Upriver, or downriver, a man is shouting in a hunchbacked dialect.

But the path back to the rear garden of the Harubayashi Inn delivers Uzaemon into a hidden clearing. Here, on a bed of dark pebbles, several dozen head-sized sea-smoothed rocks are enclosed within a knee-high stone wall. There is no shrine, no tori tori gate, no straw ropes hung with paper twists, so it takes the interpreter a little time to recognise that he is in a cemetery. Hugging himself against the cold, he steps over the wall to examine the headstones. The pebbles grind and give beneath his feet. gate, no straw ropes hung with paper twists, so it takes the interpreter a little time to recognise that he is in a cemetery. Hugging himself against the cold, he steps over the wall to examine the headstones. The pebbles grind and give beneath his feet.

Numbers, not names, are engraved on the rocks: up to eighty-one.

Invasive bamboo is kept back, and lichen is cleaned from the stones.

Uzaemon wonders if the woman he mistook for Otane is a caretaker.

Perhaps she took fright, he thinks, at a samurai charging her way . . . at a samurai charging her way . . .

But what Buddhist sect spurns even desultory death-names on its headstones? Without a death-name for Lord Enma's Register of the Dead, as every child knows, a soul is turned away from the Next World's Gates. Their ghosts drift for all eternity. Uzaemon speculates that the buried are miscarried children, criminals or suicides, but is not quite convinced. Even members of the untouchable caste are buried with some sort of name.

There is no birdsong, he notices, in winter's cage.

'More than likely, sir,' the landlord tells Uzaemon back at the inn, 'it was a certain charcoal-burner's girl you saw. She lives with her father 'n' brother in a tumbledown cottage an' a million starlings in the thatch, up past Twelve Fields. She drifts this-a-way 'n' that-a-way up 'n' down the river, sir. Weak-headed an' stumble-footed, she is, an' she's been with child twice or three times, but they never take root 'cause the daddy was her her daddy, or else her brother, an' she'll die in that tumbledown cottage alone, sir, for what family'd want such impureness dilutin' its blood?' daddy, or else her brother, an' she'll die in that tumbledown cottage alone, sir, for what family'd want such impureness dilutin' its blood?'

'But it was an old woman I saw, not a girl.'

'Kyoga mares are fatter-hipped than the princesses o' Nagasaki, sir: a local girl o' thirteen, fourteen'd pass for an old mare, specially in half-light . . .'

Uzaemon is dubious. 'Then what about this secret graveyard?'

'Oh, there's no secret, sir: in the hostellers' trade it's what we call our "Long Stayers' Quarters". There's many a traveller who falls sick on the road, sir, specially on a pilgrims' route, an' sleep their last in inns, an' it costs us landlords a handsome ransom, an' "ransom" is the word: we can't very well dump the body by the roadside. What if a relative comes along? What if the ghost scares off business? But a proper funeral needs money, same as everythin' else in this world, sir, what with priests for chantin' an' a stonecutter for a nice tomb an' a plot of earth in the temple . . .' The landlord shakes his head. 'So: an ancestor of mine cleared the cemetery in the copse for the benefit, sir, of guests who pass away at the Harubayashi. We keep a proper register of the guests lyin' there, an' number the stones proper too, an' write down the guests' names if they said one, an' if it's a man or woman, an' guess their age, an' whatnot. So if any relatives do come lookin', we can maybe help.'

Shuzai asks, 'Are your dead guests often claimed by their relatives?'

'Not once in my time, sir, but we do it anyway. My wife washes the stones every O-bon O-bon.'

Uzaemon asks, 'When was the last body interred there?'

The innkeeper purses his lips. 'Fewer single travellers pass through Kyoga, sir, now the Omura Road's so much improved . . . Last one was three years ago: a printer gentleman, who went to bed fit as a goat but come mornin' he was cold as stone. Makes you think, sir, doesn't it?'

Uzaemon is unsettled by the innkeeper's tone. 'What does it make you think?'

'It's not just the aged an' frail Death bundles into his Black Palanquin . . .'

