by Nick Lake
If it was the samurai, they would kill him.
If it was the monks, they would help him, make him live.
And that would be worse.
CHAPTER 27
WITH THE DAWN came another fire, and this one spread from the tips of his fingers to their knuckles, crawling like burning bugs, ever so slowly. This torture inched its way up his forearms, then spread across his chest, and in its wake, he was left with the ability to stretch his fingers, joint by joint, then his arms, and finally his legs and the rest of his body. Gasping at the pain as the blood filled his extremities, he began to pull himself to his feet, and so foreign was the bulk of his body to him that he felt as if he were hauling another person’s heavy carcass into the air; his legs were no longer his, but belonged to someone altogether lumpier and more clumsy.
He was staggering towards the door when the abbot stepped through it and – seeing Taro’s state – rushed forward to put a hand under his arm, supporting him. Behind him came Hiro, and when he saw Taro he gasped and ran to take his other arm. Hiro’s face was blackened with soot, his eyebrows and eyelashes singed. Taro wondered vaguely what had happened to him, could not for the moment remember when he had last seen his friend. Everything seemed very confused.
‘Oh, gods,’ Hiro said. ‘Taro. . . your mother.’
‘Yes,’ said Taro. It was all he could manage.
‘Was it. . . Kenji Kira?’ Hiro was looking at the man’s body on the ground, seeming so weak and emaciated in death that it was hard to imagine what a powerful enemy he had been in life.
‘No. Yukiko.’
Hiro made a choking sound. ‘She. . . was here?’
‘Yes.’
Inside the hall, men lay on all sides, some dead, some wounded. There was a sweet stench of blood, and the air was full of the groans and whimpers of the hurt. Taro looked around blankly. ‘The samurai?’ he asked.
‘Gone,’ said the abbot. ‘I was leading our strongest fighters. We were hiding among the trees by the meditation area, in case the samurai should breach our first defences. We were lucky – we escaped the guns. Thousands did not. But then, when the rain came, the guns were made useless. The samurai attacked with swords – and we were waiting for them.’
They emerged, finally, from the hall into the light, and Taro could see what the abbot meant: dead samurai lay everywhere. There were no monks, giving the impression that the samurai had been struck down by some vengeful act of god – the bodies of the defenders having been carried already into the halls, Taro guessed.
A single samurai knelt among the dead, his hands together, and Taro was about to question his survival when he turned, and Taro saw that it was the man who had been haunted. What had his name been? It all seemed a lifetime ago now.
The man nodded to Taro. ‘I owe allegiance to Lord Oda,’ he said. ‘But these monks saved my life. I had to fight by their side.’ It was a statement, but it carried the inflection of a question, of a plea.
‘Yes,’ said Taro, and the man nodded, a tear in his eye that might have been relief. Hayao, he thought. That’s his name.
Taro was becoming stronger by the moment, and now he turned all around, searching the scene that lay before him. He looked into Hiro’s eyes, and his friend glanced down, and in that moment he knew.
‘Hiro,’ he said. ‘Where’s Hana?’ The abbot looked at him strangely, and too late he remembered that she wasn’t Hana here, she was Hanako. He didn’t care.
Hiro still did not look up. ‘I think you had better come with us,’ he said in a flat voice.
‘No,’ said Taro, staggering. ‘No, no.’
Hiro’s face was twisted with pain. ‘I’m sorry, Taro,’ he said.
CHAPTER 28
Earlier that night
HIRO AND HAYAO flew down the steps two at a time, rushing to catch up with Hana. When Hiro could fit it into the rhythm of his running, he struck the prayer wheels, awakening their prayers to the bodhisattva of compassion. He thought compassion was what the mountain needed tonight. The way before him was lit brightly, that was one thing at least.
It was the source of the light that was the problem.
Below, the Hokke-do’s roof blazed fiercely. The trees around it were torches, the whole landscape seemingly transposed from the hell realm, where it was not terrible and unnatural for whole mountainsides to be on fire.
