Mirage Of Blaze Fan Fiction ❯ There Is No Such Place ❯ Two ( Chapter 2 )

Warnings: there's mention of rape in this chapter.

 

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Two

 

 

Waking Saburou up in the morning was not exactly an easy exercise. He slept through the wake-up call without any difficulty, curled up on his side. His hair had come lose from the ponytail he had tied it into and fell around his face in silky black strands. Calling his name didn't rouse him from his slumber, either. Only when I shook his shoulder, he lifted his head and for a moment met my eyes completely unguarded before he closed off his expression again.

 

I felt my thoughts from the previous night vanish. However unapproachable he might seem most of the time he was still a child. Quite a few people made use of pretension in order to hide their vulnerability, even though I had never seen this kind of behavior displayed by a servant.

 

“We're leaving,” I said.

 

Well before daybreak, we were on our way. A small unit like ours didn't need a lot of time to get organized. The men were eager to decamp and we were proceeding easily through the woodland. It would take us a few days to reach our destination.

 

“Is it true that Kenshin-kou intends to marry Kagetora-dono to Seienin-hime?” my father made conversation when we rested around noon the first day of our journey. I looked at Saburou.

 

“It is true.” He didn't indicate what he thought about this, but then it was hardly appropriate for him to volunteer his opinion about the decisions of his lord's father.

 

What my father had just described was the usual procedure in cases of adoption. In order to bind one's adopted heir more strongly to his new clan and family, he would be married to a daughter or a niece - the latter in Kenshin-kou's case since he had never married and didn't have any children of his own blood.

 

It fitted Kenshin-kou, everyone agreed, to adopt a person as headstrong and idealistic as he himself was. But still, Kagetora-dono was the son of a former enemy - and such alliances were fragile in our times. The Uesugi retainers would feel much more secure once he had produced offspring which was related to Kenshin-ko's clan by blood.

 

I, too, was an adopted child and had married Naoe Osen, my adoptive father Sanetsuna's daughter, when I had taken his name. I hadn't seen my wife in almost a year, though. For me, thinking of Osen-no-kata these days usually brought a quiet sense of discomfort with itself. Ours was childless marriage, partly because I went on campaigns so often. But I knew she wished for a child - and Sanetsuna for a grandson.

 

I was aware that my wife thought of me as being cold not only to her but also towards the mere idea of romantic affection. In a way, she was right. All my life, I had never harbored a desire for any particular person. I enjoyed the physical aspect there was to it as much as anybody, but no one had ever conquered a place for themselves in my thoughts. Literature was full of descriptions of this feeling, yet I had never experienced it myself.

 

Lost in my thoughts, I suddenly realized that Saburou was watching me intently. He quickly changed the direction of his gaze when he noticed me looking at him. But when we returned to our horses after the meal, he unexpectedly addressed me.

 

“What about Kenshin-kou marrying his son to Seienin-hime displeases you?” he asked.

 

This stopped me in my tracks. He must have mistaken my silent brooding over my own affairs for discontent against the marriage we had just been talking about. A servant demanding accountability about his superior's inner musings - the nerve of it!

 

I tried to stay my usual calm self. “Nothing about it displeases me. On the contrary, quite a number of the Uesugi retainers would welcome his binding himself closer to us.”

 

“And you count yourself among them,” Saburou added, “the ones who don't trust him.”

 

“Kagetora-dono switched clans once before, didn't he?” I asked before I could stop myself. “He lived with the Takeda for a couple of years.”

 

Saburou raised a brow. “You cannot honestly think that anyone asked his opinion about these happenings.”

 

“Nobody asked him this time either.” The implication was clear: Why should his new alliance mean more to him than the previous one?

 

“Actually, Kenshin-kou did,” Saburou replied with a gleam in his eyes. “In case, the alliance should be broken by either side, both Kagetora and Kakizaki Haruie will be allowed to decide on their own with which clan they prefer to remain.”

 

“In which case - you expect him to choose the Uesugi over his blood clan?” I heard the disbelief in my own voice.

 

“Perhaps,” he responded in a deceptively soft tone, “if it is in a man to do whatever serves his own interests best, he may regard being bound to a family by adoption and marriage as negligible. I wouldn't know.”

 

I was speechless. I had just been insulted in an extremely subtle way which practically made it impossible to voice objection. And he, the nuisance, knew it - he seemed completely at ease without worrying about the mere possibility of punishment. My father calling saved me from having to find an answer that didn't make things worse than they were already.

