Lord Oda's Revenge (46 page)

He just wanted Yukiko dead.

He was dimly aware of Hana saying something behind him, expressing some kind of concern, but he was not in that world any more, he was in the circle of steel. He noted that Yukiko, too, was twisting the katas to her own devices, using moves he'd never seen before. At one point she ducked under one of his strikes, then slashed open his forearm. He barely glanced at the wound before landing her a cut right across the scalp.

Then came the moment he'd been waiting for.

Taro feinted to the left and for some reason, though she had seen through all his previous deceits, Yukiko went to block his sword. Twisting his blade in mid-movement, he brought it down towards her side.

Then something hot and hard struck him in the right shoulder, knocking him back and causing his blade to drop to the ground from his suddenly numb fingers. He stumbled, pressing his hand to the wound and taking it away wet with blood. Before him, a samurai emerged from the woods, holding a gun.

Behind the samurai, walking casually, came the unmistakable figure – lopsided, its right arm withered; a beautiful
katana
in its stronger left arm – of Lord Oda Nobunaga.

 

‘K
ILL THE OLD
one,' said Lord Oda. ‘He's dangerous.'

Obeying his daimyo's orders, the samurai rushed past Taro to attack Shusaku.

Lord Oda winked at Taro. ‘You,' he said, ‘are going to die.' He turned to Hana. ‘And you are coming home with me. I haven't decided yet what your punishment will be. Probably I'll lock you up in the tower for good this time, after I've cut you up a bit. I wouldn't want any noblemen –
or peasant boys
– getting any ideas.'

She stared at him. ‘Father. . .,' she said, and Taro wasn't sure if it was a plea, or a statement, or an expression of horror.

‘Oh, don't worry,' said Lord Oda. ‘Your wounds will only be superficial, if painful. I wouldn't want to. . . ruin you.' He paused, cocking his head to one side. ‘You know, you look more like your mother than ever.'

Hana let out a scream and ran at him, her sword high. But Yukiko came forward to meet her, blocking Hana and then dropping back, keeping up a quick succession of parries that did little more than ward off Hana's blows.

Taro bent down to pick up his sword in his left hand. The world had taken on a greater brightness and detail, as if his wound
had opened him to reality and let more of it in. He could hear Shusaku behind him, muttering to himself as he fought the samurai. Taro wasn't sure if Shusaku knew that he did this. Probably not – it was like he went into a trance when he was fighting.

It was almost funny, or would have been, under different circumstances. Taro knew that Shusaku would kill the samurai – that wasn't a concern. What was a concern was Hana's safety, and Hiro's. Other samurai were bursting into the clearing now, and one of them ran towards Taro's large friend.

He doesn't even have a sword
, thought Taro.

But he needn't have worried – Hiro went down on one knee, knocked aside the man's sword, and rammed his shoulder up and forward into his chest, sending him flying. There was a time when Hiro had challenged passing
ronin
to wrestling matches, pocketing the money that their overconfident friends bet against him. His instincts had obviously not left him.

Taro turned away from Hiro, worried for him, but knowing that he had to kill Lord Oda if this was ever going to stop. He moved forward, glancing occasionally at Hana, who was still fighting Yukiko. It was odd – Yukiko had fought free-form with him, but now she was meeting Hana's competent but unimaginative kata forms with predictable blocks and simple moves.

Why isn't she fighting properly?

But he didn't have time to think about it, because at that moment Lord Oda was on him, his sword nothing but a silvery streak in the air, coming at Taro from the wrong side, which would confuse and distract a swordsman educated according to the conventions.

Yet Taro was not a conventional swordsman.

Taro met Lord Oda in the centre of the clearing, keeping his hand loose on the pommel of his sword. Neither he nor Lord Oda
said anything – it wasn't necessary. When they'd last fought, Taro had left the daimyo for dead. He wasn't going to rest until Taro paid for it.

I might as well have signed my death warrant
, he thought, as he was pressed irresistibly backwards, towards the cliff. A strike from Lord Oda came within a finger-span of his chest – would have speared his heart if he hadn't turned, letting the blade go past. For a moment there was an opportunity – he lunged at the opening in Oda's side, but the sword saint was too quick. Leaping back, Lord Oda got his sword up and twisted Taro's blade aside, raked his blade along Taro's arm as its point pressed towards his chest again. Only by giving up more ground, his back almost against the rock now, was Taro able to avoid the blow. Taro was slower than the daimyo – as he parried the blows, he knew that the fight couldn't go on for much longer. Terror was gripping his heart, squeezing it. He was finding it more and more difficult to breathe.

But Lord Oda was too arrogant in his strength. He lowered his guard for a fraction of a moment to attempt a clever strike, and Taro put his blade through the man's sword arm, rather than the heart he had been aiming for, feeling the scrape as it filleted the daimyo's bicep from the bone. He was pleased for a heartbeat, but then he yanked back on the sword and felt it resist his pull – he'd stuck himself to Lord Oda now, and left himself open to a sword tip in the guts.

His sword came free, but not before Lord Oda dealt him a deep cut through his side. Pain was a bright flash in Taro's vision, making the forest scene in front of him pale and luminous. He clutched at the cut with his left hand, feeling how deep it was, biting his tongue at the agony of it. It had missed his organs, at least. As he explored the wound with his fingers, he realized that
he was lucky – the daimyo's injury had taken the force out of his strike, which could otherwise have gone right through him. Without thinking, he raised his bloody fingers to his face and wiped streaks of red on his cheek.

