There was a whinny as Hakaru came about. “What would your father say,” he mocked, a spear of wood-grass in his teeth. His brown horse stamped the earth. “Best archer in all the sixty countries, he’d be ashamed of you now. Ha!”
“Shut up, Hakaru!”
“I thought you were a Gensei!” Hakaru roared his laughter. “Shall I show you how now, brother?”
That’s the last thing I want, Sen thought bitterly, burning red. He gripped the reins. Why couldn’t he hit the target? Sons of the warrior lines were taught their worth lay in a bow, and even as an adopted Kitanohara, Sen didn’t want to admit how much it stung. Instead, he stormed off, frustrated.Let it go, he told himself. The summer was here, the day was calm. His stewardmother, Lady Kitanohara-no-Iyo Ogami’in, had wedded the lord of Kurogane, Taga Azamaro, in a union of the eastern people. They were out now to celebrate with a hunt; from here you could see all the land-beyond-the mountains, the ancestral Taga and Kitanohara home, and the sweep of their island nation as it stretched south and west to the central capital far away. From here, it was said, you could even listen to the whispers of the gods, if you were keen enough at hearing.
All summer they had ridden and practiced on the fields, trading shouts and rebukes with their city’s other sons. All summer they had trained, relishing the heat on their hair and the breeze on their skin, the gentle smells of hay in the meadows of Kitano. Sunlight dappled the grass. A low scoop of earth cut west, to where the trees of the Blue Woods rose silent as deities, guarding the mountains beyond. There the old monastery of Kannagara, the Godspath, lay hidden in a sea of trees, where the crow monks lived and practiced their ascetic arts.
Already it had rained. The clouds unfolded themselves from nothing and spat thin, hissing drops across their faces; Sen had laughed and opened his arms in embrace of the squall. Nihira, the eldest, cried,We go in, but Hakaru whooped and raced Sen down the hill.
Now the sun was back, and with it, the airless pause of afternoon. The winds would come tonight. Young Lord Hakaru, who had predicted Sen would take his turn with the bow and miss, began to laugh. He was three years older, with a trickster’s gleam in his eyes and the stubborn jealousy of a middle child; they often butted heads. His brother, Nihira, rode behindhim. The thunder and the lightning, people called them; “Because my brother makes all the noise,” Nihira joked.
“I like swords better anyway,” Sen muttered, trying to save face.
“Swords are useless on a horse,” said Hakaru. “But I guess you’d have to learn to ride, regardless.”
“Race you to the road,” Sen challenged.
As Nihira watched with an amused expression on his face, Hakaru shouted, darting off on his horse before Sen could grip his reins. Together they left a trail of dust in the air, thundering across the meadow.
“Damn it, Hakaru!” Sen brought Kaminari over the swaying field, racing to catch up. But of course he couldn’t, which only made it worse.
Hakaru called, “Anything to win, Sen! That’s what you gotta learn!”
The trail wound high above the meadows and back down into the lowlands and the streams, and soon Kitano city lay before them, the jewel of the east. From atop the north hill, they could see all of the Aizumi valley in the west, below a rocky highland called the Serpent’s Scales, and in the other direction, long roads that wandered toward the coast-towns by the sea. With its arched roofs, gatehouses, watchtowers and keeps, Kitano fortress lay like a sleeping dragon on the hillside; Kitaiji, which would be the Temple of Hope, stood half-built at its peak. The city sprawled below, second only to the capital, but far more beautiful, and as the low road spindled from the heart of town, from hillocks to the valleys, Sen saw the outvillage in Lady Iyo’s manor to the west, at the mouth of the low-lying fields that divided Aizumi into two parts. The towering slopes of Mount Kanzan lay to the north.
In summer it was pleasant, with flowers and fleeting butterflies above them on the grass – spirits of dead ancestors, folks said, come to wish us well. In winter, woven gates held fast against the cold, strong walls and sturdy rooftops kept the fire in; and all the while, white snow blustered from the mountain, painting Iyo’s woods the color of clouds.
