Preview: Kitsune Novel

Jiro struggled against the wind. He and his two servants had been caught off guard in a mountain pass, where the air howled and sliced through their clothes. Jiro's sword clacked against his side. "Come on," he said, and took the lead.

"It could simply be the weather," Youta said. He bared teeth at the wind and pressed on with his heavy backpack. The three of them had had this conversation back and forth since they left the castle.

Unlike Youta, Sho was most burly in the mind and tongue. "It's well into harvest time. They would have sent word if there were any problems. Most likely as another petition for tax relief. We'll be lucky if we don't have to fight our way out against a bunch of peasants turned bandits."

Jiro frowned and walked silently through the pass. This might turn into another nightmare assignment and force him to execute someone, just to save face for everyone concerned. For Lord Tsugaru, who wouldn't know or care; for Boss Karo who gave the orders; and for desperate farmers who knew nothing but toil.

The coast stretched below. Jiro stopped and let the wind rush past him; the view and the pure ocean scent were worth the cold. Autumn sunlight sparkled all across the horizon and made the shoreline dim by comparison. A trail wound down to a string of villages, stretched like pearls along the beach. There were bright bare patches of mountain where people had cut the forest and carved small mines, and fields of vegetables.

Sho cleared his throat. "I see no chimney smoke."

Jiro peered down at the nearest village and saw only the thatch-roofed houses. "I can't see if the fishing boats are there either. Let's investigate."

Sho followed him down the trail, but said, "They're missing too. Most likely we'll be ambushed before long."

Jiro was ready, if it came to that. He nodded to Youta, who smiled back and tapped the end of his sturdy walking stick against the trail. But they saw nothing in an hour of hiking down to the beach.

Sho gasped. "Sir!"

They had reached the fields at the village outskirts. Not much rice grew here; from the villagers' perspective rice was more for paying taxes than for eating, and these towns paid in fish and iron anyway. There were ripe gourds waiting for harvest, so it didn't seem like a fishing collapse would explain the lack of payment... Jiro looked up from a garden and said, "What is it?" His left hand rested casually on his sword. He wasn't dressed for war.

The servant's voice dropped to a whisper. "No smoke, no boats, and no people either. Perhaps they saw us coming and even now are waiting."

Jiro slowly let go of his sword-hilt and shook his head. Then he called out for whoever was listening. "I'm Tsubasa Jiro, retainer of Lord Tsugaru! No one is in danger right now. I want to ask you if anything is wrong."

Only the wind answered, chilling his ears.

Sho had drawn his shortsword and was nervously tracing circles in the air with it. Youta looked casually around with his staff at hand. "Your orders?" asked Sho.

"Stay together. We'll knock on a few doors."

Youta slid open the door of the mayor's cottage. His bulk blocked most of the doorway, so that Jiro could only peek past his shoulders. Youta grunted and stepped back. An old man lay stretched on the floor, pale-skinned and lifeless. Flies had begun to buzz around his lips and eyes.

Jiro swallowed bile and forced himself to look more closely. What sort of man would he be if he wasn't willing to stare at death? There was no clear sign of plague, but no wounds either. A few silver coins lay untouched on the straw floormats. "Another house," Jiro said, and hurried to the next, and the next. Everyone was dead. He felt like he was choking.

Youta laid a hand on his shoulder, something he would never do back home. "Master." He let Jiro take a moment to calm down, then said, "It's not all bad. We've ruled out famine, disease and simple tax cheats. And no bandits have tried to stab us yet."

"All of them, in their homes," Jiro murmured. "Something killed them at night without much struggle." He turned toward the young men's communal house again, though he was reluctant enough that it felt like turning into the wind. He'd already seen how the village youths had been struck down. He crouched to look more closely, though it was dim indoors. It looked like the men weren't simply lying in bed. Instead, some were half dressed and sprawled around the room. One had even made it outside with a knife in hand before being struck down. No blood, no torn clothing, none of the paltry valuables stolen.

Sho said, "This is all wrong, sir. And not just the killing."

"What do you mean?" Jiro backed out of the building and into the sunlight. In the distance, the next village had no smoke either.

The man sounded like a teacher. "Think again. What else don't we see? There are missing boats, dead men and women..."

