The Plum Rains and Other Stories (13 page)

The bandit had come upright on his knees. One shoulder seemed to be shattered, and that arm dangled like a thing
attached
with a wooden peg. But he had some kind of
vicious-looking
weapon in his good hand, a hooked blade the colour and shape of a dried wisteria pod.

The Hell-kite pulled the stopper out of his black powder canister with trembling hands and dropped it. He poured in a charge then looked around for the stopper. He couldn’t find it so he tucked the still-open canister in a rock-cleft where it wouldn’t spill. He picked up the bullet and wiped it off then fitted it on a fresh patch and drove it home. The missing stopper had been under his foot. He snatched it up then stood holding the charged gun in one hand, the stopper in the other, staring down at the black power canister, unsure which to put down and which to pick up, his panic growing so that he tossed away the stopper and primed his gun, a loose spray of fine-grain powder spilling down his arm.

The bandit had managed to get to his feet. He was bent over at the waist but still carrying his deadly sword. 

The Hell-kite closed the pan-cover then eased the
serpentine
forward to half-cock. The bandit had spotted him and started up towards his bastion.

The blast tore across the Hell-kite’s forearm, and he threw himself away from it, screeching and rubbing his burned skin, trying to slap away the pain.

But his enemy was on his back again, writhing like a gaffed eel, the lower portion of his face shot away.

The Hell-kite watched as the bandit rolled over onto his belly. He started dragging himself towards the sanctuary of a grove of alders, his shattered arm flopping loosely beside him, a flap of bloody flesh hanging where his cheek had been, his smashed jaw canting out from the side of his head like a
poorly-fitted
handle.

This time he said it aloud: charge first then patched bullet. This time when he spilled priming powder he brushed it away before storming the enemy fortifications. He was determined to conduct himself in the dignified manner of an well-established bandit-killer. He hadn’t brought his barrel-support and so was required to hand-hold the heavy gun; and even though he got within twenty paces of the enemy lines, his next bullet only tore a furrow across the bandit’s buttocks, jerking him around so that he presented his ruined face back towards his assailant, his cheek ripped open, the edge of raw bone from his jaw hung with a wobbly snarl of bloody meat.

The Hell-kite prepared to reload again. But he’d left the
canister
of black powder at his primary assault position. He went scrambling back for it, keening in rage and frustration at the
unfairness
of things and only remembering once he got there that a second canister was attached to his sash. He calmed himself. Now was a time for skill and resolve and tactical cunning. And panache. He reloaded again calmly, carefully, and returned to the battlefield. He confirmed that his enemy had not regained
sufficient mobility to regroup his forces then found a good place to sit with the gun supported on his knees and shot him again, blowing a bright splash of blood out of his neck.

The bandit rolled over and lay on his back, bleeding into the dust from all parts of him.

With the tide of battle turned in his favour, the Hell-kite of Edo decided to confront his enemy in hand-to-hand combat. He seized him by one foot and dragged him more out into the open, twisting him over onto his belly in the process. The bandit probably couldn’t retrieve his sword; but the Hell-kite was
cautious
by nature, and he kicked the thing farther away then drew his own long sword, revered symbol of the warrior’s soul. This was what it was like. He darted forward, slashing down hard as he did so and employing what he understood to be the deadly ‘oblique-style’ technique of a skilled neck-cutter. But he’d swung too soon, his aim was poor, his balance all wrong, and his sword tip only took off an ear as it crashed into the side of the bandit’s already mutilated jaw, ripping it apart in a spray of blood slobber and loose teeth.

The Hell-kite paused and gathered himself. He was too
excited
. This was his opportunity to become what he wished to be, and he wanted to savour it. But he also had to finish before the stupid bandit bled to death.

He moved around to where he would have a better angle and swung a mighty swing, hitting the bandit too high again, opening another deep gash on his head and driving his face into the dirt.