‘You'll have to do better than that,' Taro spat, the pain of the cut in his side making his voice tremble more than he liked.

Lord Oda screamed, as much in frustration as rage, and stepped back into the fighting stance. Taro saw Yukiko look over to see what had happened to the daimyo, then return her attention to Hana as she redoubled her attack.

Lord Oda's wounded left arm hung awkwardly. He glanced at it, then tossed his sword into his withered right arm, the one that had been wounded so many years ago, forcing him to adapt his technique. He came at Taro with a flurry of blows.

‘At first,' said the daimyo as he fought, ‘I learned to fight with my remaining good arm. I made myself a sword saint again, learned every move backward.'

He turned aside one of Taro's strikes and got his blade inside Taro's, his sword tip plunging into Taro's bullet wound before it was pulled back, as Lord Oda leaned away from Taro's counter-strike. Over Lord Oda's shoulder, Taro saw a group of samurai wearing the Oda
mon
run into the clearing.

Oh, gods, we're outnumbered
, he thought.
Badly outnumbered
.

Lord Oda must have heard them, because he raised his bloody, wounded arm and shouted, without turning, ‘Keep back! The boy is mine. Seize my daughter if you can.'

Then he focused on Taro again, his sword still leaping and slashing, and began to talk once more, as if this were a polite conversation, not a fight to the death.

‘But then I saw my small-mindedness,' Lord Oda continued. ‘Why should a
weak
arm be a
bad
arm? I began to teach myself to
fight with this arm too. The sword is not just about strength. It's about speed and agility.'

As if to demonstrate, he let loose a succession of lightning-fast moves, forcing Taro to block ever more quickly. Taro was beginning to tire. Lord Oda was a
kensei
, a sword saint, and Lord Oda was going to kill him.

Then Taro heard Shusaku's voice. ‘Drop your sword, Nobunaga.'

Lord Oda held Taro's sword down and turned to see what Shusaku was doing. And then, to Taro's surprise, he backed away.

And dropped his sword.

 

A
T FIRST
,
AND
as always, Shusaku felt the dead pressing in on him. Shadowy forms, they filled the clearing, and all of them had been opened up or shortened by his sword – he could see its mark on them like a trace of silver.

This is my karma
, he thought. It surrounded him, crowded him, threatened to drown him. He'd never had a child. All he had done was to send people back, into the darkness, and their souls as they passed into hell were like a great counterweight, dragging Shusaku farther and farther down into his own hell, from which only death would be an escape, and even that would lead to nothing but suffering.

At first, and as always, he didn't want to kill the samurai before him. But really, what was the choice? It was either the other man or him, Shusaku knew. And one thing was for sure.

It wasn't going to be him.

Gathering his
qi
for one final time –
I promise it's the final time
– he saw the samurai in his mind's eye, a skeleton of pulsing red, smelling strongly of sweat and horse dung and leather. He blocked the childish, almost insulting attack, and sighed inwardly. Once he had woken a man he was supposed to assassinate, just to see what it was like when they fought back.

The answer was that it didn't really make any difference.

Shusaku had long since come to the conclusion that the sword loved him, for some reason. It was nothing to do with being a vampire – it was a deeper romance than that, between every fibre of his being and the hammered steel. He saw the same thing in Taro, and much as he loved the boy, he felt sorry for him.

Almost of its own accord – almost as if it was cursed, or he was – his sword flew forward and slashed the samurai's throat.

He gathered himself. A little in front of him were Hana and Yukiko – he knew because their blood ran colder than the men's; that and they didn't smell so much of sweat. He could sense which one was Hana, too, because her blood was strong and pure. Yukiko's, though, was not.

Yukiko was sick.

Shusaku wondered how long she had been wasting away. He had known people like that before, had smelled their blood. They were eaten away from inside, their own sins and their own guilt feeding on their souls. It hadn't happened to him – maybe because he didn't, deep down, feel guilty enough.

But it was happening to Yukiko. Her guilt had taken hold of her, and it was killing her.
Akuji mi ni tomaru
, thought Shusaku. All evil done clings to the body. It was one of the precepts of the Tendai monks, including his friend the abbot. They maintained that the fruits of evil actions clung to people like plums to a tree, weighing them down. Shusaku had never told the abbot about the dead he saw at the start of battles, but he thought the abbot would not be surprised.

Then, as he was sensing the movements of the girls, he noticed it.

Yukiko's sick, but there's more to it than that. She isn't fighting
.

Hana was much weaker, it was obvious. Her movements, while quick, were uninspired. She was not a person loved by the blade. But Yukiko was dangerous. And yet, as Shusaku sensed the moving bodies, it seemed she neglected several opportunities to kill Hana.

Shusaku raced forward, seeing a way out of this mess.
She's been ordered to leave Hana alive
, he thought.
That means Lord Oda doesn't want her dead. . .

He was past Hana in a flash, and with nothing more than a twitch of his sword he dealt with Yukiko's guard, sending her sword spinning away over the grass. He pressed his own blade against her neck, feeling her pulse as it thrummed weakly through the steel.