Finally, ahead of them, they saw the thin trails of smoke rising from Ariki. In the still air of evening the town's cookfires left thin lines fading into the sky like light brushstrokes of faded ink.
Yabu shifted uncomfortably on his horse. The day-long ride had done no good to the deep cut in the muscles of his stomach, and he was glad it was nearly over. He had given little outward sign of the pain of riding, but his bandages were wet with blood, and his infrequent coughing sent spikes of agony up his spine.
Over the last mile he had dropped back, until now he followed the young bowman, Shinbei, and the heiman whose name he still couldn't recall. Kenchi? Kenji? It didn't matter. The two were leading horses. One horse carried the body of the dead samurai, Sakagawa, back for burial. The other horse carried the bundles of their finds in the small village--the weapons, equipment, and coded notes of the ninja, and his staring head in a bag.
In the lead rode the other two samurai, talking. Junzo and Jiro. They had acquitted themselves well, Yabu supposed, and might receive some appropriate reward from Lord Arai. Arai-sama should be pleased at the unmasking of a spy and solving a murder both, although they had not managed to recover Sasakawa's daisho.
Yabu glanced over his four companions. Shinbei seemed simple enough--another young ashigaru, in love with the idea of battle, of being a samurai. He could even ride a horse, and seemed to be capable enough with a bow. The heiman, Kenichi? Keishi? ... whatever, Yabu had seen little of him. He walked like a fighter, but did not talk much.
Junzo-san was apparently a teacher of weapons-use to the ashigaru in the castle. Jiro-san was a capable enough fighter, if not as strong as Junzo-san, but suffered from the usual problems of being young. Well, time would fix that soon enough, if a sword didn't sooner.
There was no comfortable position to sit a horse with a stomach cut, Yabu told himself for the hundredth time today. It wouldn't have taken much more, and he would have been a dead samurai. Whoever that ninja was, he had been very dangerous. He had prepared a deadly ambush, and but for a little luck could have killed all four of them. That move with the arrow had been very clever, designed to trick Yabu into believing they were under attack by bandits. His response had been immediate, and had almost been the death of him. Leaping past Kono to gain a foothold on the other end of the footbridge had made him totally open to the slash of his enemy's tanto, and he was very lucky to have no more than a painful ride home as a momento. Then the ninja had fought Junzo and Jiro to a standstill, using the water as a screen or curtain and negating Shinbei's best efforts with the bow. Long moments had passed while Yabu and Shinbei stood at the bridge, expecting a bandit attack that proved to be nothing more than a mirage cast by this adept ninja.
Yabu shook his head, suppressing a grunt as his horse jarred his wound again. He would have to do much better than that, if he wished to hope for a position in Lord Arai's retinue. Just think, if the ninja had slain one of the other two samurai! Lord Arai would not easily forgive such a failure, he was sure. But if the ninja had escaped, it might have been even worse.
Looking back on it, he could think of few things more foolish than to chase a ninja through his chosen battlefield. They had already seen the traps he had prepared, bamboo spikes hidden in the reeds and the creek. But at the time, with the clarity and focus of battle, it seemed the clear choice. The ninja could not have been permitted to escape. And given more than a moment out of sight, the high reeds would have made it impossible to find him. So Yabu had shouted his warshout and given chase, following thrashing sounds in the bush, and then footprints of his quarry across another little rivulet in the marsh.
A moment's warning was all he had had, a sucking sound behind him, but he had thrown himself aside. Just in time. The ninja's iron palm strike had missed his skull. For a brief instant that seemed like forever they had stared at each other, bleeding samurai and mud-covered spy. Then they leaped at each other.
Once again, his skills had not failed him. His spear thrust caught the ninja squarely in the belly, punching through the armour hidden under his leather coat as if it was cloth, and sticking nearly a foot out of his back.
Death comes to us all, ninja and samurai alike. Yabu's old teacher would have berated him as a fool for chosing that strike, rather than blocking and parrying until the other samurai could come up and engage the enemy from behind. But the old man wasn't here; he was twenty years dead, gone with Yabu's Lord, honour, and relatives. Death is lighter than a feather, duty is heavier than a mountain. His teacher had died honorably, in service to his Lord. Yabu had lived, and his life since had been his punishment.
As they crossed the bridge of the river Shionori into Ariki, Yabu recalled another saying his first teacher had taught him, long ago--
After victory, tighten your helmet strings.