Sisters of the Sword Read online

  “Mother and Moriyasu must have climbed out this way,” I told Hana, tucking the little wooden sword into my sash. “Someone must have warned them. Come on, we must follow and see if we can find them.”

  Hana didn’t reply.

  I turned around and saw that she had sunk to the floor in the far corner of our mother’s room. She was crouching, half curled into a ball, shivering as she buried her face in her hands.

  I hurried over to her and pulled her into my arms. “Be strong, Hana,” I whispered against her hair. “Just a little while longer. We’ll find Mother and Moriyasu, and then everything will be all right….”

  “No, it won’t,” Hana said on a trembling breath. “Father is dead…Harumasa and Nobuaki are dead…things will never be all right again!”

  “We must make them all right!” I said fiercely. “We have to get out of here, Hana. We have to survive and make sure that Uncle is punished for what he’s done.” I gave her a little shake. “We must be brave and put our emotions aside for now.” I rested the back of my hand against her cheek. Her skin was cold. “Can you do that, Hana?” I asked. “Can you come with me to find Mother?”

  She stared at me for a moment, her eyes so dark they were almost black. Then she nodded. “Swords,” she said. “We’ll need our swords if we have to fight.”

  “I’ll go and get them,” I said. “Stay here. Don’t move until I come back.”

  The corridor was deserted and silent, but I could hear Uncle’s soldiers nearby, tearing linen from the beds and slashing wall panels. They were searching for us. Careful not to make a sound, I tiptoed next door to the bedchamber I shared with Hana. Here, tables had been tipped over and our clothes ransacked. It made my heart ache to see Hana’s scrolls of poetry torn to shreds and left on the floor.

  I moved quickly, desperate to get back to Hana as soon as I could, in case the soldiers came back to check our rooms again.

  Swiftly I took our swords from their ornate stand. Fashioned from tempered steel, the nihonto were long and lethally sharp but light and easy to carry in their wooden saya scabbards. I headed for the door—

  And froze.

  I heard the light scuff of boot leather on a floor-board. Someone was coming!

  Shrinking back against the wall, I held my breath. I closed my eyes and concentrated my mind, trying to remember the rules of self-control from my training. My heart hammered so loudly that I was sure whoever was out there would hear it. Breathe, I told myself. And don’t panic.

  Though I had practiced often, self-control was hard to find when a real enemy was approaching. I had never fought an opponent with the intention of hurting them, but these soldiers did not have wooden bokken. Their sharp blades would be fatal.

  My heart slowed. I listened again, ears straining to catch the slightest sound. This time I heard nothing except the distant cries of dying servants. Had I been mistaken?

  No. There it was again. A quiet, creeping footstep. I opened my eyes and risked a peep through a crack in the door. One of Uncle’s samurai was making his way slowly along the corridor. He stopped abruptly, just outside the doorway to my mother’s chamber—where my sister sat alone and defenseless.

  My fingers gripped the two nihonto in my left hand, and I swore to myself that I would kill the samurai if I had to.

  He moved again, his leather armor creaking softly, and I wondered whether I could draw my sword without the sound alerting him to my presence.

  Suddenly a shout echoed along the corridor. “Rokuro! This way!”

  The samurai glanced back over his shoulder. I caught a glimpse of his face, under the shadow of his helmet. He was old, battle-hardened, with wrinkled skin and a red scar that puckered one corner of his mouth. He was the samurai who fought Nobuaki in the banqueting room.

  “Not yet,” he called back.

  But a harsh voice insisted, “Now! Captain’s orders.”

  The samurai glanced back at the doorway to Mother’s room. He hesitated, and for a moment I thought he was going to disobey orders.

  My right hand tightened on the hilt of my sword. Silently I began to slide it from its scabbard.

  But all at once the samurai changed his mind. He turned away. His armor and weapons clinked as he broke into a trot and hurried back the way he’d come.

  Relieved, I waited until I was sure he was gone. Then I darted along the corridor, keeping close to the wall.

