Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [117]
Musashi, for his part, was beginning to lose patience. He liked Jōtarō, felt sorry for him, but this was no time to be thinking about children. The lancers were there for one purpose: to kill him. He had to be prepared to face them. Jōtarō was becoming a nuisance.
His voice took on a sharp edge. “Stop your blubbering! You’ll never be a samurai, carrying on this way. Why don’t you just go on back to the sake shop?” Firmly and not too gently, he pushed the boy from him.
Jōtarō, stung to the core, suddenly stopped crying and stood straight, a surprised look on his face. He watched his master stride off toward Hannya Hill. He wanted to call out after him, but resisted the urge. Instead he forced himself to remain silent for several minutes. Then he squatted under a nearby tree, buried his face in his hands, and gritted his teeth.
Musashi did not look back, but Jōtarō’s sobs echoed in his ears. He felt he could see the hapless, frightened little boy through the back of his head and regretted having brought him along. It was more than enough just to take care of himself; still immature, with only his sword to rely on and no idea of what the morrow might bring—what need had he of a companion?
The trees thinned out. He found himself on an open plain, actually the slightly rising skirt of the mountains in the distance. On the road branching off toward Mount Mikasa, a man raised his hand in greeting.
“Hey, Musashi! Where are you going?”
Musashi recognized the man coming toward him; it was Yamazoe Dampachi. Though Musashi sensed immediately that Dampachi’s objective was to lead him into a trap, he nevertheless greeted him heartily.
Dampachi said, “Glad I ran into you. I want you to know how sorry I am about that business the other day.” His tone was too polite, and as he spoke, he was obviously examining Musashi’s face with great care. “I hope you’ll forget about it. It was all a mistake.”
Dampachi himself was none too sure what to make of Musashi. He had been very impressed by what he had seen at the Hōzōin. Indeed, just thinking about it sent chills up his spine. Be that as it may, Musashi was still only a provincial rōnin, who couldn’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old, and Dampachi was far from ready to admit to himself that anyone of that age and status could be his better.
“Where are you going?” he asked again.
“I’m planning to go through Iga over to the Ise highroad. And you?” “Oh, I have some things to do in Tsukigase.”
“That’s not far from Yagyū Valley, is it?”
“No, not far.”
“That’s where Lord Yagyū’s castle is, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s near the temple called Kasagidera. You must go there sometime. The old lord, Muneyoshi, lives in retirement, like a tea master, and his son, Munenori, is in Edo, but you should still stop in and see what it’s like.”
“I don’t really think Lord Yagyū would give a lesson to a wanderer like me.”
“He might. Of course, it’d help if you had an introduction. As it happens, I know an armorer in Tsukigase who does work for the Yagyūs. If you’d like, I could ask if he’d be willing to introduce you.”
The plain stretched out broadly for several miles, the skyline broken occasionally by a lone cryptomeria or Chinese black pine. There were gentle rises here and there, however, and the road rose and fell too. Near the bottom of Hannya Hill, Musashi spotted the brown smoke of a fire rising beyond a low hillock.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“What’s what?”
“That smoke over there.”
“What’s so strange about smoke?” Dampachi had been sticking close to Musashi’s left side, and as he stared into the latter’s face, his own hardened perceptibly.
Musashi pointed. “That smoke over there: there’s something suspicious about it,” he said. “Doesn’t it look that way to you?”
“Suspicious? In what way?”
“Suspicious—you know, like the look on your face right now,” Musashi said sharply, abruptly sweeping his finger toward Dampachi.
A sharp whistling sound broke the stillness on