felt Shigeru's hand within my own. And then Jato bit home and Iida Nanaki's red blood was spraying my face.

As he fell forward onto his knees Jato struck again, and his head bounced at my feet, his eyes still full of fury, his lips snarling.

That scene remains engraved in my memory, but little else does.

There was no time to feel fear, no time to think at all. The moves I'd been taught by Shigeru and by Matsuda came to my sword through my arm but not by my conscious will. Once Nariaki was dead, I turned to Shun. Blinking the sweat from my eyes, I saw Jo-An at his head; the outcast held my enemy's horse too.

"Get them out of the way," I shouted. Hiroshi had been right about the terrain. As the Tohan and Seishuu troops were driven back and we advanced, the crush intensified. Terrified horses stumbled in holes, breaking their legs, or were forced up against boulders, unable to go forward or back, panicking.

Jo-An scrambled like a monkey onto Shun's back and forced his way through the milling men. From time to time I was aware of him, moving through the fray, taking riderless, panic-stricken animals to the forest. As he'd said, there are many tasks in a battle besides killing. Soon I could see the Otori and Maruyama banners ahead of us, and I saw the Miyoshi crest too. The army between us was trapped. They continued to fight savagely, but they had no way out and no hope.

I don't think one of them escaped alive. The river foamed red with their blood. After it was all over and silence had descended, the outcasts took care of the bodies and laid them out in rows. When we met up with Sugita we walked along the lines of the dead, and he was able to identify many of them. Jo-An and his men had already taken charge of dozens of horses. Now they stripped the dead of their weapons and armor and arranged to burn the corpses.

The day had pa.s.sed without my noticing time. It must have been the Hour of the Dog; the battle had lasted five or six hours. Our armies had been roughly equal: a little under two thousand men on each side. But the Tohan had lost all of theirs, while we had less than a hundred dead and two hundred wounded.

Jo-An brought Shun back to me and I rode with Sugita into the forest where Kaede had been waiting. Manami had managed to set up camp with her usual efficiency and had lit a fire and boiled water. Kaede knelt on a carpet beneath the trees. We could see her figure through the silver-gray trunks of the beeches, cloaked by her hair, her back straight. As we drew nearer I saw that her eyes were closed.

Manami came to meet us, her eyes bright and red-rimmed. "She has been praying," she whispered. "She has sat like that for hours."

I dismounted and called her name. Kaede opened her eyes and joy and relief leaped into her face. She bowed her head to the ground, her lips moving in silent thanks. I knelt before her and Sugita did likewise.

"We have won a great victory," he said. "lida Nariaki is dead, and nothing now will stop you from taking possession of your domain at Maruyama."

"I am immensely grateful to you for your loyalty and courage," she said to him, and then turned to me.

"Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so." The frenzy of battle was fading and I was aching all over. My ears were ringing, and the smell of blood and death that clung to me was nauseating me. Kaede looked unattainably clean and pure.

"I prayed for your safety," she said, her voice low. Sugita's presence made us awkward with each other.

"Take some tea," Manami urged us. I realized my mouth was completely dry, my lips caked with blood.

"We are so dirty..." I began, but she put the cup in my hand and I drank it gratefully.

It was past sunset and the evening light was clear and tinged with blue. The wind had dropped and birds were singing their last songs of the day. I heard a rustling in the gra.s.s and looked up to see a hare cross the clearing in the distance. I drank the tea and looked at the hare. It gazed back at me with its large, wild eyes for many moments before it bounded away. The tea's taste was smoky and bitter.

Two battles lay behind us, three ahead, if the prophecy was to be believed: Two now to win and one to lose Two now to win and one to lose.

4.

One month earlier, after Shirakawa Kaede had left with the Miyoshi brothers to go to the temple guest house at Terayama, Muto Shizuka had set out for the secret village of her Tribe family, hidden in the mountains on the far side of Yamagata. Kaede had wept when they said farewell to each other, had pressed money on Shizuka and insisted she take one of the packhorses and send it back when she could, but Shizuka knew she would be quickly forgotten once Kaede was with Takeo.