The Kyoga Road follows the Ariake Sea's muddy shore and inland through a wood, where one of the hired men, Hane, falls behind and another, Ishi, runs on ahead. 'A precaution,' explains Shuzai, from inside his palanquin, 'to make sure we aren't being followed from Kurozane or expected up ahead.' Several upward shrugs of the road later, they cross the narrow Mekura River and take a leaf-strewn track turning up towards the gorge's mouth. By a moss-blotched tori tori gate, a noticeboard turns away casual visitors. Here the palanquin is lowered, the weapons removed from its false floor, and before Uzaemon's eyes, Deguchi of Osaka and his long-suffering servants turn into mercenaries. Shuzai emits a sharp whistle. Uzaemon hears nothing - unless a twig cracking is something - but the men hear a signal that all is well. They run with the empty palanquin, climbing shallow curves. The interpreter is soon out of breath. A waterfall's clatter and boom grows louder and nearer, and around a recent rock-fall the men arrive at the lower mouth of Mekura Gorge: a stepped cutting in a low escarpment as high as eight or nine men, cloaked and choked by long-tongued ferns and throttling creepers. Down this drop the cold river plunges. The pool below churns and boils. gate, a noticeboard turns away casual visitors. Here the palanquin is lowered, the weapons removed from its false floor, and before Uzaemon's eyes, Deguchi of Osaka and his long-suffering servants turn into mercenaries. Shuzai emits a sharp whistle. Uzaemon hears nothing - unless a twig cracking is something - but the men hear a signal that all is well. They run with the empty palanquin, climbing shallow curves. The interpreter is soon out of breath. A waterfall's clatter and boom grows louder and nearer, and around a recent rock-fall the men arrive at the lower mouth of Mekura Gorge: a stepped cutting in a low escarpment as high as eight or nine men, cloaked and choked by long-tongued ferns and throttling creepers. Down this drop the cold river plunges. The pool below churns and boils.

Uzaemon becomes a prisoner of the ever-plunging waterfall . . .

She drinks from this river, he thinks, where it is a mountain stream where it is a mountain stream.

. . . until a thrush whistles in a flank of wild camellia. Shuzai whistles back. The leaves part and five men emerge. They are dressed in commoners' clothes, but their faces have the same military hardness as the other masterless samurai. 'Let's get this crate on poles -' Shuzai indicates his battered palanquin '- out of sight.'

Hidden by the wall of camellia in a hollow where the palanquin is covered with branches and leaves, Shuzai introduces the new men by false names: Tsuru, the moon-faced leader, Yagi, Kenka, Muguchi and Bara; Uzaemon, still dressed as a pilgrim, is named 'Junrei'. The new men show him a distant respect, but they look to Shuzai as the leader of the expedition. Whether the mercenaries view Uzaemon as a besotted fool or an honourable man - and maybe and maybe, Uzaemon considers, one may be both one may be both - they give no sign. The samurai named Tanuki gives a brief account of their journey from Saga down to Kurozane and the interpreter thinks of the small steps that gathered this raiding party: Otane the herbalist's accurate guess at the contents of his heart; Jiritsu the acolyte's revulsion at the Order's Creeds; Enomoto's nefariousness; and more steps; and more twists; some known, and others not; and Uzaemon marvels at the weaverless loom of fortune. - they give no sign. The samurai named Tanuki gives a brief account of their journey from Saga down to Kurozane and the interpreter thinks of the small steps that gathered this raiding party: Otane the herbalist's accurate guess at the contents of his heart; Jiritsu the acolyte's revulsion at the Order's Creeds; Enomoto's nefariousness; and more steps; and more twists; some known, and others not; and Uzaemon marvels at the weaverless loom of fortune.

