The Betrayal of the Living

by Nick Lake

  Hana could tell that she had troubled him, he knew, and so she kept quiet. But she left her hand in his too. He liked its smoothness and warmth. It was a contrast to the ache in his legs, the pain from his blistered feet.

  He missed his horse.

  It wasn’t long before they had to find shelter, the sun having grown too bright for Shusaku. Really they could cover only a couple of ri each morning and evening, and in this way several days passed as they crossed the province. A couple of times they saw dead people, but never in the numbers that had attacked them that first night, and they were able to avoid them by keeping to villages or forests that were all angles.

  As to what had brought them out, the companions had no idea. Even Shusaku was at a loss.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said. ‘In my experience the dead stay dead. Except for vampires, of course.’

  ‘It’s an omen,’ said Hana. ‘The country is in trouble. Dragons are waking. The dead are walking. It’s because of the shogun, hunting dogs in a palisade when he should be looking after his people. The dead are rising up against him.’

  Taro glanced at her when she said this. She seemed to be talking to him again, even though she was addressing Shusaku. But she didn’t meet Taro’s eye.

  ‘It’s annoying,’ said Hiro. ‘They stink and they just mumble nonsense.’

  ‘That’s what annoys you about them?’ said Taro. ‘Not the fact that they try to eat you?’

  ‘I don’t like people who smell,’ said Hiro, shrugging. ‘It’s why I’ve always had a problem with you.’

  It was when they came down from the plateau to the next province, which lay by the sea, that Taro saw the terrible evil he had done.

  There was a hint of it, even, on the way down, though he hadn’t wanted to recognize it. They had descended a wide gorge, which Shusaku said was the quickest route down from the highlands, a good, clear path. But in places there was no path. Instead the stream at the bottom of the gorge had swollen, breaking its banks, sweeping away the rocks of the path when it got too close to the white, raging water.

  None of them spoke of it, but when they left the gorge and saw the first of the villages, its wooden huts swept away, reduced to a few spars and a bell tower sticking up from the shallow water, none of them were surprised. Taro gazed around him in devastation and horror. He could see no one – until a miserable-looking man appeared, riding a buffalo.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Taro, though it was obvious. He did most of the speaking for them these days. The appearance of Shusaku’s face was so terrifying that he kept himself hidden behind a deep hood, talking to strangers only when absolutely necessary.

  ‘The water came all at once,’ said the peasant. ‘We had no warning. The stream was dried up; had been for weeks. We were so thirsty, and our crops were failing. We prayed for water. Then, when it came, we prayed for it to stop.’

  Taro could see where the houses had stood, some of them, anyway. There were broken wooden supports where walls should have been. ‘Did anyone . . . ’ he began.

  The peasant, who wore a wide-brimmed hat, tipped it back so that Taro could see the dark circles under his eyes. ‘Most were sleeping,’ he said. ‘The water was too fast. Some clung to trees, or the roofs of their huts. But water . . . it’s stronger than you think.’

  Taro didn’t need to be told that. He’d grown up by the sea, where there were tsunamis. He felt his legs buckling with the awful realization of what he had accomplished.

  ‘They may be all right,’ said Hana. ‘They may have come to dry ground.’ It wasn’t clear whether she was addressing the peasant or Taro.

  The peasant shook his head. ‘It’s been days since they were swept away. No one is coming back.’ He patted the flank of his buffalo, and began to ride slowly off across the shallow, still water. Then he turned to look at them. ‘But maybe that’s a mercy,’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘Before the flood, we learned what it’s like, when the dead come back.’

  CHAPTER 20

  TARO TRAILED HIS fingers in the water of the inland sea, as the shore – and the people he had drowned – receded behind them. There was only a thin moon in the dark sky, but enough to sail by. It was not large, the inland sea. Already Taro could see the outline of the island they were heading to. He wrapped his cloak around him, against the chill that came from the sea, even this near to summer. He could feel the Buddha ball pressing into his side. He would never use it again.

