by Nick Lake
‘How did you learn the signal?’ said the leader suddenly. There was something strange about his voice, the ninja thought. As if it were being made by an apparatus of wood and leaves, dry things, not living flesh. It was like the sound of the wind in the trees, only with words in it. ‘You’ll die anyway. But I would like to know. And your death might be more . . . pleasant, if you cooperate.’
The ninja raised his head. He would not be cowed by those who desired his death; otherwise he would have to be always afraid. He looked at the leader, or rather at the pool of darkness that was his hood.
‘I had it from a friend of yours,’ he said, gambling that at least one of the mainland’s merchants would have seen fit to do a deal. ‘One of the merchants who pays you for protection. He sent me, when he heard that this vermin’ – he indicated the fisherman, his gloating expression just turning to confusion and suspicion – ‘planned to come here and kill the pirate king, and take the island for himself.’
The fisherman stared. ‘I planned no such thing!’ he protested. Good. The ninja liked it when they protested. It made them seem less believable, even if the opposite was the case.
‘I can prove it,’ said the ninja. ‘Just untie me.’
One of the pirates laughed. ‘You must think us fools,’ he said. ‘You’ll slit our throats.’
‘I have no weapon. And it is this snake’ – again, he nodded to the fisherman – ‘you should fear, not me. I was sent to warn you.’
The leader, on his stone seat, inclined his head. ‘It is true,’ he said at last. ‘The man isn’t armed. Loose his bonds.’
He felt the ropes around his wrists go slack, and he stood stiffly, rubbing his arms. ‘Bring me those barrels,’ he said, gesturing to the cargo the fisherman had brought. When they were in front of him, he walked round them, the pirates watching him warily all the time, then selected one.
‘Open it,’ he said.
One of the pirates stepped forward and pried the lid off the barrel, causing rice to leak out onto the rocky floor. The ninja thrust his hand into the rice, gripped the handle of the sword concealed inside, and pulled it out. There was a collective gasp.
‘This is the sword he intended to kill you with,’ he said. The words were only half out of his mouth when the pirates were on him, weapons levelled, but he just flipped the sword so the handle was facing the nearest one, and handed it over. ‘I told you. I’m here to warn you. Not to attack you.’
The pirate took the sword – the ninja noticed that one of his eyes was grey and one green – and looked at it, a frown on his face.
‘I’ve never seen that sword in my life!’ the fisherman said. ‘He must have put it there!’
‘In your rice barrel?’ said the leader, in a dangerous tone, the voice still air and ash, nothing moist or human in its sound. ‘When his hands were tied?’
It might as well have been a command, because right then the pirates nearest to the fisherman grabbed him and held him still. Again, it struck the ninja as odd that some of them wore such deep hoods, so that he couldn’t see their faces. But he couldn’t think about that. He had to concentrate on the game. He had to remain one move ahead.
The fisherman was staring at him with wide-open eyes, terrified, as if he were some species of demon. But the ninja ignored him. ‘There’s more,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ said the leader, interested now, underneath the cold languor.
‘The merchant who sent me told me the price for your life,’ said the ninja.
The leader inclined his hooded head. ‘Really? I should like to know what it costs to betray me.’
The ninja knew that he could not discover the necklace for himself – he would have to direct someone else, for it to be believed. ‘Around his neck,’ he said. ‘It’s pure gold; Chinese. There is a clasp made of two heavy balls, and on one of them is engraved the kanji for power.’
The fisherman had gone white. He leaned his head back, as if he could somehow get his neck out of the cavern, and with it the incriminating necklace.
‘He’s lying!’ he yelled. ‘It was a geisha! She said she loved me, and she gave it to me as a keepsake . . . ’ He trailed off, as if even he recognized the absurdity of the story.
At the same time, the fat pirate behind him got his hands around his neck and unclasped the necklace. He held it up, then peered at the clasp. ‘I can’t . . . ’
‘Not many of our brotherhood can read,’ said the leader. He held his hand out. ‘Bring it to me.’
