Dororo: Part One - Chapter 13

Dororo: Part One

Nakamura Masaru

Part 2: Dororo

Chapter 13

    Dororo's village was burning. The black banners of the Winding Snake, the Muroto Clan's symbol, fluttered in the wind, rising above the flames.

    Dororo hid inside a small wayside shrine, watching the red-and-black world outside. The contrast between the fires and the banners made his eyes hurt. The screams of the villagers reached him where he was crouched down, trembling with terror. People that he'd seen laughing and talking the day before collapsed to the ground, screaming because their hair was on fire. A young woman who had taught Dororo how to sing was covered in so much blood that she was unrecognizable.

    At the time, Dororo was the same age that Hyakkimaru had been when he'd first left Jukai's healing water, just before he'd started walking on his own. Dororo's mother was sitting next to him, watching the other villagers being slaughtered with an expression of horror.

    "Don't close your eyes," Dororo's mother said. "Remember everything that happens today. Never forget it."

    Dororo's village was at the edge of the Kaneyama Clan's territory, and was ruled by a regional governor who was a member of the clan. The village and the land it was built on was old; the Kaneyama Clan had been in control of it for a very long time. Fighting with the Muroto Clan on the other side of the border was fierce and frequent, and the territory also shared a border with the Kabei Clan. The village was far from the cities and territories governed by the Isobe Clan, so there would be no help coming from that direction. There would be no outside interference in this battle at all. This was a territorial dispute between the Kaneyama Clan and the Muroto Clan. No one was coming to save Dororo or his village.

    Fleeing toward Isobe Clan territory would mean leaving the Kabei Clan's territory altogether. There was one area in the territory where the Isobe Clan, Kaneyama Clan, and Muroto Clan all shared a border crossing, and the fighting there was as bad as things got.

    Simply put, Dororo's village had gotten caught up in another clan war. Sadly, clan wars were a common occurrence. There were four different clans that each governed part of the country: Isobe, Kaneyama, Muroto, and Kabei. Peace between clans was rare, as were alliances. Several border lords each served their regional clan lord. The border lord governing the territory directly between the Muroto Clan and the Kaneyama Clan was named Daigo Kagemitsu.

    When Dororo was a child, Daigo Kagemitsu kept trying to expand his territory. Eventually, the lands he ruled touched on areas governed by the Isobe Clan and the Kabei Clan as well. Being surrounded on all sides by the four clans was a dangerous position to be in, but it was also strategic.

    The Daigo Clan didn't cease expanding their territory when they reached a border. At first, though, the clan took the path of least resistance. Nominally under the aegis of the Muroto Clan, Daigo Kagemitsu's armies attacked the Muroto Clan's ancestral enemies, the Kaneyama Clan. The Daigo Clan's armies snaked across the countryside, black-clad and radiating an aura of menace.

    The Kaneyama Clan mounted a defense, of course. The Isobe Clan also saw the threat that the Daigo Clan posed and acted in support of the Kaneyama Clan. Dororo's village was precariously close to the border between the lands ruled by the Kaneyama and Muroto Clans, and was destroyed early in the war that the Daigo Clan had sparked to life.

    The Daigo Clan itself was hard-pressed to make any headway into Kaneyama territory. The Isobe Clan's unexpected support bolstered the Kaneyama Clan…but Daigo Kagemitsu had a few allies of his own. Toganō, a border lord from another nation, offered the Daigo Clan the use of his armies in exchange for help in his own war. The Kaneyama Clan and the Isobe Clan solidified their alliance and their plans while the Daigo Clan was busy in a foreign land, and by the time Daigo Kagemitsu came back to fight, they were more than ready for him.

    It would have been far easier for the Daigo Clan to defeat the Kabei Clan, in these circumstances. The Kaneyama Clan's territory was rich with ore and rare metals, which was useful in manufacturing weapons. Both the Isobe Clan and the Kaneyama Clan were well-armed and formidable. The Daigo Clan had some support from the Muroto Clan and foreign nations, but its victory was far from guaranteed.

    The Isobe Clan attacked the border between the Muroto Clan and the Kabei Clan first, very close to Dororo's village. The Kaneyama Clan should have protected the village, but it was small and sat right on the very edge of the clan's territory. Later, Dororo understood that he and his village hadn't been considered worth saving. They'd been left to die.

    The Kabei Clan jumped into the war. Capturing Dororo's village would expand their own territory. The Daigo Clan noticed that all the clans were preparing to fight over the village, and understood that losing it would likely cause trouble down the road. They had to conquer it before any of the other clans could take the initiative.

    Dororo saw Daigo Kagemitsu only once during the battle, and considered him absolutely terrifying. Kagemitsu pacified the village, looking like a demon in head-to-toe black armor. Turning to the soldiers behind him, he said, "Burn it." That was all.

