Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [10]
“Now look how many more I have than you!”
“It’s getting late,” Takezō muttered. “Let’s go home.”
“You’re cross because you lost, aren’t you?”
She started racing down the mountainside like a pheasant, but suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, an expression of alarm clouding her face. Approaching diagonally across the grove, halfway down the slope, was a mountain of a man; his strides were long and languorous, and his glaring eyes were trained directly on the frail young girl before him. He looked frighteningly primitive. Everything about him smacked of the struggle to survive, and he had a distinct air of bellicosity: ferocious bushy eyebrows and a thick, curling upper lip; a heavy sword, a cloak of mail, and an animal skin wrapped around him.
“Akemi!” he roared, as he came closer to her. He grinned broadly, showing a row of yellow, decaying teeth, but Akemi’s face continued to register nothing but horror.
“Is that wonderful mama of yours home?” he asked with labored sarcasm. “Yes,” came a peep of a reply.
“Well, when you go home, I want you to tell her something. Would you do that for me?” He spoke mock politely.
“Yes.”
His tone became harsh. “You tell her she’s not putting anything over on me, trying to make money behind my back. You tell her I’ll be around soon for my cut. Have you got that?”
Akemi said nothing.
“She probably thinks I don’t know about it, but the guy she sold the goods to came straight to me. I bet you were going to Sekigahara too, weren’t you, little one?”
“No, of course not!” she protested weakly.
“Well, never mind. Just tell her what I said. If she pulls any more fast ones, I’ll kick her out of the neighborhood.” He glared at the girl for a moment, then lumbered off in the direction of the marsh.
Takezō turned his eyes from the departing stranger and looked at Akemi with concern. “Who on earth was that?”
Akemi, her lips still trembling, answered wearily, “His name is Tsujikaze. He comes from the village of Fuwa.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “He’s a freebooter, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he so worked up about?”
She stood there without answering.
“I won’t tell anybody,” he assured her. “Can’t you even tell me?”
Akemi, obviously miserable, seemed to be searching for words. Suddenly she leaned against Takezō’s chest and pleaded, “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“Who am I going to tell? The Tokugawa samurai?”
“Remember the night you first saw me? At Sekigahara?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Well, haven’t you figured out yet what I was doing?”
“No. I haven’t thought about it,” he said with a straight face.
“Well, I was stealing!” She looked at him closely, gauging his reaction.
“Stealing?”
“After a battle, I go to the battlefield and take things off the dead soldiers: swords, scabbard ornaments, incense bags—anything we can sell.” She looked at him again for a sign of disapproval, but his face betrayed none. “It scares me,” she sighed, then, turning pragmatic, “but we need the money for food and if I say I don’t want to go, Mother gets furious.”
The sun was still fairly high in the sky. At Akemi’s suggestion, Takezō sat down on the grass. Through the pines, they could look down on the house in the marsh.
Takezō nodded to himself, as if figuring something out. A bit later he said, “Then that story about cutting mugwort in the mountains. Making it into moxa. That was all a lie?”
“Oh, no. We do that too! But Mother has such expensive tastes. We’d never be able to make a living on moxa. When my father was alive, we lived in the biggest house in the village—in all seven villages of Ibuki, as a matter of fact. We had lots of servants, and Mother always had beautiful things.”
“Was your father a merchant?”
“Oh, no. He was the leader of the local freebooters.” Akemi’s eyes shone with pride. It was clear she no longer feared Takezō’s reaction and was giving vent to her true feelings, her jaw set, her small hands tightening into fists as she spoke. “This Tsujikaze Temma—the man we just met—killed him. At least, everyone