Besides the thousand men he had brought with him, Yukio had been placed in charge of two thousand Chinese troops. Twice that many civilians could be armed from the city’s arsenal and pressed into service if need be. Yukio called only the samurai for this first sally, directing the other troops to man the walls. All mounted, all in full armour, the samurai crowded into the paved staging area behind the south gate.

Observers on the walls reported that the Mongols had reached the two lakes and were lining up facing the south wall. Yukio ordered the gates opened. With Yukio and Jebu leading the way, followed by a bannerman bearing the White Dragon, the samurai rode five abreast, at a trot, on to the bridge. Their taiko drummers beat out a rising, angry rhythm.

As he looked at the line of warriors facing him, Jebu could not see the Mongols—his people—clearly. They were mostly heavy framed, bigger than the samurai. Their faces were dark, burnt by sun and wind. They all wore moustaches with drooping wings, and their hair, where it protruded from under their helmets, was braided. Most of them had black hair, but here and there Jebu saw a red beard and moustache. Their eyes were narrow, the eyes of men who had spent their lives squinting into the sun.

Yukio drew his long, gleaming sword and spurred his horse to a gallop. Jebu did the same, and the wooden bridge quivered as the samurai behind them picked up the pace. The samurai shouted their battle cry, “Muratomo!,” at the motionless Mongols. Jebu looked over his shoulder and saw a thicket of steel blades behind him. But about half of Yukio’s men were still inside the city gate.

Jebu heard three notes of a horn, a Mongol signal. Now, he thought, they would attack. But those facing him wheeled in unison and rode away from the edge of the lakes, leaving a broad open space on the far end of the bridge to invite Yukio’s warriors.

Over the clamour of the samurai charge, Yukio called, “Try to set fire to their siege engines.”

Jebu was remembering that other battle, long ago, when he watched the retreating Kiyosi lead the Takashi out of the grounds of the Imperial Palace, pursued by the Muratomo.

“Yukio,” he called. “It’s a trap.”

“I can’t stop them now.”

Jebu whipped his horse to a burst of speed that carried him to the end of the bridge well ahead of Yukio. He pulled the big brown Chinese stallion to a sliding stop and swung him athwart the path of the charging samurai. He stood in his stirrups so Yukio’s men could see him, and held up his arms in a halting gesture. A Mongol arrow shot past his neck.

Crying out to his men to stop their charge, Yukio pulled his horse up short. The riders immediately following him responded to his command, and the word was relayed in shouts back along the bridge. But the milling mass of leading horses and men crashed into Jebu’s stallion, and Jebu fell to the wooden planking.

There came two long blasts on the Mongol horn. Almost at once arrows were raining down. The Mongols, still riding away from the moat, had turned in their saddles and were shooting back at the samurai. Jebu’s horse screamed and reared as a dozen steel-tipped arrows thudded into its side.

Jebu grabbed Yukio’s arm and pulled him out of his saddle. Using the dying horses as cover, they watched the slaughter of their men. Three Mongol arrows had embedded themselves in Jebu’s armor. He broke off their shafts. The Mongols had stopped and turned to face the city. Again and again they fired volleys at the men on the bridge from their short, powerful, double-curved bows.

The man carrying the White Dragon banner had fallen. Even though it made him a special target, Yukio picked up the banner and ran with it back over the bridge to the gate. Seeing the banner, the samurai began to fall back. Jebu and Yukio stumbled over dying horses and men. The two lakes were stained crimson and filled with bodies. The arrows fell upon them in clouds. Now all the surviving samurai were rushing pell-mell for the south gate.

One mounted man galloped past Yukio and Jebu in the opposite direction, his eyes wild, his face a furious red. Yukio tried to stop him, but the warrior didn’t even notice his leader as he charged by.

The Mongol horn sounded a single note, and the arrows stopped.

Standing up in his stirrups, the lone samurai shouted into the sudden silence, “Ho! I am Sakamoto Michihiko of Owara, descended in the tenth generation from Abe Yoritoki, the renowned warrior.”

