"Buntaro-san!" Zataki motioned at the second scroll. "Please give this to your master."
"No!" Toranaga's voice reverberated around the clearing. Then, with great ceremony, he added loudly, "I am honored formally to accept the Council's message and will submit my answer to their illustrious ambassador, my brother, the Lord of Shinano, tomorrow at this time."
Zataki stared at him suspiciously. "What possible ans-"
"Please excuse me, Lord," the old samurai interrupted quietly with grave dignity, again keeping the conversation private, "so sorry, but Lord Toranaga is perfectly correct to suggest this. It is a solemn choice you have given him, a choice not contained in the scrolls. It is fair and honorable that he should be given the time he requires."
Zataki picked up the second scroll and shoved it back into his sleeve. "Very well. I agree. Lord Toranaga, please excuse my bad manners. Lastly, please tell me where Kasigi Yabu is? I've a scroll for him. Only one in his case."
"I'll send him to you."
The falcon closed her wings and fell a thousand feet out of the evening sky and smashed into the fleeing pigeon with a burst of feathers, then caught it in her talons and carried it earthward, still falling like a stone, and then, a few feet off the ground, she released her now dead prey, braked frantically and landed on it perfectly. "Ekek-ek-eeekk!" she shrieked, fluttering her neck feathers in pride, her talons ripping off the pigeon's head in her ecstasy of conquest.
Toranaga, with Naga as his equerry, galloped up. The daimyo slid off his horse. He called her gently to fist. Obediently she stepped up onto his glove. At once she was rewarded with a morsel of flesh from a previous kill. He slipped on her hood, tightening the thongs with his teeth. Naga picked up the pigeon and put it into the half-full game bag that hung from his father's saddle, then turned and beckoned to the distant beaters and guards.
Toranaga got back into the saddle, the falcon comfortably on his glove, held by her thin leather jesses. He looked up into the sky, measuring the light still remaining.
In the late afternoon the sun had broken through, and now in the valley, the day dying fast, the sun long since bedded by the western crest, it was cool and pleasant. The clouds were northward, pushed there by the dominant wind, hovering over the mountain peaks and hiding many. At this altitude, land-locked, the air was clean and sweet.
"We should have a good day tomorrow, Naga-san. Cloudless, I'd imagine. I think I'll hunt with the dawn."
"Yes, Father." Naga watched him, perplexed, afraid to ask questions as always, yet wanting to know everything. He could not fathom how his father could be so detached after such a hideous meeting. To bow Zataki away with the due ceremony then, at once, to summon his hawks and beaters and guards and halloo them away to the rolling hills beyond the forest, seemed to Naga to be an unearthly display of self-control. Just the thought of Zataki made Naga's flesh crawl now, and he knew that the old counselor was right: if one tenth of the conversation had been overheard, samurai would have leapt to defend their lord's honor. If it weren't for the threat that hung over his revered grandmother's head, he would have rushed at Zataki himself. I suppose that's why my father is what he is, and is where he is, he thought....
His eyes picked out horsemen breaking from the forest below and galloping up toward them over the rolling foothills. Beyond the dark green of the forest, the river was a twisted ribbon of black. The lights in the inns blinked like fireflies. "Father!"
"Eh? Ah Yes, I see them now. Who are they?"
"Yabu-san, Omi-san and . . . eight guards."
"Your eyes are better than mine. Ah yes, now I recognize them."
Naga said without thinking, "I wouldn't have let Yabu-san go alone to Lord Zataki without-" He stopped and stuttered, "Please excuse me."
"Why wouldn't you have sent Yabu-san alone?"
Naga cursed himself for opening his mouth and quailed under Toranaga's gaze. "Please excuse me, because then I'd never know what secret arrangement they would have made. He could, Father, easily. I would have kept them apart - please excuse me. I don't trust him."
"If Yabu-san and Zataki-san plan treachery behind my back, they'll do it whether I send a witness or not. Sometimes it's wiser to give a quarry extra line - that's how to catch a fish, neh?"
"Yes, please excuse me."
Toranaga realized that his son didn't understand, would never understand, would always be merely a hawk to hurl at an enemy, swift, sharp, and deadly.