  Behind him, Shusaku was talking to the fisherman whose boat they had hired. The man was nervous. He’d spoken of pirates, when they first approached him, and increasingly violent attacks. He’d also mentioned something about ships crewed by the dead, which Taro would have dismissed as a tall tale until a few days ago, but now it seemed all too possible. In the end, it had taken all of Taro’s money, combined with all of Shusaku’s, to convince the fisherman to set sail with them, even for the short journey to Miyajima.

  Taro wasn’t interested in talking, though. Both Hana and Hiro had tried, and Shusaku had offered him blood. He had ignored them. Once again he’d tried to help, and he had ended up killing. He felt as though the weight of the people he had brought to an end was pressing on his chest, stopping him from breathing. His mother, Heiko, even Yukiko, who wouldn’t have turned into a murderer if Taro hadn’t got her sister killed.

  The moon was nearing its highest point as they drew close to the temple. Taro couldn’t help a gasp, even though he’d heard stories of how beautiful the place was. Before them, rising from the sea itself, was a torii gate, a sweeping gull wing of a structure. Its posts stood in what seemed from this distance deep water, but revealed itself moments later as a shallow bay, walkable even. The water around the posts of the gate shivered and shimmered, creating a huge, moving reflection that stretched all the way towards them.

  The fisherman brought the boat about, having gone as far as he could. Shusaku handed over half the money, as had been agreed on the mainland. Then he, Taro, Hiro, and Hana disembarked, jumping down from the side into the knee-deep water of the bay. The torii rose above them, something delicate and miraculous. Taro could not understand how it had been built; the posts must have been sunk in the bottom of the sea, at low tide. No one knew how, of course. The temple had been old when the boy emperor Antoku was killed in the last battle of the Heike.

  ‘Come on,’ said Shusaku. ‘We should go to the temple monastery before the sun rises.’

  ‘Will they let us in?’ said Hana.

  ‘We’ll be pilgrims,’ said Shusaku. ‘At first, anyway. They’ll have to.’

  Taro turned to them. ‘I’ll catch you up,’ he said. As they headed towards the long, gently sloping beach, he moved instead towards the torii. When he came to the base of it, he looked up at the arc of red above him, like a wooden rainbow. The water gleamed silvery all around him.

  Reaching into his cloak, he took out the Buddha ball. Without meaning to, he glanced at it, and for a moment was almost pulled into the moonlit sky of the little world in his hand. He wrenched his eyes away from the magical glass globe.

  Then he hefted it in his hand and drew back his arm to—

  No.

  A thought struck him.

  He remembered Lord Tokugawa saying that Miyajima was a Buddhist temple now, with a monastery attached. Of course it was; there were no purely Shinto shrines any more. Everything was Buddhist, because all the local kami and spirits had simply become part of the Buddhist pantheon – heavenly beings, in service of dharma. Buddhist monks believed in dragons as much as peasants did.

  What it meant, though, was something important. Taro hadn’t really given any thought to how he was going to get Kusanagi. Neither had Hana or Hiro, he realized. They’d heard that it might be here, and they’d come looking for it, as if the monks would just hand it over. But if they did have the legendary sword, it was hardly likely they would simply give it to him, was it? Even if he said he wanted it to kill a dragon.

  But they were B
uddhists.

  They might give it to him in return for something else.

  Something more valuable.

  Something once owned by the Buddha himself. Only . . . might they abuse it? No. They were monks; it wouldn’t be in their nature. Better it should be with monks, who served Buddha, than with a boy who used it to drown innocent people.

  Yes. It would be safer all round. The right thing to do.

  Taro lowered his arm and tucked the ball once again into the folds of his cloak. He had been about to throw it away, but now he needed it again. If he could use it to get the sword . . . Well, it would never bring back the people he’d drowned. But it might help him to save those whose villages were being burned by the dragon. And it might help him to marry Hana.

