Iron master, p.5
Iron Master, page 5
Ne-Issan, the Land of the Rising Sun, lay on the eastern shore of a vast continent that, in The World Before, had been called Iyuni-steisa. In those far-off days, the warriors whose descendants had given birth to the Sons of Ne-Issan had lived in a distant place that had also been called the Land of the Rising Sun. A land of great beauty, whose people had risen to great wealth and power and had then lost their souls to the spinners and the weavers of the Dark Light.
The Dark Light was the earth-bound brother of the white sky-fire that split the heavens when the evil kami of the cloud-world tried to storm the castle of Ameratsu, God of All. The blinding flash was made up of the chain of sparks that flew from his sword as he struck down 10,000 of his foes with one fearful blow. And the fire that fell to earth and flowed through the world was filled with his divine power.
The spinners found secret ways to draw this power from the forests and rivers, the stones and the grass, and from the air men breathed. They captured it on magic wheels and bound it fast with metal threads as fine as silk. The weavers took these threads and wove them into thin ropes from which they made a giant net which, in time, encircled the globe. No one resisted because, in the beginning, they were entranced by its magical power. At the snap of a finger, the ropes brought light where there had been darkness, provided warmth for cold bones, and filled the air with music.
These were good things, but it did not stop there. New ways were found to throw the Dark Light through the air. A second net was woven across the sky using invisible threads. The world was made prisoner by stealth but once again no one resisted, for the spinners had built ever more powerful magic wheels and the weavers had devised ways to release men from his labours. The Dark Light turned drills, drove saws, raised hammers, forged iron and joined metals with a single spark of fire.
For the dull-brained layabouts and ne’er-do-wells this, too, was a good thing. Idleness became a virtue. But the craft-masters soon found no market for their skills. Their nimble fingers were replaced by the metal talons of headless slaves with tireless arms of steel. Fed by the Dark Light, oblivious of the seasons or whether it was night or day, they fashioned objects in the twinkling of an eye out of materials which had not sprung from the natural world. Such objects, fashioned without love, had no soul. They were worthless baubles, passing fancies for people who would pay any price to cloak the growing emptiness of their lives.
It was the weavers who had created the emptiness and now they worked ceaselessly to fill it. The world of nature was replaced by a world of illusion: a world of false hopes and hollow dreams which grew ever stronger as it fed on the energy stolen from the old.
Within less than a century, the earth was turned into a giant pleasure dome filled with magic windows that seduced the eye and siren sounds that lured all but the strongest from the Way of the Warrior. Fantasy became the new reality. Men lost all sense of honour as sensation replaced sensibility. The principles which underpinned the samurai’s code of ethics were discarded; the fruits of ancient wisdom withered untended on the vine. Wives neglected their family duties; husbands abandoned their trades and professions and all sense of honour to take part in absurd games and trivial pursuits, eagerly submitting themselves to public ridicule and humiliation in the vain hope of winning worthless prizes. Fool’s gold.
The spinners and weavers grew richer and ever more powerful. Anyone who resisted was pilloried and crucified. Rulers played host to them and sought their favours; governments acquiesced or fell.
Given the example of their parents, it was inevitable that the children born into the Age of the Dark Light would reject the moral and spiritual traditions of the past. As for the future, it did not exist. They lived in a lurid world which offered instant, mindless gratification and where Time was eternally present. They became shadow-people, rising with the moon to roam the streets, gathering together in their thousands when offered some new sensation.
Pain or pleasure, it mattered little. Jammed back and front and shoulder to shoulder in the gaudy temples of the dream-makers, they swayed like river-weeds in the grip of a flood tide of sound, their arms and eyes raised in adoration to the images created by the light. They were in the power of the weavers and their dress reflected their condition. Their bodies were strapped and chained, they had rings through their ears and noses, and needles stuck in their arms. Their hair stood up on end like the quills of demented porcupines and their faces were striped like rainbow-coloured Mutes. In a world without meaning, style was all. Like strutting peacocks, outward display was their only concern; eccentricity the ultimate goal.
