Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [442]
When they arrived, Iori began stuffing them into his kimono.
Sado, a little taken aback, asked, “Aren’t you going to eat them here?” “No. My teacher’s waiting for me at home.”
“Oh? You have a teacher?”
Without bothering to explain himself, Iori bolted from the room and disappeared through the garden.
Sado thought his behavior highly amusing. Not so the head priest, who bowed to the floor two or three times before going to the kitchen in pursuit of Iori.
“Where is that insolent brat?”
“He picked up his sack of millet and left.”
They listened for a moment but heard only a discordant screeching. Iori had plucked a leaf from a tree and was trying to improvise a tune. None of the few songs he knew seemed to work. The grooms’ chantey was too slow, the Bon festival songs too complicated. Finally, he settled on a melody resembling the sacred dance music at the local shrine. This suited him well enough, for he liked the dances, which his father had sometimes taken him to see.
About halfway to Hōtengahara, at a point where two streams joined to make a river, he gave a sudden start. The leaf flew from his mouth, along with a spray of saliva, and he leapt into the bamboo beside the road.
Standing on a crude bridge were three or four men, engaged in a furtive conversation. “It’s them,” Iori exclaimed softly.
A remembered threat rang in his frightened ears. When mothers in this region scolded their children, they were apt to say, “If you’re not good, the mountain devils will come down and get you.” The last time they had actually come had been in the fall of the year before last.
Twenty miles or so from here, in the mountains of Hitachi, there was a shrine dedicated to a mountain deity. Centuries earlier, the people had so feared this god that the villages had taken turns making annual offerings of grain and women to him. When a community’s turn came, the inhabitants had assembled their tribute and gone in a torchlight procession to the shrine. As time went on and it became evident that the god was really only a man, they became lax in making their offerings.
During the period of the civil wars, the so-called mountain god had taken to having his tribute collected by force. Every two or three years, a pack of brigands, armed with halberds, hunting spears, axes—anything to strike terror into the hearts of peaceful citizens—would descend on first one community, then the next, carrying away everything that caught their fancy, including wives and daughters. If their victims put up any resistance, the plundering was accompanied by slaughter.
Their last raid still vivid in his memory, Iori cringed in the underbrush. A group of five shadows came running across the field to the bridge. Then, through the night mist, another small band, and still another, until the bandits numbered between forty and fifty.
Iori held his breath and stared while they debated a course of action. They soon reached a decision. Their leader issued a command and pointed toward the village. The men rushed off like a swarm of locusts.
Before long, the mist was rent by a great cacophony—birds, cattle, horses, the wailing of people young and old.
Iori quickly made up his mind to get help from the samurai at the Tokuganji, but the minute he left the shelter of the bamboo, a shout came from the bridge: “Who’s there?” He had not seen the two men left behind to stand guard. Swallowing hard, he ran for all he was worth, but his short legs were no match for those of grown men.
“Where do you think you’re going?” shouted the man who got hold of him first.
“Who are you?”
Instead of crying like a baby, which might have thrown the men off guard, Iori scratched and fought against the brawny arms imprisoning him.
“He saw all of us together. He was going to tell somebody.”
“Let’s beat him up and dump him in a rice field.”
“I’ve got a better idea.”
They carried Iori to the river, threw him down the bank and jumping down after him, tied him to one of the bridge posts.
“There, that takes care of him.” The two