Tatsuo stumbled toward the table, knocking it over
with his hips in his disorientation. Still, he managed to
catch hold of the scroll case in his left hand. It burned
him, but so did everything else.
smile crack across his face. He stared into the flames that
blazed all about him. They would be the last thing he
ever saw.
Pain flared across his vision. Smoke burned his nostrils
and mouth, twisting down his throat in strangling
agony. Boils blistered across his skin, and his limbs bent
inward, gnarled by the heat. He could barely hold the
case in his flame-ravaged arm, pressing it against his
chest for support. He was dying—
Lord Soma maintained an austere disposition as he
surveyed the smoldering ruins of his home. He had
managed not to lose his dignity during the worst of the
fire, and there was no sense in showing weakness now.
Still, he had to do something! He had to save the
scroll.
And then Lady Soma’s sad sonorous song drifted to
him on the streams of smoke and memory.
He moved toward the sheet of hissing flames that had
been the back wall. No, not a wall, but another door—a
door to the outside.
Again, he slashed with the wakizashi, holding the chest
to him in his offhand. His sword passed ineffectually
through the flames.
Where steel failed, flesh must prevail.
He drove forward, plunging shoulder first into the wall
of flames and passing through it.
He had hoped for cool air and night, but no, this was
the inner courtyard, and the castle’s flaming walls bordered the four corners of the rock garden.
Tatsuo collapsed, panting, gasping, choking.
The chest spilled out onto the ground.
So too did his wakizashi.
Lying on the naked earth, he stared first at the chest,
and then at his sword, where he saw the orange flames
mirrored in the naked blade.
Tatsuo forced himself up onto his knees, and as he
reached for the weapon, he felt a crazed determined
*
*
*
The fires had begun to diminish when his home finally
collapsed in on itself in a roar of smoke just before the
dawn. Five of his men and two of the castle maids had
not survived the blaze. No one could determine for
certain who had started the fire. He would put some of
the village folk to the torture for answers soon if answers
didn’t reveal themselves.
If his enemies were behind this, he would need to
strengthen his position soon. He would also need good
men.
Good men like Tatsuo had been. The man had been no
skilled swordsman, but he had been loyal, as last night
proved. It was a shame to waste such life.
Lord Soma shouted at one of his retainers. “Tatsuo’s
somewhere inside that ash heap. Gather men. Search for
his corpse. We’ve lost too much already!”
The man agreed, bowed, and went to work. Other men
he ordered to dig through the embers and search for
what remained of his weapons, though it was likely
there’d be little besides a puddle of iron slag. At least he
could pay his smiths to reforge the iron.
Some of the men began shouting, and Lord Soma
went to investigate. They stood in a scorched hollow
amidst the rubble, all that remained of his inner courtyard. Black soot covered each of these men, and they
pointed to the remains of—
The sight of Tatsuo’s corpse almost caused Lord Soma
to lose his composure. The body was unrecognizable, a
charred knot of black spokes twisting from the charcoal
husk that had been his torso. The black tentacle of his
arm still held a warped disfigured ingot that had once
been a sword. Charred featureless meat caked the skull,
all that remained of his overly expressive face.
“Well, it was too much to hope he could rescue the
genealogy,” Lord Soma lamented. His stomach tightened
in grief and he realized he had involuntarily clenched his
hands into fists. This was more than the death of one
retainer. Tatsuo has possessed highest virtue, and he had
died in pursuit of the recorded virtue of the whole Soma
Clan.
“Remove his remains,” the daimyo said, unclenching
his hands.
His men bent to the task, turning the body as they
lifted it.
Turning his back to the desiccated corpse, Lord Soma
contemplated the commission of a new genealogy scroll.
There was no replacing such a relic. The blood and
honor of his ancestors had been ensouled in the scroll.
He did not want to contemplate the omens of such a
loss.
Behind him, the men gasped.
He turned again, and his face lost all its studied
composure.
Two men held Tatsuo’s blackened corpse by the shoulders, propping the dead man upon his knees. It was clear
that Tatsuo had lain face down in death, and from the
hollowed cave of his stomach, still wet with gore, a long
roll of rich paper unfurled, stretching open upon the
ground. The daimyo stared. There before him was the
genealogy of the entire Soma Clan, marked with the
delicate perfect brushstrokes of generations’ of Soma
scribes, and with the blood of the man who’d died
guarding their work.