'The first part of our ascent,' Shuzai is saying, 'we'll make in six groups of two, leaving at five-minute intervals. First, Tsuru and Yagi; second, Kenka and Muguchi; third, Bara and Tanuki; next, Kuma and Ishi; then, Hane and Shakke; and last, Junrei,' he looks at Uzaemon, 'and me. We'll regroup below the gatehouse' - the men cluster around an inked map of the mountainside, their breaths mingling - 'guarding this natural revile. I'll lead Bara and Tanuki, Tsuru and Hane over this bluff and we'll storm the gate from uphill - the unexpected direction - shortly after the change of guard. We'll bind, gag and bag them with the ropes and sacks. They're just farm boys, so don't kill them, unless they insist. Bare Peak is another two hours' stiff march, so the monks will be settling down for the night by the time we arrive. Kuma, Hane, Shakke, Ishi: scale the wall here . . .' Shuzai now unfolds his picture of the Shrine '. . . on the south-west side, where the trees are closest and thickest. First, go to the gatehouse here and let the rest of us in. Then we send for the highest-ranking master. Him we inform that Sister Aibagawa is leaving with us. This will happen peacefully, or over a courtyard of slain acolytes. The choice is his.' Shuzai looks at Uzaemon. 'A threat you aren't willing to carry through is no threat at all.'

Uzaemon nods, but Please, Please, he prays, he prays, don't let any life be lost . . . don't let any life be lost . . .

'Junrei's face,' Shuzai tells the others, 'is known to Enomoto from the Shirando Academy. Although our obliging landlord informed us that the Lord Abbot is in Miyako at present, Junrei mustn't risk being identified, even second-hand. That is why you shall take no part in the raid.'

It is unacceptable, thinks Uzaemon, to cower outside like a woman to cower outside like a woman.

'I know what you're thinking,' says Shuzai, 'but you are not a killer.'

Uzaemon nods, intending to change Shuzai's mind during the day.

'When we leave, I'll warn the monks that I'll cut down any pursuers without mercy. We then withdraw, with the freed prisoner. We'll cut the vines of Todoroki Bridge to win us more time tomorrow. We pass through the Halfway Gatehouse during the Hour of the Ox, descend the gorge and arrive back here by the Hour of the Rabbit. We carry the woman in the palanquin as far as Kashima. There we disperse and leave the domain before horsemen can be despatched. Any questions?'

Winter woods are creaking, knitted and knotted. Dead leaves lie in deep drifts. Needle-tips of birdsong stitch and thread the thicket's many layers. Shuzai and Uzaemon climb in silence. Here the Mekura River is a bellowing, roiling, echoing thing. The granite sky entombs the valley.

By mid-morning, the arches of Uzaemon's blistered feet are aching.

Here the Mekura River is as smooth and green as foreign glass.

Shuzai gives Uzaemon oil to rub into his aching calves and ankles, saying, 'The swordsman's first weapon is his feet.'

On a round rock, an immobile heron waits for fish.

'The men you hired,' ventures Uzaemon, 'seem to trust you entirely.'

'Some of us studied under the same master in Imabari; most of us served under a minor lordling of Iyo Domain who provoked some fierce skirmishes with his neighbour. To have relied on a man to stay alive is a bond closer than blood.'

A splash punctures the jade pool: the heron is gone.

Uzaemon recalls an uncle teaching him long ago to skim stones. He recalls the old woman he saw at sunrise. 'There are times when I suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. It shows us pictures. Pictures of the past, and the might-one-day-be. This mind's mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice.' He looks at his friend, who is watching a bird of prey high above them. 'I am sounding like a drunken priest.'

'Not at all,' mumbles Shuzai, 'Not at all.'

Higher up the mountainside, limestone cliffs wall in the gorge. Uzaemon begins to see parts of faces in the weather-worn escarpments. A bulge looks like a forehead, a protruding ridge a nose, and excoriations and rockslides, wrinkles and sags. Even mountains Even mountains, thinks Uzaemon, were once young, and age, and one day die were once young, and age, and one day die. One black rift under a shrub-hairy overhang could be a narrowed eye. He imagines ten thousand bats hanging from its ruckled roof . . .

. . . all waiting for one spring evening to ignite their small hearts.

The higher the altitude, the climber sees, the deeper life must hide from winter. Sap is sunk to roots; bears sleep; next year's snakes are eggs.

My Nagasaki life, Uzaemon considers, is as gone as my childhood in Shikoku is as gone as my childhood in Shikoku.