  Hana was waiting where I had left her, crouched low with her arms wrapped around her slender body. She flinched when I entered the room, her face white with fear. But when she saw that it was me—and that I was carrying our nihonto—relief washed over her face.

  “I heard a voice,” she whispered.

  “One of Uncle’s samurai,” I muttered, kneeling beside her. “He’s gone now, but we may meet others—and if we do, we must be prepared to fight.”

  “I don’t know if I have the strength.” Hana’s voice was so weak I could barely hear her.

  “You must find it, somehow.” I took her limp, cold hand and placed her sword firmly in her grip. I drew my own from its scabbard and weighed it in my hand, turning it this way and that so the steel caught the light. A sensation of power and confidence stole over me.

  “Come on, Hana,” I said quietly. “The safest way out is down by the lake. The path leads to the west gate, and eventually to the forest. We’ll search for Mother and Moriyasu there.”

  I checked that none of Uncle’s soldiers were on the walkway outside the gap, and then gathered my long skirts and hurried through the debris. Hana came after me, her sword gripped tightly in her hand. Keeping low, we made a dash for the lake.

  The gardens were swathed in shadows, and I could hear the samurai on the other side of the buildings, shouting when they found a survivor. Flames licked upward and tall columns of orange sparks swirled into the sky. By morning, our home would be nothing but a charred and smoldering ruin.

  There was no sign of Moriyasu or my mother near the lake. The water was black and still, not a ripple marred the onyx surface. I shivered and glanced at Hana.

  “We’ll do as you said, Kimi,” she murmured. “The west gate…and then the forest.”

  Swords in our hands, we skirted around the edge of the lake and took a curving path to the west gate. The place was deserted. Father’s guards must have rushed inside to join the fight against Uncle’s samurai.

  Hana and I hurried down the hill to the forest. But as we slipped among the trees, I heard a crashing sound in the darkness. Shouts echoed, and I knew that Uncle’s men were nearby.

  Stopping dead in my tracks, I tried to work out how many there were, and which way they were heading.

  My heart sank as I realized a small army of Uncle’s samurai were in the forest ahead.

  And they were making straight for us!

  Tightening my grip on my sword, I glanced back over my shoulder. The shinden and the buildings around it threw a curtain of crimson fire into the night sky. Even the rising moon looked blood red. We couldn’t go back. But we couldn’t go forward, either. I held my breath, trying to decide what to do.

  An idea came into my mind like a whisper of soft summer wind.

  The shrine…

  I glanced at Hana and she nodded, as if she had read my mind. The shrine was a secret place in the heart of the forest, dedicated to our family god, where I sometimes went alone to practice with my sword. Thinking of it gave me strength and courage.

  Uncle’s samurai were coming closer, not caring who heard them as they crashed through the undergrowth. Grabbing Hana’s hand, I cut to the left and stayed low, half crouching and half running through the shadowy forest. Around us, the trees crowded closer. Bark gleamed silver in the moonlight. Dry leaves rustled and whispered. Soon the sounds of the soldiers fell far behind, and we were alone.

  I knew we were near the shrine because we came to the torii, the gateway that marks the start of a sacred place. Two tall, slender pillars supported a carved crossbar, the ends curving
upward like the wing tips of a bird in flight.

  Hana and I stepped beneath the torii. We made our way on until we crossed the little wooden bridge over the stream and at last reached the tiny, open-fronted pavilion at the edge of a clearing.

  “I think we’ll be safe here,” I murmured to Hana, sheathing my sword at last.

  We bowed our heads and whispered a small prayer for the protection of our family, and then we stepped inside. There was a low wooden table with candles, a small iron lantern, and a scattering of yellow flowers and other offerings.

  I noticed one offering had been misplaced. A small scroll had been rolled and hastily tied, without the careful knotting we usually used for luck, a hand’s length away from the offering plate.

  Hana dropped to her knees in front of the low table and gasped. She pointed to markings on the outside of the scroll that spelled out our names.

  “It’s for us,” she said breathlessly. “And it’s Mother’s handwriting.”