Yukio had paused to watch Michihiko. Pushing him fiercely, Jebu got him moving again.

The next Mongol signal was a braying fanfare. In spite of his Zinja training Jebu felt a shudder of fear at what happened next. Like an avalanche the Mongol cavalry rode at full gallop towards the Green Belt Bridge. Silent before, now they screamed like madmen, their faces distorted into masks of fury. Waving their sabres, they bore down on the lone samurai.

The Chinese are much taller than we are, and lighter of skin, except for the sailors, who have been tanned a dark brown by the sun.

Sick and unhappy and frightened as I am, the adventure of crossing this vast ocean and the prospect of seeing the Central Kingdom fill me with excitement.

-Sixth Month, fifteenth day

YEAR OF THE HORSE

Chapter Four

Two flags emblazoned with white dragons flew from the battlements of Kweilin. The larger was the ancient flag of the city, the smaller, the Muratomo family crest. When Yukio and his men arrived at Kweilin, dispatched there by the Sung Emperor’s chief councillor, both they and the people of the city had been amazed by the coincidence of symbols. All considered it to be an auspicious omen.

Jebu, Yukio and Moko stood at the parapet on the south side of the city’s wall, watching the coming of the Mongols. Like a storm moving in from the sea, the Mongol advance was heralded by a blurring of the horizon. The line between the distant blue hills and the blue sky vanished into a ribbon of grey. Gradually the grey blanketed the nearer hills. Dust clouds reared into the sky like giants.

There had been plenty of advance warning. Refugees had been streaming up from the south for days, by land and on the rivers near the city. For the past day and a half, on orders of the city’s governor, the landowners, artisans and peasants living in the surrounding countryside had moved within the walls. They brought with them every scrap of food, including live animals—oxen, goats, pigs, sheep, chickens and horses. Nothing was left behind for the Mongols. It had amazed Yukio and Jebu that Kweilin could feed its huge population in normal times. Though not one of the larger cities in southern China, it was still many times more populous than Heian Kyo.

Now there would be no more refugees. The Mongols themselves had arrived.

Out of the billowing dust clouds came roars and rumblings, the booming of drums, the blare of horns and shouts of command. The Mongols’ standards rose above the dust—poles decorated with horns, spearheads, the wings of large birds or the fluttering tails of animals. The first riders appeared, dark figures advancing at a jog trot in silence.

“Do they frighten you?” Yukio asked Jebu with a smile. “There must be tens of thousands of them. The wings of their army spread from west to east.”

“I am not frightened,” said Jebu, “but I am amazed.”

“I’m frightened,” said Moko. “Even one warrior frightens me. Here there are as many warriors as there are raindrops in a tai-phun.”

“We will try to blow this tai-phun back where it came from,” said Yukio. He was his usual cheerful self, but Jebu suspected he spoke with more confidence than he felt.

On and on the Mongols came. The thunder of their horses’ hooves filled land and sky. Their advance guard was now a short ride from the two lakes, Rong hu and Shan hu, that formed the southern side of the moat around Kweilin’s walls. They were heading straight for the Green Belt Bridge, the one bridge that Yukio had left standing. The wooden bridge divided the two lakes and led to the fortified south gate of the city. All the other bridges had been destroyed and the other gates, except for the river gate, walled up.

As he watched the Mongols, Jebu remembered a day years ago when he had stood with Yukio’s father, Domei, on the wall of the Imperial Palace in Heian Kyo, watching the glittering advance of the Takashi. Would this day end as disastrously as that one had? He hoped not, and reminded himself that a Zinja does not hope.

Jebu felt a special excitement that he could not share with his comrades. These were his father’s people. Until now the only Mongol he had seen was Arghun Baghadur. He strained his eyes to capture every detail of the dress, appearance and manner of the warriors swarming over the hills south of Kweilin. His first impression was one of fur and leather, slitted eyes and brown faces that preserved, as they rode, an implacable silence.

