Blood Ninja (45 page)

Taro’s eyes opened wide. He was breathing hard from the exertion, his sword arm weakening. He remembered the story the old woman had told, the ama who had dived for the Buddha ball, who had said that the son of an ama would be shogun …

He had presumed that Lord Oda wanted him dead because of the prophecy.

But it seemed it was the
ball
he wanted.

“It’s not … It’s not real,” said Taro. “It’s a story! It’s—”

Oda brought the hilt of his sword down hard on Taro’s hand, and flicked the tip of its blade up, cutting Taro’s chin. Taro gasped.

“It is not a
story
,” said Oda in an inhuman shriek. “It is everything. It is power over this world, and all others. Why do you think the emperor wanted it?” His sword found Taro again, cut a gash down his arm. “Anyway, Kira said it exists. He had the information from the abbess, before he killed her.”

Taro looked at the man, sickened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” said Oda. “And you will tell me where the ball is or you will die here.”

“I don’t know where it is. I didn’t … even know … it … was … real.” Taro’s strength was fading fast. But even as he said it, he was thinking of something, something that had bothered him when they’d been with the abbess.

It was his mother.

That day, when his father had been killed, hadn’t she been diving by the old wreck? And hadn’t the abbess said the ball, when it was first lost, had been drowned with the wreck of a royal ship? An ama had recovered it, for the prince.

What if an ama had put it back? What if his mother had been
keeping it, and on the day when she’d heard the merchant speaking of ninja, she’d decided to make it safe?

Taro thought he had a good idea, actually, of where the ball might be. His mother had returned it to the wreck near the Shirahama shore. Perhaps the abbess had been right, perhaps Fusazaki
had
stolen the ball. Perhaps Tankai’s heir had been foolish to think that simply because he didn’t choose to exploit its power, he hadn’t removed it from the clutches of those who had, or might.

An image formed in Taro’s mind. He had no way of proving if it were true or not, but it felt right, it felt possible.

It was an image of Fusazaki giving the ball to the ama girls in Shirahama, the ones who reminded him so much of his dead mother, and asking them to hold it in their safekeeping, to guard it for the one whose coming his mother had predicted, the ama’s son who would rule the country.

For him
.

All the while he was thinking this, he was parrying Oda’s strikes almost without paying attention to him. The man was skilled, it was true, but he didn’t have the strength and reflexes of a vampire. Now Oda hissed. “Hana! Stab him in the back!” he said. “Get him!”

Hana sobbed. “No!”

“Do it! I order you!”

“NO!” screamed Hana. “Don’t kill him, Father!”

“What?” asked the daimyo. His voice was smoothly, dangerously calm.

“I said don’t kill him!”

Taro tried to ignore them, concentrating on the fight, the gleam of steel that streaked and pirouetted in front of him.

Lord Oda redoubled the intensity of his strikes. “You will commit seppuku,” he hissed at Hana. “You are no longer the daughter of a samurai. You are without honor.”

Hana gasped.

Anger burned in Taro’s throat, like bile. He struck out, slashing Oda’s face. Blood sprayed. He knew that in the narrow confines of the spiral staircase Hana was trapped behind him, unable
to help, only capable of standing by as her father and her new acquaintance—too early even for friends—fought to the death.

“You tell her to stab me in the back,” said Taro, “and you accuse her of being without honor. You are a stain on the samurai class.”

Oda growled, his eyes dark with anger. “And you ninja are so honorable? It was your friend who betrayed you. The girl, Yukiko.”

Taro gasped. Yukiko had given him away? He cast his mind back to when he had last seen her, in the tower.

Oh, no.

He had been insensitive, talking to Hana like that, admiring her beauty. To Yukiko, it must have been the greatest of betrayals. This was the daughter of the man who was responsible, indirectly, for all the deaths that had befallen her—her foster mother’s, her sister’s. And far from killing her, Taro had spoken softly with her, shown Yukiko a ring she had given him.

My gods
, he thought.
Perhaps she thinks I knew Hana all along; perhaps she thinks I planned all this. The ring … And she doesn’t know about the time in the woods, when we saved her from the ronin
.

She may think that I have been lying, all this time, about being a simple peasant
.

All this time he continued to fight. It was impossible that the swords should continue forever to twist, turn, and clatter together, without one of them finding its mark. It took only one mistake, one flat wrist that sent the arc of the blade too high, and the fatal opening formed itself out of nothingness, out of the absence of a defending blade.

Oda’s sword sprang forward like a viper, impaling the palm of Taro’s bare left hand, which had shot out in a final, unconscious gesture of self-preservation. The blade carried on through his stomach. Taro felt the cold metal grating against the bones of his spine as the tip of the sword burst through his back. Then Oda pulled out the sword again.

Taro fell to his knees, his bones jarring against the edge of a step.

Behind him, a girl from far away and long ago called out his name. Something warm was running down his—

He stared up at Lord Oda, who grinned wide now through the snake’s tongue of his mustache—

The scene before Taro began to flicker and darken. Oda raised his bloody sword—

Hana screamed. “Stop!”

The blade shivered in the air, a finger’s breadth from Taro’s face, seeming almost to hum with its stopped energy.

Hana stepped forward to face her father, trembling but defiant. “Don’t, Father. He saved my life. He was sent to kill me, but he spared me. He has honor.”

“Is this true?” Oda asked Taro.

Weakly, Taro nodded.

Oda turned from him and approached his daughter, cupping her face in his hands, his eyes gentle and sad. “Ah, my blossom-girl. You know I love you, don’t you?”

Hana cast her gaze down. “Yes,” she whispered.

“You share your mother’s beauty. You always have. But you also share her compassion.”