  I glanced over her shoulder. Immediately I recognized the firm, confident sweeps of my mother’s writing and I felt hope again.

  Normally we would not touch an offering to the gods, but this seemed to have been put here for us. Hana carefully lifted the scroll and opened it slowly. “It’s a poem.”

  “A poem?” My heart fluttered. “What does it say?”

  “Old branches break above and die…,” Hana read aloud, “seedling grows thicker…the cherry blossom grows once more…new season begins.”

  “She would have known that we would come here if we managed to escape,” I said. I read the poem again, trying to understand. “Seedling grows thicker…I wonder what she was trying to tell us.”

  “Moriyasu is the seedling,” Hana said slowly. “Mother is telling us that although our father and older brothers are gone, our youngest brother is still alive. He will grow, and so our family tree will survive.”

  “Moriyasu is the future,” I said, nodding. I touched my fingers briefly to the hilt of his little wooden sword, still tucked in my sash. “He is hope. The ‘new season’ must mean winning back the seat of the Jito for Moriyasu, as Grandfather would have wished.”

  We couldn’t know for sure that this was what Mother’s message meant. But we had to hope for something, Hana and I. Without hope, there was nothing but loss and pain.

  Hana glanced back over her shoulder, through the open front of the shrine to the dark forest beyond. “We must follow Mother and Moriyasu,” she said. “But where do you think they’ve gone, Kimi?”

  I thought for a moment. “Mother must know that Uncle will search for them as soon as he realizes they are not among the dead. Mother will need to go far away, to lose herself and Moriyasu…and what better place to become lost than in a crowded town?”

  “Then the town is where we must go, too.”

  I nodded. “We’ll rest here for the night, and set out at dawn.”

  Hana leaned forward. “We mustn’t let the samurai see this,” she said. “Or they will carry the news of our plans back to Uncle.” She lit one of the offering candles and held the small scroll in the flame until it caught. She placed the burning paper on a stone plate and we watched as the orange flame turned our mother’s parting message to black ash.

  Once Mother’s words were destroyed, I felt tiredness sweep through my body. I sank down and leaned against Hana, closing my eyes. At once images swarmed through my mind—the crimson stain spreading fast across my father’s yellow silk robes…Harumasa’s ashen face as he fell to the floor of the banqueting room…

  And over those images echoed Uncle’s last words to my father: “I honor my brother, the Jito,” he had said. “Just as I honor our Yamamoto ancestors.”

  My heart ached as the memories washed over me, and silent tears ran down my face. How could Uncle have done this? Could he really be the same man who had taught me the kata? The laughing, affectionate uncle who had ridden on horseback with Hana and me, telling us stories of past battles? Desolation gripped me as I remembered one long-ago summer’s day when our whole family had taken a picnic down to the river. Moriyasu had been a baby then, swaddled in a silk robe in Mother’s arms. Hana and I had been little girls playing in the water, splashing our cousin Ken-ichi, while Uncle and Father had laughed and joked together on the riverbank. I could hardly believe how our family had been torn apart.

  I felt Hana slip her arms around me, and soon her tears were wet on my shoulder. We wept for a long time, kneeling at the shrine of our ancestors. Outside, the moon climbed high in the sky. The black of night grew deeper in the forest.

  Eventually Hana and I curled up together on the mat. Lulled by the soothing sound of the nearby stream, we slept.

  I sat bolt upright, heart pounding. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but something had woken me.

  There! There was the sound again—a dry twig snapping under the weight of a heavy boot.

  Beside me, Hana was leaning on one elbow, her eyes wide. Another branch cracked, and then came the unmistakable sound of creeping footsteps.

  Hana glanced up at me and mouthed silently, Someone’s coming!

  I reached out a hand and quietly gripped the hilt of my nihonto. I was ready to defend us both, to the death if need be.

  The footsteps crept closer. Silently I slid my sword from its scabbard.

  I crept toward the entrance, held my breath, and waited…

  Suddenly the intruder loomed in the open doorway. Moonlight glinted on his elaborate iron samurai helmet and I knew that this was one of Uncle’s men. Before I could make a move, he shot out an arm and grabbed my throat. His fingers were like a steel vice around my neck as he dragged me out of the shrine. I began to choke.

