Blood Ninja (9 page)

When he put his hand on the door to the hut, he felt more than heard a
thwip
in the air, and then there was the shaft of an arrow protruding from his shoulder. He gasped, whirling around as another arrow struck his upper arm on the other side. Shadows moved in the trees surrounding the hut.

Taro blundered into the door, pushing it open, falling inside. The places where the arrowheads were lodged inside him were burning now, and as he staggered inside, one of the shafts caught on the doorjamb and snapped off, tearing his flesh. He screamed.

Shusaku was already up and clutching his short-sword. “Ninjas?” he asked. Hiro rushed toward Taro and caught him before he could fall. He eased Taro down to the ground.

“I—I think so,” stammered Taro. “Dark shadows. In the trees.”

Shusaku considered a moment. “They don’t know I turned you. Any ninja knows that it’s not an arrow or two that will kill a vampire. And that must also mean they don’t know I’m with you.”

“But … they were there, on the beach.”

“I don’t think so. I think these are others. Probably there are ninjas in every village surrounding Shirahama, waiting for you to show up. I should have thought of it. But this kind of operation, for a mere boy … it’s unusual.”

“Unusual?” said Hiro angrily. “That’s what you call it? We’re going to die! Taro’s badly hurt.”

The ninja shook his head. “We’ll get those arrows out in a moment. They won’t kill him. In the meantime, we have one slim advantage.”

“What’s that?”

“They don’t know
I’m
here.”

With that, Shusaku slipped out through the door. Taro had sunk to the ground just inside the hut, and he found now that by turning his head and shoulders he could watch as Shusaku glided out into the night. Arrows flew, but he ducked and weaved, avoiding them.

From the trees, holding wickedly gleaming swords, came the ninjas.

Then, so unexpected it seemed a dream, Shusaku began to twirl off the black silk wrappings that made up his mask. Continuing to move gracefully to avoid the arrows that flew toward him, he stepped out of his
hakama
and his robe.

Taro stared, gaping.

Where there had been a ninja—Shusaku—in dark clothes, and holding a
wakizashi
short-sword, now there was only a sword, shining in the starlight.

Shusaku had disappeared.

Yet his sword bobbed and danced in the air, advancing on the group of enemy ninjas, as if invested by a magician with the power of locomotion.

The ninjas who had advanced from the trees stared at the floating sword, and Taro heard them murmuring, nervous.

Then the sword fell to the ground and lay still.

There was a commotion among the attacking ninjas. One of them pointed at the sword, and another shouted something. Taro thought he heard the word
akuryou
, “evil spirit.”

The ninjas all took a step back.

Just then, one of them, standing farther back than the others, near the trees, suddenly fell to his knees. He pitched forward, the gleaming hilt of a dagger sticking out of his back.

“What was that?” said Taro, shocked.

“You didn’t see?” said Hiro. “Shusaku snuck up behind him and stole his dagger, then stabbed him with it. I’m not sure why he dropped his sword, though. And I don’t know why he didn’t want his clothes.”

Before them, the ninjas argued among themselves, brandishing
their weapons at nothingness, backing up until they were facing outward in a tight-knit group, like a deadly hedgehog.

Suddenly one of the men dropped to the ground, with slack finality.

Again the ninjas panicked, jostling against one another, shouting.

“What in the gods’ name?” exclaimed Taro.

“It was him again,” said Hiro. “He smashed that one’s head in with a rock. Is something wrong with your eyes?”

“I can’t see him,” said Taro, wonderingly. “Where is he?”

“Walking around them. He’s
naked
. But his body is covered in something … tattoos, I think.”

Taro searched the scene ahead of him. He could see nothing but scared ninjas.

One of the men stepped forward from the group, and all of a sudden his sword hand jerked up. The sword sprang from his grip but didn’t fall to the ground—instead it hung in the air, pointing toward him. Then it slashed out violently as if of its own accord, and gutted the man.

Taro gasped. What was happening?

Smoothly, in a continuation of its previous motion, the sword spun in the air and took off another man’s arm and shoulder. Then the sword dropped to the ground. The men backed away from it, as if it were infused with dark magic.

One of the ninjas ran then, but he had not gone far when one of his fellows was divested of his spear, and that same spear moved bobbing along the sand, hovering at waist level, and plunged into his chest. The ninja ran on for several steps, then went down face-first.

That was it for the other ninjas. In chaotic concert they dropped their weapons and ran, dispersing in all directions.

Most of them escaped.

The spear rose magically from the back of the man it had killed, before arcing through the air as if thrown with some power, and hitting one of the fleeing men in the back of the neck.

Moments later, he and the other dead were the only figures visible. Taro felt sick. He didn’t understand how those men had died, but he understood one thing: It was a slaughter of those unable to defend themselves.

“This isn’t possible …,” said Taro. “Who threw that spear?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Hiro. “It was Shusaku. He killed all of them. But it was like … like they couldn’t see him.”

Taro turned to his friend. “Hiro,” he said. “I can’t see him either.”

Oda no Hana cursed her calligraphy master
.

Not out loud, of course. That would have been unladylike
.

Sunlight shone through the open window, accompanied by a light breeze. The day was warm, so they were in an upper room of the castle where the windows were not covered with
shoji
paper. This was the calligraphy master’s one concession to Hana’s preference for outside pursuits. The windows of this upper room were narrow, so that an archer could fire from behind them without being hit. A shaft of light illuminated Hana’s desk
.

