Laura Rowland - The Snow Empress

Hirata led the way up the slope, outpacing his companions, barely conscious of the cold, the snow, or their predicament. From the moment he’d set foot in Ezogashima, he’d sensed an indefinable strangeness in the atmosphere. It vibrated with sounds at the edge of his range of hearing, like alien music. He perceived a soft yet powerful pulse emanating from the landscape. It resonated through him and called to some deep, uncharted place within him. He realized that this trip wasn’t an abandonment of his mystic martial arts studies but a continuation of his quest. Here he would find the enlightenment he sought.

His master’s involuntary call for help had brought him to this land of his destiny.

As he neared the forest of leafless oaks and birches, his nerves tingled alert to human presences other than those of his comrades behind him. Three figures suddenly emerged from between the trees, into the windswept snow. Hirata stopped in his tracks as the men blocked his path. He stared in amazement.

They were the tallest men he’d ever seen; they stood half a head higher than Detective Marume, the biggest man in his group. Coats and leggings made of animal skins clothed their strong physiques. Geometric patterns with curves, spirals, and cusps decorated their hems, sleeve edges, and neck bands. Thick fur that trimmed their mittens, covered the calves of their fish-skin boots, and lined their leather hoods gave them a bestial aspect. They were obviously not Japanese. They must be Ezo, northern barbarians.

They looked like giant, uncivilized versions of the Rat. Their coarse beards and mustaches were even longer than his. Under bushy brows that grew straight across the bridges of their prominent noses, their eyes were narrow as if permanently squinted against the wind and snow. Their complexions were tanned and creased, their expressions as harsh as the climate.

The one in the middle addressed Hirata in a gruff barrage of syllables that sounded nonsensical. Although the Ezo and the Japanese had engaged in trade for centuries, the Ezo were forbidden to learn the Japanese language. This was a law enforced by the Matsumae clan to protect its trade monopoly. If the Ezo could speak Japanese, they could trade independently with merchants from Japan and bypass the Matsumae middlemen. Now the barbarian made a gesture that meant the same thing in any language: Go away!

Hirata saw the daggers they wore in carved wooden sheaths at their waists. He instinctively grasped the hilt of his own sword. Sano caught up with him.

“It’s time for you to earn your pay,” Sano called to the Rat. “Talk to them. Find out what they’re trying to tell us.”

The Rat gulped and reluctantly obeyed. His eyes lost their characteristic bold gleam as he spoke to his countrymen in their language. He seemed to shrink smaller. Hirata realized that the Rat hadn’t left Ezogashima solely because he wanted to make his fortune in the city; he’d been a misfit among his own kind.

After a brief conversation with the barbarians, the Rat turned to Sano and Hirata. “They say we should go home.”

“I gathered that much,” Sano said. “But why?”

“They say that we’re in danger.”

“From what?”

The Rat conveyed the question to the barbarians. Frowning, they buttered among themselves. The spokesman, whose strong, not unhandsome features distinguished him from the others, repeated his same words in a louder voice, as if that would make Sano heed them.

“We want to go to Fukuyama City,” Sano told the barbarians. “Can you show us the way?”

Again the Rat translated. The Ezo leader looked disturbed. He conversed with the Rat, who told Sano, “He says to stay away from Fukuyama City. If we want to live, we should go before they find out we’re here.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Hirata asked.

He could see from their eyes that the barbarians understood the gist of his question, but the leader only repeated the same warning in a more forceful manner.

“We can’t go on like this,” Sano said to Hirata. With an obvious effort to quell his irritation, he addressed the barbarians: “Would you please give us shelter for the night, or take us to someone who will?”

When the Rat translated, they shook their heads at one another. The leader stepped boldly toward Sano, flung out his arm, pointed at the sea, and shouted a command in a voice both authoritative and laced with desperation.

“‘For your own good, go back where you came from,”“ the Rat translated.

“We can’t,” Marume said. “Our ship is wrecked.” He advanced on the barbarians, who ranged themselves against him. “Either help us or get out of our way.”

The Ezo responded with pleas, warnings, or threats. Marume and Fukida drew their swords. The barbarians stood their ground, and even though fright shone in their eyes, they drew their daggers.

“Back off!” Sano ordered his men. “We need these people whether they want us here or not. Don’t hurt them!”

He tried to appease the barbarians while the Rat frantically translated. Somehow, at last, the weapons went back into sheaths; tempers subsided.

“Throw us on their mercy,” Sano instructed the Rat. “Tell them that unless they take us in, we’ll die.”

The Rat spoke. This time, as the barbarians discussed what they’d heard, Hirata perceived resignation in their tones. Primitive though they might be, they didn’t lack human compassion, whatever their reason for wanting to chase off newcomers. They nodded, and the leader spoke to Sano.

“”Come with us,“” the Rat said with a sigh. As he and the rest of Sano’s group followed the barbarians into the forest, he muttered, “I hope we won’t be sorry.”

The barbarians led the way along a path that paralleled the coast. The trees screened the view of the ocean and served as a windbreak. Hirata was glad the natives had decided to cooperate. The farther he walked into Ezogashima, the stronger he felt its pulse, the more compellingly sounded its call.

A clearing appeared in the forest, and Hirata saw what he first took to be huge, pointed mounds of snow. As he moved closer, he realized they were huts. Pungent wood smoke drifted up from chimney holes. Smaller outbuildings, some elevated on stilts and accessible by ladders, stood nearby. Hirata didn’t so much as hear voices inside the huts as feel conversation stop when he and his party approached. Thatch curtains lifted to reveal doorways. Barbarians peered out, gazing suspiciously at the strangers.

Their escorts made straight for the largest hut at the center of the settlement. The leader entered for a brief time, then reemerged. He beckoned and spoke to Sano.

“He says to come in,” the Rat said.

The pull that the island exerted on Hirata was stronger near the hut. “Shall I go first and make sure it’s safe?” he asked Sano, who nodded. Hirata cautiously ducked under the thatched doorway curtain that the leader held up for him.

He found himself in a cramped entryway, where he dusted the snow off his clothes and removed his boots. The leader ushered him under another thatch curtain and into a room filled with smoky, flickering orange light from a fire that burned in a square pit at the center. An Ezo sat near the pit, hands folded in his lap, on woven reed mats that covered the door. His long hair, mustache, and beard were white with old age, but his frame was strong, his posture erect. His hands and face were so weathered and deeply lined that he seemed made of gnarled wood. Silver hoops with dangling black beads pierced his ears. He wore a blue robe patterned with the same designs as on the other barbarians’ clothes. Hirata had assumed that the man who’d done the talking on the beach was their leader, but now he knew this man held the authority.