Shizuka was deeply uneasy about leaving Kaede and about the impetuous decision to marry Takeo. She rode silently, brooding on the madness of love and the disaster the marriage would be to them. She had no doubt they would marry: Now that fate had brought them together again, nothing would stop them. But she feared for them once Arai heard the news. And when her thoughts turned to Lord Fujiwara, a chill came over her despite the spring sunshine. She knew he could only be insulted and outraged, and she dreaded what he might do in revenge.

Kondo rode with her, his mood no better than hers. He seemed distressed and annoyed at being dismissed so suddenly. Several times he said, "She could have trusted me! After all I've done for her! I swore allegiance to her, after all. I would never do anything to harm her."

Kaede's spell has fallen on him too, Shizuka thought. He's been flattered by her reliance on him. She turned to him He's been flattered by her reliance on him. She turned to him so so often; now she will turn to Takeo often; now she will turn to Takeo.

"It was Takeo's order that we leave," she told him. "He is right. He cannot trust any one of us."

"What a mess," Kondo said gloomily. "Where shall I go now, I wonder. I liked it with Lady Shirakawa. The place suited me." He threw his head back and sniffed.

"The Muto family may have new instructions for both of us," Shizuka replied shortly.

"I'm getting on," he grumbled. "I wouldn't mind settling down. I'll make way for the next generation. If only there were more of them!" He turned his head and gave her his ironic smile. There was something in his look that unsettled her, some warmth behind the irony. In his guarded way he was making some kind of advance to her. Ever since he'd saved her life on the road to Shirakawa the previous year, a tension had existed between them. She was grateful to him and had at one time thought she might sleep with him, but then the affair had begun with Dr. Ishida, Lord Fujiwara's physician, and she had wanted no one but him.

Though, she thought ruefully, that was hardly being practical. Kaede's marriage to Takeo would effectively remove her from Ishida forever. She had no idea how she could ever meet the doctor again. His farewells had been warm; he had pressed her to return as soon as possible, had even gone so far as to say he would miss her. But how could she return to him if she was no longer in Kaede's service and part of her household? Their affair had been conducted with great secrecy thus far, but if Fujiwara were to hear of it, she feared for the physician's safety. I am as bad as Kaede I am as bad as Kaede, she thought. Truly you never reach the age when you escape being scorched by love Truly you never reach the age when you escape being scorched by love.

They pa.s.sed through Yamagata and traveled another twenty miles to a village where they stayed the night. Kondo knew the innkeeper; they might even have been related, though Shizuka did not care enough to find out. As she feared, he made it clear that he wanted to sleep with her, and she saw the disappointment in his eyes when she pleaded exhaustion, but he did not press her or force her as he might have done. She felt grateful and then annoyed with herself for so feeling.

However, the next morning, after they had left the horses at the inn and begun the steep climb on foot into the mountains, Kondo said, "Why don't we get married? We'd make a good team. You've got two boys, haven't you? I could adopt them. We're not too old to have more children together. Your family would approve."

Her heart sank at the thought, especially as she knew her family probably would approve.

"You're not married?" It seemed surprising, given his age. "I was married when I was seventeen, to a Kuroda woman. She died several years ago. We had no children."

Shizuka glanced at him, wondering if he grieved for her. He said, "She was a very unhappy woman. She was not completely sane. She had long periods when she was tormented by horrible imaginings and fears. She saw ghosts and demons. She was not so bad when I was with her, but I was frequently ordered to travel. I worked as a spy for my mother's family, the Kondo, who had adopted me. On one long trip away I was delayed by bad weather. When I did not return at the expected time, she hanged herself."

For the first time his voice lost its irony. She perceived his real grief and found herself suddenly, unexpectedly moved by him.

"Maybe she was taught too harshly," he said. "I've often wondered what we do to our children. In many ways it was a relief to have none."

"When you're a child, it's like a game," Shizuka said. "I remember being proud of the skills I had, and despising other people for not having them. You don't question the way you're brought up; that's just how it is."

"You are talented; you are the Muto masters' niece and grandchild. Being Kuroda, in the middle, is not so easy. And if you don't have natural talents, the training is very difficult." He paused and went on quietly: "Possibly she was too sensitive. No upbringing can completely eradicate a person's essential character."