    No one argued. The moment the command was given, Dororo's village was put to the torch. There was no time for people who were still in their houses to run. Those who tried to flee were cut down, as were those who put up a fight. The fire burned indiscriminately, destroying everything in its path.

    Destroying the village didn't end the battle. There were fields and outbuildings outside it that might still prove valuable to the Kabei Clan and the Muroto Clan. The village's place on the world stage was never exactly safe, and even with the village gone, the land was still of value to the clan lords. Daigo Kagemitsu decided to burn the village, trample and salt the surrounding fields, and build a new fortress on top of the ruins. He saw no other way to hold this area once he'd conquered it.

    Dororo was a very young child. He wasn't capable of understanding Daigo Kagemitsu's reasoning, even if it was explained to him in simple terms. As an adult, Dororo could understand the Daigo Clan's desperation, but not its cruelty. 

    But Dororo's mother understood. She made Dororo face Kagemitsu Daigo and said, "Remember that face. Engrave it in your memory and think of it every single day so that you don't ever forget it."

    The black smoke made it hard to see. Dororo stared into it at the man in black armor on horseback and did his best to do as his mother had said.

    This is the man who burned my village.  

    Aside from his head-to-toe black armor, one other thing was distinctive: he had a scar like that looked like an X right in the middle of his forehead.

    Another man passed near the shrine where Dororo and his mother were hiding. "I'm right here! I'm coming. We'll escape into the mountains."

    It was Dororo's father, Hibukuro. His mother's name was Oujiya. Hibukuro, Oujiya, and their neighbors who had a child of around Dororo's same age were the only survivors from their village.

    After their village was destroyed, they became bandits that plundered the Daigo Clan's armies and others who destroyed villages. Neither Hibukuro nor Oujiya were inclined towards theft or violence, but in a world at war, there was no other way for them to survive. Another man, Itachi, had thrown his support behind Hibukuro and encouraged him to help others by stealing from the wealthy, or the predatory. Hibukuro and his bandits didn't attack innocent villagers. All told, there were twelve men under Hibukuro's command, and Itachi served as his lieutenant and right-hand man.

    Though their numbers were few, Hibukuro's men were brave, and Hibukuro was intelligent. Their activities caused trouble for the Daigo Clan and the Kaneyama Clan; the bandit band gained something of a local reputation. Itachi longed for greater fame and glory, and was far less scrupulous than Hibukuro. "If you refuse to attack villages, we'll never do any better than this," Itachi grumbled.

    Itachi's ambitions took them close to the border between the Kaneyama Clan's territory and the Muroto Clan's territory. There were plenty of evil people to fight there, and the small bandit band was assailed by the Daigo Clan, the Kaneyama Clan, and the Kabei Clan at every turn. The entire region was openly at war, and villages were burned to ashes every day. Most of the time, Hibukuro and the bandits collected what they needed from what remained of these ruined villages.

    Dororo understood a little about what his parents did, but the kind of warfare that Daigo Kagemitsu and the clan lords did was different. No one in the Daigo Clan brought back food for children or helped other people rebuild their houses after a battle. The clan lords were here to destroy, and destruction was all they did.

    One day, Hibukuro and the others were picking over a burned village when one of the men—the father of Dororo's friend—cried out in anguish.

    "What's wrong?" Hibukuro asked.

    "We are!" the man shouted. "We're no better than vultures, stealing from the dead so that we can survive for one more day.

    Dororo didn't like the sound of that. "We're not vultures," Dororo yelled. "Dad's like...a falcon! A fast, smart hunter. What do you think, dad? Or are we more like owls, because we only go out at night? Mom's like a cormorant, since she's such a great swimmer..."

    Hibukuro laughed. "I think a heron suits her better, if she's like a waterfowl. Or maybe a white crane. No matter what birds we are, we'd all get covered in ash and soot, rooting around like this."

    "You're right," Dororo said. "Mom is special, like a white crane. The rest of us are black all over. But you'd have to be a crane, too, dad, otherwise you couldn't mate."

    Oujiya patted Dororo on the head. "Yeah. We're cranes, all of us."

    Dororo had always been interested in animals and the natural world. Living as a bandit meant sleeping out in the open and never having a roof overhead, so even as a small child, he knew a lot about plants and the animals that ate them. Hibukuro and Oujiya tried to nurture Dororo's interests as best they could. They loved Dororo deeply and tried to protect him from the dangers of the life they led.

    On a day in summer when the cicadas were singing all around, the bandits were passing under the trees of a deep forest close to the border between Daigo Clan territory and Kabei Clan territory. A small scouting party on horseback came into view along the path, so the bandits hid and waited. The scouting party didn't fly any flags or banners, so it was difficult to tell who these men were.