  CHAPTER 21

  KENJI KIRA was glad he had recruited the ninja. It had been an inspired idea, he thought, not being one for false modesty. Hiring an assassin to kill himself! The attempt itself was a kind of audition, and a test of his island’s defenses at the same time. Actually, he had been a little upset when the ninja got close enough to wrap that chain round his neck – it had been nicely done, but what it said about his security was not flattering.

  A few of his crew had died after that – and those he hadn’t brought back.

  But the important thing was that the ninja was talented. It was a burning ambition of Kenji Kira’s to kill the boy Taro – especially after the news reached him that Taro had destroyed Lord Oda. Yet it wasn’t the only thing that drove him, and there were things that needed to be done first. He wanted power, too. Land. Influence. Wealth.

  A woman to stand by his side.

  Hana.

  He had nothing to fear, not any more. He was already dead, and he couldn’t rot, because he was made of bone. It was everything he had dreamed of. Now he was free to build his empire, little by little.

  He already had the inland sea in his pocket. The merchants paid him taxes now, in return for not capturing their vessels – imagine it! They actually paid him for his piracy. The province’s daimyo knew about it too, but what could he do? There was no way his troops could challenge the pirate island. Anyway, Kira had heard rumours that the man was a secret Christian. He would not be hard to push out of the way, once Kira began to consolidate his territory.

  There was, however, one merchant who apparently didn’t know about Kira’s grip on the inland sea – the one on the heavily laden ship just ahead.

  Kira was looking through a Portuguese spyglass he had taken in a haul of booty soon after he’d arrived at the inland sea – a place conveniently far from the shogun’s influence or control – and begun to build his little army. He could see that the ship had raised all its sails, trying to outrun him, heading for the natural harbour just ahead.

  They would fail.

  He waited until his own ship had gained a little more, and the prey had drawn closer to the rocky arms of the bay. Then, raising the matchlock rifle at his side, he fired a shot over their bows. It wasn’t meant to scare them. It was meant to give the ninja his signal.

  The newest member of Kenji Kira’s private army did not hesitate. Even without the spyglass, Kira saw the chain go up, snapping taut just in front of the fleeing ship. There was a crash as it cut into the bow, a splintering sound as the rear of the ship rushed to fill space still occupied by the front.

  A movement from the rocks – the ninja was on the chain, running on all fours like a monkey towards the stricken merchant vessel.

  Extraordinary.

  Kenji Kira congratulated himself once more on his choice.

  ‘Prepare to board,’ he said to the men beside him – at least, some of them were still men.

  There was a ram on the front of their ship, a big fist of iron. It slammed into the other ship, forcing it even farther onto the chain, wood crying out as it bent and broke. A couple of the merchant crew fell into the water, screaming. Kenji Kira ignored them, because they wouldn’t be a threat any more. Sailors didn’t learn to swim; it was one of their many stupidities. Along with greasy hair and poor hygiene. Kenji Kira had been trapped on a field of the dead once, held immobile beneath a dead horse. That had been a more unpleasant experience than being in close proximity to sailors – but not by much.

  The ninja was on the other ship already. Kira saw his shadow flit behind the mast, then heard a cry from one of the sailors – a cry that was quickly cut off.

  But even the ninja couldn’t kill them all.

  The ram had brought the decks of the two ships together. Kira was on the merchant vessel with the first wave, as was his rule, seeing the stinking long-haired defenders staring at him and his crew with abject terror. He had a club in his hand; he’d discovered a liking for the way that it crushed and shattered, something more satisfying than the slicing of a sword. A man stood before him, defending his own life and his cargo. He had a short blade in his hand.

  He decided to let the man stab him – it was a good strategy, intended to wrong-foot the enemy. It also amused him. The short-sword grated between the bones of his empty ribcage, a sound like a ship’s hull on rocks. Kira twisted his torso, trapping the sword, pulling it from the man’s hand. An image: staring, fearful eyes in front of him. He struck up and outward with his club, and the sailor somersaulted backwards, landing on his face with a final-sounding crunch.