Jebu said, “I would advise that, for the spirits of our men and the spirits of the people of this city, we ride out and attack the Mongols before they get into position.”

Yukio nodded. “Let’s give them a taste of what they can expect from us.”

Yukio called his samurai together at the base of the city wall. Four times the height of a man, the wall was built of yellow rock quarried from the limestone hills around Kweilin. The gates consisted of an inner and outer set of doors made of huge logs reinforced with iron bands. Square stone towers guarded either side of the gateway.

Besides the thousand men he had brought with him, Yukio had been placed in charge of two thousand Chinese troops. Twice that many civilians could be armed from the city’s arsenal and pressed into service if need be. Yukio called only the samurai for this first sally, directing the other troops to man the walls. All mounted, all in full armour, the samurai crowded into the paved staging area behind the south gate.

Finally, there was the thought of China, that fabulous country across the sea, from which came all beauty, all wisdom and all law. She could not die without seeing China.

One day a maid came to her. “His Highness says that you are to pack your very best robes and gowns, because you may be presented to some great lords of China.”

Strange, Taniko thought. Why would he present her to great lords, when he loathed her? With the help of Horigawa’s maids she began to make a list of the things she wanted to take with her. Fear rose in her mind, and she tried to quell it with “Homage to Amida Buddha.”

There had not been an official mission from the Sunrise Land to the Land of Sunset in over two hundred years, and Horigawa’s visit was not an embassy from the Son of Heaven to the Emperor of China either. But when he set out the prince visited the retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa and Chancellor Sogamori and even paid a ceremonial visit to the young Emperor Takakura, Sogamori’s son-in-law. These conversations took most of a day. In the late afternoon Horigawa, along with Taniko, his samurai and his servants, protected by a hundred Takashi outriders, set out through the Rasho Mon.

They followed the Sanyodo Road through pleasant plains divided into flooded rice paddies. They spent the night at the estate of a Takashi lord and continued south in the morning. The road led south to the coast and then west along the Inland Sea.

Through the screened window of her carriage, which she shared with three maids, Taniko could see islands sparkling on the sea like emeralds scattered on blue silk. Fishing boats and other small craft plied their way among the islands and along the shore.

At last they came to Hyogo. The Takashi banner was everywhere fluttering on the tops of warehouses and the tall masts of ships in the harbour. The harbour itself had been specially dredged by Sogamori to admit fully loaded ocean-going vessels. The party rode along the stone wharves past staring dock workers.

Three Takashi war galleys were docked in the harbour, their sail down, their oars at rest. It was from here, thought Taniko, that Kiyosi had embarked on his last voyage. Perhaps it was in one of these very ships that he had sailed to his death. Now, for part of her journey, she would be following the same route he had, seeing the same sights he had seen.

She remembered her own voyage on the Inland Sea with Kiyosi. That time, too, they had left from this same port. She recalled the islands they had stopped at, the flowers they had picked, the shrines and temples they had visited. Tears filled her eyes, blurring the sights of the harbour.

The maids were both excited and terrified at the thought of leaving their country, but had kept their conversation subdued throughout the journey because of Taniko’s presence in the carriage. Now they burst into excited chatter. They had seen the ship on which they would be sailing.

It was a Chinese sea-going junk, standing alone and majestic, tied to the end of a long stone wharf. Taniko’s first impression, as she pressed her head against the carriage screen beside the maids, was of a floating castle. The ship had five masts. Taniko had to twist her neck to see to the top of the tallest one, where a gleaming, golden fish trailing red pennants swam through the sky, veering this way and that with the wind. Eight-sided charms, looking like round, glaring eyes, were painted on either side of the prow. In the centre of each was the yin-yang symbol. The sides and stern of the ship were decorated, mostly in red, black and gold, with scenes of warfare, with birds, fishes, flowers and dragons. As the carriage approached closer to the huge junk, she read a verse of good omen in Chinese on the stern: “Water that sleeps in the moonlight.” This enormous, gaudy ship was like no vessel built in the Sacred Islands. When she stepped aboard, she would already be in China.

