For hours they cried together in each other’s arms.

In the evening the maids brought food to them. Taniko could not eat. She watched Atsue pick at the small slivers of fish with his chopsticks. In his green silk tunic and black trousers he looked like a replica of Kiyosi.

Why didn’t they chop me to bits with swords and be done with it? Taniko thought. How long could she feel this pain before she went mad?

“Homage to Amida Buddha.” Taniko started to recite the invocation. Atsue put down his chopsticks and joined her.

After the maid took away their dishes, Ryuichi pushed back the screen to Taniko’s chamber and peered in at them. His face was pale. In the dim corridor he looked like a goldfish trying to see up through the surface of a pond. Taniko, murmuring the homage to Buddha, looked back at him.

“You never went to Yasugi, Uncle.”

“Forgive me, Taniko-san. I remembered how you were when Horigawa brought you here. I couldn’t bear to see you like that again.”

“So, instead of telling me yourself, you mercifully allowed one of Sogamori’s lackeys to give me the news by accident.”

“Do not torment me, Taniko-san.”

“Ah, are you the one who is being tormented? I see. Well, don’t stand there in the doorway like a frightened peasant. Sit down with us.”

Ryuichi snapped his fingers at a maid. “Sake.” Still looking apologetically at Taniko, he sat down.

Taniko said, “Atsue, go to your bedchamber. I have something to discuss with your uncle.”

“Why can’t I hear? I’m the head of our family now.”

The words brought Taniko a renewed realization of her loss. She burst into a storm of weeping, while Ryuichi sat looking sadly at her. Atsue crept into her arms.

The maid brought hot sake. Taniko poured for Ryuichi and herself. “All right,” she said. “You will also have to decide what you want, Atsue-chan.” Atsue did not object to the term of endearment for a child. “Stay and listen.” The boy sat down again, facing his mother and his uncle. She turned to Ryuichi. “Sogamori has asked that I send the boy to him. He wants to take him from me and adopt him, make him a Takashi.”

Ryuichi nodded. “This afternoon I received a summons to the Rokuhara. Of course, it was worded as an invitation. What did you say to Sogamori’s secretary?”

“I refused. I want Atsue to stay with me.”

Ryuichi quickly drained another cup of sake. “You refused?”

“Yes. But Atsue must be the one to decide in the end.”

“Children do not decide their futures,” Ryuichi cut in. “Of course he will want to stay with his mother. But he has no idea of what he would lose. What can you give him that would compare with the station in life he would have as Sogamori’s son?”

“Kiyosi gave Sogamori other grandsons, and Kiyosi’s younger brothers still live,” said Taniko. “Why must Sogamori, who has so much, take this child from me?” Tears ran down her cheeks.

Ryuichi shrugged. “Aside from the late Kiyosi, Sogamori’s male descendants are a rather undistinguished lot. This boy, on the other hand, is a paragon. Perhaps it is because you and Kiyosi enjoyed some powerful bond in a former life. You must be aware that Atsue’s musicianship and his knowledge of the classics are remarkable. And his face—” Ryuichi sipped his sake and contemplated the boy. Atsue, his eyes downcast, flushed a deep scarlet. That’s one trait he gets from me, Taniko thought.

Ryuichi went on. “Anyone who knows anything about physiognomy can see Atsue has the face of one destined to hold a high place in the realm. In all respects, even at this young age, Atsue outshines Sogamori’s other descendants. That cannot have escaped you, Taniko. Be sure that Sogamori himself is well aware of it.”

Taniko turned to the boy. “Atsue-chan, what your uncle says is true. You can become an important member of the most powerful clan in the land. If you remain here, you’ll merely be a fatherless boy, part of a rather undistinguished provincial family.”

“I want to stay with you, Mother,” Atsue said instantly. “I love you, and you love me. I am afraid of Lord Sogamori. They say he is cruel and has a terrible temper. I don’t want to live in the Rokuhara. I don’t like the Rokuhara.”

“This is not childish prattle,” said Taniko. “The boy knows perfectly well what he is saying.”