Freed from the restraints imposed by moral and spiritual laws, men and women became prey to criminal elements which pandered to their worst instincts, drawing them down into a morass of licentiousness and corruption. Terror ruled the cities, cowards attacked the weak and defenceless, armies lost the will to fight, government became a meaningless ritual, kings and their ministers were publicly mocked and scorned by scribes and merchants and the lowest rapscallions.
Ameratsu-Omikami, the great sky-spirit, sickened by the evil in the world below, hurled the sun into the sea where it exploded with a mighty roar, setting the oceans aflame. Those who dared to look upon the scene were struck dead with terror. The waves bubbled and boiled like molten gold. Driven by a twisting wind with the voice of a thousand storms, they rose high in the air, clawed at the layered clouds with glowing fingers, then crashed down upon the shore, consuming everything in their path. No one was spared, not even those who had fled to the summit of the sacred Mount Fuji.
Only the boat-people survived, hidden behind the iron walls of their floating villages among the snow mountains beyond the Southern Seas. They saw the fire in the sky but the flames did not reach them, for Ameratsu, who wished to spare them, summoned cold white winds to draw the heat from the waves. For these were the chosen ones. Within their souls dwelt a spark that would become a flame. The flame that would one day temper the steel in the heart and mind of a new nation of samurai.
Time stood still. The sun had vanished, swallowed up by the oceans leaving a fugitive after-image in the sky; a dull red ball which occasionally pierced the leaden gloom that had descended like a funeral shroud.
As they drifted silently amid the pillars of grey ice, the boat-people slowly became aware that the world they had known had vanished. The earth had been turned into a charred wasteland where nothing moved and nothing grew. The clouds sucked up the death-laden dust and cast it down upon the sea as poisonous rain. Since their only source of food was the fruits of the ocean, the boat-people reaped a deadly harvest. Many perished, but not all. Some, blessed by Ameratsu, fell sick then recovered a measure of their former strength. Their numbers dwindled, but a nucleus survived and were joined by other ocean-wanderers who spoke their tongue and shared their dreams.
The odyssey lasted for more than two centuries. Generation after generation was born and buried at sea, but the descendants of the chosen ones never lost hope, and gradually they grew stronger. They kept the memory of their once-glorious past alive in the minds of their children, made eyes dulled with hunger, sickness and resignation sparkle with tales of heroic deeds by bold, fearless samurai for whom the thought of death was ‘as light as a feather’.
They also handed down precious knowledge of the world that had been, and the skills that would be needed to build a new one when the earth had begun to heal. Above all, they passed on the code of bushido; the spiritual laws which governed the thoughts and actions of the Warrior and set him apart from ordinary humankind. And they entrusted to them a sacred task: to root out and destroy the Dark Light and banish it from the world for ever.
It was a task that the Sons of Ne-Issan had never abandoned. On the establishment of the first Shogunate, it had assumed the form of an edict. The Dark Light was the greatest enemy of mankind; to seek to recapture it was the greatest crime. Successive rulers of Ne-Issan had carried on the fight with crusading fervour and the present Shogun was no exception.
Yoritomo knew that if the rumour proved to be true, then those involved would have to be ruthlessly eliminated. But how widespread was the conspiracy? Prior to Toshiro’s return, the Min-Orota had been regarded as fudai – loyal allies of the Toh-Yota. It was an extremely delicate situation. With the forces in the opposing camps so finely balanced, the Shogunate could not risk making any overt moves against the conspirators – if that was what they were. Even if he ordered his brother-in-law, the Consul-General, to commit seppuku – as family honour demanded – it could, given the present climate of intrigue, have unforeseen consequences.
No… The insult to his sister and his own house would be avenged – but at a time of his own choosing. For the moment, it was wiser to let the pot simmer.