Uzaemon thinks of his adoptive parents and his wife conducting their affairs, intrigues and squabbles, but not guessing that they have lost their adopted son and husband. The process will take many months.

He touches the place over his midriff where he carries Orito's letters.

Soon, Beloved, soon, he thinks. Just a few hours more . . . Just a few hours more . . .

By trying not to remember the Creeds of the Order, he remembers them.

His hand, he finds, is gripping his sword-hilt tight enough to blanch his knuckles.

He wonders whether Orito is already pregnant.

I will care for her, he swears, and raise the child as my own. and raise the child as my own.

Silver birches shiver. Whatever she wishes is all that matters. Whatever she wishes is all that matters.

'What was it like,' Uzaemon asks a question he never asked Shuzai before 'the first time you killed a man?' Sycamore roots grip a steep bank. Shuzai leads for another ten, twenty, thirty paces, until the path arrives at a wide and lapping pool. Shuzai checks the steep, surrounding terrain, as if for ambushers . . .

. . . and cocks his head like a dog. He hears something Uzaemon does not.

The swordsman's half-smile says, One of ours One of ours. 'Killing depends on circumstances, as you'd expect, whether it's a cold, planned murder, or a hot death in a fight, or inspired by honour or a more shameful motive. However many times you kill, though, it's the first that matters. It's a man's first blood that banishes him from the world of the ordinary.' Shuzai kneels at the water's edge and drinks water from his cupped hands. A feathery fish hovers in the current; a bright berry floats by. 'That reckless lordling of Iyo I told you about?' Shuzai climbs on to a rock. 'I was sixteen and sworn to serve the greedy dolt. The feud's history is too long to explain here, but my role in it had me blundering through a thicket on the flank of Mount Ishizuchi one stewed night in the Sixth Month, separated from my comrades. The frogs' racket smothered other sound and the darkness was blinding, and suddenly the ground gave way and I fell into an enemy foxhole. The scout was as unprepared as I was, and the foxhole so stuffed with our two bodies that neither of us could reach our swords. We fumbled and writhed but neither of us yelled for help. His hands found my throat, and clamped and squeezed, tight as Death. My mind was red and shrieking and my throat was crumpling and I thought, This is it This is it . . . but Fate disagreed. Long ago, Fate had chosen for the enemy lord's crest a crescent moon. This insignia was attached to my strangler's helmet so poorly that it snapped off in my hand, so I could slip its sharp metal point through the slit of his eye-mask, through the softness behind it and side to side like a knife in a yam until his grip on my windpipe weakened and fell away.' . . . but Fate disagreed. Long ago, Fate had chosen for the enemy lord's crest a crescent moon. This insignia was attached to my strangler's helmet so poorly that it snapped off in my hand, so I could slip its sharp metal point through the slit of his eye-mask, through the softness behind it and side to side like a knife in a yam until his grip on my windpipe weakened and fell away.'

Uzaemon washes his hands and drinks some water from the pool.

'Afterwards,' says Shuzai, 'in marketplaces, cities, crossroads, hamlets . . .'

The icy water strikes Uzaemon's jawbone like a Dutch tuning fork.

'. . . I thought, I am in this world, but no longer of this world I am in this world, but no longer of this world.'

A wildcat paces along the bough of a fallen elm, bridging the path.

'This lack of belonging, it marks us . . .' Shuzai frowns '. . . around the eyes.'

The wildcat looks at the men unafraid, and yawns.

It leaps down to a rock, laps water, and disappears.

'Some nights,' Shuzai says, 'I wake to find his fingers choking me.'

Uzaemon is hiding in a deep, weather-sculpted crater, like a molar's indentation, a wiry-rooted scramble above the track, with the two mercenaries going by the names Kenka and Muguchi. Kenka is a lithe man of many small and fluid motions, whilst Muguchi is a stockier, cut-lipped miser of words. From their crater, the men have a partial view of the Halfway Gatehouse, just an arrow-shot away. Smoke blows down from the structure's crude vent. Uphill, upwind and above the bluff, Shuzai and four of the men are waiting for the guards to change. Across the river, something tears through the wood.

'Wild boar,' mutters Kenka. 'Sounds like a fat old thumper.'