She was carried up the gangplank in a small sedan chair, preceded and followed by maids. Around her rose the murmurings of the Chinese crew as the sedan chair bearers hurried along the deck. She was hastily whisked to a cabin in the stern. The presence of women on the ship must greatly increase the danger of disorder, she realized.

The cabin which she would share with one of her maids was small but reasonably elegant. There was a window and, one above the other, two wooden shelves were covered with mats and quilts for sleeping. Her travelling boxes would take up the remaining space.

From the pillow book of Shima Taniko:

We have been at sea five days now. Since we left Shimonoseki Strait behind, we have been in sight of land most of the time. We stopped at Tsushima Island, then at Pusan on the coast of Korea. I saw both places only through my cabin window.

Once a day we women are permitted to walk the deck for our health. The rest of the time we are confined to cabins which get tinier and smellier each day. When I see Horigawa he smiles at me in his ugly way. I wish I could push him overboard, but he is always surrounded by guards.

Since we entered the China Sea I have been sick. The ship rises and falls constantly and sometimes rolls from side to side. It is not so bad when I am on deck and can look out at the horizon, but when I am in my cabin and the sea is rough I cannot keep food in my stomach and ardently wish I could depart this life.

There must be over two hundred passengers on board. I can’t imagine that there is enough room for them below decks. Some of the more important passengers, including Horigawa and myself, have cabins in the stern. Besides Horigawa’s party there are priests, monks and merchants aboard. There are Chinese and Korean travellers as well as our own people. The crew, one of the maids told me, consists of about a hundred men.

The Chinese are much taller than we are, and lighter of skin, except for the sailors, who have been tanned a dark brown by the sun.

Sick and unhappy and frightened as I am, the adventure of crossing this vast ocean and the prospect of seeing the Central Kingdom fill me with excitement.

-Sixth Month, fifteenth day

YEAR OF THE HORSE

Taniko remained kneeling with her arms around Atsue. Ryuichi held out his hands to her.

“Please, Taniko. Do not disgrace us like this.”

“It is you who disgrace yourself, Uncle.”

“Take the boy,” Horigawa snapped at the samurai.

The elder of the two men stepped forward and stood over Taniko. “Excuse me, my lady. Will you give us the boy?”

“I’m sorry,” said Taniko, “but I cannot do that.”

“We know you, my lady. It was you who helped one of our comrades into the beyond. You are held in great esteem by all samurai. But we must obey orders. Do not force us to shame you.”

Taniko closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Forgive me.” She tightened her grip on Atsue.

“It is you who must forgive us, my lady.” The samurai bent over and took hold of her arms. Atsue screamed. Ryuichi stood moaning and wringing his hands.

Suddenly Taniko let go of Atsue and leaped at the younger of the two samurai, grabbing for his sword. She had it half-way out of its scabbard when the samurai’s open hand smashed down on the side of her head. She fell, stunned, unable to move.

“She must have been a warrior in a former life,” said the older samurai.

“Mother!” Atsue cried. Taniko opened her eyes and saw her son in the grip of the younger samurai. She held out her arms to him and he struggled to free himself.

“Get the boy out of here,” Horigawa said. The man dragged Atsue from the room.

Shutting Atsue’s screams out of her mind, Taniko turned to the older samurai. She had to speak very slowly to keep the sobs from breaking through.

“Before you leave, ask the servants to give you his flute, koto and samisen and take them with you to the Rokuhara. The flute, Little Branch, is a Takashi family heirloom given Atsue by his father. The boy’s practice should not be interrupted. He is a very fine musician.” She remembered years ago when Lady Akimi had said of Domei’s son, Yukio, “His flute-playing is beautiful to hear.” Yukio, because of whom Kiyosi was now dead. Yukio, whose life she had helped save.

Until this moment that had not occurred to her. Now the realization of it stunned her.

“Homage to Amida Buddha,” she whispered. Only the Lord of Boundless Light could understand the tangled karma that made her somehow responsible for Kiyosi’s death.