    One man had a scar in the shape of an X on his forehead.

    "Daigo...Kagemitsu?!" Dororo's neighbor gasped. He drew his sword. Other men also drew their weapons, including Itachi.

    "Let me at him," Itachi whispered.

    "Wait," Hibukuro said quietly. He didn't give the signal to attack. The Daigo Clan's scouting party looked like they'd seen some hard fighting recently. Their armor was dented and bloody. They stopped in the middle of the woods and started treating their wounds.

    "Now?" Itachi whispered?'

    Hibukuro still didn't give the signal. All of the bandits were here with their wives and children. This looked like a good opportunity to attack, but if things went wrong, they'd be putting their families in terrible danger.

    Hibukuro waited for Daigo Kagemitsu and the scouting party to ride off. Then he gestured for the bandits—only the fighters—to follow him. They did, moving stealthily through the trees.

    Dororo noticed that Itachi didn't go with Hibukuro and the other bandits. He sneaked off in a completely different direction.

    What is he doing?

    Dororo pointed out Itachi to his mother, and they started following him. They didn't get far before they heard screams coming from where Hibukuro and the other bandits had gone.

    Alarmed, Oujiya and Dororo dashed toward Hibukuro and the others. Hibukuro and four other bandits, including one woman, surrounded Daigo Kagemitsu in a loose circle. Several other bandits lay dead on the ground. The other people accompanying Dororo and Oujiya scattered when they saw the fighting.

    Daigo Kagemitsu's defenders rushed to protect him. Hibukuro broke through, engaging Kagemitsu in single combat with his sword. His companions screamed. Dororo's neighbor, the father of her friend, shouted that it was hopeless,  but Hibukuro didn't seem to hear. He kept fighting.

    Dororo's neighbor was stabbed through by the enemy, and died in the woods, never to be buried.

    Hibukuro was the last bandit standing. Kagemitsu hid behind his guards. Three foot soldiers advanced on Hibukuro with their weapons raised.

    "Get out of my way, you useless fools!" Hibukuro called out. He was so loud that Dororo could hear him clearly, even from some distance away.

    There was no way for Hibukuro to escape. He was vastly outnumbered. All he could hope to do was to kill Daigo Kagemitsu before he died. His resolve made him strong enough to continue fighting after suffering terrible wounds from the spears and swords of his opponents. Even arrows didn't stop him. He fought like a man possessed, consumed by a single irresistible desire.

    Dororo's father wasn't immortal. He fell to the earth, tattered clothes and armor red with his blood. He was still alive. He glared up at Daigo Kagemitsu with hatred burning in his eyes.

    Dad...

    He was so brave. His bravery wasn't about to save him now, but it had in the past, and it was admirable all the same. Dororo thought that his father was a hero.

    Dad!

    Kagemitsu didn't even dismount from his horse. He looked down at Hibukuro coldly, then raised his sword to cut off Hibukuro's arms. That done, he slit Hibukuro's throat. Hibukuro gurgled blood. He died without being able to inflict so much as a slight wound on Daigo Kagemitsu.

    Dororo couldn't believe what he'd just seen. He refused to believe it. He wanted to cry, but he couldn't make a sound. He passed out from shock in Oujiya's arms.

    Four women and two children survived the bandits' battle with Daigo Kagemitsu. One woman collapsed from exhaustion and never got up again. Another killed herself along with her child, so that they wouldn't starve. The last took refuge in a village.

    By the autumn of that year, Dororo and his mother were left alone to fend for themselves. They traveled from place to place. Dororo didn't remember much about that time except that he was constantly hungry. He remembered crying a lot, too.

    "You mustn't cry," Dororo's mother said sternly. "If your father were here, he would tell you that boys don't cry."

    Dororo had been raised as a boy since his village was burned by Daigo Kagemitsu. That had been Hibukuro's decision. It was easier to survive in this harsh world as a man than as a woman. Oujiya continued treating Dororo as a boy after Hibukuro's death, to respect his wishes. Besides, he was right.

    "You must live as a brave, strong boy," Oujiya said. "You cannot be a girl, never, not unless you meet a good man like your father. If you meet a man like that and want to be with him, you can, but until then, you are male. Do you understand? Men don't cry. Never cry again, unless you decide to become a woman."

    Shortly after that, the season turned to winter. Oujiya couldn't find enough food to feed both herself and Dororo. She died of exposure and starvation in the snow with her arms around Dororo, trying to keep her child warm until her last breath.

    "Mom?"

    There was a knife clasped in Oujiya's hand when she died. That knife was now Dororo's special knife, Claw; it had its own carved wooden scabbard. Oujiya had always worn it concealed close to her heart.

