The Kyôga Road follows the Ariake Sea ’s muddy shore and inland through a wood, where one of the hired men, Hane, falls behind and another, Ishi, runs on ahead. ‘A precaution,’ explains Shuzai, from inside his palanquin, ‘to make sure we aren’t being followed from Kurozane or expected up ahead.’ Several upward shrugs of the road later, they cross the narrow Mekura River and take a leaf-strewn track turning up towards the gorge’s mouth. By a moss-blotched torî gate, a noticeboard turns away casual visitors. Here the palanquin is lowered, the weapons removed from its false floor, and before Uzaemon’s eyes, Deguchi of Osaka and his long-suffering servants turn into mercenaries. Shuzai emits a sharp whistle. Uzaemon hears nothing – unless a twig cracking is something – but the men hear a signal that all is well. They run with the empty palanquin, climbing shallow curves. The interpreter is soon out of breath. A waterfall’s clatter and boom grows louder and nearer, and around a recent rock-fall the men arrive at the lower mouth of Mekura Gorge: a stepped cutting in a low escarpment as high as eight or nine men, cloaked and choked by long-tongued ferns and throttling creepers. Down this drop the cold river plunges. The pool below churns and boils.

Uzaemon becomes a prisoner of the ever-plunging waterfall…

She drinks from this river, he thinks, where it is a mountain stream.

… until a thrush whistles in a flank of wild camellia. Shuzai whistles back. The leaves part and five men emerge. They are dressed in commoners’ clothes, but their faces have the same military hardness as the other masterless samurai. ‘Let’s get this crate on poles -’ Shuzai indicates his battered palanquin ‘- out of sight.’

Hidden by the wall of camellia in a hollow where the palanquin is covered with branches and leaves, Shuzai introduces the new men by false names: Tsuru, the moon-faced leader, Yagi, Kenka, Muguchi and Bara; Uzaemon, still dressed as a pilgrim, is named ‘Junrei’. The new men show him a distant respect, but they look to Shuzai as the leader of the expedition. Whether the mercenaries view Uzaemon as a besotted fool or an honourable man – and maybe, Uzaemon considers, one may be both – they give no sign. The samurai named Tanuki gives a brief account of their journey from Saga down to Kurozane and the interpreter thinks of the small steps that gathered this raiding party: Otane the herbalist’s accurate guess at the contents of his heart; Jiritsu the acolyte’s revulsion at the Order’s Creeds; Enomoto’s nefariousness; and more steps; and more twists; some known, and others not; and Uzaemon marvels at the weaverless loom of fortune.

‘The first part of our ascent,’ Shuzai is saying, ‘we’ll make in six groups of two, leaving at five-minute intervals. First, Tsuru and Yagi; second, Kenka and Muguchi; third, Bara and Tanuki; next, Kuma and Ishi; then, Hane and Shakke; and last, Junrei,’ he looks at Uzaemon, ‘and me. We’ll regroup below the gatehouse’ – the men cluster around an inked map of the mountainside, their breaths mingling – ‘guarding this natural revile. I’ll lead Bara and Tanuki, Tsuru and Hane over this bluff and we’ll storm the gate from uphill – the unexpected direction – shortly after the change of guard. We’ll bind, gag and bag them with the ropes and sacks. They’re just farm boys, so don’t kill them, unless they insist. Bare Peak is another two hours’ stiff march, so the monks will be settling down for the night by the time we arrive. Kuma, Hane, Shakke, Ishi: scale the wall here…’ Shuzai now unfolds his picture of the Shrine ‘… on the south-west side, where the trees are closest and thickest. First, go to the gatehouse here and let the rest of us in. Then we send for the highest-ranking master. Him we inform that Sister Aibagawa is leaving with us. This will happen peacefully, or over a courtyard of slain acolytes. The choice is his.’ Shuzai looks at Uzaemon. ‘A threat you aren’t willing to carry through is no threat at all.’

Uzaemon nods, but Please, he prays, don’t let any life be lost…

‘Junrei’s face,’ Shuzai tells the others, ‘is known to Enomoto from the Shirandô Academy. Although our obliging landlord informed us that the Lord Abbot is in Miyako at present, Junrei mustn’t risk being identified, even second-hand. That is why you shall take no part in the raid.’

It is unacceptable, thinks Uzaemon, to cower outside like a woman.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ says Shuzai, ‘but you are not a killer.’

Uzaemon nods, intending to change Shuzai’s mind during the day.

‘When we leave, I’ll warn the monks that I’ll cut down any pursuers without mercy. We then withdraw, with the freed prisoner. We’ll cut the vines of Todoroki Bridge to win us more time tomorrow. We pass through the Halfway Gatehouse during the Hour of the Ox, descend the gorge and arrive back here by the Hour of the Rabbit. We carry the woman in the palanquin as far as Kashima. There we disperse and leave the domain before horsemen can be despatched. Any questions?’

Winter woods are creaking, knitted and knotted. Dead leaves lie in deep drifts. Needle-tips of birdsong stitch and thread the thicket’s many layers. Shuzai and Uzaemon climb in silence. Here the Mekura River is a bellowing, roiling, echoing thing. The granite sky entombs the valley.

By mid-morning, the arches of Uzaemon’s blistered feet are aching.

Here the Mekura River is as smooth and green as foreign glass.

Shuzai gives Uzaemon oil to rub into his aching calves and ankles, saying, ‘The swordsman’s first weapon is his feet.’

On a round rock, an immobile heron waits for fish.

‘The men you hired,’ ventures Uzaemon, ‘seem to trust you entirely.’

‘Some of us studied under the same master in Imabari; most of us served under a minor lordling of Iyo Domain who provoked some fierce skirmishes with his neighbour. To have relied on a man to stay alive is a bond closer than blood.’

A splash punctures the jade pool: the heron is gone.

Uzaemon recalls an uncle teaching him long ago to skim stones. He recalls the old woman he saw at sunrise. ‘There are times when I suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. It shows us pictures. Pictures of the past, and the might-one-day-be. This mind’s mind exerts its own will, too, and has its own voice.’ He looks at his friend, who is watching a bird of prey high above them. ‘I am sounding like a drunken priest.’

‘Not at all,’ mumbles Shuzai, ‘Not at all.’

Higher up the mountainside, limestone cliffs wall in the gorge. Uzaemon begins to see parts of faces in the weather-worn escarpments. A bulge looks like a forehead, a protruding ridge a nose, and excoriations and rockslides, wrinkles and sags. Even mountains, thinks Uzaemon, were once young, and age, and one day die. One black rift under a shrub-hairy overhang could be a narrowed eye. He imagines ten thousand bats hanging from its ruckled roof…

… all waiting for one spring evening to ignite their small hearts.

The higher the altitude, the climber sees, the deeper life must hide from winter. Sap is sunk to roots; bears sleep; next year’s snakes are eggs.

My Nagasaki life, Uzaemon considers, is as gone as my childhood in Shikoku.

Uzaemon thinks of his adoptive parents and his wife conducting their affairs, intrigues and squabbles, but not guessing that they have lost their adopted son and husband. The process will take many months.

He touches the place over his midriff where he carries Orito’s letters.

Soon, Beloved, soon, he thinks. Just a few hours more…

By trying not to remember the Creeds of the Order, he remembers them.

His hand, he finds, is gripping his sword-hilt tight enough to blanch his knuckles.