CHAPTER I

Japan lay sweltering with uncertainty. Four centuries of unbridled warfare had reduced her once sturdy, centralized government to little more than a revered impotency; the country had become the property or the booty of its daimyos—those knights-errant, the pride of a nation.

It was an age of military prowess, of unlicensed chivalry, and to the victor belonged the spoils—till wrested from him, by another more powerful or less nice about the taking.

Shibata, grizzled and fair, sat upon the veranda, looking out, over the ramparts, across the moats, along the busied streets, to the mellowed hillsides beyond. It was all his: gained by life’s devoted, loyal service, not to self, but to a chosen, rising superior. It had now come time for him to assert his own supremacy; the lord he served had met his doom, gone the self same way that ambition for ages had decreed—lay shrouded in state, with his good rich blood dripping cold at the dagger’s point.

“Nobunaga conceived well,” mused he, half aloud, the tears fast welling in his great dark eyes, “but Shibata, his oldest captain, alone shall finish what the master undertook—Japan must be subdued.”

The skies darkened and the land-tempered breeze calmed, as the big lord rested back upon the soft-matted floor, gazing now afar over the hill tops toward the starry vaulted space in the distance. A little maiden, tender and eager, with black eyes and darker, massive hair, stealing near, sat at his side.

Perhaps she, too, dreamed of the future, for she had learned to love.

Learned to love as the Taira maidens, her ancestors, of a half thousand years ago, had not attempted to do. The deeds of daring and flights of fancy through all those tumultuous centuries had not only given to man the privileges of individuality, but wrested woman from the thraldom of the ages and secured to her a place and choice worthy her being.

Once again she might love and be loved—though the father’s command, the shogun’s decree, or the mikado’s will stood over her, in fact, as law, and at heart, both materially and spiritually.

Shibata did not at once turn to her, nor did he take his eyes from the vision conjured within. Conscious of her presence, the very thought burned and seared deeper and firmer his ready-made if rigorous anticipations. Fortune had given him a child in whom the blood of Taira made possible the connection. His own efforts had carved out a place and privilege. Their chieftain’s death afforded the opportunity. By the sacrifice of a child he himself would gain the shogun’s favor.