Brilliance of the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

gazing at the river, wondering if we could swim across,
reconstruct the bridge, or what in heaven’s name, when above the steady roar of
the water I heard the sounds of human activity. Focusing my attention, I
thought I could recognize voices, the chink of an ax, then unmistakably the
sudden crash of falling timber.
    To my right, upstream, the river curved away around a bend, the
forest growing closer to the banks. I could see the remnants of what might have
been a jetty or loading dock, presumably for taking lumber from the forest to
the town. I turned my horse’s head and at once began to ride through the fields
toward the bend.
    “What is it?” Makoto called, following me.
    “There’s someone there.” I grabbed at Aoi’s mane as he slipped
and almost lost his footing.
    “Come back!” he shouted. “It’s not safe. You can’t go alone.”
    I heard him unsling his bow and fit an arrow to the cord. The
horses plunged and splashed through the shallow water. Some memory was
stringing itself together in my mind, of another river, impassable for
different reasons. I knew what—whom—I would find.
    Jo-An was there, half-naked, soaking wet, with his thirty or more
outcasts. They had taken lumber from the jetty, where it had been stranded by
the flood, and had felled more trees and cut enough reeds to build one of their
floating bridges.
    They stopped work when they saw me, and began to kneel in the
mud. I thought I recognized some of them from the tannery. They were as thin
and wretched as ever, and their eyes burned with the same hungry light. I tried
to imagine what it had cost them to abscond with Jo-An out of their own
territory, to break all the laws against the felling of trees, on the faint
promise that I would bring justice and peace. I did not want to think about the
ways they would be made to suffer if I failed them.
    “Jo-An!” I called, and he came to the horse’s side. It snorted at
him and tried to rear, but he took the bridle and calmed it. “Tell them to keep
working,” I said, adding, “So I am even further in your debt.”
    “You owe me nothing,” he replied. “You owe God everything.”
     
    Makoto rode up alongside, and I found myself hoping he had not
heard Jo-An’s words. Our horses touched noses and the black stallion squealed
and tried to bite the other. Jo-An smacked it on the neck.
    Makoto’s glance fell on him. “Outcasts?” he said, disbelieving.
“What are they doing here?”
    “Saving our lives. They’re building a floating bridge.”
    He pulled his horse back a few steps. Beneath his helmet I could
see the curl of his lips. “No one will use it—” he began, but I cut him off.
    “They will, because I command it. This is our only way of
escape.”
    “We could fight our way back to the bridge at Yamagata.”
    “And lose all our advantage of speed? Anyway, we would be
outnumbered five to one. And we’d have no retreat route. I won’t do that. We’ll
cross the river by the bridge. Go back to the men and bring many of them to
work with the outcasts. Let the rest prepare for the crossing.”
    “No one will cross this bridge if it is built by outcasts,” he
said, and something in his voice, as if he were speaking to a child, enraged
me. It was the same feeling I’d had months ago when Shigeru’s guards had let
Kenji into the garden at Hagi, fooled by his tricks, unaware that he was a
master assassin from the Tribe. I could only protect my men if they obeyed me.
I forgot Makoto was older, wiser, and more experienced than I was. I let the
fury sweep over me.
    “Do as I command you at once. You must persuade them, or you’ll
answer to me for it. Let the warriors act as guards while the pack-horses and
foot soldiers cross. Bring bowmen to cover the bridge. We will cross before
nightfall.”
    “Lord Otori.” He bowed his head and his horse plunged and
splashed away over the rice fields and up the slope beyond. I watched him
disappear between the shafts of bamboo, then