Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [215]
“You’re asking me? You thick-headed ass!” Baiken went back inside and stamped around nervously. “There are only two ways he could have gone: he either went up to Suzuka ford or back to the Tsu highway. Whichever it was, he couldn’t have gone far. Go get him!”
“Which way do you think he went?”
“Ugh! I’ll go toward Suzuka. You cover the lower road!”
The men inside joined forces with the men outside, making a motley group of about ten, all armed. One of them, carrying a musket, looked like a hunter; another, with a short field sword, was probably a woodcutter.
As they parted, Baiken shouted, “If you find him, fire the gun, then everybody come together.”
They set off at great speed, but after about an hour came straggling back, looking hangdog and talking dejectedly among themselves. They expected a tongue-lashing from their leader, but when they reached the house, they found Baiken sitting on the ground in the smithy, eyes downcast and expressionless.
When they tried to cheer him up, he said, “No use crying about it now.” Searching about for a way to vent his wrath, he seized a piece of charred wood and broke it sharply over his knee.
“Bring some sake! I want a drink.” He stirred up the fire again and threw on more kindling.
Baiken’s wife, trying to quiet the baby, reminded him there was no more sake. One of the men volunteered to bring some from his house, which he did with dispatch. Soon the brew was warm, and the cups were being passed around.
The conversation was sporadic and gloomy.
“It makes me mad.”
“The rotten little bastard!”
“He leads a charmed life. I’ll say that for him.”
“Don’t worry about it, master. You did everything you could. The men outside fell down on their job.”
Those referred to apologized shamefacedly.
They tried to get Baiken drunk, so he would go to sleep, but he just sat there, frowning at the bitterness of the sake, but taking no one to task for the failure.
Finally, he said, “I shouldn’t have made such a big thing out of it, getting so many of you to help. I could have handled him all by myself, but I thought I’d better be careful. After all, he did kill my brother, and Tsujikaze Temma was no mean fighter.”
“Could that rōnin really be the boy who was hiding in Okō’s house four years ago?”
“He must be. My dead brother’s spirit brought him here, I’m sure. At first the thought never crossed my mind, but then he told me he’d been at Sekigahara, and his name used to be Takezō. He’s the right age and the right type of person to have killed my brother. I know it was him.”
“Come on, master, don’t think about it anymore tonight. Lie down. Get some sleep.”
They all helped him to bed; someone picked up the pillow that had been kicked aside and put it under his head. The instant Baiken’s eyes were closed, the anger that had filled him was replaced by loud snoring.
The men nodded to each other and drifted off, dispersing into the mist of early morning. They were all riffraff—underlings of freebooters like Tsujikaze Temma of Ibuki and Tsujikaze Kōhei of Yasugawa, who now called himself Shishido Baiken. Or else they were hangers-on at the bottom of the ladder in open society. Driven by the changing times, they had become farmers or artisans or hunters, but they still had teeth, which were only too ready to bite honest people when the opportunity arose.
The only sounds in the house were those made by the sleeping inhabitants and the gnawing of a field rat.
In the corner of the passageway connecting the workroom and kitchen, next to a large earthen oven, stood a stack of firewood. Above this hung an umbrella and heavy straw rain capes. In the shadows between the oven and the wall, one of the rain capes moved, slowly and quietly inching up the wall until it hung on a nail.
The smoky figure of a man suddenly seemed to come out of the wall itself. Musashi had never gone a step away from the house. After slipping out from under the covers, he had opened the outer door and then merged with the firewood, drawing the rain cape down over him.
He walked silently across the smithy and