Chapter 42: The Gluttonous Lord and the Gates of Deceit
The tenshukaku, the castle keep, stood as the heart of the domain. In the Sengoku period, it was both the lord's residence and his command center—invariably the tallest and most fortified structure in any castle town.
This particular keep was not especially tall, rising only three stories from its stone foundation. Yet for a minor lord governing a mere six villages, its construction was a statement of grandeur, one that had required him to exhaust his entire fortune.
Of course, "exhausting his fortune" was a delicate turn of phrase. The truth was that he had exhausted the homes of the commoners under his rule and bled the farmers of their last copper coin.
"Trash! You are all worthless trash!"
A furious roar erupted from the main hall on the top floor.
Suda Shigenobu sat enthroned on a high platform, his face a blotchy, furious red. The veins on his forehead pulsed violently, looking as if they might burst at any moment. He was in his early forties, short and stout, his portly frame stuffed into a slightly ill-fitting hitatare. With a katana tucked at his waist, he looked less like a samurai lord and more like a pot-bellied merchant playing dress-up.
But a samurai he was—a low-ranking vassal of the Hojo Clan, assigned to this remote territory of poor mountains and treacherous waters. Originally, the post had offered no real perks.
That was, until he discovered a secret two years ago.
He found that no matter how ruthlessly he taxed the commoners, they wouldn't resist. They would only endure it, silently. And so, the annual tribute rose from forty percent to fifty. Then from fifty to sixty. Finally, it settled at a staggering seventy percent.
But it was still not enough.
There was the corvée labor, military service, poll taxes, transit taxes, and even taxes on weddings and funerals. He levied a fee for every excuse he could invent. If a family couldn't pay, he seized their children. If they fled, he burned their homes to the ground.
After two years of this tyranny, his private treasury overflowed with grain and copper coins, while the villages under his rule grew poorer and more dilapidated with each passing season. The commoners either fled into the wilderness or died of starvation.
He did not care. The Hojo Clan only demanded military funds; they never asked how he procured them.
"My lord, please, calm your anger!"
Kneeling on the floor below was his chief retainer, a thin, withered old man who bowed so low his forehead was pressed flat against the wooden planks.
"The three villages to the west truly cannot pay their taxes. This year's harvest was abysmal, and that was compounded by the plague that swept through before..."
"I don't care!" Suda Shigenobu slammed a meaty fist onto the armrest of his seat. "Lord Hojo has sent word! We are mobilizing against the Imagawa Clan this year, and every household must prepare military provisions!"
He gestured wildly. "I have only these six villages under my command. Three cannot pay, and there is still one more..."
His voice trailed off, his expression twisting into something even uglier. "What is the situation in Shimura?"
Shimura. The village occupied by the toad demon.
The chief retainer buried his head even lower, his voice barely a whisper. "Reporting to you, my lord... the men sent to collect taxes from Shimura were driven back again."
"That toad is truly..." Suda Shigenobu's face contorted. "Useless!" he spat.
His thoughts soured as he pictured that damnable toad. The creature had appeared from the swamps three months ago, taking up residence in Shimura's abandoned shrine and proclaiming itself a deity. At first, he hadn't taken it seriously. It was just a demon; a few sorcerers should have been enough to exterminate it. He kept a retinue of such men in his castle town—charlatans who typically spent their days fooling commoners with cheap tricks. They ought to be useful in a crisis.
But three different groups had been sent, and all three had been beaten back, bruised and battered. The sorcerers claimed the toad was blessed with 'fear' and was invincible on its home turf.
Next, he sent his samurai. They couldn't even get close; the poisonous miasma hanging over the marsh was thick enough to render a man unconscious in minutes.
Finally, gritting his teeth, he had spent a small fortune to hire that legendary group of mercenaries.
"Where has the Band of Seven reached?" Suda Shigenobu demanded.
The Band of Seven was a mercenary group active throughout the Kanto region. As their name implied, they were a company of seven. It was said that each member possessed a unique and deadly skill. For the right price, they would take on any dirty job—be it war, assassination, or demon extermination. They were infamous for having no moral compass, and though their fees were outrageously high, they had never been known to fail.
The chief retainer lifted his head, his face a mask of trouble. "Reporting to you, my lord... the Band of Seven is still on the road. It will take at least three more days for them to arrive."
"Three days? That's too long!" Suda Shigenobu's expression darkened. "I spent so much coin, and this is the service I receive?"
He heaved himself to his feet and began to pace, his heavy footsteps thudding against the floorboards.
"That toad eats people every month. The villagers in Shimura are fools, but even they will eventually be eaten to the last man. Once they're gone, that thing will surely move on to the other villages. When all the people are dead, what will I use to pay my taxes? How will I answer to Lord Hojo then?"
The retainer dared not respond, only shivering as he remained prostrate on the floor.
Suda Shigenobu waved a hand in irritation. "Go. Summon all those sorcerers in the city. Since the Band of Seven has yet to arrive, let them try to earn their keep. I refuse to believe that toad has three heads and six arms!"
As he spoke, his gaze swept across the hall to the main wall. Hanging there was a trophy he had acquired just ten days prior: a massive, boomerang-like weapon forged from pale yellow demon bone. Its surface shimmered with a faint, unholy luster.
Hiraikotsu.
