Beneath the Road⁠

Kiku led them beneath Kurotake.

The firing trench was older than Taro had imagined. Its walls were baked earth, black from years of heat. Roots pushed through the roof. Water crawled around their hands and knees.

The village existed above them as sound.

Boots.

Wood dragged across mud.

A horse stamping.

Once, a child crying inside the storehouse.

Kiku moved confidently until the first bend.

Then she stopped.

Jubei whispered, "What changed?"

"The roof used to be higher."

A burned cedar support had sagged across the passage. Mud filled most of the gap beneath it.

Jubei touched the beam with two fingers.

Ash fell.

"We go back."

Kiku shook her head.

"The drop is just past it."

"Which means this holds the ground above the drop."

"I crossed before."

"You were smaller and the timber was younger."

Taro looked at the gap.

Ken could not have passed it.

Taro might.

"I can test it."

Jubei caught his ankle before he moved.

"Her road."

Taro looked at Kiku.

She looked back.

For two days everyone had protected her by deciding things for her.

Now the only reason they were beneath the village was that she knew something the adults did not.

Taro shifted aside.

"Your call."

Kiku lowered herself into the mud.

She turned one shoulder beneath the beam and breathed out. Earth touched her back. For a moment only her ankles remained visible.

Then they vanished.

Taro counted breaths.

Five.

Six.

At eight, fear began inventing reasons to pull her back.

Her whisper came from the other side.

"Still here."

Jubei closed his eyes for half a heartbeat.

"Useful information."

Taro followed.

Halfway under the support, the cedar creaked.

His body froze.

The trench disappeared.

Concrete pressed across Ken's legs.

Smoke filled a tunnel.

He could hear Satoshi crawling away.

Then Kiku's hand closed around his wrist in the dark.

"Taro."

He forced air out of his lungs.

Moved.

The beam held.

Jubei crossed last, cursing quietly when his shoulder caught.

Beyond the support, the trench dropped into a deeper channel. Small vents pierced the roof at irregular intervals.

Through one, boots passed directly overhead.

Dust fell with every step.

The hidden army was walking over them.

Kiku counted turns under her breath.

"Left. Straight. Water stone. Right."

At the water stone, the passage widened enough to kneel.

Jubei raised a hand.

Voices carried through the earth.

Genta.

"...until dawn."

Another man answered. Younger. Sharper.

Captain Seki.

"The storehouse is cleared before the next supply group."

"The road is not secure."

"The road is open."

"The hills are part of the road."

A pause.

Seki said, "Then burn the hills."

Genta's reply came too low to catch.

The men moved away.

Taro looked at Jubei.

Neither needed to say it.

Their disagreement was real.

That did not make either man a friend.

It made space.

Kiku touched the wall.

"Shrine steps."

"How do you know?" Taro whispered.

She tilted her head.

The faint scrape of the bell rope travelled through timber overhead.

Taro understood.

They continued.

The trench ended at a wall of old stones. A narrow gap near the floor admitted grey light.

Kiku looked through first.

"Storehouse."

Taro took her place.

He saw the bottom of a millet sack. A floorboard. Bare feet.

Someone shifted.

Taro tapped the stone.

Three short.

Pause.

Two.

The pattern Emi had used.

Nothing.

He tried again.

Three.

Two.

A hand appeared between the floorboards.

The damaged fingers were enough.

Taro forgot to breathe.

Koji lowered himself carefully.

"Taro?"

His whisper nearly undid him.

"I'm here."

One of Koji's eyes appeared above the gap.

Father and son stared at each other through two fingers of space.

"You should be in the hills."

"So should you."

Koji's mouth moved. Pain or a smile. Taro could not tell.

"Hana?"

"Alive. Hachi too."

"Kiku?"

Kiku leaned close.

"Hello, Father."

Koji's face changed immediately.

"Why is she under the shrine?"

"Because she found the way," Taro said.

Koji looked at him.

He understood.

He also hated it.

Those could exist together.

"Listen," Koji said. "Next group before dawn. Seki wants us dead before they pass."

"How many guards?"

"Four near the front. Two behind. More on the road. Genta moves men when the smoke changes."

Taro stored the information.

"Can you lift the floor?"

"One board. Not enough for a grown man. Widening it makes noise."

Jubei leaned close.