"I'm glad you understand, my son," he said to encourage him, knowing his good qualities, and valuing them. "You're a good son," he added, meaning it.
"Thank you, Father," Naga said, filled with pride at the rare compliment. "I only hope you'll forgive my stupidities and teach me to serve you better."
"You're not stupid." Yabu's stupid, Toranaga almost added. The less people know the better, and it's not necessary to stretch your mind, Naga. You're so young - my youngest but for your half brother, Tadateru. How old is he? Ali, seven, yes, he'd be seven.
He watched the approaching horsemen a moment. "How's your mother, Naga?"
"As always, the happiest lady in the world. She'll still only let me see her once a year. Can't you persuade her to change?"
"No," said Toranaga. "She'll never change."
Toranaga always felt a glow when he thought of Chano-Tsubone, his eighth official consort and Naga's mother. He laughed to himself as he remembered her earthy humor, her dimpled cheeks and saucy bottom, the way she wriggled and the enthusiasm of her pillowing.
She had been the widow of a farmer near Yedo who had attracted him twenty years ago. She had stayed with him three years, then asked to be allowed to return to the land. He had allowed her to go. Now she lived on a good farm near where she was born - fat and content, a dowager Buddhist nun honored by all and beholden to none. Once in a while he would go to see her and they would laugh together, without reason, friends.
"Ah, she's a good woman," Toranaga said.
Yabu and Omi rode up and dismounted. Ten paces away they stopped and bowed.
"He gave me a scroll," Yabu said, enraged, brandishing it. "...We invite you to leave Izu at once for Osaka, today, and present yourself at Osaka Castle for an audience, or all your lands are now forfeit and you are hereby declared outlaw.'" He crushed the scroll in his fist and threw it on the ground. "Today!"
"Then you'd better leave at once," Toranaga said, suddenly in a foul humor at Yabu's truculence and stupidity.
"Sire, I beg you," Omi began hastily, dropping abjectly to his knees, "Lord Yabu's your devoted vassal and I beg you humbly not to taunt him. Forgive me for being so rude, but Lord Zataki . . . Forgive me for being so rude."
"Yabu-san, please excuse the remark - it was meant kindly," Toranaga said, cursing his lapse. "We should all have a sense of humor about such messages, neh?" He called up his falconer, gave him the bird from his fist, dismissed him and the beaters. Then he waved all samurai except Naga out of earshot, squatting on his haunches, and bade them do the same. "Perhaps you'd better tell me what happened."
Yabu said, "There's almost nothing to tell. I went to see him. He received me with the barest minimum of courtesy. First there were 'greetings' from Lord Ishido and a blunt invitation to ally myself secretly with him, to plan your immediate assassination, and to murder every Toranaga samurai in Izu. Of course I refused to listen, and at once - at once - without any courtesy whatsoever, he handed me that!" His finger stabbed belligerently toward the scroll. "If it hadn't been for your direct order protecting him I'd have hacked him to pieces at once! I demand you rescind that order. I cannot live with this shame. I must have revenge!"
"Is that everything that happened?"
"Isn't that enough?"
Toranaga passed over Yabu's rudeness and scowled at Omi. "You're to blame, neh? Why didn't you have the intelligence to protect your Lord better? You're supposed to be an adviser. You should have been his shield. You should have drawn Lord Zataki into the open, tried to find out what Ishido had in mind, what the bribe was, what plans they had. You're supposed to be a valued counselor. You're given a perfect opportunity and you waste it like an unpracticed dullard!"
Omi bent his head. "Please excuse me, Sire."
"I might, but I don't see why Lord Yabu should. Now your lord's accepted the scroll. Now he's committed. Now he has to act one way or the other."
"What?" said Yabu.
"Why else do you think I did what I did? To delay - of course, to delay," said Toranaga.
"But one day? What's the value of one day?" Yabu asked.
"Who knows? A day for you is one less for the enemy." Toranaga's eyes snapped back to Omi. "Was the message from Ishido verbal or in writing?"
Yabu answered instead. "Verbal, of course."
Toranaga kept his penetrating gaze on Omi. "You've failed in your duty to your lord and to me."
"Please excuse-"