 

-

 

Leaving the woodland, we entered a war-torn country. A member of the warrior class by birth, I didn't know much about the troubles that befell the people cultivating our land whenever they were as unfortunate as to be caught between two warring armies. I had seen battlefields, of course. But it is one thing to go to war knowing that your loved ones are safe home and something entirely different to peacefully mind your own business and find that war is coming to you instead.

 

A lot of Kenshin-kou's warriors took pride in the fact that he had always done his utmost to avoid the peasantry coming to harm. He was famous for this attitude of his. Only recently, when the Hojo and the Takeda had gone to war against each other and Takeda Shingen had found himself without any supplies, Kenshin-kou had sent salt to the besieged with the argument that wars should be won with spears and swords - not with salt and rice.

 

The last days had passed without any exceptional occurrences. Thoughts of Saburou were like thorns under my skin, even if we were hardly speaking to each other. Ever so often my eyes were drawn to him without me even realizing what I was doing. From questions my father had addressed him with, I had learned a few more details about him. He was eighteen, the same age as Kagetora. His father was not a peasant as I had assumed, but a fisher. He had grown up with Kagetora and had accompanied him to the Takeda when he had been sent there as a hostage. He also implied that they had been educated together which shed a new light on his manner of speaking.

 

He still was a pest, I thought bitterly wishing quite unreasonably that our paths never would have crossed. I still couldn't get over what he had said about conflicting loyalties. Did he really see me that way? And if so: what did he base his assumptions on having met me only a couple of days ago? You don't know me at all, I glared daggers in his direction all the while being aware that he had actually come very close to the truth. So far I hadn't found anyone who inspired real devotion in me.

 

But this really wasn't Saburou's business. It hadn't escape me that he was perhaps a bit aloof but agreeably so towards everyone else. It seemed he reserved the dismissive treatment for me. Why I could only guess at.

 

Surely, he must be used to people falling for him. A youth with his looks surely drew a crowd of admirers wherever he went. It was impossible for him to overlook that I felt somewhat attracted to him - and made a fool of myself while I was at it.

 

The afternoon before we reached our destination, however, something happened that put things into a different light.

 

We entered a village in no-man's land which didn't belong to either to Oda nor to Uesugi territory. Still it was obvious that troops of one kind or the other had passed through. The village lay deserted, however, a single person came out of one of the houses to greet us and offer us food and shelter for the night. To my surprise it was a young woman - almost scared out of her wits. Of course, one could never know what to expect from a bunch of warriors that appeared out of nowhere.

 

“Pathetic,” my father said contemptuously when she retreated. “The men are hiding in the barns and send a young girl out when so much more can happen to her.”

 

“You hopefully don't think I would allow any man to defile a woman in my presence,” I said.

 

“How would they know what you would or wouldn't allow?” Sanetsuna asked. “They don't know you.”

 

As my father turned away, Saburou spoke to me for the first time in a couple of days. “It would too late to protect her from that fate anyway.”

 

“What gives you that idea?” I asked a bit flustered.

 

He hesitated, then gestured towards the ivory skin of his underarm. “She had those marks there. Open spots. That comes from scrubbing the skin until it breaks. She was trying to get clean again.”

 

And you would know that…how? I had to bite my tongue not to blurt out with the obvious question. It seemed completely unreal to me to be standing here in front of a door that had just been shut to us and let myself be lectured on the sensitivities of rape victims by an insolent servant. Even if his hair faintly smelled of peppermint when he was standing so close to me… I suppressed a groan at the direction my musings were taking. Not again, I thought. Not when this so obviously upsets him - however bravely he tries to hide it.

 

He hadn't looked at me once, but I could tell that he was deeply unsettled.

 

-

 

The following night, a muffled scream woke me up.

 

Jumping from my sleeping place, I was frantically looking around for intruders, but soon realized that we weren't being attacked. In fact, I was the only one who had heard something and probably I had done so just because I had been sleeping in close distance to our youngest companion.

 

He was fast asleep, but a nightmare had him tossing and turning. Sweaty strands of his black hair clung to his forehead. Worried, I knelt beside him and already extended a hand rouse him from his troubled sleep when I could make out the words that came from him.

 

“Don't… don't come any closer!” His brows were contracting. “No! Don't any of you touch me! Help me, Aniue…!”

 

It was only then that I questioned myself about the possible contents of his dream and came to a quick and unpleasant conclusion. Suddenly, I was glad that I hadn't touched him and at the same time I knew that I had to in order to wake him up.

 

“Saburou…” I called softly. “Saburou!”

 

It wouldn't do, I realized when he didn't come to. His eyes were moving incessantly behind his closed eye-lids. His breathing was ragged. I couldn't wake him like this.

 

“Saburou!” I closed my hand around his wrist.