The bandit lay with blood leaking out of his broken-open mouth, bits of bone and teeth jammed up into odd quadrants of what was left of his face so that the Hell-kite panicked and hit him again in disappointment and despair at the unfairness of things, this blow too glancing off the bandit’s skull; and he stood over him hacking downwards with blow after blow,
finding
his neck with some strokes and ricocheting off his skull with others, gouts of blood flipping up and bits of meat flying, but finally chopping the head free so that he could kick it away in triumph.

He stood over him panting. He was the scourge of bandits, the implacable restorer of justice and provider of retribution for all the suffering inflicted on all the … sufferers.

He pulled off the dead man’s robe and spread it on the ground then rolled the head onto it with his foot and tied up the sleeves to form a carry-sack. It was a poor thing, he knew, with most of the features hacked away; but there would be a time when he would look back over a distinguished career of saving towns and villages from the depredations of bandits, and remember this moment and smile ruefully and nod modestly and forgive himself for its awkwardness and accept the praise of those who owed him so much and to whom he had become something of a legend and a wonder and a marvel.

He felt a sudden urge to urinate and thought he might piss on the corpse of his opponent but was also a little frightened of that idea and so chose the bandit’s fortress instead, the yellow of his urine splashing against the green of the alder bushes.

There were no villagers nearby to appreciate what he had done for them so the Hell-kite started back to his pre-battle camp, intending to hide his gear then continue on to the Land of Dewa with his trophy for the pleasure of the praise he would find there. He lost his way immediately and wandered crimped with irritation until he spotted a familiar gorge and headed off again in the right direction.

Then he stopped as if maul-struck. He’d left his harquebus on the battlefield.

As he retraced his steps, he almost wept at this latest
demonstration
of the unfairness of things, of the injustices that dogged him so that even now, in his moment of victory, he still 
had to compensate for the stupid karma that had caused him to be born the child of peasant instead of the son of a samurai. Nothing came easily for him. Nothing was ever given to him. He was on his own always and had to do everything himself, with no help from anybody ever.

The Hell-kite got back to his camp late in the afternoon. His horse lay on its side shivering. When it spotted him
approaching
it began struggling to get up; but its bad leg had
become
broken, and it toppled over each time and screamed in a sound he hadn’t known could come from a horse.

He had left it tied in a manner he thought was about right and now this. He darted in and stabbed the horse in the belly, barely avoiding its flailing hind legs. He stabbed it again then stepped back to wait; and once it had died, dragged his gear around to a low, marshy dell and hid it in a grove of willows. It was probably too late to reach Dewa. Warriors lived off the land. He decided to butcher the horse, using his small sword since his long sword, the warrior’s soul, was too precious for such a menial task.

The horse was harder to cut than he would have thought. Drawing the edge smoothly through the target was the secret, but that didn’t seem to have much of an effect. His neglect of his blades might have been partially at fault. But nobody showed how to care for them, and he began jabbing and hacking at the tough hide, splashing blood all over everything in his
frustration
, but managing to gouge out a ragged crater eventually and earn himself a few strips of stringy meat.

He built a fire pit with rocks then started his evening fire. He regretted not having a more martial battle-camp, with watch fires blazing on the horizon, and war banners mounted on tall poles. He wished he had an enclosure with camp stools and a rack for displaying the heads of slain warriors. He would have liked to sit up under the full moon after the others had retired 
and gaze on the heads of the men he had overcome and
speculate
on the sadness of the nature of things. Or perhaps just the sliver of a three-day moon in a clear sky? Or, no, the full-moon but wreathed in mist. And the cries of fearful prisoners
pleading
to be spared. And maybe their wives and daughters on their knees begging for mercy. And the melancholy note of a single flute mournfully tootling of the sadness of things. But so then not the cries of captives but just a row of severed heads in the moonlight. But still maybe with a few daughters, young ones with long, lustrous hair. And also only wearing their underskirts. And how at first they’re afraid of him, but then when he’s in his quilts they all creep in too. Or maybe just one does. But then the next night a different one.