"I wonder. I'm sorry for your loss."

"Well, it was a long time ago. But it certainly made me question a lot of things I'd been taught. Not that I tell most people. When you're part of the Tribe, you're obedient, that's all there is to it."

"Maybe if Takeo had been brought up in the Tribe, he would have learned obedience as we all do," Shizuka said, as if thinking aloud. "He hated being told what to do and he hated being confined. So, what do the Kikuta do? Give him to Akio for training as if he were a two-year-old. They've only themselves to blame for his defection. Shigeru knew how to handle him from the start. He won his loyalty. Takeo would have done anything for him."

As we all would have done, she found herself thinking, and tried to suppress it. She had many secrets concerning Lord Shigeru that only the dead knew, and she was afraid Kondo might discern them.

"What Takeo did was quite considerable," Kondo said, "if you believe all the stories."

"Are you impressed, Kondo? I thought nothing impressed you!"

"Everyone admires courage," he replied. "And, like Takeo, I am also of mixed blood, from both the Tribe and the clans. I was raised by the Tribe until I was twelve and then I became a warrior on the surface, a spy beneath. Maybe I understand something of the conflict he must have gone through."

They walked in silence for a while, then he said, "Anyway, I think you know I am impressed by you."

He was less guarded today, more open in his feeling toward her. She was acutely aware of his desire and, once she had pitied him, less able to resist it. As Arai's mistress or as Kaede's maid, she had had status and the protection status gave her, but now nothing was left to her apart from her own skills and this man who had saved her life and would not make a bad husband. There was no reason not to sleep with him, so after they stopped to eat, around noon, she let him lead her into the shade of the trees. The smell of pine needles and cedar was all around them, the sun warm, the breeze soft. A distant waterfall splashed, muted. Everything spoke of new life and spring. His lovemaking was not as bad as she'd feared, though he was rough and quick compared to Ishida.

Shizuka thought, If this is what is to be, I must make the best of it If this is what is to be, I must make the best of it. And then she thought, What's happened to me? Have I suddenly got old? A year ago I would have given a man like Kondo short shrift, but a year ago I still thought I was Arai's. And so much has happened since then, so much intrigue, so many deaths: losing Shigeru and Naomi, pretending all the time I did not care; barely able to weep, not even when the father of my children tried to have me murdered, not even when I thought Kaede would die What's happened to me? Have I suddenly got old? A year ago I would have given a man like Kondo short shrift, but a year ago I still thought I was Arai's. And so much has happened since then, so much intrigue, so many deaths: losing Shigeru and Naomi, pretending all the time I did not care; barely able to weep, not even when the father of my children tried to have me murdered, not even when I thought Kaede would die...

It was not the first time that she had felt sickened by the constant pretense, the ruthlessness, the brutality. She thought of Shigeru and his desire for peace and justice, and of Ishida, who sought to heal, not to kill, and felt her heart twist with more pain than she would have thought possible. I am old I am old, she thought. Next year I will turn thirty. Next year I will turn thirty.

Her eyes went hot and she realized she was about to weep. The tears trickled down her face, and Kondo, mistaking them, held her more closely. Her tears lay wet between her cheek and his chest, forming a pool on the vermilion and sepia pictures that were tattooed on his body.

After a while she stood up and went to the waterfall. Dipping a cloth into the icy water, she washed her face, then cupped her hands to drink. The forest around her was silent apart from the croaking of spring frogs and the first tentative cicadas. The air was already cooling. They must hasten if they were to reach the village before nightfall.

Kondo had already picked up their bundles and slung them onto the pole. Now he lifted it to his shoulder.

"You know," he said as they walked on, raising his voice so she could hear him, for she, knowing the path, was in front, "I don't believe you would hurtTakeo. I don't think it would be possible for you to kill him."

"Why not?" she said, turning her head. "I've killed men before!"

"I know your reputation, Shizuka! But when you speak of Takeo, your face softens as if you pity him. And I don't believe you would ever bring grief to Lady Shirakawa because of the strength of your affection for her."