Lord Oda's Revenge (49 page)

‘Did
you
do that?'

Taro nodded, as he continued to move.

They were surrounded by a small guard of the Ikko-ikki, armed not with guns but with
katanas
, for short-range fighting. Formed into the shape of an arrowhead, their aim was to
fly into the heart of Oda's army, to seek out the daimyo in its centre. Taro, like Hiro, wore a horned helmet – it bore no
mon
, for the Ikko-ikki had no respect for nobility, but it protected his head, while leaving a thin gap through which he could see.

The Ikko-ikki arquebusiers parted to let them past. Taro glanced at them, saw the concentration on their faces as they aimed their rifles and fired. It was terrifying, really, how easily the new guns loosed their bullets into the air – how the flintlock mechanism whipped round in a tight circle to ignite the spark that fired the ball. Taro had seen the older, matchlock guns in action on Mount Hiei, and he knew how long it took for the fuse to burn down, even when it wasn't raining. Seeing these new Portuguese models firing again and again, he could almost feel sorry for the dying men of Oda's army.

Almost, but not quite.

He squeezed the ball again, drawing more water from the sea into the clouds above. Somehow he was able to run down the hill while being in the clouds at the same time, a bird with no body, only eyes to see, floating up there in the heavens, a part of every raindrop and a presence in every bolt of lightning, a voice in the choir of thunder. In some sense, he
was
the weather. He was linked inextricably with the natural world around him; in fact, it was as if he could feel the beat of the men's feet on the ground, as if he was the mountain, too.

He was also, though, a young ninja, hurrying towards the most powerful sword saint in the land, praying under his breath that this time he would have the strength to kill Lord Oda, to put an end to the horror that had begun when his foster-father had been killed.

Ahead, a samurai ran at the foremost of the Ikko-ikki, screaming and holding his sword ahead of him. He wore a
tusked helmet, emblazoned with the Oda
mon
. Two of the Ikko-ikki sprang forward, cut him down.

‘Hurry,' one of them said. Taro looked up – somehow they had already closed the gap of the no-man's-land between the Ikko-ikki arquebusiers and Oda's army. Mere paces ahead of them was a phalanx of
hatamoto
, spears and swords in their hands, formed in an orderly, protective square.

Lord Oda's retainers
.

Beside Taro, Hiro roared unintelligibly. Taro found himself roaring too.

Then, with a ringing crash, the two bodies of men met, and everything became madness. Taro staggered, swinging his sword indiscriminately, still screaming, and he saw a man's arm severed just in front of him, though he didn't know if it was his sword that had done it. He had never been in battle like this – on Mount Hiei, he had spent most of the time lying with the bodies, trembling with shock at the devastation wrought by Kenji Kira's guns. This time, he was in the thick of it.

He glanced to his right, saw Hiro bludgeon a samurai in the face with the pommel of his sword, then turn the blade to gut the man, ducking as a blow from another samurai behind him nearly took off the top of his head like the crown of an egg.
This is madness
, thought Taro. The greatest swordsman in the world – even a legend like Lord Oda – could die in a moment in a battle like this, stabbed by an ordinary dagger in the side, or tripping on a body and landing on a blade. There was no logic to it, no skill, no fairness.

Even as he thought it, he was fighting. The ball in his left hand and the sword in his right, he whirled and spun, always cutting, blocking, feinting. The Ikko-ikki were trying to maintain a cordon around him and Hiro, but it was impossible for
men not to get through, and Taro buried his sword in one's man's stomach as the enemy samurai brought his blade down, two-handed, trying to split Taro in two.

The world shrank now – it reduced itself to what he could see, framed by the helmet; an oblong window onto hell, populated by sword-wielding demons and bloody corpses, carpeted with blood, rocks, and soggy earth. He felt something, a caress of air behind him, and turned to see a
hatamoto
's sword coming down on his neck. Then, at the last moment, the man slumped forward, following his sword to the ground. The back of his head was a bloody mess, and Taro saw the Ikko-ikki arquebusier, a hundred paces back up the hill, kneeling, reloading.

That would have killed me
, thought Taro.
It would have been just a sensation of a breeze, then death
.