When the fire seemed about right he washed the horse meat in the nearby stream then skewered it on peeled willow sticks. He raked apart the fire to expose a bed of glowing coals then positioned the strips of meat between two upright stones. He went off to collect more firewood before full dark, and came back to find that the skewers had burned through in the centre before the meat was hardly more than singed and his meal had dropped onto the fire, smothering the flames so that he had to pluck out the raw chunks of bloody muscle and take them down to the stream to rinse off again then come back and get his fire blazing again, almost incapacitated with frustration. He banked the burning branches under the tallest upright wedge of granite then draped the stringy bits of muscle down over the front of it. The bottoms of each strip charred while the tops remained raw, but by reversing them and moving them around this way and that, he managed to burn the flesh sufficiently to be able to choke it down. War drums wouldn’t have helped.

That night the Hell-kite of Edo awoke with a searing pain in his belly. He thought he’d been stabbed, and he staggered up out of his quilts on his hands and knees and vomited in great 
heaving gasps. His mouth and throat burned with the foul discharge, and he stumbled down to the stream and fell to his knees at the edge of it, clenching himself in his misery and rage at the world that never relented, never relaxed in its
determination
to humiliate him. He drank deeply then started back up to his quilts, but an abrupt spasm in his bowels flooded him open in an uncontrollable rupture so that he barely squatted in time, jerking his robes up as he emptied himself, the stench of it
awful
, splattering his heels and ankles in this final violation of his dignity and panache.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY, EXHAUSTED
, starving, bent with cramps, the Hell-kite of Edo shoved his swords through his sash and set out on the road that would take him to the Dewa border, his harquebus wrapped in a light quilt and the bandit’s head
packaged
within its blackened and filthy robe.

The morning sun burned just above the ridge line of the mountains, and he walked with an ache in his belly that would not cease. He found what he thought might be blackberries and tasted them but only vomited again, hacking up a thin, watery bile. He drank from creeks he passed, his water gourd forgotten at his bivouac site, and he stopped occasionally, sat in wedges of sunlight and stared up at the empty blue sky.

By the hour of the ram, the Hell-kite had reached a narrow valley thick with flowering pampas grasses, the silver filaments glowing in the late autumn sunlight. His path led straight through this dry moorlands as if it had been cut with a blade. There was no stream that he could see, but an outcropping of rock bordered the path, and he flopped down to rest, his long gun beside him.

His eyes closed in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, the sound of the wind in the trees soothed him, and he dozed off then jerked awake. 

A huge man was observing him from the road. He wore old-style body armour of polished leather strips laced together with red silk cords. His immense badger-belly protruded like a great flabby drum, and his coiffure was so heavily oiled it left greasy streaks on the rolls of fat at the back of his neck. The man’s naked arms and shoulders and thighs bore the scars of healed slash wounds, his fleshy red face was hatched with them, and he leaned on a heavy cudgel and gazed down at the sick warrior like a gate guardian.

You’re carrying something with you, Jirobei said.

No concern of yours, said the Hell-kite.

The huge man looked up at the steeply vertical mountains arranged all around them, the highest peaks bright with snow in the sunshine. You don’t belong here.

I’m called Tarō, Hell-kite of Edo, harvester of bandits.

Very good.

No one disputes my ferocity.

I’m sure that’s the case.

The huge man sat down across from him, his massive and naked buttocks resting directly on the earth. What’s your family name?

Family name?

Jirobei nodded at the two sword hilts protruding from the Hell-kite’s sash. Your samurai name.

Tarō of Edo is what I use.

Jirobei said nothing.

The Hell-kite waited then said, Is this the road to the Land of Dewa?

Is that where you wish to go?

I’ve been in these mountains for days fighting bandits. I need rest. I need food and wine and warm quilts to sleep on.

Jirobei’s eyes on him didn’t waver. What are you carrying? 

The Hell-kite pulled the harquebus up onto his lap in a demonstration of ownership; but Jirobei held his hand extended with the fat red palm turned upwards, thick as a saddle. Show me.