The Harsh Cry of the Heron Read Online Free PDF Page B

carried within the breast
of a garment and would make no sound, a weapon that even Otori Takeo would be
powerless against.
    Every year some young
man who thought himself invincible, or an older one who wanted to end his life
with honour, set out for one or other of the cities of the Three Countries, lay
in wait on the road for Otori Takeo or crept stealthily at night into the
residence or castle where he slept, hoping to be the one who would end the life
of the murderous traitor and avenge Kikuta Kotaro and all the other members of
the Tribe put to death by the Otori. They never returned: the news came months
later of their capture, so-called trial before Otori’s tribunals, and execution
- for assassination attempted or achieved was one of the few crimes, along with
other forms of murder, taking bribes and losing or selling firearms, punishable
now by death.
    At times Otori was
reported wounded and their hopes rose, but he always recovered, even from
poison, as he had recovered from Kotaro’s poisoned blade, until even the Kikuta
began to believe that he was immortal as the common people said, and Akio’s
hatred and bitterness grew, and his love of cruelty increased. He began to look
more widely for ways to destroy Otori, to try to make alliance with Takeo’s
other enemies, to strike at him through his wife or his children. But this too
proved almost impossible. The treacherous Muto family had split the Tribe and
sworn loyalty to the Otori, taking the lesser families, Imai, Kuroda and Kudo,
with them. Since the Tribe families intermarried, many of the traitors also had
Kikuta blood, among them Muto Shizuka and her sons, Taku and Zenko. Taku, like
his mother and his great-uncle, had many talents, headed Otori’s spy network
and kept constant guard over Takeo’s family; Zenko, less talented, was allied
to Otori through marriage: they were brothers-in-law.
    Recently Akio’s
cousins, Gosaburo’s two sons, had been sent with their sister to Inuyama where
the Otori family had celebrated the New Year. They had mingled among the crowds
at the shrine and had attempted to stab Lady Otori and her daughters in front
of the goddess herself. What had followed was unclear, but it appeared the
women had defended themselves with unexpected fierceness: one of the young men,
Gosaburo’s eldest son, was wounded and then beaten to death by the crowd. The
others were captured and taken to Inuyama castle. No one knew if they were dead
or alive.
    The loss of three
young people, so closely related to the Master, was a terrible blow: as the
snow melted with the approach of spring, opening the roads once more, and no
news came of them, the Kikuta feared they were dead, and they began to make
arrangements for funeral rites to be held, mourning all the more that there
were no bodies to burn and no ashes.
    One afternoon, when
the trees were shining with the green and silver of their new leaves and the
flooded fields were alive with cranes and herons and the croaking of frogs,
Hisao was working alone in a small terraced field, deep in the mountain. During
the long winter nights he had been brooding on an idea that had occurred to him
the previous year, when he had seen the crops - beans and pumpkins - in this
field wither and die. The fields below were watered from a fast-flowing stream,
but this one was only viable in years of great rainfall. Yet in all other ways
it held promise, facing south, sheltered from the strongest winds. He wanted to
make the water flow uphill, using a waterwheel in the stream’s channel to turn
a series of smaller wheels which would raise buckets. He had spent the winter
making the buckets and the ropes: the buckets were fashioned from the lightest
bamboo and the ropes strengthened with iron-vine that would make them rigid
enough to carry the buckets uphill yet much lighter and easier to use than
metal rods or bars.
    He was concentrating
deeply on the task, working in his patient, unhurried way, when the frogs
suddenly