The Fall of Daigo
Book 3 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 2 - Nomitadani Fortress
Chapter 2
All of this happened more than ten years ago.
Then as now, Ochika had lived in a hidden valley in the middle of the mountains. It was snowing heavily outside, but she and about twenty other riders pressed on, preparing to make their attack on another samurai estate. Their leader, Hibukuro, unsheathed his sword and called out in a bright, clear voice: “We’re there!”
The samurai estate was in their sights. The other riders cheered, then commenced their attack.
Ochika’s face was covered completely by a white cloth, except for her eyes. The bandits surrounded the estate and started cutting their way in. One of the samurai defending the estate lost his longsword and got to his knees before Ochika. “Please,” he begged, “spare my life.”
Rage flashed in Ochika’s eyes for an instant before she slit the samurai’s throat. There was the sound of splintering bone as blood sprayed everywhere. Ochika was as unperturbed as the stones in the courtyard beneath her feet. The other samurai attempting to surrender saw what she had done and sprinted away from the estate as fast as they could.
The attack was a complete success. The bandits returned to their encampment in a river gorge near dawn, then built a roaring fire and prepared a feast to celebrate their victory.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a baby crying coming from one of the huts in the camp. Ochika entered the hut and knelt down next to the baby, who lay in a makeshift cradle suspended from a shelf. She removed her face covering, then picked up the baby and exposed one breast for feeding. The baby suckled greedily, little hands reaching up.
“You must be starving,” Ochika said. “Sorry we were away for such a long time.”
Ochika was completely recognizable as the warrior who had cut down her samurai opponents without mercy. The cloth served to conceal the fact that she was a woman in battle. None of the people she’d killed would ever guess that she was a loving mother.
Back in the camp, Hibukuro’s lieutenant and right-hand man, Itachi no Gonza,was so drunk that he was unsteady on his feet. “Yo, captain. All this fighting samurai is very well and good and all, but why not set your sights higher? We could conquer the world!”
“Not this again,” Hibukuro muttered. “You’re not suggesting that I become a samurai, right?”
Itachi snorted. “Isn’t it better than being a bandit?”
“What?” Hibukuro glared at him.
Ochika placed the baby back in the makeshift cradle, then went outside and took a seat next to Hibukuro. “Itachi, have you forgotten what those bastards did to us?” she asked. “We were farmers who lost everything to them. We don’t want to become like them, waging pointless wars and killing innocents. We exist to fight the samurai who burned our village and trampled our fields, and all the men like them. Samurai are our enemies, Itachi. They’re not who we are. Even if all of us died tomorrow and I was the last survivor, I wouldn’t stop trying to make a more peaceful world, for the sake of all the people who are like we were, once. The world would be a better place without samurai in it.”
Hibukuro rested a heavy hand on Ochika’s shoulder.
“We are bandits,” Hibukuro said, “but we attack only samurai. Not farmers or peaceful people just trying to live their lives.”
“That’s how we got started,” Itachi said cajolingly. “But it’s not who we are now. Stop being so narrow-minded. Your name’s Hibukuro and all, but why not Zudabukuro instead? 1 You can hold more than one idea in your head at a time, y’know. And we can’t make any changes in the world when we have no political power. If you don’t become a samurai, we’re stuck here doing the same damn thing forever.”
Hibukuro’s rage boiled over. He stood up. “I could kill you for saying that!”
Ochika tugged at Hibukuro’s sleeve. “He’s clearly had too much to drink,” she said.
Hibukuro stared at Itachi for a long moment, then spun on his heel and entered the hut he shared with Ochika and the baby. The other bandits dispersed; the feasting mood had been spoiled. Itachi was left alone by the fire. “I guess I’ll have to use force,” he said softly.
***
The next day, Hibukuro came back from the river around noon, carrying water. The camp was eerily quiet. Maybe Itachi had tried stirring up the men again. He heard Ochika scream and ran to their hut.
“The baby,” Ochika cried, “The baby is…gone.”
Their child had vanished.
“This is probably Itachi’s fault. We’ll get ‘em back. I promise.”
Hibukuro and Ochika saddled their horses and left the camp. The tracks they were following led to a nearby magistrate’s office.
