"Pretty, ain't she?" The old crone cackled again. "If you want to lie with her, she's free. She won't give you no argument neither."

"Shut up!" Tora raised an arm as if to strike her. She scuttled away a few steps, dropping a long knife in her haste. Tora cursed and snatched it up. "What's that for, you she-devil?" he snarled, coming after her with the knife.

She backed against a wall, raising spindly arms to cover her face. "Nothing," she wailed. "There's no law against it. She'll not be needin' it."

Tora stopped. "What?"

The crone reached into her robe and stretched out a bony arm. From her fist dangled a long twist of black hair.

Tora cursed again and turned away. So she had come to rob the dead woman of the only valuable thing she had left. There was a good market for women's hair. The wealthy and noble ladies liked to augment their own thin or short tresses artificially; little did they know where their borrowed beauty came from. Glancing down at the dead woman, Tora saw that she might have been quite pretty once with her long and shining hair. His stomach twisted again with anger, but he restrained himself. The old one had to live too, and he knew well what poverty could make people do.

"I'm looking for the body of an old man," he said. The crone stuffed the hair back into her robe and picked up her lantern. "He's about a head shorter than me, skinny, big nose. A drowning victim. Have you seen anyone like that?"

"Gimme back my knife!"

He returned it to her reluctantly.

"What you want him for?" she asked slyly, shoving the knife into her belt. "Think he's got some gold on him?"

"No. He's a beggar."

Her eyes shifted past him. She muttered, "Don't know nothing. Gotta go." Kicking at Tora's lantern, she left him standing in the sudden darkness.

"Hey!" He cursed and groped his way forward, hoping he would not step on any more corpses or tumble down the stairwell. He touched a wall and moved along it cautiously. Somewhere ahead of him steps shuffled away. Then the wall ended. Tora decided to abandon his lantern rather than come in contact with the corpse again. A doorway opened into another room, dimly lit by moonlight coming through wooden shutters. Tora entered and threw the shutters wide. The room was empty except for a pile of refuse and a scurrying rat.

Back in the hallway, he found that he could see well enough now to make out several other doors opening into rooms similar to the last one. He stumbled over another body, which turned out to be still alive. He did not bother to check whether the person was drunk or dying. Checking rooms systematically while clutching his Fudo amulet, he finally found what he had come for in the fifth and last room.

A dark shape lay in the middle of the floor. When he bent to touch it, he found wet garments and went to open the shutters wide. The moon was about to disappear behind clouds again, and he quickly turned back to the corpse.

It was Umakai.

He had not been dead long when he had been fished out of the water. His face was blue; his eyes, their whites bloodshot, protruded; and his tongue showed between toothless gums. The wet rags notwithstanding, he did not look like a drowned man. Puzzled, Tora bent to check the dead man's throat the way he remembered his master doing with the girl Omaki.

At that moment the back of his head seemed to explode, and he fell into blackness.

• • •

When he came to, he was lying on his side, his arms tied behind his back and his feet tied together and drawn up. There was an evil-tasting gag in his mouth, his head hurt blindingly and he felt nauseated.

Opening one eye, he peered cautiously at his surroundings and saw that he was still in Rashomon. The beggar's body was gone, but someone else had taken its place. A man sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, reading a book by the light of an oil lamp. The man looked familiar.

Slowly memory returned. It was the robber-warrior who had been downstairs earlier. His sword was still slung across his back, but he had laid the bow and arrows aside.

Tora decided that he was in an extremely unpleasant situation and surreptitiously tested his bonds. Not a chance! If it was his companion who had trussed him up, he knew his business. His legs were bent at the knees, and a short piece of rope connected the bonds of his ankles and wrists. The shoulder he lay on hurt like the devil, and something dug painfully into his ribs. He had lost sensation in one arm. But the gag was the worst. It was an evil-smelling rag, no doubt part of the refuse left after the grave robbers had picked their victims clean. A wave of nausea rose, and Tora concentrated on subduing it. If he were to vomit while gagged, he would suffocate. Slowly his stomach settled and he could breathe again.

The armed man turned to another page.

That a robber should read books in his spare time astonished Tora. The man looked to be about his size, but was more thickly built, with a broad chest and powerful arms. His face was slightly scarred, perhaps from superficial sword cuts. There was a daredevil handsomeness about his features, and the well-trimmed beard and mustache suited him. His clothes, too, were worn but clean and of good quality.

Steps sounded on the stairs outside, and the man quickly rolled up the book and tucked it inside his robe. He glanced at Tora and then at the doorway. Three men entered. Two of them were dressed like poor laborers; one of these was a big and clumsy fellow, the other not much more than four feet tall and very thin. The third man was a monk. Though he was bareheaded now, carrying the straw hat in his hand, Tora thought he was the same one who had been downstairs earlier, probably pretending to be asleep. He was still young, with a round, plain face and broad shoulders. The stubble of hair on his head and chin suggested that he was casual about his vows.

"Well, was it taken care of to your satisfaction?" asked the armed man.

The tall brute lumbered towards one of the walls and sat down. He gave a loud sniff.

"Stop sniveling, Spike!" said his short companion sharply. He had a high voice like a boy's and his face was smooth like a child's, but there were lines of age around his eyes and mouth. "Yeah," he answered the warrior's question, "we put our old buddy away neat and proper like we promised him. Dug a nice dry hole near the wall, and Monk here did the honors, saying some of his mumbo-jumbo while Spike wailed like a baby."

Spike sniffed again, and the monk asked in a deep, rumbling voice, "What about our prisoner?"

They all turned to stare at Tora, who shut his eyes quickly.

"Hasn't moved," said the warrior. "What will you do with him?"

"I should've killed the bastard!" quavered Spike. Tora's eyes snapped open. He now saw the pointed metal rod protruding from the man's right sleeve. No wonder his head felt the way it did. In fact, it was a miracle he was alive. His skull must be cracked.

The monk said, "No. There will be no bloodshed."

The armed man cleared his throat. "I think we've got a problem. Since he's an official and has had time to memorize our faces,"— he broke off, jumped up and came over to grab Tora's collar and jerk him to his knees—"he'll have the police down on us before you can say 'Praise the Buddha's name!'There! I thought he was awake."

Waves of pain pounded the inside of Tora's skull. He shut his eyes and heard from a great distance the monk's voice. "He looks ill. Not much fight left in him. Why don't we loosen the rope a little? When he starts feeling a bit better, he can work himself loose. By that time we'll have gone to ground somewhere. Nail here knows a couple of places."