The hooded figure on the stone seat took the necklace when it was proffered to him, raising it to examine it by the moonlight. He sucked in a breath. ‘The stranger speaks the truth,’ he said. ‘The kanji is here, as he described.’
The pirates around the ninja took a step back, just as the ones around the fisherman drew even closer, locking him in a circle of blades – the movements complementing one another, as if the pirates were one creature, with many bodies.
‘Wait . . . wait . . . ’ said the fisherman, but the leader made a brusque gesture and he was dragged away.
The leader swung the necklace in his hand, looking at the ninja, or at least that was what the ninja thought. It was hard to tell, given the hood he wore. Eventually he spoke.
‘You seek a reward, I presume?’
The ninja shook his head. ‘Only the necklace,’ he said.
‘The necklace?’
‘Yes. It was stolen from my employer, before it was given to the traitor. His wife holds it very dear.’
The leader nodded, slowly. ‘Very well.’ He beckoned the ninja closer, then threw him the necklace.
The ninja caught it, throwing his body forward at the same time. His fingers stretched the chain, which wasn’t gold at all, but toughened steel with thin plate over it, the heavy ball clasps perfect weights for turning a length of metal into a tool for strangling. The necklace was a manriki – a chain weighted at each end, designed to be flicked suddenly at a target’s neck, wrapping itself around. It was in the nature of a ninja’s weapons to appear to be something else.
He was a vampire, and he moved at the speed of thought. The leader of the pirates did not even get his hands up before the ninja landed on him, flicking one end of the necklace so that it spun, weighted by the clasp, around the man’s neck. He could hear men rushing towards him from behind, the hush of their weapons against the air, but they would never be fast enough. Not only was the chain strong enough to choke, but he’d had it sharpened, too, in such a way that when he stretched it – just . . . so – the links presented sharp edges. Enough to cut through a man’s windpipe in seconds.
Of the many ways to kill a person, the neck really was the easiest.
The ninja squeezed, hard, and as he felt the chain dig into the man’s oesophagus – dig surprisingly quickly and easily, actually – he felt the pleasure of a job well done. He had got onto the island, and he had got past the pirates by ensuring that he was captured by them. In short, he had been one move ahead, all night.
He squeezed, and squeezed, and finally the pirate king stopped moving. The ninja closed his eyes and smiled, waiting for the blow from behind that would kill him.
Nothing.
He frowned, turning, and—
—he was on the cold stone floor, looking up at the pirate leader, who was, inexplicably, standing up. He was also very, very strong, the ninja realized. He must be – one moment the ninja had been crouching on his corpse, or what seemed a corpse, and the next he was lying several strides away, his whole body aching.
The man who had thrown him off so easily unpeeled the chain from around his neck, looked at it for a moment – or seemed to, for again it was hard to tell – then let it drop to the ground.
And that was when he lowered his hood from around his face.
For the first time in the ninja’s life – he was normally the one doing the killing, not the one screaming – he let out a sound of terror, and he felt his heart stop for just a moment.
Under th
at hood, there was no face. Just the grotesque grin of a skull, hanging with tatters of skin.
The ninja scrabbled at the ground with his hands, kicking with his feet, trying to crawl backwards away from the monster ahead of him, so terrified he was not even aware of the indignity of his situation. He mewed, like a kitten.
‘You did not expect this,’ said the pirate leader. It was a statement, not a question.
The ninja babbled. He looked behind him and saw that some of the other pirates had lowered their hoods too, and they were also dead. He thought he might begin to cry, something else he had never done before. It was usually his victims who cried, if he gave them the chance. Which wasn’t often.
‘My name is Kenji Kira,’ said the dead leader. ‘I was the bangashira for Lord Oda no Nobunaga, the commander of his armies. Did you think that a piece of jewellery would kill me?’
The ninja said something, but it didn’t come out of his throat. He had heard of Kenji Kira, and where before he had been terribly afraid, now he felt that he might just turn to liquid and melt away.
‘Speechless, I see. You did well, though, I will grant you that. I presume you wanted us to catch you, so that you could get close to me?’