“We dare not defy Lord Sogamori,” Ryuichi muttered.

“If Sogamori can take a child from us, he can take anything and everything from us.”

That thought made Ryuichi frown. “But there is nothing I can do. What can I say to Lord Sogamori at the Rokuhara tomorrow?”

“You are a samurai, Uncle, as much as he is. You can present the case to him and let him make what he will of it. When you go to the Rokuhara, tell Sogamori that the boy does not want to go and his mother does not want to send him.”

“Madness,” said Ryuichi.

“Uncle-san,” said Taniko, the tears coming again, “My champion is dead. You are the only defender I have left. If you won’t protect me, I am lost.”

Shaking his head, Ryuichi rose. “I will do what I can. Drink more sake. It will help you to sleep.”

It was a sweltering morning when Ryuichi went to the Rokuhara. Alone, sweating and trembling in his carriage, he fanned himself incessantly. Six armed, mounted men escorted him, but their presence did nothing to make him feel more secure. He was going, perhaps, to his death. What else could he expect if he disobeyed the command of Lord Sogamori, who could annihilate him as a careless sandal crushes an ant?

The Rokuhara was at once magnificent and frightening. Its three donjon towers, bedecked with proud red Takashi banners, dominated the surrounding district. Ryuichi saw them as soon as his carriage crossed the Gojo Bridge. The stone outer walls with their tile-roofed turrets were taller than those around the Imperial Palace. The walls girdled a spacious park bounded by four avenues. Three streams diverted from the Kamo River fed the moat, itself wide as a river, and ran through the park over beds of carefully chosen pebbles, beneath tiny ornamental bridges. Interior walls divided the grounds into parade fields, gardens and gravelled courts. The main buildings of the Rokuhara were imposing structures in the Chinese style, with red and green tiled roofs. Mixed in among these were a Buddhist temple, a Shinto shrine and many stables.

The Takashi headquarters was across the Kamo River, east of the original limits of Heian Kyo, outside the city’s walls. The land had been given to Sogamori’s grandfather after a victory over pirates on the Inland Sea. In those days the Takashi estate was out in the countryside. Over the years, with each new acquisition of power and wealth, the stronghold grew, as a coral reef rises out of the sea. At the same time the capital spread eastwards, and now the Rokuhara was surrounded by innumerable lesser buildings, like a black rock in a swiftly moving current.

“There was no message,” he said hastily. “Lord Kiyosi sent no message.” There was something in his voice that frightened Taniko. “What is it then?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Lord Sogamori desires that his grandson be sent to him.”

The secretary’s words surprised Taniko and intensified the dread she felt. “For how long?”

Again the secretary seemed surprised. “Why, for the rest of his life, my lady. Lord Sogamori wants to give the boy the Takashi name and adopt him as his own son.”

“His son? But he is Lord Kiyosi’s son. He, if anybody, should adopt him.”

“My lady,” the secretary said, then stopped. He seemed at a loss for words. At last he blurted out, “A dead man cannot adopt a child.”

It was as if he had plunged a sword into her body. She sat paralysed, impaled on his words. At last, as the numbness of shock faded away, she began to feel pain and struggled to free herself.

“No, no, he is not dead. Someone would have told me. You can’t come here and say that he is dead. I would have known about it if something had happened. You’re wrong. You must be mistaken.”

Even as she denied his words, it struck her with overwhelming force: Kiyosi had been killed in the fighting in Kyushu, and no one had told her.

The secretary blushed a deep scarlet. “Don’t you know what happened, my lady?”

“I have heard nothing. Surely I would have heard if anything had happened to Lord Kiyosi.”

Again the man seemed to grope for words. “Then I—I must tell you? How unfortunate. But seemingly it falls to me to do this duty where others have failed.” He drew himself up and composed himself into a picture of Confucian rectitude. “My lady, it grieves me greatly to be the bearer of this news. Six days ago, we received word that there had been a great sea battle at Hakata Bay. The rebellious Muratomo forces were trying to escape. My lord Kiyosi was on the flagship of the Takashi fleet. During the fighting he was struck in the chest by an armour-piercing arrow. Those who were near say he died instantly. One arrow, no pain. His body fell into the sea and disappeared immediately. He is gone, my lady. He died faithfully carrying out his father’s orders. You may take pride in that.”

