by Nick Lake
This is Oda’s territory, his province, thought Taro. I was arrogant to think that wouldn’t matter.
He could turn and run, but there would be no point. Besides, he’d seen the ghosts turn to crabs before his eyes – he knew that there was more to the world than most people saw, and that made him think that just possibly prophecies were real too, and he might not die on this anonymous path. Or if he did die, then just as well. He would rejoin his mother – maybe Hana, too.
That wasn’t all of it, though. There was also the anger that burned in his chest when he drew closer and saw that the men wore the Oda mon on their breastplates, and on the tusked and horned helmets on their heads. The need for revenge was like something trying to force its way out of him by charring his flesh, some fire-breathing demon living within his flesh, beneath the cage of his ribs. He understood now how Yukiko must have felt about those she considered guilty of her sister Heiko’s death.
Taro kept walking, but slowed. He scanned the path ahead, counting the men, checking where they stood. He had only a sword to defend him, and there were at least eight of them. Some of them had bows, he could see. Well, he could send some of them to hell, at least. Even as he thought all this he was gauging the distance to the nearest bow, wondering if he could get to it in time to nock an arrow to the string – he had always been good with bows.
‘Stop, boy,’ said the biggest man. His helmet was a demon’s face, leering and pulling its tongue.
Taro stopped.
‘You must be Taro. We’ve been waiting for you.’ The man drew his katana. ‘Hand over the ball.’
‘I don’t have it,’ said Taro.
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘I don’t expect you to do anything. I’m just telling you I don’t have it.’
The samurai sighed. ‘Where is it, then?’
‘The last I saw of it, a samurai had it. He wasn’t wearing the Oda mon.’
A ripple of unease ran through the men at that. Taro heard several of them draw in breath, heard it whistle over their lips and tongues. His senses turned more acute, he had noticed, when a fight was brewing. His hand twitched at his side, wanting to go to the sword.
‘Liar,’ said the big man, evidently a hatamoto, judging by the spear he carried with the Oda mon on a small pennant – and so a prominent member of the Oda hierarchy. ‘There are only Oda samurai in these parts.’
‘That’s strange,’ said Taro. ‘Because the men who took the ball were being fired on by a ship flying the Oda flag. It seems to me your enemies must have the ball. Maybe even Lord Tokugawa.’ As he said it, a thought flashed through his mind. The big man on the ship – it couldn’t have been Lord Tokugawa, could it?
No, it was impossible. The daimyo would not be on a ship in Shirahama bay, deep in Oda territory. It would be tactical madness.
The leader took a step towards Taro. ‘Give us the ball or die, ninja scum,’ he said.
‘Not much of a choice,’ said Taro, ‘when I don’t have the ball.’ But he moved forward anyway, his hand outstretched, fingers closed, as if clutching something. The hatamoto took the bait – leaned towards him, looking down at his hand. Taro flicked his hand and the sand he’d put in his pocket sprayed out, hitting the man in the eyes. He followed with a right-hand strike to the neck, his large ring striking a pressure point on the hatamoto’s neck and causing his legs to give way, as if the tendons at the back of his knees had been severed.
Taro used the man’s bulk as a shield to take the first three arrows that flew towards him. Then he pushed the corpse to the ground and rushed at the last man to fire – the one who’d be slowest to reload. He still hadn’t drawn his sword – instead he jumped at the man, clung to his shoulders, and flipped over him, turning in the air. He landed behind the man, hugged him tight, and dragged him, twisting, to the ground. An arrow whooshed over his head as they fell. He bit deep into the man’s neck, tearing open the windpipe. Limbs flailed. He registered in some deep part of him the iron beauty of blood on his tongue, but he didn’t drink – he didn’t have time. Still, some of the life force trickled down his throat, a warm blessing.
With one hand, he snapped the quiver from the dying man’s back, and with the other he tore the bow from his loose fingers. He came up on his knees, aimed, fired. A samurai staggered, clutching at the feathers suddenly protruding from his throat, gagging on blood.