CHAPTER THREE
Once again, Toshiro Hase-Gawa had demonstrated his remarkable flair for information-gathering, drawing together the loose strands from his network of agents and informers: eyewitness reports, tell-tale documents, pillow talk, drinking-den gossip and bath-house rumour. But the picture the herald had woven for the shogun was seriously flawed. Domain-lords Yama-Shita and Min-Orota had entered into a covert alliance, they were contemplating the construction of devices to recapture the Dark Light, and Consul-General Nakane Toh-Shiba was involved in an illicit sexual liaison. But Yama-Shita was not in league with the Federation or its agents. Toshiro had drawn the wrong conclusion from the information presented to him. The scenario he had constructed was based on one fundamental error: his assumption that the love-object – Clearwater – was a long-dog.
It was a mistake which Toshiro could not be blamed for making. Like most Iron Masters, his knowledge of Mutes was limited to those he had encountered in Ne-Issan; dull-eyed slaves who were fed and watered like cattle and who worked better under the whip. They were primitive outlanders whose place in Iron Master society was on a par with field-oxen and, at times, they were accorded even less consideration.
As a samurai and Herald of the Inner Court, Toshiro was bound by strict social conventions. It was unfitting for him to converse with such individuals, he could only give orders. And, had he owned slaves, those orders would have been transmitted through an intermediary. As a result, he knew next to nothing about their customs and traditions or their unfettered mode of existence in the vastness that lay beyond the waters of the O-hiyo and Mei-suri. In particular, he was unaware of the existence of ‘super-straights’; Mutes whose bodies were not only straight-boned and smooth-skinned but who were also clear-skinned – like long-dogs and the Sons of Ne-Issan.
He was not alone.
Lord Hiro Yama-Shita had made exactly the same mistake some months before – despite the fact he knew more about the Plainfolk than anyone else in Ne-Issan.
Over the years, Yama-Shita had amassed a considerable body of information about the nomadic Mutes, but only senior members of his own family had access to it. The annual expedition by the wheelboats across the Great Lakes was one of the many enterprises that had made the Yama-Shita rich and powerful. The Mutes were not only a source of cheap labour; the goods they supplied helped to feed and clothe their captive brethren. The facts at his command were trade secrets; knowing his clients’ strengths and weaknesses enabled Yama-Shita to extract the most favourable rates of exchange, and the rivalry between the various clans usually meant his trade-captains got the best of the bargain.
Unlike the majority of Iron Masters, Yama-Shita did not despise the Mutes, even though he personally found their disfigured bodies somewhat repugnant – in particular, their hairy armpits and bushy sexual organs. But, despite their bizarre appearance and their lackadaisical approach to hygiene, they possessed a certain nobility and, in their natural state, were strong, fearless individuals with their own code of honour which, in many ways, paralleled that of the samurai. They also had sufficient good grace to recognise and defer to a higher authority – namely himself and his entourage – and the wit to realise that the continuing exchange of goods and people for arms and artefacts was a profitable enterprise for both parties.
The picture they presented to outsiders was that of a largely untutored race endowed with a certain low cunning, but with more brawn than brains. However, there were some Mutes – notably the wordsmiths – who displayed a keen intelligence and an unexpected degree of subtlety. The individual named Mr Snow, the wordsmith of the clan M’Call, was one of them, and it was to him that Yama-Shita had turned for help in acquiring a flying-horse.
The domain-lord was also familiar with the unsubstantiated claims that certain Mutes possessed supernatural powers: mysterious gifted individuals known as summoners and seers. The Iron Masters, who worshipped at shrines dedicated to Ameratsu-Omikami, believed that the world of nature was permeated by the spirit-world – the realm of the kami – but Yama-Shita treated the stories of Mute magic with derision. In his view, the Mutes posed no danger to the Iron Master. Despite their vast numbers, the fragmentary nature of the clan system and the traditional hostility with which the rival factions viewed each other made it impossible for them to mount a large-scale military action against their benefactors in the east or their enemy in the south. The Plainfolk were fiercely territorial but they were not empire-builders. That was why it was safe to supply them with arms. Their implacable hatred for the long-dogs, and the guerrilla tactics they employed, were ideally suited to counter the probing advances of the Federation’s overground war machines.