Taniko heard the man out. Then she stood up.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor, her maid kneeling beside her, wiping her face with a damp cloth. She struggled to sit up. The screen was knocked over, and the Takashi family secretary was standing in a corner of the room with his face politely averted.

Then it came back to her. Kiyosi was dead.

She looked up at the maid, one of the women who had come with her to Heian Kyo years ago. The maid was crying.

“You knew,” said Taniko. “You knew days ago and you didn’t tell me.”

“I could not, my lady,” the maid sobbed. “I could not bear to be the one. Why should it have to be me?”

In spite of the shock of grief, Taniko’s mind was still working. “Set up the screen.” The first thing she must do was get rid of this man with his talk of taking Atsue. When the screen was raised, Taniko composed herself and sat behind it.

“Please tell Lord Sogamori that I am overwhelmed with gratitude at his offer to adopt the boy Atsue. However, with the greatest respect, the Takashi family has no obligation to do anything for either Atsue or me. Atsue is my son, and it is my desire that he stay with me.”

The secretary stared. “My lady, the boy is Lord Kiyosi’s son. Lord Sogamori has lost his own son, his eldest-the son he loved best in the world. He wants his grandson. You cannot deny him.”

It was agony to sit upright, agony to hold her voice to a soft, polite tone, agony to speak at all. She clenched her hands in her lap, digging the fingernails of one into the back of the other. “I am very sorry, but Lord Sogamori has other children and grandchildren. I have only Atsue. I am sure he would not want to take my only child from me.”

“Excuse me, Lady Taniko, but this is most unwise. You only bring more suffering upon yourself. Lord Sogamori is the most powerful man in the Sacred Islands.”

“My son does not belong to Lord Sogamori. I do not belong to Lord Sogamori. I have nothing more to say.”

His mouth drawn down, the secretary left her. Taniko sat without moving for as long as she could, while her grief welled up inside her until she felt it would tear her apart. She began to gasp like a deer with an arrow in its chest. Her gasps became sobs. At last she screamed. She threw herself full length on the floor, tearing at her robes and beating upon the polished floor with her fists.

Her maids rushed in and tried to hold her. She struck them away. Drawing her body into a knot, she shrieked and wept.

Atsue came in. Horrified at the sight of his mother, he turned to the maids, who stood whimpering and wringing their hands.

“What’s happened to my mother?”

Still sobbing, Taniko pulled herself to a sitting position. Thank Amida Buddha I can be the first to tell him, she thought. At least he won’t get the news from some servant. She reached out and pulled the boy to her, fighting for breath, trying to get her voice under control.

“Your father has left us. He has gone to the Pure Land. He died in battle at sea off Kyushu. I have just heard it.”

“Oh no, Mother, no, no, no.” The boy’s arms tightened around her neck until she thought he would break it. But she endured the small pain gladly. She had only Atsue to live for.

For hours they cried together in each other’s arms.

In the evening the maids brought food to them. Taniko could not eat. She watched Atsue pick at the small slivers of fish with his chopsticks. In his green silk tunic and black trousers he looked like a replica of Kiyosi.

Why didn’t they chop me to bits with swords and be done with it? Taniko thought. How long could she feel this pain before she went mad?

“Homage to Amida Buddha.” Taniko started to recite the invocation. Atsue put down his chopsticks and joined her.

After the maid took away their dishes, Ryuichi pushed back the screen to Taniko’s chamber and peered in at them. His face was pale. In the dim corridor he looked like a goldfish trying to see up through the surface of a pond. Taniko, murmuring the homage to Buddha, looked back at him.

And perhaps, too, the great distances would help him forget for a time that small, white, lovely face that had haunted him ever since that journey down the Tokaido.