Hibukuro drew his sword, still mounted, face red with rage. “Get out here, you fucker! What do you think you’re doing with my kid?”
The magistrate was named Mori Toshisada. He’d been trying to capture Hibukuro and his bandits for a very long time, so having Hibukuro come to him put him in something of a prideful mood. Itachi’s laughter rang out from behind the office’s latticework windows. Mori laughed with him.
“So you actually showed your face, Hibukuro?” Mori asked from inside the office. “Your kid’s locked up and crying. If you resist, we’ll strangle him to death.”
Ochika faced Hibukuro with a heartbroken expression.
Hibukuro threw down his sword and jumped down off his horse. “Do whatever you want to me,” he said. “But let the kid go.” His own life was not worth that of his child’s. He sat down on the ground cross-legged and waited.
Police exited the magistrate’s office and bound Hibukuro hand and foot. That done, the police dragged Hibukuro into a prison cell. The policemen lashed an enormous wooden log onto his back to make it harder for him to run away. The heavy weight made him groan.
“Lock the wife up, too,” Mori ordered coldly. “We’ll execute all three of them tomorrow.”
***
That night, a powerful wind blew outside, shaking the walls of the jail cells where Hikukuro, Ochika and their baby were being held. There was a fire set in front of the cells, but cold wind blew through the cracks in the walls, so all of the prisoners were shivering. The prison guard carried a heavy club, patrolling back and forth.
“I want to save our child, at least,” Ochika whispered.
“We will,” Hibukuro said. He shifted toward the barred windows of the cell. The guard was visible, coming his way.
“Hey, you! I’m getting executed tomorrow. I got money, but it’s useless now. Want it?”
The guard’s eyes lit up. “That’s admirable of you, thinking of others on eve of your death. Thank you.”
While Hibukuro was passing the guard some coins, he seized the guard’s arm in a tight grip.
“Ah! Let go, you bastard!”
Hibukuro helped himself to the guard’s club, pulling it into the cell and dropping it before squeezing the guard’s throat hard in both hands. The guard collapsed outside the cell, unconscious. Hibukuro knelt down and recovered the guard’s keys, then unlocked the cell and opened the door.
“Hurry,” Hibukuro said. “Meet me at the mountain ridge. You know the place.”
“What do you plan to do?” Ochika asked.
Hibukuro picked up the guard’s sword. “I’m going to have a chat with the magistrate,” he said. He ran out of the prison, sword raised.
Ochika stole a horse and fled with the baby in her arms. Hibukuro sprinted all the way to the magistrate’s house.
“Get out here, you fucking coward!” Hibukuro shouted.
Guards and policemen rushed to their places, but they were too late to save the magistrate from Hibukuro. He found the magistrate sleeping in his room and slit his throat.
Hibukuro found a jar of oil and spilled it all over the magistrate’s bedroom floor. Then he threw a torch into a puddle of oil. He watched the room burn for a few moments before leaving. He had to meet Ochika at the mountain ridge. Hibukuro ran, kimono soaked in the magistrate’s blood.
He got to the ridge a little before dawn. Itachi was there ahead of him, holding a knife to Ochika’s throat with one hand. He held the baby by the neck in his other hand.
Hibukuro glared. “Let the baby go, Itachi.”
Itachi laughed. “If you want to save him, throw down your sword.”
Hibukuro cast his stolen sword aside. Seconds later, arrows flew in from all directions, all of them aimed at Hibukuro’s thighs. Hibukuro fell to his knees with a painful gasp.
“Traitor,” he spat. “Monster.”
Itachi smiled. “Everyone follows my orders now, not yours,” he said. “It’s like I said. We can’t change anything n this world if we can’t deal with samurai on equal terms.”
“You’re a butcher and a thief. You belong in the gutter, Itachi.” Hibukuro mastered his pain and got to his feet.
“Oh, you can still stand, Zubabukuro?” Itachi said mockingly. “Go wherever you want. I don’t care. You’re not important anymore.” He threw the baby roughly at Ochika.
“Ah!” Ochika just barely caught the baby.
Itachi ran away, laughing loudly. His voice echoed on the rocky ridge.