Now Jiro felt even colder. "Where are the children?" There should be dozens in a village this size.

"Exactly."

"Rescued by the neighbors?" Youta suggested.

For the first time today, Jiro drew his sword. It caught the sunlight and helped steady his left hand. But there was no one here to fight. Some great injustice had happened here, and he could do nothing.

Sho kept close. "What will we do, sir?"

"We'll pray for the dead. And then... we'll find out what happened here."

It was Youta who led the service, in Buddhist style. Jiro prayed with him and Sho. He would have someone sent later for the remains. "Thank you. Let's gather up what money is here to appease Boss Karo, while I think about this." They fanned out through the few dozen buildings to do some tax collection.

Jiro stepped into the headman's house again and took the silver coins. Then, standing in shadow with his back to the door, he pulled a tiny lacquered plaque out of his robe. It showed Saint Kannon, the many-armed Buddhist lady of mercy and compassion. He spoke quietly to the image, saying, "Hail, Princess Mary, full of grace; the Spirit-Lord is with you; blessed are you..." The prayer helped to calm the sneaking suspicion working its way into his mind.

When he was done, he tucked Kannon's image away and went back to the sunlight. Youta was gnawing on some dried fish. "Want some?"

Jiro felt queasy at the thought of eating in the presence of corpses. "Not now. We should investigate the other villages and then regroup back home, if we find nothing more to go on."

"What? Home?" Sho twitched. "Are we giving up?"

Jiro walked toward the beach, thinking out loud. There were still grooves on the sand from where the fishing boats had been. "No. It's only been a few days since whatever happened here. If the children from this village and the others were stolen away, someone wanted them alive badly enough to kill their families. So they'll most likely still be alive for long enough for us to come back with more force. But let's make sure I'm not completely wrong, Sho, hurry to the east and check that village for signs of life. Youta and I will visit the western town."

Sho nodded and began jogging along the beach. It took hours to return to the first town, but by then their suspicions seemed confirmed. Missing children, missing boats, slain men and women. "Where would they have gone, though?" Sho asked between gulps of water. "A den of bandits somewhere a few miles away, in some mountain cave?"

Youta said, "It could be ninjas." Jiro and Sho laughed at him, but he persisted. "Don't they take orphans as new recruits?"

Jiro said, "And don't they rely on stealth? Destroying whole villages at harvest time is not a good way to get hired by Lord Tsugaru."

For a moment Sho was quiet. "Master, the assessed value of these three towns was sub-par, about three hundred and twenty _koku_ units each versus an average of nearly four hundred." A _koku_ was roughly a man-year of rice production -- months of labor for some peasant -- or one gold coin. "You care about the fate of the villagers. Boss Karo will mainly want to see to it that the bandits are quelled and some peasants shuffled into the empty village sites to resume production. And Lord Tsugaru won't even be back from gambling in Edo for months. Killing remote villagers is no less stealthy than a few insect bites -- if no one cares."

Jiro imagined vast bloodsucking insects drifting in like clouds to drink up towns and leave only shriveled bodies in their wake. Just minor wounds on the greater body that was the province, which was just one corner of the nation. He shuddered. "A human life means something, even if it's only a peasant's. It's not right to leave this crime unsolved. We'll return to the castle, make our report, and come back with more swords, ninjas be damned."

Sho said, "There's one other possibility." He pointed north, to the sea. But that was unthinkable; it was illegal to leave the nation. Punishable by death. There was nothing to the north but the frigid island called Ezo (a far cry from civilized Edo!) or Hokkaido, and its barbarian tribes.

Youta rubbed his big chin. "I don't know what they'd want with a bunch of kids. Do they have ninjas there?"

Jiro stared out at the Tsugaru Strait for which his master was named, as though it would be possible to see the missing boats out there. "It's a strange explanation, but as good as any so far. In any case, we'll need special permission if we want to search there."

He turned his back on the sea and began the march home. He felt small and hollow from knowing how little three towns meant in the grand scheme of things. How much less was his own single life worth, even as a samurai? In a better world, no one would be abandoned so easily. He could at least fight to save the missing, and say forbidden prayers for the dead.