Hana was lighter than they were, more graceful. She flitted downward as if the steps were not even there. Hiro, on the other hand, was panting, his bulk getting in his own way, as if his own body were trying to frustrate his aims. Hayao drew ahead of him after only half the steps.
When she reached the bottom of the steps, Hana turned and headed straight for the burning Hokke-do. Hiro stopped, drew a deep breath, and shouted out.
‘Hana! No!’
She turned, and paused as she recognized him. Hayao stopped too, the three of them utterly still for one moment. She hesitated, and Hiro began running again – he’d hold her still, if he had to. But then she gave them a little bow. ‘If anything happens,’ she called, ‘tell Taro I’m sorry. Tell him. . .’ She shrugged. ‘Tell him I’ll see him in the next life. I’ll always see him.’
She was already moving, too quick to catch, and then she was inside the building, as if swallowed by its toothy mouth, all red columns and darkness. Smoke billowed from inside it, and Hana disappeared into it like a ghost.
Hiro ran forward, Hayao beside him. The heat hit him like a massive, physical presence, forcing its fiery fingers into his nostrils, his mouth, his ears. He coughed, feeling the smoke curling itself into his lungs. He tried to move forward, but found that his feet simply would not obey, that they would not take him through that doorway.
What those scrolls must mean to her. . .
His eyes streaming with tears, his throat tearing like it was being ripped from his neck, he stumbled back, driven from the door by the force of the flames. He was surprised to see Hayao run into the building, roaring.
He’ll die, he thought. But gods, he’s brave. He’d noticed Taro looking at the man with jealousy in his eyes, and now he could understand why.
A moment later, though, Hayao came stumbling out, and there was no Hana in his arms. His hair was on fire – he didn’t seem to have noticed. Red weals stood out angrily on the flesh of his arms and face. He went past Hiro and collapsed to the ground, and Hiro rolled him in the dewy grass, flapping at his hair with his cloak until the flames went out.
‘I couldn’t. . . I couldn’t even see her,’ said Hayao. Hiro saw that there were tear tracks on his cheeks, where his tears had been burned away, leaving salt on his skin. ‘I tried,’ he whispered.
‘I know,’ said Hiro. ‘I know.’
His eyes were always on the door where Hana had vanished, and as the moments went by he thought he saw her several times, but it was only a trick of the flickering light, and she didn’t come.
Sweat prickling his skin, tears drying on his cheeks, he sat down heavily at the bottom of the steps, as the world burned around him. Flames licked at the columns of the Hokke-do, hungry to consume it, as hell is always eager to consume the things of our realm. There was an almighty crash as part of the roof collapsed, sending up showers of red sparks that glittered in the air like jewels. A blast of hot air rushed past Hiro’s face, like a departing ghost.
She was not coming out.
He was surprised to note that a small part of his mind – a contemptible part, a base part – wanted him to get up and retreat, carry himself far from this fire that was threatening to kill him.
He ignored it. Only when the remaining beams crashed to the ground, sending up showers of ash and sparks – only when the flames had died down and the ground and air began to cool – did he feel a tugging on his arm, and then Hayao was hauling him to his feet.
‘She’s dead,’ said the samurai. ‘But you don’t have to be.’
Hiro shrugged. He followed Hayao as the samurai began making his way slowly up the hillside.
Behind them, the ruins of the Hokke-do – no longer a temple but a tomb – smouldered quietly in the gradually brightening air.
CHAPTER 29
TARO STOOD ON the mountaintop, and the devastation of the landscape was a mere echo of the devastation inside him.
Looking down the slope, he could see the winding stone steps, lined on either side with prayer wheels. There was a stiff wind, and as it blew the wheels turned, creaking, on their hinges – sending out useless prayers to a bodhisattva of compassion who was evidently not listening. Ash danced in the air, which itself seemed to be shivering – distorted by the heat of the small fires that still burned in the forest – so that it seemed the whole world was shaking with grief.
At the bottom of the steps was a pale grey oblong where the Hokke-do had stood. Taro could see monks moving over it, as small as ticks crawling on the skin of an animal, sifting through the debris to look for the scrolls, or any trace of Hana.