Yama-Shita sometimes wondered if the Plainfolk realised they were being manipulated, but it never occurred to him that they might also be inspired by a sense of destiny. He had never heard of the Talisman Prophecy but, had it been brought to his notice, he would have given it short shrift. His curiosity about the Mutes was blinkered by the innate belief in his own superiority and that of the system he represented. In his view – which was shared by all Iron Masters from the Shogun downwards – there was nothing to be learned from the Mutes, one could only learn about them. Yama-Shita was not an anthropologist, nor was he a student of comparative religion; he was engaged in resource-management.
This selective garnering of information meant that Yama-Shita, like the Herald, was completely unaware of the existence of ‘super-straight’ Mutes. He was thus fated to draw the same wrong conclusion and, when the news of Clearwater’s unexpected transformation from multicoloured Mute warrior to unblemished long-dog reached him at the end of January, he had shared the Shogun’s present sense of betrayal.
In the case of Yama-Shita, his anger had been directed against two targets: Mr Snow, for attempting to deceive him, and the Consul-General for his weakness and stupidity. When Kiyo Min-Orota had informed him of what had taken place, his first impulse had been to have Clearwater dispatched by an assassin, but Kiyo had reassured him that, when all the circumstances were taken into account, neither of them could be accused of complicity.
On reflection, Yama-Shita had agreed but, like the Shogun, he now found himself on the horns of a dilemma. The concealed presence of the female long-dog was simultaneously an unwelcome embarrassment and a heaven-sent gift. The Consul’s inexplicable desire to tup females from the lower social orders had finally rendered him vulnerable to blackmail. The man was a degenerate clown but his high-level connections, through his marriage to one of the Shogun’s sisters, made him a valuable pawn in the dangerous game that was now afoot.
Mr Snow, the obliging wordsmith, was another problem entirely. What game was the sly old lump-head playing? Since it was he who had undertaken to deliver a flying-horse in exchange for a shipment of rifles, it followed that he must be party to the deception. Did that mean he was in league with the Federation? If he was, the request by the disguised female long-dog to be returned to the M’Calls with the cloud warrior when he had accomplished his task now made sense. She and her partner were obviously expected to report on all they had seen: the craft skills of the Iron Masters and their ability to adopt new techniques, the methods by which they would power the flying-horses, and their mastery over them in the air. No wonder the cloud warrior had requested that he and his escort be allowed to remain together. It was a clever ruse, but no Mute or renegade Tracker who had entered Ne-Issan had even emerged to tell the tale – and this impudent pair would share the same fate.
But one important question remained unanswered: why would the Federation voluntarily hand over the secrets of flight to a potential enemy? The gift had, admittedly, been delivered in the guise of damaged goods, but that merely lent plausibility to Brickman’s claim to have built it from salvaged bits and pieces while held captive by the Mutes. Despite its somewhat battered appearance, the craft was still capable of carrying two people through the air, and it had arrived bearing two objects of immense value: a rider who was eager to explain in detail the function of every part and the theory behind its design, and a working example of an engine powered by the Dark Light.
To Yama-Shita – a born entrepreneur – this had proved too good an opportunity to miss. After hiding it away, he had used considerable ingenuity to fake its destruction under the watchful gaze of the Shogun’s representative in a spectacular bonfire containing crackerjacks and several concealed charges of gunpowder.
The mistake over Clearwater’s true identity – which was later to lead the Herald, Toshiro, into believing that Yama-Shita might be in league with the Federation – prompted the domain-lord to evolve his own elaborate scenario around Mr Snow. In Ne-Issan, no one attained the position of power that Yama-Shita enjoyed without being ruthless and cunning – and he was no exception. Like most domain-lords, he had a naturally suspicious mind and a penchant for labyrinthine conspiracies. He was certain that Mr Snow had not expected the female long-dog to reveal her true colours. And there was no way the wordsmith could have known she would be placed in the custody of Nakane Toh-Shiba, nor could he have foreseen what was to follow.