Taro nocked, drew, fired – a smooth rhythm, and his arrows took one archer in the heart, one in the stomach, and another, who had turned to run, in the back. The one who had been hit in the stomach went down on his knees beside the tree he had been using for cover, but still started to arm his bow once more. Taro put another arrow in his eye.
The world had shrunk to this moment, this scene before him. He could hear nothing but his own heartbeat, whoosh-boom, whoosh-boom, whoosh-boom. He wasn’t aware of the sunlight falling through the leaves, the distant smell of the sea, the crying of birds. He was aware only of the other men, and him, and the work that would have to be done to put them in the grave. He wasn’t even thinking about revenge, not really. He was just conscious of a consuming imperative, which was to kill these Oda samurai, to give them a taste of what they had done to the monks of Mount Hiei, to his mother, to Hana.
A lithe samurai with bushy eyebrows beneath his mask came at Taro, sword swinging wildly. It was no kata Taro had ever seen – he thought it was pure fear and desperation turned into movement. Taro didn’t even bother deflecting the blow, just let it swing harmlessly past, and brought his sword up into the undefended side of the man, splitting him from his armpit to his opposite shoulder. There might have been a gurgling sound, though Taro may have imagined it because he saw the blood bubble from the man’s mouth.
Two more samurai crept towards him – he was surprised to see that they appeared to be the only ones still living. He bounced his sword in his hand, half invitation and half taunt. He suddenly became aware that he was screaming, though he hadn’t heard that either.
A horrible thought went through his head, almost as if someone else was thinking it. They’re already dead, said the thought. They just don’t know it yet.
There must have been a clang that rang out through the trees when his blade met the onrushing sword of the first man – but he didn’t hear it. He focused on the eyes of his enemies, watching for their next moves. He blocked, parried, slashed. These two were good, he realized. They were driving him back, cramping his movements, keeping his sword so busy defending that he wasn’t able to draw blood. He glanced down, to avoid a stone or a corpse at his feet – it could have been either – and a line of fire traced itself down his arm.
Blood dripped from the wound. It wasn’t deep but it was bad, anyway, it meant he was losing. He saw one of the samurai – blankly, he noted that the man was missing most of his teeth – grin at him. Swords flashed, spun, danced. He was growing weaker.
Then, an opening. The man on his right stepped awkwardly, catching his foot on the armour of a downed archer. He recovered quickly, getting his sword up in a block – but Taro wasn’t concerned with that. What the pause from the right-hand man had enabled him to see was that the samurai on the left was coming at him with a classic kata, and he raised his sword, deflected, took off the man’s jaw with a devastating blow that continued in a blood-spattered right-hand arc, finished by biting into the other man’s shoulder.
Shaking and convulsing, the left-hand man went down – though again, his companion was stronger. He twisted away from Taro’s sword, the blood running down his arm forming an almost exact counterpoint to Taro’s own wound, as if Taro were facing himself across a mirror, a nightmare version of himself in Oda armour.
The samurai spat. ‘Now we’re equal,’ he said, as if this were some kind of stupid childhood game.
‘No,’ said Taro. ‘We’re not. You’re a samurai and I’m a fisherman.’
‘So?’ said the man.
‘So I don’t bother with things like honour,’ said
Taro. He brought his hands together as if to grip his sword with both, then flicked his left wrist. A throwing star embedded itself in the man’s cheek, or rather it was there so quickly and suddenly it was as if it had started out within him, and grown outward through the flesh. Observing Shusaku’s actions had taught Taro always to carry such things; somewhere in the folds of his cloak were also gold coins, explosives, daggers disguised as quills.
The man grinned again – it seemed a fixation with him – and leaped forward, pressing Taro back with a flurry of strikes. Taro met them easily, though he gave ground anyway, to give the man a good death, if nothing else.
‘You missed,’ said the man.