She knew that the master meant well, but this was pure torture! The sunlight, unfiltered by paper blinds, only made her long more keenly for that which she couldn’t have
.

Lady Hana would have liked to be outside, honing her skill with the sword. She trained with a
bokken,
but her skill was already a matter of public knowledge, and it had been whispered—sometimes in her presence—that she would one day be a sword saint just like her father, a
kensei.

But Lord Oda did not want a sword saint. He wanted a gift, a bargaining piece, a pliant bride he could offer to whichever nobleman he most needed to forge an alliance with—whichever of his vassals or enemies he could bind closer to his person by marrying them to his beautiful daughter
.

The times when Hana was able to escape the castle and practice her sword moves were very few indeed, and since she had given her father the message from the dead pigeon, they had stopped almost entirely. Her father, on the few occasions she had seen him, had appeared distracted, angry, and—yes—worried. She would not have believed it of the Sword Saint daimyo, whose eyes and will were made of the same steel as his swords. But he was afraid. And lately he would not allow her to leave the castle under any pretext. These last days, Kame had been confined to Hana’s room, submitting with increasingly poor grace to the indignity of food she hadn’t killed herself, its blood no longer flowing in its veins
.

Hana gazed out of the window, looking at the oblong patch of sky above the main gate of the castle. A few wispy clouds drifted by, against the pale blue
.

The calligraphy sensei rapped Hana on the knuckles. “You’re miles away! Concentrate, girl! You’re worse than the Tokugawa boy.”

The Tokugawa boy, who was sitting right next to Hana at the adjacent desk, looked up from where he was scrawling messy spiral on his paper with a wet brush. “I hate you!” he said. “Calligraphy is
stupid!”

Lord Tokugawa’s son was a ruddy-faced boy of around four—far too young for calligraphy, of course, and Hana didn’t quite see why he had to sit there with her. She strongly suspected that it was meant to teach her some sort of salutary lesson, useful one day for her management of a samurai household. Patience, perhaps. Or the fortitude required not to gut an obnoxious four-year-old boy with one’s sword
.

Little Tokugawa loved mud, frog spawn, and stone fights, and hated anything to do with sitting inside. On that point, Hana was in complete agreement with him—though on that point only. He was an arrogant brat, and she tried to keep her contact with him to a minimum.
Some days she worried that her father might try to marry her to him. A four-year-old boy! She wouldn’t put it past Lord Oda
.

The lesson crawled along slowly, like a dog with three legs. Hana applied herself to several new characters, deriving—despite herself—a certain pleasure from the brush’s progress across the white paper
.

Suddenly there was a cough from behind her, and Hana turned, startled, her brush sketching a wild, unplanned stroke. Kenji Kira had entered the room, his
tabi
shuffling lightly on the polished wooden floor, as he placed his weight on his uninjured leg, dragging the wrecked one behind him
.

Not that there was much weight to place—the man seemed thinner every time Hana saw him, as if a hungry ghost from the lowest realm of samsara were feeding on his flesh. She had never seen him eat anything but rice, and he drank only water. She wondered how he remained alive. His eyes were sunk in dark pools, surrounded by bruises; his bones showed through his near-translucent skin like sticks bundled in a sack
.

He bent over Hana’s desk and greeted her respectfully. Hana would be more grateful for the man’s respect if he didn’t convey it with such terrible breath. The man’s every word carried a scent of decay, as offensive to the nostrils as unconvincing to the ear
.

In truth, she trusted nothing Kira said
.

He was her father’s head of security—his spymaster, as Hana’s indiscreet maid Sono called him—and he had a wide remit of responsibility. Hunting fugitives, interrogating prisoners, quelling insurrections—he had done them all. There was, however, one insurrection he was powerless against: Hana did not return his obvious admiration
.

Kira leaned his long, emaciated body over hers, forcing her to squirm aside, and plucked up her sheet of white paper. He examined the image she had drawn there, the character for “crane.”

“Your strokes are too bold,” he said in his nasal twang. He tutted at the mistake she had made when he’d surprised her. “You must aspire to a more feminine line if you wish to make a fine match for a desirable nobleman.” He smiled at her, revealing rotten teeth, and red, bleeding gums. “Unless, of course, you already have your eye on someone …?”

Hana shook her head. “Even if I did, it would be futile. I will marry whomever my father wishes me to marry.”

Kira bowed. “Indeed. Let us hope that he makes the choice wisely.”

Hana’s calligraphy master cleared his throat. “Sir Kira—did you wish me to end the lesson?”

“No. I merely came to inform Lady Hana that I am departing on a mission for her father, a very dangerous mission to recover a lost asset. It is a great honor, of course, that I have been entrusted with a matter of this magnitude.” Preening proudly, he ran his fingers through his greasy hair, which in the samurai way was long and tied back
.

A man who boasts about his honor,
thought Hana
, doesn’t have much of it.
But she said, “What is the … asset which you are sent to recover?”

Kira put a finger to his lips. “It is some-something Lord Oda wished above all to possess. But those he sent to find it failed him. I will not. And when I return with it … who knows? Lord Oda will no doubt wish to reward me, his loyal servant.” He bowed once again to Hana and fixed her with his milky eyes. “Maybe, when I come back, our relationship will be set on a closer footing.”

Black clothes floated into the hut, apparently moving of their own volition.

Taro stared as the clothes dropped to the ground. Then, shocking him, a pair of eyes appeared suddenly in the air.