Because Hana was in there, or had been in there. Consumed by the fire. Taro had just left the body of his mother, and now he was expected to accept that Hana was dead too. He felt something tear inside his chest, and thought that thing might have been something he needed, in order to be Taro. Guilt opened its leprous, rotten arms and embraced him, covering him with its stink. If he had gone after Hana instead of his mother, then they might both be alive. He could have gone into the flames, and come out with her. He was a vampire – the fire would have hurt him, but he would have healed better than a human. And if he had not been near his mother, then Yukiko might not have killed her to hurt him.
I made the wrong choice, he thought. I made the wrong choice and now this is hell that I’m living in.
He looked up at the abbot, his gentle old face framed by sunshine – a grotesque light from heaven that Taro would from now on despise, since it did nothing but illuminate things he could not bear.
‘Permit me to commit seppuku,’ he said. What he wanted was to kill Yukiko and every one of Lord Oda’s samurai – but he would settle for himself, because in the end it was he who had failed his mother and Hana.
‘You are one of Buddha’s creatures,’ said the abbot. ‘That is not in my power to permit.’
Taro cast his sword aside and opened his mouth. The sound that came out of it was the howl of a wild creature, not a human being, but the sound – like everything else apart from the fury of revenge, the decay of guilt – was a thing of no consequence at all.
CHAPTER 30
YUKIKO STROLLED PAST the tents. Between them were corridors of air, and in those corridors she could see beyond the tent tops to the mountain beyond, where she had left Taro with the body of his mother. Some of the samurai had died, of course, but there were still thousands. That was the thing about Lord Oda’s army – it was like the waves. You could slash at it all you liked, but it would just keep coming.
There was still the problem of Lord Tokugawa, of course. His army camped on the other side of the river, tens of thousands of them. Lord Oda had requested their help with the assault on Mount Hiei, but they had declined. They had no quarrel with the Tendai monks, they said. They would continue with the siege of the Ikko-ikki. Damn them, thought Yukiko. If they had only joined the battle, the monks would be utterly destroyed now.
Well, they would be dealt with later. The time must come when Lord Oda would order war against Lord Tokugawa, and then all those smug samurai would die.
She glanced to her left, getting her bearings. About one ri away, on the other side of the river, fluttered a pennant bearing Lord Tokugawa’s mon. The sight disgusted her – Taro was Tokugawa too – but she had learned not to push Lord Oda on the topic. His surface alliance with Tokugawa was still necessary, he said, and so the farce of the two enemies besieging the Ikko-ikki monks continued.
She stepped over a large stone and turned right, counting out four tents before she came to one that was like all the others, if anything a little smaller and dirtier. Already she’d killed an assassin sent to the larger, more ostentatious tent at the fork in the river – the one decorated with the Oda mon and surrounded by well-armed, if inattentive, samurai.
Idiots.
She skirted a pile of what looked like horse manure. Really, you had to admire the man. If she were a daimyo, she would make her life all sake and tea and hot baths, when she wasn’t hunting down her enemies anyway. She wouldn’t live among sweating men and excrement. But Lord Oda was different. He did not mind discomfort. He only minded defeat.
Taking a breath to steady her nerves, she pushed aside the fabric covering and entered the tent. Light flooded in from outside, but she wasn’t worried about that – Lord Oda might be a vampire, but he had been created from Taro’s blood. The sunlight wasn’t going to harm him. And when he finally turned her, the same would go for her. She would be vampire, but she would be free, like Taro.
Not that Taro would ever be truly free again. He would walk the earth with his mother’s ghost behind him, like a shadow. Distractions might give him ease, for moments at a time, as when clouds cover the sun and your shadow disappears. But a shadow is stitched on, as is the most profound grief, and it will always come back.
Yukiko knew this intimately. She saw her sister everywhere, still. Even called to her sometimes. But the people who turned round were never her.
Lord Oda was conferring with one of his generals, but he waved the man aside when he saw Yukiko, beckoned for her to approach. The general subtracted himself ingratiatingly from the tent, walking backwards, bowing all the while.
