The Diamond Chariot (82 page)

The pine tree blazed brighter and brighter, red shadows flickered across the trunks of trees and the ground. Panting, the titular counsellor tore the clothes from his beloved’s shoulders and her body changed from black to white.

Midori made no attempt at all to stop him. Her breathing was as fast as his, her hands were tearing off his shirt.

Around them the flames blazed, the earth split open, the trees groaned and Fandorin felt as if Night itself, wild and hot, were making love to him.

Pine needles pricked his back and his elbows by turns – the grappling lovers were rolling across the ground. Once a piece of shrapnel buried itself in the earth where their bodies had been just a second earlier, but neither of them noticed it.

It all ended suddenly. Midori pushed her beloved off with a jerk and darted in the opposite direction.

‘What are you doing?’ he exclaimed indignantly – and saw a burning branch falling between them, showering out sparks.

Only then did Erast Petrovich come to his senses.

There was no more artillery fire, just blazing trees crackling in two or three places.

‘What is this called in your
jojutsu
?’ he asked hoarsely, gesturing round at the forest.

Midori was tying her tangled hair in a knot.

‘There’s never been anything like this in
jojutsu
. But there will be now. I’ll call it “Fire and Thunder”.’

She was already pulling on her black costume, turning from white to black.

‘Where is everybody?’ asked Fandorin, hastily putting his own clothing in order. ‘Why is it quiet?’

‘Let’s go!’ she called, and ran on in front.

Half a minute later they were at the fissure – in the very spot where the vice-consul and his servant had thrown the lasso across. The dead tree was still there, but Erast Petrovich couldn’t see any sign of the rope.

‘Where to now?’ he shouted

She pointed across to the other side, then went down on all fours and suddenly disappeared over the edge of the cliff. Fandorin dashed after her and saw a cable woven from dry plant stems hanging down. It was thick and strong enough to hold any weight, so the young man followed Midori without hesitation.

She moved on a long way ahead of him, slithering down easily and confidently. But he found the descent difficult.

‘Quickly, quickly, we’ll be late!’ Midori urged him on from down below.

Erast Petrovich tried his very best, but she still had to wait for quite a long time.

The moment he jumped down on to the grass-covered ground, his guide dragged him on into dense, prickly undergrowth.

There, between two boulders, he saw a black crevice in the sheer wall. The titular counsellor squeezed into it with great difficulty, but after that the passage widened out.

‘Please, please, quickly!’ he heard Midori’s voice pleading out of the darkness.

He dashed towards her – and almost fell when he stumbled over a root or a rock. There was a strong draught blowing from somewhere above him.

‘I can’t see a thing!’

A glowing thread appeared in the darkness, emittting a weak, trembling glow.

‘What’s that?’ asked Fandorin, enchanted.

‘A
yoshitsune
,’ Midori replied impatiently. ‘A falcon’s feather, it has mercury in it. It doesn’t go out in the rain and wind. Come on! I’ll die of shame if I’m late!’

Now, with the light, it became clear that the underground passage had been equipped very thoroughly: the ceiling and walls were reinforced with bamboo, and there were wooden steps underfoot.

Struggling to keep up with Midori, Erast Petrovich barely looked around at all, but he did notice that every now and then there were branches running off the passage in both directions. It was an entire labyrinth. His guide ran on, turning several corners without slowing down for a moment. The titular counsellor was starting to feel exhausted from the long, steep uphill climb, but the slim figure ahead of him seemed incapable of tiring.

Eventually the steps came to an end and the passage narrowed again. The light went out, something creaked in the darkness and a grey rectangle opened up ahead, admitting the damp, fresh breath of the dawn.

Midori jumped down on to the ground. Following her example, Erast Petrovich discovered that he was clambering out of the trunk of an old, gnarled oak tree.

The secret door closed, and the vice-consul saw that it was absolutely impossible to make out its edges on the rough, moss-covered bark.

‘I’m too late!’ Midori exclaimed despairingly. ‘It’s all your fault!’

She darted forward into an open meadow where black silhouettes were moving about slowly. There was a smell of gunpowder and blood. Something long glinted in the morning twilight.