They hear a shadowy far-off bell that must belong to the Shrine of Mount Shiranui.

As improbable as a theatrical backdrop, Bare Peak hangs in the sky under clouds massy and crumpling.

'Rain'd be useful,' remarks Kenka, 'so long as it waits till we're done: it'd wipe our tracks, swell the rivers, make the roads worse for horses and--'

'Voices?' Muguchi's hand demands quiet. 'Listen - three men . . .'

Uzaemon hears nothing for a minute or more, until the embittered voice on the track below is very near. 'Before we was married, she was "No, after we're married I'm yours but not till then," but since the wedding she's all "No, I ain't in the mood so paws off." All I did was knock sense into her, like any husband would, but since then the demon in the blacksmith's wife jumped into mine an' now she won't look at me. Can't even divorce the she-viper, for fear her uncle'd take back his boat an' then where'd I be?'

'High an' dry,' says a second companion, passing below. 'That's where.'

The three approach the gates. 'Open up, Buntaro,' one calls out. 'It's us.'

'Oh, it's "us" is it?' The shout is muffled. 'An' who might this "us" be?'

'Ichiro, Ubei and Tosui,' answers one, 'and Ichiro's moanin' 'bout his wife.'

'We can find room for the first three, but leave the last outside.'

Ten minutes later, the three off-duty guards emerge. 'So, Buntaro,' says one, as they draw into earshot. 'Serve us up the juicy bits.'

'Those're 'tween me, Ichiro's wife and his tell-no-lies futon.'

'Tight as a turtle's slit you you are, you . . .' The voices fade away. are, you . . .' The voices fade away.

Uzaemon, Kenka and Muguchi watch the gate, wait and listen.

Minute follows minute follows minute follows minute . . .

There is no sunset, just a steady fading of the light.

Something's gone wrong, Fear hisses inside Uzaemon.

Muguchi announces, 'Done.' One of the gatehouse gates swings open. A form appears and waves a hand. By the time Uzaemon has scrambled down to the track, the other men are halfway to the gatehouse. Waiting for the interpreter at the gate is Kenka, who whispers, 'Don't speak.' Inside, Uzaemon finds a sheltered porch and a long room built on props and stilts over the river. There is a rack for pikes and axes, an upended cooking pot, a smouldering fire and three large sacks, suspended by ropes from a rafter. First one and then another of the sacks moves, and a bulge shifts, betraying an elbow or knee. The nearest sack, however, hangs motionless as a bag of stones.

Bara is wiping a throwing-knife on a bloodied rag . . .

The river flowing underneath clamours with human syllables.

Your sword didn't kill him, Uzaemon thinks, but your presence here did but your presence here did.

Shuzai leads Uzaemon up through the rear gates. 'We told them we meant them no harm. We told them nobody need be hurt. We said that although samurai cannot surrender, farmers and fishermen can. They agreed to be gagged and bound, but one tried to outwit us. There's a trapdoor in the corner, over the river, and he made a lunge for it. He almost reached it, and had he escaped, things would have gone badly for us. Bara's throwing-knife opened his throat and Tsuru only just saved the body from being washed down to Kurozane.'

Is Ichiro's wife, Uzaemon wonders, now both adulteress now both adulteress and and widow? widow?

'He didn't suffer.' Shuzai grips his arm. 'He was dead within seconds.'

By night, Mekura Gorge becomes a primordial place. The twelve-strong raiding party walks in single file. The track now rises above the river, clinging to the steep side of the gorge. The aches and creaks of beeches and oaks give way to heavy-breathing evergreens. Shuzai has chosen a moonless night, but the clouds are disintegrating, and the starlight is bright enough to gild the darkness.

He didn't suffer, Uzaemon thinks. He was dead within seconds He was dead within seconds.

He places one sore foot in front of the other and tries not to think.

A quiet life of schoolmastering, Uzaemon sees a future, in a quiet town . . . in a quiet town . . .

He places one sore foot in front of the other and tries not to think.

Maybe a quiet life was all the slain guard wanted as well . . .

His earlier zeal to take part in the raid on the monastery has disappeared.