Lord Oda looked up at her, his eyes taking in the blood on her kimono. ‘My daughter?’ he said.
Yukiko was surprised that he would ask about the girl first, not Taro. ‘I heard she went into the Hokke-do when it was burning, to try to save the sutras. She didn’t come out.’
‘Fool!’ said Lord Oda. ‘You were told to leave her in peace.’
‘I was on the other side of the mountain. And anyway, she betrayed you. I thought you would be pleased. . .’
‘Then you are a cretin,’ said Lord Oda. ‘She was my only child. My heir. How could I want her dead?’
Yukiko edged backwards, seeing the fury and disorder in his eyes. She had not expected this. ‘I—I mean, I thought you ordered her to commit seppuku, that night when Taro attacked the tower.’
‘I did,’ said Lord Oda. ‘But I was angry. I wasn’t thinking. Besides, one of my concubines was with child then. But the pregnancy. . . failed. I have sired no other children.’
He coughed, then wiped his eye with his sleeve. Yukiko stared at him. He’s a weakling! she thought. The great sword saint was shedding actual tears over his daughter.
‘She went into the Hokke-do as it burned, you say?’ he asked at last.
‘Yes.’
‘So she died bravely. Like a samurai.’
‘I suppose so, yes,’ said Yukiko, feeling increasingly uncomfortable.
‘That’s good,’ said Lord Oda, almost to himself. ‘Good.’ He looked down. ‘She betrayed me – you’re right about that – but she was beautiful, and headstrong and clever.’ He looked at her as if for confirmation. Pathetic!
‘Er. . . yes,’ said Yukiko.
‘And now, of course, I have a loyal girl in you, do I not?’
Yukiko nodded.
‘Good. Because if you fail me. . .’ He drew his finger over his throat. Then he sat up straight and blinked slowly, as if to close his mind to the topic of Hana and open it again on more important matters. ‘What about Kira?’ he asked.
‘Dead.’
‘With honour?’
‘No,’ said Yukiko. ‘I killed him from behind. He cried.’ She stared into the eyes of the daimyo, willing him to blink, to rebuke her. But he only shrugged.
‘And Taro?’
‘Alive. I killed his mother before his eyes.’
Now a hardness came into Lord Oda’s expression. ‘You’re sure this will work? I don’t like to think that he’s up there’ – he waved a hand towards
the general direction of Mount Hiei – ‘and I can’t just go and make him tell me where it is.’
‘I explained this,’ she said patiently. ‘He would never tell you. However, with his mother dead, he will go to the ball. He must. He is consumed now by thoughts of revenge, gnawing at him like rats. I know the feeling. He will go to what will give him power; to what will enable him to destroy us. He will seek out the ball.’ She stretched her back, yawning. ‘Anyway, it’s his closest link to his mother. I assume he will start by returning to Shirahama, where he grew up.’
‘So he will go to Shirahama. Then he will seek the ball and its power.’
Yukiko sighed. ‘It’s not the power that interests him, I don’t think. He has more honour than that. Real honour, not samurai honour. It’s tedious, I can tell you. He’s always thinking about the right thing – that’s why he’s so dangerous. He makes people believe in him, and then they die. The ball is more than a source of power to him. It’s an heirloom from his dead mother. That is why he will go to Shirahama.’
Lord Oda grinned. ‘You are a cold one, aren’t you?’
‘No. It’s the dead who are cold.’ And hungry, she thought. Many times she had sensed her sister’s presence – a different thing from seeing her in the backs of strangers – and had felt a draining of her strength. Many times she had woken sweating, and seen Heiko’s face pale and drawn in the gleam of her sword, or the clear water of the well. Yukiko was haunted, she knew it. She only hoped the blood she was spilling would satisfy her dead sister.
‘You know he’ll want to kill you?’ the daimyo asked. ‘You’re not concerned about that?’
‘No. He’s weak. All I had to do was draw a second sword, and he became as defenceless as a baby.’
Lord Oda shrugged. ‘Very well. The risk is yours to take, anyway. But you had better be as tough as you say.’