The barrel of the gun, Fandorin realised, looking more closely and then turning his head in all directions.

The underground passage led to the summit of the mountain. The ideal spot for a bombardment – Kamata must have chosen it in advance.

The skirmish was already over. And from the looks of things, it hadn’t lasted long. Pouring out of the passage, the
shinobi
had taken the Black Jackets by surprise, from behind.

Tamba was sitting on a stump in the middle of the clearing, smoking his pipe. The other ninja were bringing the dead to him. It was an eerie sight, like something out of the afterlife: silent shadows gliding in pairs above the mist that was creeping across the ground, lifting up the dead men (also black, but with white faces) by their arms and legs and laying them out in rows in front of their leader.

The titular counsellor counted: four rows with eight bodies in each, and another body started moving, this time a little one – no doubt the old bandit Kamata. Not one had escaped. Don Tsurumaki would never know what had happened to his brigade …

Shaken by this grim picture, Fandorin didn’t notice that Midori had come back to him. Her husky voice whispered right in his ear.

‘I was late anyway, and we hadn’t finished.’

A lithe arm slipped round his waist and pulled him back towards the entrance of the underground passage.

‘I shall go down in the history of
jojutsu
as a great pioneer,’ Midori whispered, pushing the titular counsellor into the hollow of the tree. ‘I’ve just had an idea for a very interesting composition. I shall call it “The Love of Two Moles”.’

Even lovelier
Than two flamingos’ loving –
The love of two moles.

THE NOCTURNAL MELDING OF THE WORLD

Tamba said:

‘I know a lot about you, you know little about me. From this there arises mistrust, mistrust produces misunderstanding, misunderstanding leads to mistakes. Ask me everything you wish to know, and I will answer.’

The two of them were sitting in the open clearing in front of the house and watching the sun rising from behind the plain, filling the world with a rosy glow. Tamba was smoking his little pipe, every now and then stuffing it with a new pinch of tobacco. Fandorin would gladly have smoked a cigar with him, but the box of excellent manilas had been left behind with the baggage, on the side of the crevice that divided the
shinobi
village from the rest of the world.

‘How many of you are there?’ the titular counsellor asked. ‘Only eleven?’

He had seen eleven people at the site of the massacre. When the earth-stained lovers crawled out of their underground burrow, the
shinobi
had already concluded their sombre task. The dead had been counted, tipped into a pit and covered over with rocks. Tamba’s people took off their masks and Fandorin saw ordinary Japanese faces – seven male and four female.

‘There are four children too. And Satoko, Gohei’s wife. She wasn’t in the battle, because she is due to give birth soon. And three young people, out in the big wide world.’

‘Spying for someone?’ asked Erast Petrovich. If the
jonin
wanted a straight-talking conversation, then to hell with ceremony.

‘Studying. One in Tokyo University, studying to be a doctor. One in America, studying to be a mechanical engineer. One in London, studying to be an electrical engineer. We can’t get by without European science nowadays. The great Tamba said: “Be ahead of everyone else, know more than everyone else”. We have been following that precept for three hundred years. And he also said: “The ninja of the Land of Iga are dead, now they are immortal”.’

‘But surely Tamba the First was killed together with the others? I was told that their enemies wiped them out to the l-last man.’

‘No, Tamba got away, and he took his best pupils with him. He had sons, but he didn’t take them, and they were killed, because Tamba was truly great, his heart was as hard as diamond. The final
jonin
of the land of Iga chose the worthiest, so that they could revive the Momochi clan.’

‘How did they manage to escape from the besieged temple?’

‘When the shrine of the goddess Kannon was already burning, the last of the ninja wanted to take their own lives, but Tamba ordered them to hold out until dawn. The day before, one of his eyes had been put out by an arrow and all his men were also covered in wounds, but such is the power of the
jonin
that the
shinobi
did not dare to disobey. At dawn Tamba released three black ravens into the sky and left through an underground passage with his two chosen companions. But the others took their own lives, cutting off their faces at the last moment.’

‘If there was an underground passage, then why didn’t they all leave?’

