Blood Ninja (13 page)

Taro pulled back from the eyeholes. Had this man seen through their disguise?

But Shusaku only echoed the samurai’s laugh. “Please don’t confuse me for a peasant. My master’s elevated class excuses him from this kind of irritation. You will let us past.”

The samurai bowed. “Ordinarily I would agree. However, the order to search comes from Lord Oda himself, and he is of a
sufficiently elevated
class to impose whatever he wills. Besides, it will be a matter of a moment. The ambassador we have been expecting is a grown man. The criminal we seek is too young to shave. I imagine that even men of our class can tell the difference.” He put a strong accent on the words “our class,” and Taro could feel the tension and violent potential in the air.

Taro tried to control his heartbeat.
They’re going to look inside
, he thought.
And then we’ll be done for
.

Shusaku sighed, then jerked his head back to indicate the palanquin. “Very well. But please don’t detain us too long.”

What?
Taro sat back as far as he could in the seat, as if he could disappear into the fabric.

The samurai motioned for his companion to go forward. This man—his features were coarser, suggesting a lower rank—stepped toward the curtained door of the palanquin. Taro, thinking of nothing else to do, pushed the scroll out through the curtain, hoping
that the man would see the seals and leave it at that, satisfied.

It almost worked.

The scroll was taken from Taro’s hand, then returned to it. He allowed himself for a moment to hope, but the curtain began to twitch open and—

“Balance, Hiro!” said Shusaku, using the signal they had agreed on before.

As instructed, Hiro dropped his end of the palanquin. Taro fell backward, striking his head on the wooden board of the vehicle, cursing. The samurai called out in surprise.

Taro heard the man step up to Hiro. “What’s wrong, man?” he demanded. There was a pause. “What’s that you’re looking at?” Then there was a cry of disgust. “Gods, it’s a finger! What the—”

“Hey,” said the higher-ranking samurai. “What’s going on here?”

Taro heard Shusaku say, in a calming voice, “All is well, guard-
san
. My friend here is a leper, that is all. I thought his condition was improving, but … Well, you see how his face is wrapped. It is a terrifying sight when that scarf comes off. Hiro,” he continued, his voice modulating from placatory wheedling to indulgent reprimand. “Please pick up your finger and apologize to the samurai for startling them.”

The higher-ranking samurai grunted with revulsion. “A leper? And you use such a man to carry an important official?”

“Charity,” said Shusaku, “is of great importance to the ambassador.”

Taro pressed his face once more to the crack and saw the samurai guards stepping back, wary of infection.

The leader gestured, irritably. “Be on your way,” he said, gruffly. “I don’t want you leaving body parts all over my bridge.”

Taro felt the rear end of the palanquin lift into the air, and then they were moving again. He looked through the eyeholes. They were passing between rice paddies, over which peasants’ cottages stood on stilts. It was drawing close to the annual
obon
festival, when the spirits of the dead walked the earth, and many of the cottages already bore blue lanterns, swinging in the breeze.

This was the time of year when the spirits were able to leave, for one week only, the confines of the lower realms of samsara, known collectively as
annoyo
—the realm of hungry ghosts, or any of the other circles of hell. For this one week they could return to their families, and the
obon
lamps would guide their way. Then they could feast on the offerings of rice that were left for them, assuage for a short time their hunger, and perhaps progress further to enlightenment in a subsequent life, thanks to the prayers of their family.

When the dead of the family returned, these lanterns would help light their way home.

“We must find somewhere to shelter,” said Shusaku, turning as he supported the weight of the palanquin’s front bars. “We’ve lost time, with waiting for the ambush.”

“All right,” said Taro. The light was already spreading on the tips of the now closer mountains, as if they had been dipped in gold.

“Have you seen how many cottages are not displaying
obon
lights?” the ninja asked.

“Yes,” said Taro. He
had
noticed it, actually, and found it strange. Only a few blue lanterns had glowed in the windows of the villages they’d passed.

“Many peasants were killed in the battles against Lord Yoshimoto. Many others were forced out of these areas.”

“My parents included,” said Hiro.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” said Shusaku. “Anyway, we should be able to find an abandoned hut without too much difficulty.”

Just then, Taro saw a flicker of movement over to the right. Bushes lined the side of the road, obscuring the fields from view. “What was—”

The words stopped in his mouth, as two black-clad figures stepped out of the undergrowth in front of them, blocking the road. They wore masks that covered their faces, all but the eyes—and their swords were short and businesslike in their strong-looking hands.

“Didn’t I say,” said the one on the left, “when we saw those two eyes bobbing along in the air before that palanquin there, that we may have happened upon our quarry?”

“You did,” said the other man, running his fingertip along the blade of his sword. “Your powers of discernment remain undimmed by your recent bludgeoning.”

“Thank you. You, too, appear unaffected in your mental capacities by the painful evisceration you only this night received.” He snapped his wrist to make a heavy wooden stick drop from his sleeve into his hand.

Shusaku stammered. “We’re just—just travelers.… We have no money.” Taro couldn’t tell if he was really scared, or just feigning terror to buy time.

The ninja on the right laughed, palming a dagger into his left hand, and turned to his companion. “Oh, our master will forgive us
now
, don’t you think?”

His friend nodded, flipping his heavy stick.

The ninja who had spoken first pointed his sword at Shusaku. “You
gutted
me. From behind! It took me an age to push my entrails back inside.”

“You bashed my head in with a rock,” said the other. “Luckily, I was ugly to begin with. But it
hurt
.”

Taro stared at the hooded figures.
These are the men Shusaku killed when he was fighting invisibly
. Shusaku was not wearing his mask now, and so to a ninja his eyes would appear to hover in the air.
Yet they
live.
How is that possible?
He had seen Shusaku kill them, with his own eyes.

