Kites mewed above them, and once in the distance they saw eagles circling on the warm air. Occasionally a hare started up at their approach, bounding away in huge desperate leaps, its eyes bulging. Pheasants and partridge were also abundant, glossy in their summer plumage.
“It would be a good place for hawking,” Shigeru observed.
“You need your eyes on the ground, not in the skies,” Komori replied. “Few people come this way.”
They saw no one all morning; the plain indeed seemed deserted. So it was a surprise to come over the ridge of a slope and see in the valley beneath it a group of horsemen milling around the edge of one of the caverns. Several had dismounted and were peering over the rim, shouting and gesticulating.
“Tohan!” one of the men exclaimed, and Komori said, “Ah! Someone has fallen into the Ogre’s Storehouse!”
The men around him shouted in triumph and derision and drew their swords, waiting expectantly for Shigeru’s orders.
“Go forward slowly,” he said. “There is no need to attack unless they do. Have bows ready to cover our approach.”
The bowmen immediately drew off to one side. The Tohan below noticed the Otori coming, and their confusion increased. They saw they were outnumbered and at a hopeless disadvantage. Three of the men on foot leaped immediately over the edge into the cavern, plunging without a sound into the darkness. The rest turned their horses and urged them into a gallop. The riderless horses ran after them, leaving one man stumbling helplessly behind.
“Capture him, but don’t kill him,” Shigeru ordered.
The man fell to his knees as the horsemen surrounded him. He was carrying a carved bird perch with two hawks tethered by their jesses, trying to hold them upright and reach his sword at the same time. The birds shrieked and flapped in frenzy, striking out with their sharp curved beaks. Shigeru’s men disarmed the man before he could kill himself and brought him to Shigeru.
He was thrown down somewhat roughly and sprawled on his face in an attitude of despair in the dusty grass.
“Sit up,” Shigeru said. “What happened?” When the man did not reply, he went on, “There’s no need to be afraid…”
At that the man raised his head. “Afraid? Do you think I am afraid of any Otori? All I ask of you is to allow me to take my own life, or kill me yourselves. My life is over. I let my lord fall into the pit.”
“Your lord? Who is it down there?”
The man’s face was white with horror. He was shaking with emotion. “I serve Iida Sadamu, son of Lord Iida Sadayoshi and heir to the Tohan.”
“Iida Sadamu fell into the Ogre’s Storehouse?” Komori said in disbelief.
“What were you doing here?” Shigeru demanded. “You have crossed the border with armed men! You were seeking to provoke the Otori into war!”
“No, we were hawking. We rode two days ago from Inuyama. He was leading, galloping ahead of us, following the bird.”
He pointed upward, and they saw the small dark shape still wheeling in the sky. “He and his horse went in together.”
“Hawking!” Shigeru thought it would have made a good excuse for Sadamu to ride to the border country to see for himself what the Otori were up to. As good an excuse as trying out young horses. He marveled at the strange workings of fate that had brought them together in this way. The heir to the Tohan lay beneath his feet, dead or dying… The men grinned nervously, as if they felt the same awe and shock.
The birds’ screaming quietened suddenly, and in the silence they heard a voice echoing up from the depths below.
“Can you hear me? Get me out of here!”
“He lives! It is Lord Iida. Let me go. I must go to him.” The man struggled against the hands that held him. Shigeru made a sign to Komori, and they moved away to one side so they could talk unheard.
“Could he have survived?”
“People do, sometimes. It’s not the fall that kills them-it’s starvation, usually.”
“Is it possible to rescue him?”
“We’d do better to leave him there. Throw this man down, too, and pretend we know nothing about it. If Sadamu’s gone, Sadayoshi will go soft.” Komori’s eyes were gleaming with excitement.
“The men that rode off saw us. They will construct more lies about what really happened and blame the Otori for Sadamu’s death. It would give the Tohan the excuse for war. But if we rescue Sadamu and return him to his clan, it will give us many advantages.”
Like the return of the Kitano boys, Shigeru thought.
“If it is Lord Otori’s will,” Komori said, sounding disappointed.
“You can get to him?”
“I can get to him. Whether he can follow me out-that’s a different matter.”
“Would you descend through this opening?”
“No, it’s too deep, and anyway there’s nothing here to lash a rope to. But, luckily for Sadamu, there’s a passage linking this cavern with another; less deep, and with trees around it. It’s very narrow, though.”
Komori called to the Tohan man. “How fat is Lord Sadamu?”
“Not fat at all!”
“But he’s a large man, right?”
When the other man agreed, Komori muttered, “I may have to persuade him to strip!”
“Help!” the voice cried from the darkness. “Can anyone hear me?”
“Tell him I’m coming,” Komori said. “Tell him it’ll take a while.”
The man crawled to the side of the slope, where the land fell away toward the cave’s opening. The grass was slippery and sharp-edged. He called out, his voice still weak with shock.
“Lord Iida! Lord Iida! Can you hear me?”
“He won’t hear that,” one of the Chigawa men said scornfully. “We should throw you in; then you can tell Sadamu in person.”
The man who had been so eager to join his lord in death had now had time to recall all the joys of living, and for his natural reluctance to leave them to reassert itself. He begged the Otori to spare him, to save Lord Iida, making many promises on behalf of his clan, the Iida family and his own. Shigeru left him to try to communicate with his lord, guarded by half his men, while he himself rode with Komori and the rest over the grassy hills for more than an hour, he thought, until they came to another depression in the earth where the fragile limestone, eaten away by water and weather, had collapsed into the honeycomb of caverns below.
The hills formed a gentle slope here, and water oozed from where it had collected between the rocks. Several pines grew in the moistened earth: two had sacred straw ropes around them, gleaming palely in the dark shadow of the trees, and a small wooden shrine stood between them and the cave’s mouth, with offerings of fruit and flowers placed on it.
They dismounted, and Komori went to the shrine, clapping his hands to summon the cave god and bowing low three times. Shigeru did the same and unexpectedly found himself praying for the life of his enemy.
They prepared the lamps and lashed the ropes to the pine closest to the edge. Komori stripped down to his loincloth and rubbed his body all over with oil, to slide more easily between the narrow rocks. He debated whether to take a weapon, but in the end decided against it.
“If Iida kills me, he’ll die there alongside me,” he said philosophically.
Two other Chigawa men were lowered down after Komori: they lit a small fire at the bottom to help guide him back. Shigeru sat on the edge of the slope by the rope, watching the flames below, waiting for the time to pass.
The sun crossed the sky above them: the sky was bright blue and cloudless. Slowly, the shadows swung from one side of the grove to the other. The sun was low over the rim of the hills when Shigeru heard the sound of hoofbeats. One of his men came at a gallop, shouting, “Komori has reached Lord Iida and they are on their way back!”