He didn't dwell on it, brought his sword up to block a strike from his left, put all his strength into a counterstrike upward and sideways, saw the man's head spring into the air and fall. He thought he could hear someone saying his name but it was impossible to tell. The battle was a raucous chorus in his ears, a jangling, discordant music of gunfire, metal on metal, and screaming.

He backed into something and turned, sword spinning – stopped the blade an inch from Hiro's face. Hiro nodded, turned again, and Taro did the same – so that they were back to back, swords a blur as they defended, slashed, killed. The Ikko-ikki were pressing the
hatamoto
back – though Taro saw another band of samurai break off from the assault on the mountain and come running towards them, as fast as their heavy armour would allow. Taro flipped – one moment he was standing in the cold, wet mud, water trickling into his boots and the blood of others slick against his skin – the next he was clouds.

Drawing himself in, he paused, then expressed himself. Another bolt of lightning flashed down, tore into the samurai, and sent them – in pieces – in the four cardinal directions, a sickly, burning smell lingering after them.

For an instant the madness paused – it seemed some of the
hatamoto
had seen him look into the ball, then seen the lightning strike, and had connected the two. They backed away, swords lowering as if it was the blades that were nervous. In that moment of calm, Taro knelt and seized a man who was still alive, a terrible wound opening his belly. Taro whispered a request for forgiveness, then sank his teeth into the man's neck.

He closed his eyes and the noise and stink of the battle disappeared – there was only the hot blood on his tongue. He drank deeply, feeling the man's force enter him, taking on more life than his body should have been able to hold, feeling the man's spirit fill out his skin.

He stood, ignoring Hiro's stare, and looked around, trying to get some sense of the lay of the land. It was impossible – there was only flux, only a storm of swords and bullets. It seemed like there were more dead people on the ground than there were living people standing on it, but he couldn't tell who was winning.

Then Hiro let out a cry.

‘There!' he shouted. ‘Lord Oda!'

Taro turned to follow Hiro's finger, saw Oda striding forward, dragging samurai in his wake, as if he were a great fish and they the minnows that swam in his slipstream. Oda was enormous, though not tall – it was something hard to explain. He seemed bigger than everyone else on the field, more alive – his armour seemed made to contain him, not to protect him; it was as if he were a monster temporarily encased in metal. A malevolence
spread from him, like heat – it was as if he were invisibly on fire. Enormous horns rose from his helmet, spearing the sky.

Taro took an involuntary step backwards. He had faced the man on the staircase of his own tower, had fought him hand to hand at the bottom of the cliff. But he hadn't seen Lord Oda in his element, on the battlefield, among his troops. The sight was terrible to behold. He noticed the Ikko-ikki, too, shrinking back; even Lord Oda's own samurai gave up ground, as if Lord Oda were projecting in front of him some wave of malefic energy that pushed bodies aside like driftwood.

Taro glanced down and shivered. Lord Oda held a sword in each hand, one long and one short. He'd tried to face two blades before, with Yukiko, and it had been a disaster. Taro flicked his eyes left and right, afraid.

Lord Oda's ruined right arm was held unflinching in front of him, a
wakizashi
clutched in the pale fingers.

Like Yukiko, he was going to fight with two swords.

Taro took a deep breath and willed his feet not to turn him round and run him back up the hill. He faced his enemy, the man who had ordered his foster-father killed, who had ordered his own daughter to commit seppuku, who had sent Kenji Kira to kill his mother.

None of the Ikko-ikki attacked Lord Oda – they seemed to recognize that this fight was Taro's. Neither did any of the samurai continue to fight. They put up their swords, and soon there was a circle of men around Taro and the daimyo, a point of calm in the storm of the battle.

Taro looked up. Beyond, he could see Mount Hiei, and the distant Tendai monastery. The conical shape of the mountain was ringed by mist, haloed – and it shone in sunshine that didn't reach here,
couldn't
reach here, because Taro was making it rain.
He glanced behind – the stronghold of the Ikko-ikki loomed grey and massive behind him. A good place to fight. He imagined his mother's grave, up there on Mount Hiei, and wondered if people would visit it, in time, if he won here.

Or if he lost.

He gripped his sword. Lord Oda stepped closer. The daimyo looked at the ball in Taro's hand, the simple glass ball with its simple globe in it, power housed in humility.

