Shōgun

“Oh yes oh yes oh yes!” She had thrown her arms around him and blessed him and apologized for her impulsive bad manners for interrupting and not listening dutifully, and she had left him, walking four paces off the ground where a moment ago she had been ready to throw herself off the nearest cliff.

Ah, ladies, Toranaga thought, bemused and very content. Now she’s got everything she wants, so has Gyoko—if the ship’s built in time and it will be—so have the priests, so have—

“Sire!” One of the hunters was pointing at a clump of bushes beside the road. He reined in and readied Kogo, loosening the jesses that held her to his fist. “Now,” he ordered softly. The dog was sent in.

The hare broke from the brush and raced for cover and at that instant he released Kogo. With immensely powerful thrusts of her wings she hurtled in pursuit, straight as an arrow, overhauling the panicked animal. Ahead, a hundred paces across the rolling land was a brambled copse, and the hare twisted this way and that with frantic speed, making for safety, Kogo closing the gap, cutting corners, knifing ever closer a few feet off the ground. Then she was above her prey and she hacked down and the hare screamed and reared up and darted back, Kogo still in pursuit ek-ek-eking with rage because she had missed. The hare whirled again in a final dash for sanctuary and shrieked as Kogo struck again and got a firm grip with her talons on its neck and head and bound on fearlessly, closing her wings, oblivious of the animal’s frantic contortions and tumblings as, effortlessly, she snapped the neck. A last scream. Kogo let go and leaped into the air for an instant and shook her ruffled feathers into place again with a violent flurry, then settled back onto the warm, twitching body, talons once more in the death grip. Then and only then did she give her shriek of conquest and hiss with pleasure at the kill. Her eyes watched Toranaga.

Toranaga trotted up and dismounted, offering the lure. Obediently the goshawk left her prey and then, as he deftly concealed the lure, she settled on his outstretched gauntlet. His fingers caught her jesses and he could feel her grip through the steel-reinforced leather of the forefinger perch.

“Eeeeee, that was well done, my beauty,” he said, rewarding her with a morsel, part of the hare’s ear that a beater sliced off for him. “There, gorge on that but not too much—you’ve still work to do.”

Grinning, the beater held up the hare. “Master! It must be three, four times her weight. Best we’ve seen for weeks, neh?”

“Yes. Send it to the camp for the Anjin-san.” Toranaga swung into the saddle again and waved the others forward to the hunt once more.

Yes, the kill had been well done, but it had none of the excitement of a peregrine kill. A goshawk’s only what it is, a cook’s bird, a killer, born to kill anything and everything that moves. Like you, Anjin-san, neh?

Yes, you’re a short-winged hawk. Ah, but Mariko was peregrine.

He remembered her so clearly and he wished beyond wishing that it had not been necessary for her to go to Osaka and into the Void. But it was necessary, he told himself patiently. The hostages had to be released. Not my kin, but all the others. Now I’ve another fifty allies committed secretly. Your courage and Lady Etsu’s courage and self-sacrifice have bound them and all the Maedas to my side, and through them, the whole western seaboard. Ishido had to be winkled out of his impregnable lair, the Regents split, and Ochiba and Kiyama broken to my fist. You did all this and more: You gave me time. Only time fashions snares and provides lures.

Ah, Mariko-chan, who would have thought a little slip of a woman like you, daughter of Ju-san Kubo, my old rival, the archtraitor Akechi Jinsai, could do so much and wreak so much vengeance so beautifully and with such dignity on the Taikō, your father’s enemy and killer. A single awesome stoop, like Tetsu-ko, and you killed all your prey which are my prey.

So sad that you’re no more. Such loyalty deserves special favor.

Toranaga was at the crest now and he stopped and called for Tetsu-ko. The falconer took Kogo from him and Toranaga caressed the hooded peregrine on his fist a last time, then he slipped her hood and cast her into the sky. He watched her spiral upward, ever upward, seeking a prey that he would never flush. Tetsu-ko’s freedom is my gift to you, Mariko-san, he said to her spirit, watching the falcon circle higher and higher. To honor your loyalty to me and your filial devotion to our most important rule: that a dutiful son, or daughter, may not rest under the same heaven while the murderer of her father still lives.

“Ah, so wise, Sire,” the falconer said.

“Eh?”

“To release Tetsu-ko, to free her. I thought the last time you flew her she’d never come back but I wasn’t sure. Ah, Sire, you’re the greatest falconer in the realm, the best, to know, to be so sure when to give her back to the sky.”