Cloud of Sparrows (35 page)

“Lord, the others have disappeared!”

“What do you mean, disappeared?”

“One moment they were there, the next, they were gone.” He looked fearfully over his shoulder. “Someone is hunting us.”

“Shigeru,” someone else said.

“Return to the rear,” Kudo said. “You, you, and you. Go with him. People don’t disappear. Find them.”

The men he had assigned sat on their horses and looked at each other. No one made a move to obey.

Kudo was about to chastise them harshly when the rider at the front of the column screamed. His hands clutched at the shaft of the arrow jutting from his right eye socket.

Shigeru would have preferred to let Kudo and his men continue their plodding pursuit awhile longer. Then he would have killed half of them as they advanced, and the other half as they retreated. There was a certain pleasing symmetry in that. Unfortunately, it was necessary for him to abandon such aesthetic considerations.

He looked at the huge stone structure looming through the trees. Massive smokestacks spewed foul-smelling fumes into the sky. Dark ashes fell like the shadows of dead snowflakes, turning the landscape black. Humbled, spiritless men in loose gray uniforms, heads nearly shorn of all hair, moved self-propelled carriages out of the building and into neat rows outside. The ground beneath him vibrated. Was it caused by the laughter of demons?

His visions were still evanescent and transparent, and therefore bearable. But they were rapidly growing more vivid, more grotesque, more frequent, and, worst of all, more convincing. So far, he could tell the difference between future vision and present reality. That wouldn’t last much longer. He had been separated from Genji for only two days. At his present rate of deterioration, in two more days, he would once again become the blithering lunatic he had been at Mushindo Monastery. In such circumstances, patience was not a virtue. Haste was.

The hooves of his horse made little noise as it stepped into the snowy meadow. Yesterday, Shigeru would have trusted the animal’s instincts and ridden through the image of the fiery prison and the broken men inhabiting it. Today, the will to do so was already gone. He went around it.

Kudo was down to sixteen men. They were probably the best marksmen he could muster. Their aim might be good, if they waited to sight a target before firing. But their discipline was poor, their courage weak. Only four of them had been killed, yet those remaining were already defeated, fleeing in panic from a single unseen attacker. He was pleased none of them were samurai he had trained.

Shigeru let an arrow fly toward an outrider’s throat. He didn’t wait to see whether he hit his target or not. A strangled scream and answering gunfire told him he had. Musketballs snapped branches and whirred through the leaves. Not one came close to where he was or even to where he had been. Pathetic. Perhaps the outsiders would conquer Japan in less time than he had thought. They certainly would if this was the level of resistance they could expect.

He watched Kudo struggle to bring his men into a defensive circle within a stand of tall pines. As the traitor’s marksmen continued to fire at nothing, Shigeru moved up the trail.

Kudo fumed. The situation was utterly ridiculous. Fifteen men armed with muskets surrounded by what was almost certainly a single opponent. That the opponent was Shigeru mattered not a whit. If it were a matter of swords, it would be entirely different, of course. But they were modern musketeers against one archaic lunatic. They could shoot him down before he was anywhere close enough to cut anyone. Shigeru was a master of the bow, true enough. Five corpses testified to that. Yet if his men maintained their discipline, they would know where he was by the trajectories of the arrows that came their way.

Kudo held his position for almost an hour though there was no longer an immediate threat. He knew Shigeru was long gone, probably to set another ambush. He stayed where he was to give his men time to calm down. The greatest danger was that they would continue to dissipate their advantage in numbers and weaponry through mindless fear.

“Shall we surrender?” he said mildly. “I think we should. After all, we outnumber him only fifteen to one, we have only muskets to oppose his bow, and we are surrounded. Or at least I think we are. How is it that one man can surround fifteen? Please clear up this mystery for me.”

The men exchanged chastened glances.

“Forgive us, Lord Kudo. We let ourselves fall prey to Shigeru’s reputation. You are right, of course. There is no reason for us to huddle like frightened children.”

“I take it you are once again ready to be samurai?”

“Lord.” The men bowed.

Kudo divided his force into three groups of five. They would move together, separated but well in sight of each other. They would be far enough apart that Shigeru would be able to shoot at only one group at a time, revealing his position, and allowing all fifteen guns to come to bear.

Kudo said, “Even if we fail to hit him the first time, we will have located him. Our three groups will drive him like game, trap him, and shoot him down.”

“Yes, lord.”

“Whoever fires the fatal shot will have the honor of removing his head and presenting it to Abbot Sohaku.”