‘So small and unimpressive,' said Lord Oda. From a fold in his clothing he produced the gold ball, the fake one, and threw it down in the mud. ‘Yet I suppose there's a pleasing irony in that.' He spread his hands, the twin swords stretched out on either side, like the gleaming wings of some awful insect. ‘Come on, then. Kill me with it. Show me its power.' He pushed back his helmet, let it fall to the mud. ‘I am not afraid. After spending the night trying to make that golden trinket work, I'd practically welcome death right now, if I at least got to see the true ball in action.'

‘It doesn't work like that,' said Taro. He thrust the ball into his cloak and edged forward, sword extended.

‘Ah,' said Lord Oda. ‘I suppose you think this is honourable. Well, so be it.' He was standing there, and then he was in front of Taro – that was how quick it was. He brought his
katana
down, brutally fast, and followed it up with a downward strike of the
wakizashi,
almost slicing Taro's leg off at the knee.

Taro dodged and blocked, barely, grunting with effort. Lord Oda grinned, his lips drawing back so that Taro could see his pink gums, the sharp points of his canines. There was something appalling about the daimyo, a claimant to the position of shogun, smiling at him with the teeth of a vampire.

And I did that,
thought Taro.
I made him like that.

Just then Taro wished that Shusaku could be with him. But of course, it was Taro's fault that they were here, in the light, and Shusaku was hiding in the monastery – it was Taro's blood that had made Lord Oda like this, just as he had done for Little Kawabata, too. He had given Lord Oda this gift, this ability to transcend the limitations of his spirit nature.

At the same time, he fought. He caught a glancing blow on his helmet that would have opened his forehead if he hadn't been wearing it, and for a moment Lord Oda's blade lodged against one of the horns. He lunged forward, pushing the daimyo off balance, and slashed at his side, his blade ringing against armour. But Lord Oda recovered his equilibrium in a flash, danced back onto his heel, and then thrust with one blade, pushing Taro's sword out of the way with the other.

The point of Lord Oda's sword drove into Taro's shoulder, a flare of pain that stunned Taro into a moment of inaction. Lord Oda ripped the point out again and brought the blade glimmering down at Taro's neck – he only just got his sword up in time, blocked it with a scream as blood ran from his wound.

Taro gasped for breath. He was dimly aware of something large pushing past him, and then Hiro was throwing himself at Oda, his sword swinging.

‘Die!' Hiro was shouting, over and over.

Lord Oda met the big boy's first, wild gambit and counter-struck viciously, raining down blows.

No,
thought Taro.
No, no.

He sprang forward, ignoring Lord Oda, and struck decisively at Hiro with his ring, aiming for the pressure point on his neck. Hiro crumpled to the ground and Taro vaulted over his body, pushing Lord Oda back, whipping his blade so fast back and
forth that for the first time the daimyo struggled to meet his thrusts.

‘Ruthless,' said Lord Oda. ‘I like that.'

Taro stared at him blankly, still trying to find a way to strike his heart, or take off his head.

‘Didn't want your friend to have the glory of killing me. You know, if you weren't standing in my way to immortality, I could use someone like you.'

Taro almost smiled at the depth of the daimyo's inability to understand. He hadn't minded Hiro stepping in – he just didn't want his friend to die, and so had knocked him out for a moment. Even now he was pushing forward, forcing Lord Oda ever farther from Hiro.

But Lord Oda was too strong. Taro misread one of his parries, got a
wakizashi
slash to the thigh as his reward. He nearly fell, but managed to stay on his feet. His shoulder and his leg were on fire. The worst thing was that he could smell his own blood, and his stomach snarled at the scent of it – even now, the monstrous side of him was threatening to take over. He saw it in Lord Oda's eyes too – saw the pupils cloud with red as the other vampire's nostrils flared, saw the bloodlust in those noble features.

He tried to get a grip on himself, to remind himself of his need for revenge, but part of him could see the dead samurais from Shirahama, and he could still feel the emptiness inside that had followed their deaths. Perhaps he shouldn't kill Oda. Perhaps it would be better to kneel down here, to lower his sword and wait for the final blow. . .