He nodded – it was all he could manage.
‘And the necklace . . . and the sword . . . I imagine, if circumstances had allowed it, you might have used the blade instead?’
He nodded again.
Kenji Kira clapped, softly. ‘Really, well done. Now all that remains is for you to tell me who hired you.’
The ninja shook his head. ‘I . . . d-d-d-don’t know. I never know.’
‘But you receive instructions. Money. Someone must give it to you.’
‘Only through—’
‘Letters, yes, I know.’ A sad shake of the head. ‘Yet still, you know who it was. You do. You just don’t want to know it. But I have heard about how you play cards. I have heard about how you carry out your missions. You always think ahead. Just ask yourself . . . what if your opponent were thinking further ahead? Just imagine it. And then ask yourself what you know, deep down.’
The ninja stared, confused. At the back of his mind, a taunting echo.
Always be one step ahead.
Well, he wasn’t now. He wasn’t at all. He had a feeling, like a shiver inside him, that the person, the thing, standing in front of him was more than one step ahead. Was many, many steps ahead.
The pirate leader approached. ‘It’s really very simple,’ he said. ‘The person who hired you . . . was me.’ Then he drew a beautiful katana from under his cloak, and he must have been a man who knew that a neck presented the simplest opportunity to kill someone, because he brought it crisply down and cut the ninja’s throat.
The ninja crossed the bridge over the Three Rivers, which was all spangled with jewels, and he came to the other side. To death. He was surprised to find it exactly as described, and at the same time completely different.
He walked over the grey ground, until he came to the seat where Enma would sit – he could tell, because standing to the sides were the judge’s guards, Horse-head and Ox-face, huge demons with weapons longer than a man.
But Enma’s chair was empty, and the ninja wondered what this meant. Enma was supposed to judge the souls of the dead, to decide where on the wheel of samsara they would end up – whether they had accrued good enough karma to go to the heaven of Amida Buddha, or whether they would be reincarnated as a horse or even a lowly dog in the realm of beasts, or condemned to eternal starvation and loneliness in the realm of hungry ghosts. Or, worst of all, tortured forever in the hell of meifumado.
Yet Enma wasn’t here. Did that mean the ninja would not be judged at all? Or did it mean something worse?
The ninja didn’t have the chance to think about it for long, because then there was a sound behind him, and he turned to see the pirate leader, Kira, his hood still down. Only now, his bones were clothed in flesh, and he looked much as he must have looked in life. Not exactly as in life, though, the ninja thought. There were holes in the skin, where it looked as if maggots or slugs had been feeding, tears that indicated the gnawing teeth of rats. The ninja shrank back a little. Kira ignored this. He indicated the empty chair. ‘I killed him,’ he said.
‘You . . . killed . . . Enma?’
‘Yes. It was easy. He’s only a man, after all. I challenged him, and I won. It was perfectly legitimate.’
‘But Horse-head and Ox-face—’
‘Accept that a stronger judge was required. One who wasn’t so . . . sensitive to the rules. One who might allow them to return to earth one day. One who wasn’t so particular about the dead staying dead.’
The ninja cocked his head, catching something in the walking skeleton’s tone.
‘Yes,’ said Kira. ‘I’m bringing you back with me, to life. You’re dead, of course, so you’ll rot like me. But you’ll get used to it. Luckily, you have not been dead long, so you will retain human language, and a semblance of your prior personality. Those who have been dead for longer are . . . different.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said the ninja.
‘It lessens them, the experience of being dead.’
‘No. I mean, I don’t understand this. You. What I’m doing here.’
‘You don’t? And yet your father said, always be one move ahead.’
‘How do you—’
‘I am Enma, remember? I acquired his powers when I spilled his blood. I could judge you, if I wanted. But I sense that it would be painful, for both of us.’
Kira was looking at him, and though the dead man’s decaying face was capable of little expression, it was as if he was waiting for something. The ninja thought, harder than he ever had before, knowing that he was being offered a chance here that might never be repeated. He could see shapes moving, further into the grey land of death, and he had a nasty feeling they were some of the people he had killed.