‘No,’ said Taro. ‘I didn’t.’ Just then the man’s leg gave way beneath him and he crashed heavily to the ground – Taro heard a crunch as his knee hit a rock and broke. He clutched at his windpipe, his eyes going big and bulging.
‘Poison,’ said Taro. ‘Just the thing for ninja scum like me.’
The samurai was starting to turn an alarming purple colour. Taro decapitated him with a single blow, to put him out of his misery. Then he limped over to the leader’s body. He must have pulled something in his leg during the fight, though he couldn’t think when. He looked down into the proud, arrogant, stupid eyes that stared out blankly through the mask. The Oda mon was set in the middle of the section of steel that covered the man’s forehead. Then, as he looked into the dead eyes, it wasn’t the hatamoto he saw any more but Hana, lying with the scrolls clasped to her chest, not moving, and then it was his mother, too still in her white clothes.
Without warning, a tsunami of fury washed away any trace of Taro for a moment, any trace of a human being, and left him a demon of revenge. He screamed and this time he knew he was screaming. He brought his sword down, brought it down again, again. He felt blood hot against his face, like hell’s rain, and he kept stabbing down, butchering the already dead body.
Then there were great racking sobs going through him, and as he shook the sword fell from his fingers and struck the ground wetly. He was crying, he realized, and his tears mingled with the blood on his face, and there was a sound coming out of him that was like a broken bellows, a terrible, sad, lonely sound.
He gazed around him, at the broken bodies and the blood. He gazed inside him, and saw that his mother was still dead and Hana might be too, and it still hurt. None of their deaths had done anything to help him; his revenge was a hollow thing – a rice bowl with nothing in it but chopsticks.
Feeling sick, he dragged himself to his feet and lurched from that place. If I kill Yukiko, and Lord Oda – will it feel this empty? he wondered. He couldn’t think about that now – it made his head hurt. He had to kill them – they had killed his mother, had taken Hana from him. It was because of Lord Oda that all of this had happened, that his father had died – the man he’d thought was his father – and his mother, too.
And there was something else. If he didn’t cling to revenge, to the desire to hurt those who had hurt him, then what was there? The Buddha ball was nothing – a golden trinket. Perhaps there was a real ball somewhere, and he would look for it, of course he would. He wasn’t going to give up on reviving Hana. But in his mind that quest was shapeless, amorphous. He didn’t know how he was ever going to begin to find the real Buddha ball, even if it existed.
A small, quiet voice inside him – a voice he didn’t like, a snivelling voice – also told him that Hana might not wake as he wanted her to, might not wake to embrace him and take him for her husband but to stand by Hayao’s side, to marry the samurai she clearly deserved. He told that voice to shut up; it made his skin crawl.
As he took the path, he turned and saw his mother’s ghost following him. It didn’t even surprise him any more – he accepted it, with a weary horror. His mother was grey against the green of the grass, she was shaking her head, over and over, and she was weeping. She had seen him kill those men, he realized – had seen him lose control of his anger, anoint himself with blood.
He turned, so that he couldn’t see her any more. His shame was a heavy enough burden – he didn’t need to see it reflected in her eyes.
I’m doomed now, he thought. I’m lost.
CHAPTER 49
THE MAN TURNED around, and Taro crouched behind a tree. It had been four days since he left Shirahama, or had it been three? He was finding it hard to keep track any more. He seemed to be walking so slowly, too – every footstep a painful effort. He needed blood, that was it.
Well, soon he would have it.
He slowed his breathing right down, until he could hear the susurrus of the wind in the trees, and the song of a faraway bird. He waited for the sound of footsteps, but none came. Eventually he eased himself onto his feet and peered round the tree. The old peasant was continuing on his way, his bony back now a fair distance down the path.
Taro cursed. Now he’d have to get close again, and he was so weak he couldn’t move with his customary grace or silence. He didn’t even want this old man’s blood – not really.
But he did need it.