With trembling fingers he reached into his robe for the Jewel of Life and Death.

Part Two: The Book Of Kublai

Because men suffer, they fight and kill one another. The innocent, who begin by fighting to defend themselves against robbers and murderers, become robbers and murderers themselves. Someone must protect them, both from what happens to them and from what they become. It is our hope that we can take upon ourselves the duty of necessary fighting and killing. We think we can be trusted.

The Zinja Manual

Chapter One

Summer came to Heian Kyo. The screens and lattices of houses were opened to the air as the days grew longer and the nights warmer. Rain and sun alternated to deepen the green of the huge old willows that grew along the avenues and canals. Moon and fireflies lit the night. Taniko found that she missed Kiyosi terribly. She wanted to share this beauty with him. Unable to talk to him, she wrote poems, two or three a day, and imagined herself reading them to him.

The sun warms the wind,
The wind strokes the willows,
The willows reach down to caress the river.

She had little to record in her pillow book. She liked to write about the gossip of palace and Court, the problems of the country’s rulers, the struggles of powerful men. About all this, she had heard in abundance from Kiyosi. Since he had sailed south to Kyushu her life had been one of isolation, monotony and boredom. It was no consolation to her that it was the same for almost all women of her station, except the few lucky enough to have duties at Court. She had no idea how other women managed to tolerate such lives.

Her one source of daily joy was the companionship of Atsue. The boy had quite forgotten his horror at seeing his mother stab a man to death, and the two spent hours together every day. Atsue was growing to look more and more like his grave, square-jawed father. Every fifth day she took him by carriage to the Buddhist temple on Mount Hiei for lessons on the flute and koto with a famous master. Daily she listened to his practice on these instruments. She finally convinced him the samisen was worth learning and gave him lessons herself. Kiyosi had taught him go, saying that every samurai should play the game well, and Taniko played it with Atsue night after night. She took him for walks through the garden, teaching him the names of summer herbs and flowers. Late in the evening, just before he went to bed, they would sit and watch the moon rise. Atsue would play on his flute just for pleasure, and his playing was often so beautiful it brought tears to her eyes.

A strange silence fell over the Shima household in the middle of the Fifth Month. Taniko’s maids seemed nervous and chattered less than usual while helping her dress and undress. There was something furtive in the way her aunt and cousins greeted her in the women’s quarters and hurried past on business of their own. Ryuichi’s oldest son, Munetoki, now a fierce young samurai of nineteen, had gone off with Kiyosi’s expedition to hunt down the last of the Muratomo. Uncle Ryuichi seemed to have disappeared completely. When she asked about him, Aunt Chogao said he had gone on a long journey by sea to Yasugi on the west coast. Yasugi, Taniko knew, was a stronghold for the pirates who preyed on the Korean coast and shipping. All her life she had been hearing rumours that her family was involved with pirates; this seemed to confirm it.

One afternoon a servant announced that the first secretary to Lord Takashi no Sogamori was in the main hall and had asked to visit her. She felt a little leap of pleasure. She had not had a letter from Kiyosi in nearly a month. She hurriedly prepared herself with her maid’s help, set out the screen of state in her chamber and sent her maid for Sogamori’s secretary.

She immediately noticed the willow-wood taboo tag tied to the secretary’s black head-dress and dangling down the side of his face. She wondered if the evil that beset him was a personal misfortune or something that had fallen upon the entire house of Takashi. It would not be polite to enquire. It was surprising that a man under taboo would even leave his house. He must consider the visit essential.

She had never seen the man before, but she recognized the type. His prim manner and old-fashioned, slightly tattered robe and trousers proclaimed him a Confucian scholar. Doubtless a man of good family whose declining fortunes had forced him to go into service with a rising clan like the Takashi.

They exchanged greetings, the secretary peering nervously at the screen as if trying to see through it. He wants a look at the famous lady who delights Kiyosi, she thought.

At last the secretary said, “Lord Sogamori has sent me to you to inform you of his wishes.”