Taro felt behind him, and his fingers touched the smooth curve of his bow. The string had lost much of its elasticity from the seawater, but the two ninjas were not far away. He held his breath as he held up the bow, nocked an arrow, and aimed through the eye slit. The point of the arrow wavered over the closest ninja’s chest, as if it were marking him out, eager to leap into his flesh.

But it’s not the arrow marking him out
, Taro told himself.
It’s you
. He felt his soul withering within him, as he contemplated
shooting this man from concealment. But he knew he would do it, to help Shusaku.

“What are you doing here?” Shusaku asked. “On this road?”

“Sneaking away,” said Sword-and-Stick. “Our master is a man of iron principles. He would not view our failure with indulgence. Let the others go to him if they like. We are better off alone.”

Sword-and-Dagger hissed at him. “Enough,” he said.

Taro cursed him. The talkative one may have revealed the name of their employer, given a little more time.

Suddenly Sword-and-Stick sprang forward and, spinning in the air, punched Shusaku in the throat with the end of the stick. Shusaku dropped the palanquin, coughing, and now Taro was looking up at the scene, holding his breath.

The ninja landed and was turning on his foot even as he hit the ground, coming round again with his sword blade glinting—

Then something flew up from Shusaku’s waist and burst in front of the attacking ninja’s face—one of the little bombs Shusaku carried, packed with gunpowder from China. The ninja screamed as flames ate at his scarf. He spun around, flapping at his face with his sleeves. Shusaku plucked the man’s sword from his hand as he flailed ineffectually at the flames, as easily as removing a cherry from a low-hanging branch.

The other ninja fared little better.

With ample time to react, he also had the advantage of approaching Shusaku from the side as Shusaku was occupied with throwing his bomb. That meant that he was able to launch a well-aimed strike with his sharp-looking dagger.

But by the time the blade was in motion, Shusaku had already pirouetted out of the way, leaving the steel to penetrate the wall of the palanquin. Taro fell back, as the point shivered just a hand’s breadth from his face.

Outside, the ninja tugged on his knife, trying to free it. Taro closed his eyes for a moment, then fired.

The ninja had of course not anticipated the arrow that sprang forth from the palanquin, as if the vehicle itself wished him harm.
His dagger forgotten, he stared at the shaft protruding from his chest. It had not penetrated deeply. Taro had known the string was not strong enough, but as the attacker pulled out the arrow, Shusaku moved liquidly from the side.

The unfortunate ninja’s hands still clung to the arrow as his head fell past the slits in the curtain, turning in the air.

Before the head left the shoulders, Shusaku was already moving at the other man. Hiro, too, had rushed forward, when the palanquin fell, and now the big wrestler grabbed the ninja’s arms and pinned them behind his back. Sword-and-Stick had managed to put out his scarf, and now it only smoldered, giving off little wisps of gray smoke.

He struggled against Hiro’s grip.

Taro dragged himself out of the palanquin, stumbling to his feet at the side of the road. “Wait!” he shouted to Shusaku, who was advancing on the ninja with his sword twirling in his hand. “He might know something about who wanted me dead!”

But his words were still forming in his mouth when Shusaku gestured at Hiro to let go, and plunged his sword into the man’s heart. The ninja swayed a moment on his feet, as if pinned to the air by the blade, then crumpled to the ground.

Taro put a hand on Shusaku’s arm. “You killed them.”

“This time, yes. I could not risk any less. We should move, right now. Get off the road and into the fields, if we must.”

“But in Minata, then, and on the beach—you didn’t kill them?”

“No. A vampire can survive any kind of insult to his body, unless he be decapitated or cut through the heart or exposed to bright sunshine, of course.”

Taro looked at the man’s floating eyes. He could see Shusaku’s body, clothed in the servant’s garb, yet the face was invisible. The effect was disconcerting. “Yet you let me believe that they were dead. Why didn’t you tell me they lived?”

Shusaku’s eyes glimmered with what Taro thought might be a smile. “I didn’t tell you they
didn’t
. But better that I lie to
you, if it forces you to see that sometimes we must be practical, not merciful.” He pointed to the fields that lay glittering in the encroaching gray light of dawn. “Come on. Look for a hut with no light in the window.”

Taro looked at the ninja, then at Hiro. He nodded, and they left the road, following as Shusaku led the way through shallow reed beds, disturbing frogs that leaped away, croaking. A smell of damp vegetation rose from the waterlogged ground. Luckily for them, the moon was now covered by ragged clouds, and so despite the rapid onset of dawn, their movements were obscured by darkness.

As they skirted what looked like an inhabited village, Taro watched Shusaku. The older man had wrapped his face again using silk scarves he appeared to have secreted in his clothes, and his dark clothes concealed him less effectively—in Taro’s case, anyway—than the tattoos on his bare skin.

They crept in this manner across a
ri
or more of farmland, and Taro was acutely conscious of the orange light that tinged the mountains—both because of the threat it posed to his physical safety and also because when the sun rose, it would reveal them starkly against this flat, featureless landscape, devoid of woods and concealed animal paths. Anyone looking for them would spot them immediately from the road.

If the sun didn’t kill them first.

So it was with a sigh of relief from Taro and Hiro that Shusaku peered through a grimy shoji window of a hut just at the edge of one of the villages. Already they were in the foothills that had seemed so distant from Nagoya, and the ground was less wet underfoot, as rice paddies gave way to orchards and beehives.

“This one,” he whispered, and Taro stood beside him to look into a dust-covered and sparsely furnished hovel, only a couple of tatami mats wide. “We’ll have to hang up cloth in the window, to block out the sunlight. But it will serve for today. As long as the light is not too bright and our skin is covered, we will survive.”