He tilted her face upward. “And that is why you must die.”

Hana gasped, struggling against her father’s hands, which now held her face tightly. Taro tried to rise, to help her, but his legs would not support him.

“The boy is Tokugawa’s son,” continued her father. “He will not give me what I want. For both reasons he must die.” His voice was sad. “Hana, Hana. Your compassion blinds you. It has no place in the Oda dynasty, in the Oda shogunate that soon will rule this land. And it will corrupt the blood of my grandsons if I allow you to live.”

“But—”

“You are no longer samurai.” He paused to wipe a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Don’t cry, blossom-girl. Believe me, your death will hurt me more than it will hurt you. But I did not lead my clan to victory over Yoshimoto by being kind, or compassionate.”

Hana screamed, struggling against her father’s grip. She swung out with her sword, but he knocked it casually aside with his knee, connecting so hard with Hana’s wrist that the sword went clattering up the steps. He threw her against the wall, hard. There
was a harsh
ki, ki
from Hana’s hawk, which clung to her wrist and flailed violently with its wings.

Hana herself made a noise like a whale blowing steam, and slid to the ground. Lord Oda brandished his sword, ready to eviscerate his only daughter as punishment for her insolence.

Taro tried to stand, but his thighs trembled. His
hakama
were soaked now in his own blood.

Lord Oda thrust the sword at Hana’s stomach.

And then two things happened, almost at once.

Hana must have let go of the hawk’s bindings, because it flew suddenly into the air, crying an angry stream of almost human invective –

Ki, ki, ki, ki, ki, ki
.

Blinded by its hood, it nevertheless could hear, and it slammed into Lord Oda’s face, claws scraping at his skin, still screaming and beating its wings.

Oda dropped his sword, seized the bird, and dashed it against the wall, where it moved no more.

But then there came, from below, the sound of running footsteps. “Ah,” said Oda. “My guards. Perhaps I will leave them to kill you both.”

But the figure that appeared from below was clad all in black, and wore a mask. Oda whirled to face it, then turned back again to Taro and Hana, his sword wavering.

Even in the gloom of the stairwell, Taro recognized the ninja’s eyes. Then he saw Hiro come puffing up the stairs behind the ninja.

“He took me by surprise,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Little Kawabata shrugged. “The boy is fat and slow.”

“Look who’s talking,” said Hiro.

Oda’s eyes were jerking back and forth between Taro and the new ninja on the stairs below him. “Who are you?” he almost squealed.

“My name is Kawabata,” said the boy. “And Taro nearly killed me once. I’ve come to make things even.”

Lord Oda smiled.

“You shouldn’t smile,” said Little Kawabata. “I said he
almost
killed me. The point is he saved my life. Now I’m going to do the same for him, if I can.”

Oda spun, his sword whipping from Taro to Little Kawabata, but in the cramped stairwell his movement was obstructed, and Little Kawabata was already moving into him, his shoulder striking the lord in the chest and throwing him against the wall next to his daughter.

The lord of the castle slumped, head down, unmoving. Little Kawabata jabbed him with his foot, but his head only lolled like a doll’s. The ninja nodded, pleased. “Out cold,” he said.

Hiro ran up the stairs and threw his arms around Taro. “You’re alive!” Then his smile faded as he stared at Taro’s wound, saw the way his friend was kneeling on the steps, clutching his bleeding stomach. “Oh … that’s bad …”

As if on cue, Oda peeled himself away from the wall, swinging out with his sword at Hiro’s neck.

Those would have been Hiro’s last words, but seeing the bigger boy had given Taro the energy—and the distraction—he needed to pull himself to his feet. Stretching out with his sword, he blocked Oda’s strike, then held his blade trembling before him.

His mind went back to a day in the mountains, when he had withdrawn from Shusaku as from a snake, and he wished that he could go back to that day and put his arms around the ninja instead.

He couldn’t.

But he could do
this
.

Compensating for Oda’s left-handedness, Taro let his sword waver a little to the left, simultaneously letting some of his weight settle visibly on his left foot, as if he were about to make a slash from left to right. Oda grinned, bringing his sword flashing up and round in a strike at Taro’s exposed neck. But Taro never made the slash he had signaled. Instead, as Shusaku had taught him, he kept his sword vertical, pushing it forward into a block.

Then, even as Oda’s eyebrows were quirking down in a half frown, Taro flipped his wrist, pushed forward with his forefinger, and brought his blade round in a low sweep, under Oda’s sword and across his belly.

With a sound like a wave hitting a sand beach, Oda collapsed. But Taro didn’t want him to die, just yet.

First he needed the lord’s blood.

Drawing on his final reserves of strength, Taro let gravity carry him down the stairwell. His knees struck the stone floor and he vaguely registered the pain, then his hands hit Oda’s shoulders and clung to them.

He opened his mouth.

He felt his teeth extend, little weapons hidden in his gums.

And, clutching the lord close, as if in an embrace, he sank his fangs into the man’s thick neck.

He drank deep, feeling the lord’s lifeblood enter him, feeling the great strength of the man. Already he felt that he would recover from his terrible wound.

That which was killing Oda was giving Taro life.

It was perfect.

From her position on the stone floor, Hana gasped. “No!” she shouted. “Father!”

Oda swayed for a moment, like a man on a ship in hard weather. Taro let go, tearing his mouth from the already dwindling supply of blood.

He got one glimpse of Oda’s face, drained of blood, as white and accusatory as a wronged ghost’s, then the massive body with its shriveled arm went tumbling down the stairs, the clangs and bangs of metal on stone accompanied by organic slaps and crunches that made even Hiro wince at the cruel lord’s fate.