A half-dead old man had been passing through his lands with it on his back when he was stopped by the lord's soldiers for an "inspection." The old man claimed it was a family heirloom of a demon slayer clan and, at first, refused to hand it over, ready to die for it. But in the end, faced with overwhelming numbers, he had bowed his head and surrendered the weapon.
Suda Shigenobu smirked, his eyes glinting with smug satisfaction as he looked at Hiraikotsu. Hanging that on his wall brought him far more prestige than any painted scroll or work of calligraphy.
Just then—
"Report!"
A soldier stumbled into the main hall, gasping for breath. "My lord! Two people have arrived at the castle gate!"
The soldier's voice trembled slightly. "One of them calls herself a shrine maiden, and she says... she says she has eliminated the toad of Shimura!"
Suda Shigenobu froze.
Eliminated? That toad, which not even the legendary Band of Seven had yet faced, had been killed by someone else?
"Who are they?" he demanded.
"A woman in a white robe and red hakama, and also..." The soldier swallowed hard. "And a young man who looks like a samurai. He has a pale complexion, red eyes, and an aura... that is very strange."
Such a description did not sound simple. But at that moment, Suda Shigenobu didn't care about the details. A jolt of energy shot through him, and he threw his head back with a loud, booming laugh.
"Let them in!"
At the castle gate, Hikaru looked up at the structure before him.
The castle was not large. Its walls were earthen ramparts reinforced with stone, rising perhaps a little over twenty feet high, with clan flags fluttering from the battlements. The gate itself was a heavy wooden door, flanked on both sides by ashigaru in simple armor. These foot soldiers were the lowest rung of the samurai hierarchy—little more than farmers who had been handed a spear and a cheap suit of armor.
Beyond the gate lay the castle town that had grown around its walls. In the distance, the silhouette of the tenshukaku was visible, its three-tiered wooden frame capped with a roof of blue-gray tiles. In this war-torn era, it was a respectable fortress, though it paled in comparison to the grand residential castles of the daimyo in Kyoto.
"So, this is it?" a smooth voice inquired from beside him.
Hikaru turned his head. Nura Rihan had appeared at his side at some point, a long kiseru pipe held between his teeth. His golden hair was particularly striking under the midday sun.
"Why are you here again?" Hikaru asked, his tone flat.
"To join in on the fun, of course," Rihan said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Last night, you said you were coming to slaughter the lord of this castle. How could I miss such a fine show?"
He exhaled a lazy puff of smoke, his golden, slitted pupils sweeping over the distant keep. "Let me think, what was this castle lord's name again? Suda? A low-ranking vassal of the Hojo Clan?"
"How do you know so much?"
"I've been wandering this area for decades. What news is there that I don't know?" Rihan shrugged. "Like I said before, this one is a ruthless character. In two years, he's squeezed six villages so dry that only bone fragments are left. His reputation is so foul that even most yokai don't want to get near him."
Hikaru didn't speak. He glanced at Kikyo, who stood silently beside him, clad in her white robes and red hakama, a longbow held firmly in her hand. Her expression was as cool and distant as ever, but Hikaru could see the tension in her fingers, the way they gripped the bow just a little too tightly.
"Let's go in," Kikyo said, her voice calm but resolute.
"Mm," Hikaru nodded.
The two of them started toward the castle gate. Rihan followed a few paces behind, the very picture of a casual spectator ready for a good performance.
The heavy wooden gate slowly creaked open. The ashigaru guards parted, their eyes filled with a mixture of fear and curiosity as they watched the trio pass.
Stepping through the gate, they entered the streets of the castle town. Hikaru's gaze swept around as they walked. The street was lined with shops and houses, but there were few pedestrians, and a dull, oppressive atmosphere hung in the air. Occasionally, he spotted a few ragged commoners huddled in corners; they scurried away like mice seeing a cat the moment their eyes met.
But the further they walked toward the center of the town, the more the scene changed.
Near the area of the tenshukaku, the houses became neat and orderly. Samurai in gorgeous kimonos swaggered by, merchants hawked their wares from carrying poles, and women holding paper umbrellas laughed softly in the sunlight. The shops along the street also transformed, shifting from dilapidated general stores to exquisite taverns and fragrant food stalls.
The rich scent of cooked food drifted through the air.
Hikaru's gaze fell upon the front of one shop. There, piles of rice were displayed openly—snow-white grains stacked into a small mountain.
The people in the villages outside this castle were starving. Yet here, inside the walls, the merchants used mountains of grain as a mere sign of their prosperity.
"The sweat and blood of the people," Nura Rihan murmured from behind him, his tone laced with a rare, mocking edge. "This castle lord really knows how to squeeze them dry. He scraped the countryside clean and piled it all up in here."
Hikaru didn't respond. He simply looked forward.
The tenshukaku was now right before them.
A middle-aged man in a formal hitatare was standing on the stone steps leading up to the keep, a broad, welcoming smile plastered on his face.
"Are you the experts who eliminated the evil yokai of Shimura?" the man asked, bowing low with a humble posture. "My master has been waiting in the main hall for a long time. Please, follow me."
Hikaru glanced at Kikyo. The shrine maiden gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
Together, they stepped onto the stone steps.
The doors of the castle keep swung open before them, revealing a different world within.
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