"Western path."

Taro asked.

Koji's eye hardened.

"Genta left it weak on purpose. Two obvious guards. Red thread on the vents."

"We saw the thread."

"Then don't get so proud of seeing traps that you start walking into them to prove it."

Taro looked down.

The warning found him too easily.

"What does the army need most?"

"Road. Water. Lower bridge."

Kiku touched Taro's shoulder.

"Fire pond."

He turned.

"What fire pond?"

"Above the communal kiln."

Koji heard her.

"Sluice hasn't moved in years."

"Timber, not stone," Kiku said.

Jubei shifted closer.

"How much water?"

"After the rain? Enough for the lower field. Maybe the road."

Taro pictured what he had seen from the ridge.

Straw laid over mud.

Timber strengthening the bridge.

Pack horses.

Men moving in narrow files.

A road built for speed only worked while everyone believed it would remain a road.

Release enough water and movement stopped.

More important, priorities changed.

Soldiers saved horses.

Officers saved supplies.

Guards were pulled toward whatever mattered most to their lord.

Prisoners might stop being the centre of attention for a few minutes.

"If we flood it, they know the village resisted," Taro whispered.

Koji answered without hesitation.

"They plan to kill us because we saw them. Resistance is not what made that decision."

"Searchers will cover the hills."

"They already do."

Jubei asked, "Can the prisoners reach the rear wall?"

Koji looked over his shoulder.

"Some. Sada's grandson cannot walk. Mata's knee is bad."

The shape of the problem changed.

Taro had been thinking about opening the cage.

That was only half a rescue.

Ten hungry, injured people could not outrun hundreds of soldiers.

"There is a high bank beside the stream," Kiku said. "Above the dye shed."

Koji looked toward her voice.

"Flood reaches below it, not above."

"Can the prisoners get there?"

"If they cross the road."

"When the water comes," Taro said, "the road becomes the thing everyone watches."

Jubei's hand settled on his shoulder.

"Pieces."

Taro glanced back.

"I know."

"Say it."

Taro understood why.

Ideas became dangerous when the person who had them began mistaking possibility for certainty.

"Pieces," he said. "Not a plan."

Jubei removed his hand.

A boot struck the storehouse floor above.

Koji's face vanished.

Genta's voice came through the boards.

"Who are you speaking with?"

Silence.

Taro pressed himself flat.

A spear butt struck the floor.

Dust fell into his eye.

Koji answered louder.

"My dead."

Genta did not laugh.

"Do they answer?"

"More honestly than you."

Footsteps crossed the room.

The floorboard lifted a fraction.

Taro saw darkness.

Then the edge of a red cord.

Genta crouched on the other side of the wood.

Jubei's knife came free without sound.

Taro caught his wrist.

A blade through the gap might kill Genta.

It might also trap Koji with every armed man in the shrine.

Jubei looked at him.

Taro shook his head once.

The board settled.

"Keep speaking," Genta told Koji. "Perhaps the dead will warn you before dawn."

The door opened.

Closed.

Nobody in the trench breathed for several heartbeats.

Koji returned.

"He knows something."

"Not enough," Taro said.

"Enough grows."

Jubei whispered, "We leave."

Taro wanted another minute.

Another number.

Another answer.

There would always be one more thing to know.

He looked at his father through the floor.

"We come back before dawn."

Koji's eye narrowed.

"Don't promise that."

"What can I promise?"

The question came out younger than Taro intended.

Koji was quiet.

"Promise you won't turn every person you fail to save into another reason to hate yourself."

Ken's oldest wound opened beneath the words.

Taro could not answer.

Koji's hand disappeared.

Kiku led them back.

The path felt longer now.

At the sagging cedar beam, Jubei crossed first. Kiku followed.

Taro had one shoulder beneath the timber when something near the wall caught his eye.

Red.

A thread tied around a root.

It had not been there before.

He stopped.

Kiku whispered from ahead, "What?"

Taro pointed.

Jubei's face went still.

Footsteps crossed the earth above them.

One man.

Then another.

A voice near the dye stones said, "Thread's broken."

Taro lay half beneath the rotten beam.

Daylight entered as someone lifted the first stone from the trench mouth.

Genta had not needed to know the hidden road existed.

He had only needed someone frightened enough to use it.