He heard Nichiren speaking his thoughts in an uncannily clear voice, so that it was as if Jimmu were listening to a ghost.

“During the attack it will be dark, and there will be uproar. It should be simple for you to find Ankan, call him out, and put him to the sword. Afterward, you must commit seppuku. Your father will be the first to greet you in the next life.”

My father? Jimmu thought. Who was he? I hardly knew him, only what Nichiren told me about him. My parents never gave me advice, or comforted me when I was sad, or nursed me when I was sick. I’ve led my life for the benefit of two dead strangers. Why should I want to avenge them?

“What other purpose do you have?” said the voice of Nichiren. “What is the point of your life, if not to die? Without revenge, you are an insect crushed by a peasant’s heel, a thing without honor, meaning, or value. Only Ankan’s blood can make you worthy.”

Nichiren had said this, or something like it, almost every day when Jimmu was growing up, and Jimmu had believed him. Yet Ishida Muraki had seen worth in Jimmu. The captain had patiently trained him, and had been closer to a friend than anyone Jimmu had known. And Takeko: Jimmu remembered how her face had looked the last time he saw it—troubled, angry, sad. If someone as beautiful as Takeko cared about him, surely he could not be worthless?

The raiding party reached the scene of the afternoon’s fighting. The moon emerged from behind a cloud and shone down on the carnage, its light turning the bloodstains on the snow black, and making statues of the dead.

Jimmu shivered. It seemed that they were trespassers in the land of the dead, and that at any second a corpse would leap to its feet and scream at them.

Lord Ankan suddenly stopped and looked down. The soldiers gathered around, and Jimmu saw that Lord Ankan was staring at the body of Captain Muraki.

The captain was lying on his back. His face was unmarked, but a spear with a broken shaft protruded from his breastplate. The dead Takeda troops littered close by showed how courageously he and his men had fought.

Earlier, when he had taken his leave of Captain Muraki, Jimmu had been able to control his emotions, but he could not control them any longer. He wept silently, his tears drying rapidly in the biting wind.

Lord Ankan raised his hand in a gesture of farewell to the captain, and as he turned away, Jimmu was astounded to see that he too had tears in his eyes.

Like me, he is grieving for Ishida Muraki, Jimmu thought.

It was disturbing to realize that he and Choju Ankan had something in common.