 

His eyes flew open in an instant. They were wide with panic. “No,” he gasped and withdrew from my grip with the speed of lightning. “Let go of me!”

 

I made a sign for him to be quiet as he scrambled to get away from me. I really didn't want the others to awaken and ask unnecessary questions. Thankfully, they slept like the dead after a journey of several days' duration.

 

“It's all right,” I whispered. “Nothing is going to happen to you. It was just a nightmare.”

 

Understanding dawned in his eyes at my choice of wording that I must have guessed at what his dream had been about. He sat in silent shock at what had been revealed about his past.

 

“It's all right,” I said again, fondly. It wasn't as if I was going to tell anybody. And as far as I myself was concerned, he would just have to deal with me knowing.

 

“I don't need your pity!” Saburou spat at me as if trying to restore the old animosity between us. But it was too late for that. My anger at his assertiveness suddenly seemed so wrong at this moment.

 

“I'm not offering you pity,” I answered.

 

We sat there in silence for a while - I not wanting to do anything wrong and Saburou probably not knowing what to say. I collected his blanket from the ground and handed it to him. Surely he must be cold sitting sweaty in the night-wind.

 

“How old were you?” I eventually asked.

 

For an eternity, he remained quiet. When I finally received a reply, it was barely audible.

 

“Fourteen.”

 

I closed my eyes.

 

It made sense, in a heart-breaking way. Many little things made sense now. How he seemed oblivious to the attention the men were paying him, how he had reacted to my question whether the rumors about Kagetora's appearance were true and how he knew about the marks on the peasant girl's skin, of course.

 

This also explained why he had been so offhanded with me from the beginning. He had most probably noticed that I kept staring at him before I had realized it myself. He would be quite sensitive in those matters. All of a sudden I realized that my men would have noticed, too. That was the reason why none of them had made a move on Saburou yet. They were deferring to me.

 

Very well then, I thought a bit wistfully, I won't touch you either. I've got something better to offer to you.

 

I watched him pull the blanket around his shoulders, apparently not ready to go back to sleep yet. In the moonlight, his fine features possessed an almost otherworldly beauty. I happily would have wrought the neck of any person who had dared to lay a hand on him without having been given permission. But I wasn't like them, I wanted to prove it to him.

 

Sooner or later, you'll feel safe with me.

 

-

 

We were woken up again shortly before dawn and this time even more unpleasantly so. My eye-lids were heavy having just gone back to sleep again, but when I heard my father's voice call us to arms I felt wide awake in an instant. The Oda had found us.

 

I reached for my sword, then turned around to see if Saburou had managed to sleep through the noise that filled the barn we were sleeping in - and was greeted with an unexpected sight.

 

Saburou was standing next to my father, an arrow set on the string of his bow which he held up. He was eying the door in perfect concentration so when our attackers reached us, one of them instantly fell prey to Saburou's arrow.

 

Launching myself against another of Oda's men, I still found time to think: Is that brat actually good at everything he's doing? During the minutes that followed I was too engaged in combat myself to pay attention to what he was doing, though. I was concentrating completely on the fight and within a short span of time we were alone in the room.

 

My men were heading for the door to look for further opponents outside and I was turning into the same direction.

 

“No!”

 

I spun around and looked directly into Saburou's fierce gaze.

 

“They will expect that. Let them come in one by one instead!”

 

I didn't know what surprised me more: that he gave us orders in this commanding voice or that everyone hurried to do as he said. I didn't have much time to think, however, and both paid off to our advantage. The small passage slowed down the speed the Oda were moving with and never let more than one or two pass at the same time - which also gave Saburou the opportunity to make good use of some more of his arrows.

 

One of them was a bear of a man, however. Even when we inflicted several sword wounds on him and his shoulder had been hit by one of Saburou's arrows, he still managed to slip through our defenses to where Saburou and my father were standing and very nearly decapitated both of them with a single stroke.

 

My father ducked away.

 

Saburou jumped out of the way and in doing so stumbled, unwittingly, into my arms.

 

We were all wearing only light clothing, not our armors, and heat surged through my entire body at the unlooked-for touch. One of our men mowed down what turned out to be our last attacker. Out of breath, we were staring at each other.

 

Only then I realized why Saburou hadn't moved out of my reach at once. He was carefully balancing on one foot, his face grimacing with pain. I took hold of his elbow. My father ran towards us and asked if we were hurt.

 

“Saburou might have broken his foot,” I said.

 

“Actually, it's sprained,” Saburou pointed out, but for once, his insolence didn't bother me.

 

“Must you always have the last word?” I scolded.

 

“No,” said Saburou without batting an eye.

 

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