“I am honoured,” said Taniko. “But I had hoped you might have a message for me from Lord Kiyosi.” Through the openings near the top of the screen she could see that the man’s eyes had widened in surprise—and possibly fear—at the mention of Kiyosi’s name.

“There was no message,” he said hastily. “Lord Kiyosi sent no message.” There was something in his voice that frightened Taniko. “What is it then?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Lord Sogamori desires that his grandson be sent to him.”

The secretary’s words surprised Taniko and intensified the dread she felt. “For how long?”

Again the secretary seemed surprised. “Why, for the rest of his life, my lady. Lord Sogamori wants to give the boy the Takashi name and adopt him as his own son.”

Yukio ran amidships and helped pull wet, naked men from the fishing boat. “Marvellous!” he shouted. “Splendid! Let sake be brought for these men at once. They’re cold from their swim.”

Looking aft, all Jebu could see was rolling clouds of black smoke and a jumble of burning ships. Then his eyes narrowed. Two ships were coming after them. One, judging by its lines, was a Muratomo transport, while the other appeared to be a Takashi warship. He caught Yukio’s arm.

“Look.”

Yukio laughed wildly. “Look again.” There were white banners waving from both ships. Jebu remembered the two ships that had come together and the masses of samurai locked in hand-to-hand combat. Evidently the Muratomo had won.

“We have eleven ships now instead of ten,” said Yukio. “A gift from the Takashi.” He suddenly seized Jebu violently by both arms and shook him with a strength surprising for such a small man.

“China, Jebu! China! A whole new world for us! Let the Takashi perish in the nine hells. The future is ours.”

Yukio laughed again. “Out to sea,” he called to the pilot. “Take us to China.” The signal flags flapped, and the Muratomo vessels turned away from the mouth of the harbour and set their course westwards. All sails were up, and all rattled as the strong wind from the east took them.

Yukio’s feverish gaiety subsided. “If only we hadn’t killed Kiyosi. That takes some of the joy out of this victory for me, Jebu-san. He was the wisest of all the Takashi, the best fighter, the noblest lord. In killing him we’ve dealt the Takashi a blow from which they may never recover. Still, I would rather he had lived, if karma allowed it.”

Jebu shrugged. “It was his day to die. I’m sure he was as ready and willing as you and I are. And he was trying to kill you.”

“You saved my life. Again. I am in your debt for ever.” Yukio gripped Jebu’s upper arm, hard. “But it’s a great sadness, not just for Kiyosi’s sake. His death harms others for whom I care. There was a woman, Kiyosi’s woman. She was very good to my mother and me. Remember I told you how my mother became Sogamori’s mistress to save my life? Well, this lady acted as a go between, for no other reason than her affection for my mother. And she suffered for it. Her husband was Prince Sasaki no Horigawa, who wanted Hideyori and me dead. He punished his wife by— Why are you staring at me?”

Jebu’s body went cold. Even now, he reminded himself, the secret must be kept. He made himself assume a calm expression.

“This lady. Was her name Shima Taniko?”

“Yes, that was she. Did you know her?”

“Long ago,” Jebu said, waving his hand as if it were of no consequence. “I’ll tell you about it some time.”

“She had a baby by Kiyosi, a son, while I was at the Rokuhara. I suppose he’d be about nine by now. Another son whose father has been torn from him. Moko is right. War is an evil thing.”

Yukio turned away and began to walk among the men on his ship, praising them, even talking to the rowers and patting their shoulders. Then he called for a small boat so he could visit the other ships. A dinghy was lowered over the side, and Yukio leaped into it with the astonishing, easy grace that Jebu had first seen seven years ago on the Gojo Bridge.

Jebu walked along the deck to the forecastle and stood staring into the empty blue sky. His eyes burned and his cheeks were wet.

Why am I crying? he thought. If I hadn’t killed Kiyosi my friend would be dead now.

Instead, another son has lost his father. As Yukio did. As I did.

Another woman has lost the man she loved, as my mother did.