***
Hibukuro and Ochika walked slowly through a city, each holding one hand of their tiny child. They were beggars now, and not proud of it, but Hibukuro’s legs had never fully healed and he couldn’t work. Hibukuro used a club as a cane as he shuffled painfully down the street. Ochika wore her white face covering on her head and pulled the three-year-old toddler gently along.
A cart drawn by oxen passed them by on the street. It was obvious at a glance that the cart belonged to someone obscenely wealthy. The guards protecting the cart were all samurai. One of them threw a piece of manjū2 at the three-year-old’s feet.
“Our mistress pities you,” the samurai said. He sounded bored. “You should be grateful for her generosity.”
“Ah, manjū!” The child picked up the sweet bun with both hands.
“Put it down,” Hibukuro said. He took the manjū roughly from his child’s hands, then clubbed the samurai who had thrown it in the stomach.
Ochika trembled with fear. The other samurai guards shouted angrily. “Is that any way to treat someone who’s offered you food, you beggar? It’s better than you deserve!”
“You all feast on delicacies while the farmers who harvest your food starve to death along with their families,” Hibukuro spat. “I’ll take nothing of yours. The Buddha will punish you for your crimes someday.” He threw the manjū into the cart, right at the noble lady sitting inside.
“We’ll kill you for that!” the guard Hibukuro had clubbed said. The other samurai guards drew their weapons. Hibukuro fought many of them off even though his legs couldn’t move well, but he was surprised by a spearman who’d been hiding in the shadow of the cart. He went down with a spear point lodged in his stomach.
Ochika screamed as the other samurai moved in and stabbed all four of Hibukuro’s limbs. He never got up again.
***
The blizzard was the worst one Ochika remembered. She tried to hang on to her child, but she kept slipping and falling. She was exhausted and starving and she couldn’t see.
“Mommy?”
Ochika was alarmed at the child’s pale face and blue lips. She pulled her child closer to her and kept walking. Snow fell thickly around them, but Ochika could just make out a small wayside shrine ahead.
“Amida Buddha has a shrine right there,” Ochika said. “If we can make it, people will help us.”
Ochika made it all the way to the shrine before she collapsed, unconscious.
“Mommy?”
Ochika didn’t move. Her child ran to get help. “Ah! Help! Someone help my mom!”
The strong wind carried the child’s voice away. No one heard it.
When Ochika opened her eyes, her child was gone. She searched, but even footprints had been covered over by the blizzard. All she could hear was the howling of the wind.
***
Ochika curled in on herself in the corner near Dororo’s bed and wept. Everything Dororo had dreamed was the truth. Ochika was saved by traveling monks who worshiped Amida Buddha. She believed that she wouldn’t have lived without the Buddha’s intervention.
The monks who had saved Ochika were militant and opposed to the wastefulness and cruelty of samurai. Ochika’s devotion and fighting skill proved useful to them, and she eventually became their leader. She acquired money and resources, not just for the cause, but for personal reasons.
Dororo assumed that his mother was dead, but Ochika had always believed that her child was alive. Even though she and the monks had searched the mountain paths for days looking and found nothing, she still believed. She waited for the snow to melt and searched the entire mountain herself. She still found nothing, but she was not discouraged. If her child was dead, she would have found a body, or at least bones. Finding bones would have eased her mind somewhat. She could at least bury Hibukuro’s child next to him, then.
So much time had passed. Ochika had given her child up for lost, but now, Dororo had returned to her. Despite this, Ochika couldn’t reveal her true identity to Dororo: not now. She didn’t dare. Ochika and the bandits were being hunted by the Eastern and Western Armies. There was no guarantee that Dororo wouldn’t be captured and questioned by them one day, so Ochika had to be cautious. Eguri Valley itself wasn’t as safe as she’d claimed. It was impossible for Dororo to live with Ochika as things were.
Dororo had survived this far on her own. Ochika wanted her to survive for as long as possible.
Ochika had recognized Dororo as her long-lost child when she’d noticed the peculiar placement of three moles on her upper thigh. They were birthmarks. Ochika had never seen them on any other child.