‘Because then Nobunaga’s warriors would have pursued them.’

‘And why was it absolutely necessary to wait until dawn?’

‘So that the enemy would see the three ravens.’

Erast Petrovich shook his head, totally bamboozled by this exotic oriental reasoning.

‘What have the three ravens got to do with it? What were they n-needed for?’

‘Their enemies knew how many warriors were ensconced in the temple – seventy-eight men. Afterwards they would be certain to count the corpses. If three were missing, Nobunaga would have guessed that Tamba had got away and ordered a search for him throughout the empire. But this way the samurai decided that Tamba and two of his deputies had turned into ravens. The besieging forces were prepared for every kind of magic, they brought with them dogs, trained to kill rodents, lizards and snakes. They had hunting falcons with them as well. The falcons pecked the ravens to death. One raven had a wound instead of its right eye and so the ninjas’ enemies, knowing of Tamba’s wound, stopped worrying. The dead raven was displayed at a point where eight roads met and a sign was nailed up: “The Wizard Momochi Tamba, defeated by the Ruler of the West and the East, Protector of the Imperial Throne, Prince Nobunaga”. Less than a year later, Nobunaga was killed, but no one ever discovered that it was Tamba who did it. The Momochi clan was transformed into a ghost, that is, it became invisible. For three hundred years we have preserved and developed the art of
ninjutsu
. Tamba the First would be pleased with us.’

‘And none of the three lines has been interrupted?’

‘No, because the head of the family is obliged to select a successor in good time.’

‘What does “select” mean?’

‘Choose. And not necessarily his own son. The boy must have the necessary abilities.’

‘Wait,’ Fandorin exclaimed in disappointment. ‘So you are not a direct descendant of Tamba the First?’

The old man was surprised.

‘By blood? Of course not. What difference does that make? Here in Japan, kinship and succession are based on the spirit. A man’s son is the one into whom his soul has migrated. I, for instance, have no sons, only a daughter. I do have nephews, though, and cousins, once removed and twice removed. But the spirit of the great Tamba does not dwell in them, it dwells in eight-year-old Yaichi. I chose him five years ago, in a village of untouchables. In his grubby little face I saw signs that I thought looked promising. And it seems that I was not mistaken. If Yaichi continues to make the same kind of progress, after me he will become Tamba the Twelfth.’

Erast Petrovich decided to wait a little with the other questions – his head was already spinning as it was.

Their second conversation took place in the evening, at the same spot, only this time the two of them sat facing the opposite direction. Watching the sun slipping down on to the summit of the next mountain.

Tamba sucked on his eternal pipe, but now Fandorin was also smoking a cigar. The selfless Masa, who was suffering morally because he had slept right through the night battle, had spent half the day supplying all of his master’s needs by bringing his baggage from the ravaged camp through the underground passage, as well as using a cable hoist (it turned out that there was one of those too). The only thing left on the other side was the untransportable Royal Crescent Tricycle, and there was nowhere to ride that in the village in any case. The mule, set free, wandered through the meadows, dazed and delighted by the luscious mountain grass.

‘I have a request for you,’ said Erast Petrovich. ‘Teach me your art. I will be a zealous student.’

He had spent most of the day observing the
shinobi
training and had seen things that left his face frozen in an expression of dumb bewilderment entirely alien to him in normal life.

First Fandorin had watched the children playing. A little six-year-old had demonstrated quite incredible patience in training a mouse – teaching it to run to a saucer and come back again. Every time the mouse coped with its mission successfully, he moved the saucer a bit farther away.

‘In a few months’ time the mouse will learn to cover distances of four hundred or even five hundred yards. Then it can be used for delivering secret notes,’ explained the ninja called Rakuda, who had been attached to the vice-consul.

‘Rakuda’ meant ‘camel’, but the ninja was nothing at all like a camel. He was a middle-aged man with a plump, extremely good-natured face, the kind of man that people say ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’. He spoke excellent English – which was why he had been assigned to accompany Erast Petrovich. He suggested that the titular counsellor call him ‘Jonathan’, but Fandorin liked the resounding ‘Rakuda’ better.