He had never wanted to know what Taniko was doing. Only once had he asked, when Moko told him what happened at Daidoji. That had been the worst moment of his life. He had never asked about her, because it hurt too much. Hardly the attitude of a true Zinja.

What if he had known what Kiyosi was to her? Would he have hesitated to kill him? Or would jealous hatred have gone winging along with his arrow?

No, he had never wanted to invade her life. Even when Domei said he was sending men to kill Horigawa, his first thought had been that he must not go. How much less would he want to kill this Kiyosi. After all, he himself had given her nothing.

He didn’t really know how much Kiyosi had meant to her. He might just have been a protector, someone to whom she could escape from Horigawa. Or he might have been a true lover, a man who had made her cry out with delight in the darkness, as she had wanted to, —but never could with Jebu.

Whatever she shared with him, Jebu had reached out from all this distance, after all this time, and destroyed it. Just by letting go of a string that propelled an arrow. Such a little thing. So easy to kill a man, end his whole life and whatever it meant, perhaps destroy many other lives at the same moment.

But even if he’d known what he was doing, he’d have done it anyway, to save Yukio.

Why was he crying? Because he’d done an evil thing? But a Zinja was beyond good and evil. A Zinja was always aware of his own perfection.

From a dark chamber in his memory a voice whispered, The Zinja are devils. He had not thought of the Saying of Supreme Power in years.

Was this what it meant? That in trying to do good the Zinja did evil, and then tried to tell themselves it didn’t matter, that good and evil were the same thing? If war was an evil thing, as he had been shown today, and the Zinja were devoted to war, then truly they were devils.

He had hurt Taniko. Had hurt her child. And there was no way he could undo it. He couldn’t even want to undo it, because the only other choice would have meant the death of his friend.

He wondered if she would ever hear a description of the man who killed Kiyosi. He wondered if she would realize that it was he.

The sun had crossed the sky and now hovered, white hot, ahead of the Muratomo fleet. It paved a road of dazzling white jewels in the sea before them. Somewhere at the end of that glittering pathway lay the land of his father, the empire of the Mongols. Perhaps he would actually see the land where his father was born and meet again his father’s killer.

And perhaps, too, the great distances would help him forget for a time that small, white, lovely face that had haunted him ever since that journey down the Tokaido.

With trembling fingers he reached into his robe for the Jewel of Life and Death.

Yukio shouted to the captain in the nearest Muratomo ship, “Aim for the steersmen and rowers only! Don’t bother with samurai! Pass the word!” He gripped Jebu’s arm and pulled him to the rail.

“Come on. Our men think it’s unworthy to shoot anyone lower in rank than a samurai. Let’s set an example.”

The column of Muratomo ships aimed for the head of the Takashi line. Takashi vessels were pulling out of formation and rushing to crowd in upon the Muratomo as Yukio’s ship raced across the bow of the leading enemy galley. Yukio drew back on his samurai bow, as tall as himself, and a fourteen-hand arrow with a humming-bulb head screamed through the air to strike the throat of a steersman on the lead Takashi ship. Yukio had used the noise-making arrowhead to call the attention of his men to the target he had chosen.

Jebu’s bow twanged and the steersman’s companion collapsed over the tiller. A shame to kill unarmed seamen, but it would mean less bloodshed in the long run.

Yukio loosed two more arrows among the Takashi rowers. Out of control, the ship began to roll and flounder. Arrows fired by the Takashi samurai whistled over Jebu’s head.

One armoured man on the other ship was leaping over the oarsmen, scrambling for the foredeck, holding his long bow high over his head. Standing in the bow of the ship, he braced himself, legs apart, and aimed an arrow at Yukio. The man was bare-headed. In the instant that it took Jebu to jerk a blunt-headed armour-piercing arrow from his quiver, he saw a darkly handsome face with a small moustache. The arrow struck the Takashi samurai square in the chest. He dropped his bow, toppled slowly over the railing of the ship and fell into the sea. When the splash subsided, he was gone.