Ochika and Hibukuro had decided to raise their child as a boy to better protect her from the dangers of the outside world. Dororo was a girl, but she had lived as a boy for much of the last thirteen years. The farmers who had enslaved her had undoubtedly known that she was a girl, but Dororo had reinvented herself as a boy after settling down in the capital. She must have understood instinctively what her parents had been trying to do, and she’d used the same kind of strategy to protect herself.
Ochika saw so much of herself in her daughter. She saw Hibukuro’s fierce bravery in Dororo, too. She felt like Dororo was repeating parts of her parents’ lives. She had been abused by wealthy farmers and attacked by samurai, but she had fought. She’d found friends. And she was still alive.
Hibukuro had given his life to save their daughter.
Daigo Kagemitsu had sacrificed his own child for the sake of power.
Knowing both of their circumstances, Ochika felt that Hyakkimaru and Dororo were meant to meet. They were both children seeking a family--and they’d made one.
Ochika made sure that Dororo was completely covered by the blanket, then went to sleep.
***
Dororo was finally recovered from his injuries. It was time for him to leave Eguri Valley.
“Where will you go from here?” Ochika asked. “To find your aniki?” Ochika understood how devoted and steadfastly loyal Dororo was to Hyakkimaru. She recognized that particular trait as Hibukuro’s.
“Yeah. Aniki and taifu are probably worried. I gotta find them.”
“You’re just going to meet them, right? You’re not going to have to fight.”
“Um, yeah.”
Ochika smiled and folded her arms. “Don’t play dumb with me, young man. I found those darts in your sleeves.”
Dororo checked his sleeves and found his weapons gone. He frowned at Ochika. He knew that she wasn’t an enemy, but he needed his darts back before he could leave. “Give them back,” Dororo said. “I can fight with them, and I can’t do as much without them. Please.”
Dororo did seem desperate to be of use. Ochika saw the shadowed past of a child who had been forced to fight every day of their lives in Dororo’s expression. For Dororo, the idea of his loving mother was nothing more than a distant memory that made his heart hurt whenever he thought of it.
Hyakkimaru and his adoptive father Jukai were vivid and real and immediate. Ochika knew that Dororo was heading farther north into Kaga Province to find them, but Dororo hadn’t told her about Hyakkimaru’s artificial limbs, his psychokinesis or the Hall of Hell demons. Ochika was worried for Dororo’s safety, but the things she was worried about were warlords and soldiers, not monsters and demons.
“You were very brave to break into the Judicial Office all on your own,” Ochika said, “but you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks.”
“I won’t,” Dororo said. “Doing that is what got us all separated in the first place.” Dororo scratched his head and laughed. “They’ll be waiting for me at Nomitadani.”
“Nomitadani? You mean the fortress?”
“Yep, the fortress.”
“Why?” Ochika appeared shocked. “Why would you go to such a place?”
“Do you know where it is?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Ochika said. “You can’t go there. Absolutely not.”
Ochika stared down at Dororo with clear disapproval. Dororo held her stare and drew himself up. “I am going.”
“We’ve attacked that place once before,” Ochika said. “Their guard will be up now. Give up. Go back to the temple, or to Kurama. You’ll die if you go to that fortress.”
Dororo’s expression was resolute. “I’m going, and you can’t stop me,” he said. “Aniki and taifu are already there, probably. I can’t just abandon them.”
Dororo really was his father’s child. It was impossible to prevent him from leaving.
“Do you love Hyakkimaru so much that you’re willing to throw your life away?”
Dororo blushed from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. “It’s not like that!”
Ochika chuckled. “Well then, Dororo. You’re going to Nomitadani Fortress?”
“Yes.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
Ochika sighed. “If you insist, I guess we’ll have to go with you to make sure you get there safely.”
“What?” Dororo blinked. “I mean, um, thanks!”
Dororo’s eyes sparkled in the sunshine. She looked so much like a little boy that it broke Ochika’s heart.
Translator's Notes:
1 Hibukuro’s name means “Bag of Fire.” Zudabukuro means “Carryall Bag.”↩
2 Manjū is a traditional Japanese confection. Of the many varieties of manjū, most have an outside made from flour, rice powder, kudzu, and buckwheat, and a filling of anko (red bean paste), usually made from boiled adzuki beans and sugar. ↩
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