‘You . . . hired me, to kill you. So you could see how good I was. It was a test. And now you want me to join you.’
Again, that ironic, soft clapping.
‘Good. Now, follow me, and let’s go back to the island, shall we? Your body will feel strange to you, I know it from experience. But I find there’s a cure for that, in the blood of a still-beating heart. The fisherman will still be alive. I suggest we go and eat him.’
The ninja followed, but there was one more question. He asked it.
‘Why?’
Kira spread his hands. ‘I wish to build an army,’ he said.
‘But this . . . ’ The ninja gestured at the bridge they were crossing, its jewels, the figures of the demons standing guard, dwindling behind them. ‘Death . . . Was it necessary?’ He felt upset, but in a way that was oddly distant, as if someone had offended him in a half-remembered dream, and he still felt obscurely angry. ‘Could you not have just paid me to join you?’
‘Living things will always betray you. An army of mercenaries is good. An army of the dead is better. Fear induces betrayal. Yet what do the dead have to fear? They’re already dead.’
The ninja nodded. ‘But what do you need this army for?’
‘There is a boy I would like to kill,’ said Kira, bitterness in his voice.
‘A boy? But that should be easy.’
Kira hissed. ‘This isn’t an ordinary boy.’
CHAPTER 1
The Tendai Monastery, Mount Hiei
Two months later
TARO DREW BACK the arrow, stretching the bow, imagining all his fury and frustration flowing down his arm and into the wood of the shaft.
Then he let it all go.
The arrow struck the fan he was using as a target, nailing its centre to the tree, which was seven tan away. His feelings, though, returned almost immediately, creeping back into his heart and mind.
He sighed, nocking another arrow. He was using long shafts – eight-hand lengths – of pure bamboo, tipped with sharp heads of antler bone, fletched with goose feathers. Arrows built
for distance. His bow was new, a gift from the abbot. He no longer used the Tokugawa weapon, because he didn’t think of himself as being a Tokugawa, didn’t want to see himself as having a destiny any more. It was his destiny that had ended up with him killing Lord Oda on a mountainside, in an explosion of blood.
He knew that soon he would have to make some kind of decision. Hiro and Hana were happy to remain here with him, of course, for as long as he wanted. Shusaku had gone. . . actually, Taro wasn’t sure where Shusaku had gone. He had said he had errands to run in Edo, the capital city, and – in his usual mysterious way – had left it at that. Taro hadn’t seen his mentor for a couple of months. Little Kawabata had decided to stay at the Hongan-ji, the monastery of the Ikko-ikki. He liked the attitude of the warrior monks, who trained with guns and swords, and who believed that anyone could reach enlightenment, even the lowest of peasants.
Taro suspected that wasn’t the whole reason, though. On the battlefield, Taro had discovered that he could control Lord Oda’s body with the Buddha ball, because it was Taro who had turned the daimyo into a vampire. Taro had also turned Little Kawabata. So, in theory, Taro could make Little Kawabata do what he wanted, as long as he was holding the Buddha ball. For some reason that Taro didn’t fully understand, his blood in someone else’s body was subject to the ball in the same way that the weather was. When Taro had seized control of Lord Oda, stopping the daimyo’s sword, he’d wondered if Shusaku would be able to do the same to him, since it was Shusaku who had turned Taro into a vampire. But it seemed the power didn’t work without possessing the ball.
The ball could make it rain; it could also make a vampire he had turned do whatever he wanted, including exploding in a rain of blood, as Lord Oda had. As a result of this realization, Taro had taken to hiding the ball away. He was afraid of it – it was too powerful, and he didn’t want to strike anyone with lightning, or call out to his blood inside them, as he could do with Little Kawabata if he wanted. But even though Taro never took the ball out, Little Kawabata still seemed to distrust him. He seemed uncomfortable around Taro, seizing any excuse to go elsewhere. Taro understood it – but it didn’t stop him from feeling hurt, especially since he’d saved Little Kawabata’s life once.