    Dororo pulled the knife from his mother's fingers. They were still warm. Tears fell on the wooden scabbard.

    "I...can't cry. No." Dororo wiped his tears away. "I'm a man now." He was alone. The ground was a pure, untrammeled white. There weren't any footprints or animal tracks. Dororo had never felt so isolated in his entire life. He continued to live as a man, even when he started bleeding once a month.

    Dororo understood the natural world. He knew that he was biologically female, but that had nothing to do with how he saw himself.

    Dororo stuck the point of his knife into Banmon, frowning. The Daigo Clan's fortress was visible just ahead. Dororo turned his back on it and returned to the Kaneyama Clan's territory. Hyakkimaru faced Dororo and sat down right next to Banmon.

    "So you want the sword in my left arm because you want to kill your enemies," Hyakkimaru said. "Am I right? You think you'll use it to kill Daigo Kagemitsu."

    "Not just him!" Dororo fumed. "Him, his friends, his family, and everyone he cares about. I'll kill them all, and I won't be sorry. He's got a wife and a son named Tahōmaru. I know all about him."

    Dororo didn't know that Hyakkimaru was Daigo Kagemitsu's son. Hyakkimaru didn't know that, either.

    Who is my father? 

    The demons knew. Why didn't he? He turned over the words of Shuragarasu, the demon crow, in his mind. It's not us you should hate. Your father did this to you.

    Hyakkimaru and Dororo sat in the shadow of Banmon. They were at an old border between two territories. Those territories had been united by the Daigo Clan, and only this one remaining length of Banmon was left to indicate that there had ever been a border crossing here.

    The direction of the wind changed. There was a high-pitched whistling sound that was a bit like a bird call coming from the direction of the Daigo Clan's fortress. Dororo scowled and said, "Damn it! Don't you dare laugh at me!" He was staring at the wind as if it were a living thing.

    "Maybe you think we're stupid. We keep getting crushed down, but we always get up. What's stupid about that? Isn't that what people are supposed to do, if they're still alive?!"

    Dororo stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Shut up! We're alive, goddammit! We're still alive because we fight to stay that way. There's nothing weird about that! You're stupid!"

    There was no answer from the fortress, or from Banmon, aside from the whistling of the wind.

    That night, four demons met together in the darkness.

    "That one seems to be his son," one demon said. It looked like a fox, but had some human features as well.

    Maimai Onba faced the half-human, half-fox demon. She'd killed a woman in the village and stolen a kimono so that she could clothe herself. She had asked the fox demon to help her get revenge on Hyakkimaru and Dororo for killing her mother and siblings.

    The demons didn't really understand concepts like parents and siblings, but Hyakkimaru was intriguing to them. He kept killing demons and monsters wherever he went. They didn't know why, but they understood the threat he posed to them.

    "It seems so," another demon said. This one took the form of an enormous centipede. "Should we let him come to us, or should we go to him?"

    The demons argued for a short while before coming to a decision. They moved from their meeting spot, each keeping pace with the others. They all shared a singular purpose.

    There was a town near the Daigo Clan's fortress that helped to keep it supplied. In turn, the Daigo Clan defended the town. Biwabōshi was there, strumming his lute. He was remembering when the Hall of Hell had burned down with the temple's head priest inside it.

    The head priest hadn't died from being burned to death. Biwabōshi knew that his head had been cut off. That was what had killed him.

    "Hello," the head priest from the Hall of Hell said. "It's been a long time."

    Biwabōshi froze. The head priest of the Hall of Hell was dead, wasn't he? He had been for many years. "Head priest?" Biwabōshi couldn't see well, but he could tell that there was no one standing near him. He listened to the head priest's voice as he told him what had happened to him on the day the Hall of Hell had burned down.

    The head priest knew that forty-eight pieces of Hyakkimaru's body had been stolen by demons. Hyakkimaru's father was the one who had sold his body to the demons by striking a terrible bargain.

    The head priest shared what he knew with Biwabōshi by projecting his memories into his mind. Biwabōshi saw the man who had cut down the head priest.

    "Is that...Daigo Kagemitsu?!"

    "Yes," the head priest said. "He made a deal with the forty-eight Hall of Hell demons."

    The four demons hunting Hyakkimaru were united by the single-minded goal of killing Daigo Kagemitsu's son before he could kill them.

    Over and over again, Hyakkimaru asked himself, Who is my father? That question had plagued him since Jukai's death.

    Dororo was determined to kill Daigo Kagemitsu and all that he held dear, even if it killed him in the process.

    The long night ended when the sun crested over the horizon. It was a chilling, terrifying dawn.

 

This is the end of Dororo: Part One.

The story concludes in Dororo: Part Two.