“I told you not to bother with samurai,” Yukio shouted. Jebu started to explain that the warrior had been about to shoot Yukio, when a wail from beside them interrupted him. It was Moko, clinging to the railing, staring at the place where the Takashi samurai had gone down. He turned tearful eyes to Jebu.

“Accursed am I, that I should have seen this. Years ago that man saved my life. I will never forget his face. He was the only man in the world besides you, shiké, to whom I could truly say I owed my life. And now you have killed him.”

“He was aiming at Lord Yukio.”

“I do not reproach you, shiké. I only say that war is the evillest thing I know, and I hate it.”

They were past the Takashi line now. The ocean, blue-grey and limitless, lay ahead. Behind them, two more Muratomo ships were pushing through the blockade. More Takashi ships closed in. Flights of arrows whistled in both directions. Again the Takashi ships wallowed, disabled, and the Muratomo ships shot by them.

Moko told Yukio and Jebu of the day Domei was executed, and how Kiyosi had seen him hiding in the tree above the Emperor’s head and had not denounced him.

“Of course,” said Yukio. “I would have recognized him if I’d been looking in his direction. I saw him often, especially during the years I lived at the Rokuhara. How strange karma is. On the very day that Kiyosi spared your life, he beheaded my father.”

“I saw him do it,” said Moko. “But also, Lord Yukio, I saw him weep after he did it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. He was always kind to me. He never said he was sorry that he killed my father; it would, not have been proper for us to speak of that. But somehow I knew he did it because it was his duty, and I never held it against him. Just as it was his duty to aim an arrow at me just now. I hold others to blame for my father’s death. Sogamori, Horigawa.”

“So that was Kiyosi,” said Jebu. “Years ago I shot at him, but it wasn’t his karma to die that day. I have heard nothing but good of him. I am sorry that he died by my hand.” Gripping the rail and bowing his head, Jebu mentally recited the Prayer to a Fallen Enemy with greater fervour than he had felt in years.

A Takashi vessel slammed up against the side of a Muratomo ship trying to break through the blockade. Takashi samurai leaped over the rails. Swords clashed. The decks of both ships were a jumble of fighting men. But two more Muratomo ships cut through to the open ocean.

Yukio gave orders to his signalman. In a few moments the Muratomo craft that had broken the blockade were sailing parallel to the line of Takashi warships, arrows devastating the enemy crews. More Muratomo ships came through. Clouds of arrows fell on the Takashi ships while their samurai, shouting challenges and insults, stood at the rails, futilely waving their swords.

Jebu looked past the crumbling blockade. The other Takashi ships and the commandeered fishing boats from Hakata had joined forces and were sailing towards the harbour entrance in hot pursuit of the Muratomo.

A bright flash caught Jebu’s eye. Flames leaped up on a fishing vessel. The men on it were jumping overboard. Ribbons of fire sprang up all over the fishing boats. The flames spread to the Takashi warships.

“What’s that? More of your planning ahead?”

Yukio nodded. “It was easy to foresee that the Takashi would commandeer boats to come after us. So, aboard the boats today were, not the local fishermen, but Muratomo samurai dressed as fishermen. When the fishing boats were mixed in with the Takashi fleet, my men set fire to them and jumped overboard.”

A few of the Takashi ships seemed to have escaped, but the mouth of the harbour was now blocked by a great ball of fire, as if a piece of the sun had fallen into it. Takashi samurai splashed briefly in the water before their armour pulled them under. One of the fishing boats, manned by Muratomo men, darted here and there, pulling the unarmoured Muratomo survivors out of the water. When they had all been pulled in, the boat followed after the Muratomo fleet. Yukio’s ship fell behind to meet it.

Yukio ran amidships and helped pull wet, naked men from the fishing boat. “Marvellous!” he shouted. “Splendid! Let sake be brought for these men at once. They’re cold from their swim.”

Looking aft, all Jebu could see was rolling clouds of black smoke and a jumble of burning ships. Then his eyes narrowed. Two ships were coming after them. One, judging by its lines, was a Muratomo transport, while the other appeared to be a Takashi warship. He caught Yukio’s arm.