Along the river, the village bustled with activity. Summertime meant trading from the harvest more than pelts; merchants came along the lowland, surrounded by farmers with their carts, dedicants, well-wishers, Kitaiji priests, and families. Night would bring faint firelight upon the river, and with it dancing, the sound of songs. Sen had long watched the boatsmen with their oars and narrow transports coming up the flow, from Otsuzaka and the ferry slope with its great hub of trade along the coast. He used to think he’d travel there one day, sail the river to the sea, cross the country, and see the world.
It was in these moments that he thought, as he often did, of his family, the mother and father who had been taken from him, the clan he never knew.
I might as well have no name, he thought, as he followed his stewardbrothers’ horses along the grassy trail. He’d been raised as a Kitanohara; but though he loved them and lived well, he couldn’t help but feel apart. For he was a Gensei, and the Gensei were all gone. He would inherit no lands, he would be always the half-brother, the one who was raised in ward. He couldn’t help but wonder about the place where he’d been born, about the great Gensei name that once would have been his own. When his father, Katsusada Asa’in, rebelled against the sovereign, he’d been told, the clan was ruined. Stripped of its lands, its rights, its titles, its glory; stripped of its heart. His father had tried, and failed, to change an empire. And he had been murdered, killed by his ally’s army in the dead of night. Killed begging them to save his daughter, Kai, the heir who would one day have led their family, and the older sister Sen had never met.
I wonder if she even knows about me, he thought, as they made their way along the path. He didn’t know how he had lived, that night, when so many others died. He’d been told his uncle had saved him. Hidden him, no more than a toddler, three years on this earth and helpless to his fate. His tutor, Old Yozora Hogen, wouldn’t tell him anything else. He didn’t know if he was the only one to have escaped, or if there were others. But he knew he wanted to learn more.
The skies were clear above him, passing silent with the clouds. The air, warming in the summer sun, danced with a scent of flowers and dried grain, the herbal scent of roots. Soon the light had grown into a different shade, and they rode past the crescent of an evening. Storms lingered in the far-off west. The sun itself descended on the rim of distant mountains.
Sen allowed his mind to drift, from thoughts of home – whatever that would mean – to clouds, to the earth and his brothers and his bow again. He let Kaminari lead him down the trail. The horse knew these hills, and the meadows in the valley, better than he ever could, and he knew them like a piece of his own skin. Kaminari would bring them back to Kitano. Their city, their home. But Sen felt his mind still floating toward the past, thinking again about his family, both his families, the one that birthed him, and the one that took him in. And to him it felt as though he had two hearts. He wondered what the future would bring.
A moment passed, and something changed in the wind. Ahead of him, Nihira stopped. They’d found the cutback where the trail split off toward the village, sloping down on one side of the hills, the other climbing upwith branches crawling through ravines. Hakaru had ridden ahead, but now he too began to slow, finally stopping altogether and turning back toward his brother. “What is it?”
“Sen,” Nihira said, in his stern, flat voice. “Look here.” He was motionless, peering down at a damp impression on the path. “Blood, on the trail.”
“There’s more,” Hakaru called. “Over here.”
“Something’s been hurt.” Nihira turned his mare from the path. “Not too long ago… it looks like…”
He trailed off, punctuating his words with a flick of his heels, and together the three of them left the main path, tracking through the trees and the red-fresh trail of blood in the woods. They followed its winding trail into a gorge, where the slopes began to rise up against them and the endless sea of trees of the Blue Woods scored along like waves, reaching almost vertically into the mountains. There Nihira slowed, staring through the gulley, his eyes sharp as glass. He began maneuvering his horse like he wanted to climb down.
“What is it?” Sen called. And then he saw.
Hakaru gasped. “Oh, horrible—”
A serow, the sacred goat-antelope of the woods, lay wedged between the rocks where it had fallen. An arrow protruded from its side, cutting in each time the poor creature tried to move. Someone had shot it and left it to die.
“Heartless,” Nihira said.