Taniko stood, turning to Horigawa. “Take me and do what you will.”

Walking with the small steps of a lady, holding her back very straight, Taniko left the weeping family of Shima Ryuichi. She realized that she might never see any of them again, but she walked silently past them without saying goodbye. Her family had failed her once too often.

Horigawa commanded one of the Takashi samurai to get into the carriage with himself and Taniko. As they trundled through the streets of Heian Kyo, Taniko said, “Will you always have a guard present when you are with me, Your Highness?”

Horigawa smiled at her, a smile full of hatred. “You cannot possibly imagine the fate I have in mind for you. It will be most interesting to see how a delicate, well-bred lady, used to life in the capital, withstands the rigours of a journey to China.”

Taniko stared at Horigawa, open-mouthed. China? But if Yukio had fled to China, as she had heard, Jebu might have gone there, too. It was almost impossible to believe this was not some strange dream.

“Yes, my dear, China,” Horigawa said. “But that is only to be the beginning of your journey. Before you come to the end you will find yourself in hell.”

She was treated rather like a guest at Horigawa’s house. The women’s building had been unused for some time. It was dirty, and the roof leaked. But Horigawa’s servants, evidently on orders from the prince, worked hard and quickly and had it put right the day Taniko arrived.

She was completely cut off from the rest of the world. The servants avoided conversation with her. She longed for just a word about Atsue. Sometimes, when she woke from a night’s sleep, it would be a moment or two before she remembered that Kiyosi was dead and that Atsue had been taken from her. Then she would cry for hours before she could gather her strength to dress and take her morning meal. At night she would cry until she fell asleep.

There was absolutely nothing to do. She tried to write poetry, but she had no heart for it. She tried to write in her pillow book, which had followed her here from the Shima mansion along with her wardrobe and other personal possessions, but she had nothing to write about. Sometimes she thought about the tortures to which Horigawa might subject her, the kinds of death he might inflict on her, and she felt terror. But the realization of what she had lost, and how hopeless her future was, numbed her to fear. Whenever the sadness and the fear seemed unbearable, she found comfort in invoking the Buddha.

More than once it occurred to her that by slitting her throat she could put an end to her suffering, once and for all. But empty as her life seemed, dreadful as Horigawa’s plans for her might be, she was sustained by a feeling that somehow she would overcome all, that she still had a destiny to fulfil. Then, too, it would give Horigawa too much satisfaction to look down on her corpse and think he had driven her to kill herself. Nor could she bear to leave this world while Jebu was still part of it. As long as he was alive, she had not lost everything.

Finally, there was the thought of China, that fabulous country across the sea, from which came all beauty, all wisdom and all law. She could not die without seeing China.

One day a maid came to her. “His Highness says that you are to pack your very best robes and gowns, because you may be presented to some great lords of China.”

“Tell the captain of the guard to assign twenty outriders to you.” Filled with despair, Ryuichi bowed, turned and shuffled out of Sogamori’s presence.

Chapter Three

Taniko and Atsue were playing go when they heard the carriages and mounted men come rumbling through the gate of the Shima mansion. Atsue’s hand, about to place a white stone in a move that threatened a whole line of Taniko’s black stones in a corner, hesitated in mid air. He put the white stone down slowly, and they sat and looked at each other.

The returning party made much more noise than Uncle Ryuichi and his outriders had on leaving, as if there were more horses, perhaps more carriages, with him now. The nervousness Taniko had felt all morning turned to dread. Pushing the go table aside, she took Atsue in her arms.

After a time, the shoji screen to her chamber slid back, and Aunt Chogao’s tear-streaked face appeared in the opening. One look, and Taniko’s fear turned to a wild, despairing terror. Her aunt shook her head helplessly.

“Your uncle wants Atsue in the main hall.”

Taniko kept her arms around the boy. “If he wants Atsue he will have to come and tear him from me.”

Sobbing, Chogao left. Atsue was crying in Taniko’s arms. She patted the small shoulder beneath the dark green robe.