  Beside him, his men dispatched other defenders just as quickly. The ninja killed one of them ruthlessly from behind. One of the less bright among Kenji Kira’s crew, one of the still living, had been fighting the sailor from the front, and was too slow to stop his sword from swinging at the ninja. The ninja turned his body, let the blade pass harmlessly by him. In a continuation of the same movement he swung his own sword; the pirate’s head hit the deck, rolled, and fell into the sea with a plop.

  The ninja turned to Kira, shrugging an apology, when he realized what his instincts had done. Kira shrugged back. It wasn’t important. He had no room for idiots.

  A gun went off; shards of deck flew up as a hole gouged itself into the wood at Kira’s feet. He pointed up at the rigging, saw the ninja jump for the mast, begin shimmying up.

  A moment later, a diminishing cry – then a splash.

  Kenji Kira surveyed the ship. Everyone who had been on it was either dead or in the water, which meant they would soon be dead. He gestured towards the hold. ‘Take everything,’ he said.

  Then he bent down to the body at his feet, the one he’d struck with his club. He picked it up in one hand, grabbed an arm, tore it off. He prized open the chest, snapping the ribs. Tore out the heart.

  Raised it to his fleshless lips.

  When he had fed, he took in the ship again. He was a little shocked, despite himself, at how many pieces the dead man was now in. Had he really ripped his legs out of their sockets?

  Well, the hunger had been on him. He had discovered early on, when he ate Yukiko’s heart, that the dead needed to ingest the flesh of the living if they were to remain in this realm of existence.

  He saw that some of his crew, the dead ones, were eating too. Good. They would need their strength, for the coming battles. He was disturbed to see that a couple of the living ones were also gnawing on bones, but he supposed it showed ambition, at least. He held the prospect of eternal life over some of the men, leaving them mortal for the moment – it wouldn’t do if he had an army with no fear at all.

  It would mean they wouldn’t be sufficiently afraid of him.

  When he looked to the north, he saw something on the horizon. A ship. As far as he could tell, it had not noticed him and his men, hidden as they were by the embrace of the bay. It was still sailing straight for Miyajima. He raised the spyglass to his eye socket.

  The torii gate dedicated to the sea dragon swam into view, an elegant brushstroke in red. He swung the eyeglass, keeping it level with the sea. He passed the ship, moving too quickly, then turned the spyglass back, more slowly this time.

  It was a fishing vessel, no more. Perhaps taking pilgr
ims to the temple; it was common for fishermen from the mainland to do so for a price, though he had noted with some satisfaction that the price had gone up since he had been operating in these waters.

  He was about to lower the spyglass again when he saw something that shocked him. Sitting at the prow, was that...

  No. It couldn’t be.

  He examined the other figures – a large young man, a beautiful woman, another figure in a hood that covered his face.

  A beautiful woman.

  Hana.

  And the one sitting in the prow – that was Taro. Kenji Kira had been sent to kill the boy two years ago, and the closest he’d got was to face him in the monastery on Mount Hiei. He would have killed him too, if the traitor-girl Yukiko had not stabbed him from behind, bringing to an end his mortal life.

  Well, he’d killed Yukiko, tearing out her heart and devouring it. Now he had only to kill Taro, the boy who had defied him, who had made him look a fool, who had stolen the girl he loved, the beautiful Hana, who should have been Kenji Kira’s wife. The boy who – if the rumours Kira had heard on his way from Mount Hiei were to be believed – possessed the Buddha ball.

  Lord Oda believed the Buddha ball would give him control over all creation, over the five realms of samsara. Lord Oda had failed to find it. But imagine if Kenji Kira were to take it! Imagine if he were to kill Taro, and claim his treasure. Oh, it would be beautiful, it would be perfect. It was something beyond his wildest dreams of power.

  And Taro had just sailed into his little patch of the world.

  His kingdom.

  This, thought Kira as he absentmindedly licked the blood from around his mouth, was something of a mistake.

  CHAPTER 22