  I staggered but he kept me upright, his face so close to mine that I could smell the fish on his breath. I stared into his battle-hardened face and the long red scar that puckered one corner of his mouth, and realized that this was the samurai who had crept along the corridor to my mother’s chamber earlier. My hand gripped tighter on the hilt of my sword.

  “I’ve been tracking you silly girls since you left the banqueting hall.” He sneered. “And you never suspected a thing.” He sniggered, a nasty, low, rasping sound, and tightened his grip on my throat.

  I couldn’t breathe. Blood pounded in my ears.

  As he raised the point of his sword to my throat he whispered, “I will be well rewarded for killing you!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Not as easy as you think,” I gasped.

  I flung my sword up toward his head.

  The sharp edge near the hand guard sliced easily through the leather flap at the side of his helmet. Crimson blood spurted from the side of his face and for a moment he was blinded, shrieking in agony. His grip on my throat loosened and I twisted away.

  He staggered toward me, blinking the blood from his eyes. I half turned, moving fast, and jerked my elbow up under his chin. His head snapped back and my sudden small victory gave me courage. Power surged through my limbs as I leaped forward into the air, my foot swinging up to deliver a hard kick—

  But the samurai stepped behind me and grabbed my shoulder. He pulled hard and all at once I was falling! I landed flat on my back in the dirt, the breath knocked from my body.

  With a sneer of triumph, he brought his boot down hard on my sword arm. Pain lanced through me.

  “You will die on my blade,” the samurai muttered, black eyes glittering from the shadows beneath his helmet.

  I struggled and tried to break free, but I was trapped. Somewhere nearby, I heard the metallic whisper of another sword being drawn. Had more samurai come for us?

  Suddenly I caught a glimpse of a pale figure running from the shadows of the shrine, hands clasped together around the hilt of a silvery blade, silky black hair trailing behind. Hana! She sprinted across the clearing and swung at the old soldier.

  The samurai cursed and twisted like a cat to face her, stepping off my arm. He deflected her attack with his blade, and the clash
of steel echoed through the forest.

  I scrambled to my feet. The samurai’s back was to me, so I rushed at him with a downward slice of my sword. He must have heard me coming because he stepped away, and I could only catch him with a sharp slash to the forearm.

  The samurai howled and turned with a fast, high, sideways slice but I ducked before it could take my head off my shoulders. I had hit him twice now.

  Moonlight flashed on flat steel. Hana came at him from the other side but he deflected her blow. As he moved, I saw the leather laces that held the steel plates of his armor together pull apart to reveal his patterned kimono. Beneath would be his flesh. The perfect place to strike…

  As if he sensed my intent, the samurai turned and came at me in a roaring attack, sword whirling above his head. He had murder in his eyes, and in that instant I knew that his would be a fatal blow. “Victory!” he yelled.

  Without hesitation, I stepped to the side and flung my weapon up to knock his away. The force sent shudders jarring down my arm.

  The samurai’s own weight and the ferocity of his charge brought him forward, bellowing. Quickly I dropped down on one knee and plunged my sword into his side. My sharpened steel slipped cleanly into the gap between the plates of armor—and my blade was buried in his flesh.

  He turned toward me in surprise and for a moment we stared at each other, eye to eye, his hot breath whistling into my face. “I may bleed,” he hissed, “but I won’t die. Not until I’ve killed you!” Then he rammed his body farther onto my blade.

  The samurai gasped for breath, sending a fine spray of blood across my face. I let out a horrified cry.

  He raised his sword and would have brought it swinging down, its silver arc aimed for my head. But abruptly Hana was there, her nihonto swirling through the air. Her blade sliced through the samurai’s wrist.

  He howled in agony as his severed hand fell to the ground. His eyes bulged. I could feel his weight dragging on my sword, twisting the blade inside him even more. “You won’t last long…,” he rasped. “He will find you.”