It had started with the outstretched hands, the beseeching expression. But every time he went towards his mother, she scattered on the air like a dandelion clock, and he was left embracing a column of nothingness. More and more often she had appeared to him, until she was almost a constant companion on his journey to the ninja mountain. Always, now, she was trying to tell him something, but though her mouth opened and closed, no sound came out, her lips speaking the silent language of the dead. Perhaps he should have been returning to Mount Hiei, to see her body again before it was cremated. But he had time, he thought, before the last rites. And besides, he had been wrong to send Hiro off on his own. His friend had always been loyal. It was time to repay him in kind.
Did she understand, when he asked her what she wanted? It was impossible to tell. She only went on speaking to him in her incomprehensible, soundless speech, and sometimes shaking her head. If he tried to approach her, she turned back into air.
The day before, he’d looked down at the surface of a stream as he was crossing it, and caught sight of his face. At first he’d recoiled, thinking someone desperately ill was standing behind him. But then he’d realized that the haggard, pallid features were his own. His skin was stretched taut over his cheekbones, as if his skull had grown tired of being hidden away beneath his flesh and was pushing through to show itself to the world.
His eyes were the worst. They gazed blankly out from within sunken bruises, the eyes of a dying person. Horrified, he thought of Mokuren, and how he had grown pale and thin when his mother’s ghost was visiting him – he saw Hayao, sitting in the inn, a wasted, skeletal vestige of his former self.
My mother is a gaki, he realized. A hungry ghost.
There was a ghost killing him, and it was his own mother.
So it was that the need for blood grew stronger and stronger. He’d hunted two peasants already in this valley, and if he wasn’t careful there would be men all over the woods, holding burning torches and makeshift weapons, looking for the kyuuketsuki. Still, it would be what he deserved, wouldn’t it? He felt sick with shame as he moved as quietly as he could between the trees, stalking the old man.
Still, it wasn’t enough to stop him.
The old man paused by a tree and took some tools out of his bag. He began tapping something into the wood with a hammer. No doubt taking the sap for glue or something, thought Taro. Now was the time, while the man’s hands were occupied. Ordinarily Taro could have chased down any man – any deer, too – and overpowered it easily.
(Him, he corrected himself.)
But now he was weak, and no amount of blood seemed to keep him going for long.
Stepping closer, he snapped a twig, and the man turned just as Taro reached out for his neck. Reacting instinctively, Taro lashed out with his heel, stamping on the sensitive spot between the man’s ankle and the top of his foot. The man went down on one knee and Taro caught his neck, his fingers j
abbing into the peasant’s pressure points. The body went limp in his hands and he lowered it to the ground
(him)
before sinking his teeth into the neck and drinking deeply. He felt that surge of power, like a deep breath after a long dive, and then his limbs were no longer heavy wooden appurtenances, seemingly attached to him with the sole purpose of weighing him down, but light, lithe, and essential components of his being, the parts of him that touched the ground and allowed him to shape the things he could hold. He gripped the man with fingers of iron.
For a long moment he was conscious of nothing but the unbelievable sensation, warm and comforting, of satiety, but then there was a flicker of movement and he looked up to see his mother, standing a little to the side, a shadow cutting across her body. She was looking at him with disappointment in her eyes, her mouth opening and closing uselessly as always.
He pulled away, feeling blood trickling down his chin. He looked down and saw that the man was very pale indeed, his pulse only a faint irregular vibration of the skin on his neck. Usually Taro could sense a person’s heartbeat from strides away, a drumbeat that encoded their state of health, their age, their level of excitement. But this man’s heart was barely beating.
You nearly killed him, he thought – and for once, when he looked at his mother’s mouth, he thought that was what she was saying too.
It may have been a day after that, or it may have been a week, when he came finally to the little hut at the top of the meadow. It was near dusk, or near dawn, Taro wasn’t entirely sure. Small flowers dotted the high grass, nature bombarded his senses with the rich smell of its healthiness, its vigour, the vivid colours of the new life. He couldn’t wait to get inside and see Hiro again. Hiro would know what to do.