“Mother, kill me like you killed that man, and then kill yourself. We’ll meet Father in the Pure Land.”

Taniko bit her lip. “You have a long life before you, Atsue-chan. I would rather lose you than harm you in any way. And even in the worst moments of my own life I’ve never wanted to kill myself. Let us commend ourselves to the mercy of Amida. Homage to Amida Buddha.”

“Homage to Amida Buddha,” Atsue repeated.

Ryuichi came into the room. Behind him there walked a small, hatefully familiar figure wearing a tall black-lacquer hat.

“Good day to you, Taniko-san,” said Horigawa, baring his blackened teeth in a broad grin.

With a scream of rage Taniko reached for the nearest weapon, which happened to be a lighted oil lamp. She hurled it at Horigawa, who stepped aside, laughing at her. Ryuichi shouted an alarm as the small, orange flames raced up a paper wall. A servant rushed in with a pot of water and threw it on the fire, and Ryuichi beat out the remaining flames with a quilt.

“I see Lady Taniko is still given to setting houses on fire,” said Horigawa.

“It was you who put this idea in Sogamori’s mind,” said Taniko, wanting to spring upon her husband and strangle him.

Horigawa spread his hands. “On the contrary, I suggested to Lord Sogamori that the offspring of a woman of unsound mind and low birth could hardly be worthy of his attention. But he insisted. I am merely here to see that his wishes are carried out. By law you are my wife, and this boy is my son. He will be adopted by Lord Sogamori, and you, from now on, will be part of my household.”

His household. They were sending her back to Horigawa. Her mind reeled under the shock. For a moment she really did want to kill herself. Everything that had given her happiness in these past years was gone, as if swallowed by an earthquake.

She knelt and held Atsue. “We will not go.”

“That man isn’t my father,” Atsue sobbed.

“Of course not,” Taniko said through clenched teeth. “He is incapable of being anyone’s father.”

Ryuichi was pleading with Horigawa. “You don’t want her as a wife, Your Highness. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t trouble Lord Sogamori.”

A change came over Horigawa’s face. His cheeks reddened under his courtier’s white powder. His eyes narrowed and his thin lips drew back from the black teeth. In a voice choked with hatred he said, “She is my wife. Mine. I will dispose of her as I see fit. Do not interfere in this, Ryuichi.” Horigawa turned away from Ryuichi and called through the shutters to men standing on the veranda.

“Taniko,” said Ryuichi, “perhaps if you let the boy go without making a scene, we could persuade Prince Horigawa to allow you to stay with us.”

“Don’t deceive yourself, Uncle,” Taniko said coldly. “The prince has old scores to settle with me. As for you, you failed me when I needed you most. Now I don’t want to stay with you.”

“Try to understand, Taniko. All the world bends before Lord Sogamori as grass before the wind. I can’t withstand him.”

“I thought a samurai could withstand anything.”

Two men in red silk jackets and shin-length trousers, their long swords hanging from their belts, tramped into the room. They looked somewhat sheepish at entering the chamber of a lady unprotected by a screen. Standing against the wall, they kept their eyes averted from Taniko and looked questioningly at Horigawa.

“Really, Your Highness, this is unnecessary,” Ryuichi said. “You insult me by bringing your samurai into my house.”

“You have already shown yourself unable to make the members of your household obey the commands of Lord Sogamori,” said Horigawa. He turned to the samurai. “Take the boy from her and put him in Lord Sogamori’s carriage.”

Taniko remained kneeling with her arms around Atsue. Ryuichi held out his hands to her.

“Please, Taniko. Do not disgrace us like this.”

“It is you who disgrace yourself, Uncle.”

“Take the boy,” Horigawa snapped at the samurai.

The elder of the two men stepped forward and stood over Taniko. “Excuse me, my lady. Will you give us the boy?”

“I’m sorry,” said Taniko, “but I cannot do that.”

“We know you, my lady. It was you who helped one of our comrades into the beyond. You are held in great esteem by all samurai. But we must obey orders. Do not force us to shame you.”