“Thank you, lord.”

Kudo led the most exposed men, the ones on the downward slope of the hills to the left. He hoped Shigeru would attack them first. He would dearly love to be the one to put a bullet between the madman’s eyes. Since Shigeru always did the unexpected, he was more likely to hit the center, where he would be exposed to the most concentrated fire. That meant he would have to attack them from behind. Kudo’s eyes looked forward. All his attention was in his back. He would sense rather than see. Shigeru was not the only true samurai in the clan.

A riderless horse bolted from the trees on the right.

None of the men fired.

Had the horse slipped free or had Shigeru intentionally released it to distract them? It didn’t matter. The tactic, if that’s what it was, hadn’t worked. No one panicked. And now Shigeru was on foot. Without his horse, his speed and mobility were greatly reduced. Kudo’s confidence began to rise.

The low winter sun moved in its shallow arc toward nightfall, and still there was no attack. Shigeru was waiting for darkness to minimize Kudo’s numerical advantage. Out in the open, in three groups, they would be easy prey. But only if they continued their present tactic, which Kudo had no intention of doing.

He scanned the landscape. It was a trusted axiom of war that he who chose the field of battle secured a key to victory. The valley widened here. In the middle of the small plain was a low hill, an island of seven pines rising from the snow. If they encamped there for the night, they would enjoy the advantage of clear sight lines in every direction. Even in the slight light of the new moon, a man would stand out against the freshly fallen snow. Stealth, the main advantage Shigeru enjoyed, would be lost. It was perfect.

Which was precisely why his suspicions were aroused. Everything he had seen, Shigeru surely had seen as well. It had to be a trap.

“Approach with caution. Look carefully into the branches of the trees. He may think to come at us from above.”

They moved forward, muskets at the ready. When they reached the base of the hill, Kudo sent seven men forward, one to examine each tree.

“No one here, lord.”

Something was amiss. Every warrior instinct he possessed told him so. He walked slowly around the hill. There was no place for a man to hide, even one as adept at hiding as Shigeru. Still, he felt deep unease.

“Lord?”

Perhaps, seeing how obvious the possibilities were for both ambush and defense, Shigeru had continued down the valley. There was a narrow gorge below that would be an ideal place for one man to confront many. Perhaps he waited there. Perhaps.

Finally, finding no reason to delay further, Kudo said, “We will camp here. Each group will take its turn maintaining the watch.”

“Yes, lord.”

At the base of the hill, the scent of the pines grew strong. Kudo stopped.

“Fall back!”

“Do you see him, lord?”

Kudo did not. But he had made a mistake and realized it just in time. He had looked up. He had not looked down. Pine trees dropped their needles in profusion. Three small hollows were full of them.

He drew his sword.

“Cover me.”

He advanced to the closest hollow and stabbed vigorously into the blanket of pine needles. Nothing. The second and the third hollows produced the same result.

Shigeru was not above. He was not below. There was nowhere else he could be. He had not laid a trap here. He was mad, but he was also brilliant. And patient. Stealth and patience were inseparable qualities.

“Secure the horses there. You. Climb that tall pine. Keep watch.”

Shigeru awaited them elsewhere. They were probably safe for the night. So his reasoning told him.

Kudo was unable to sleep. He went back to the three hollows filled with pine needles and probed them with his sword once again.

The sentry in the tree said, “Lord, a horse approaches. I see no rider.”

It was Shigeru’s warhorse. It approached for a distance, neighed, and shied back, as if it wanted to come closer, but was afraid to do so.

“It wants to join our horses,” the sentry said.

Its hesitancy was understandable. Warhorses tended to mistrust people in the absence of their masters.

The reason for its desire to come forward was less obvious. Did it really seek equine company? Is that what was moving it toward them?

Kudo’s persistent uneasiness sharpened. There was trickery of some sort here. He leaned up against the tree to get a better view.

“Are you sure no one is with the horse?”

“No one is in the saddle, lord, and no one hides behind it.”

“Under it, perhaps?”

The sentry peered harder into the distance. “I don’t think so, lord. The horse’s girth seems normal in profile.”

“Would you stake your life on it?”

The sentry’s answer came without delay. “No, lord.”

“Shoot the horse.”

“Yes, lord.”

Kudo’s hand came away from the pine tree sticky with resin. An unusual amount seeped from a long line in the bark where the trunk had partially splintered. The venerable pine had been weakened by age, disease, and storm, then suffered this injury. When the sentry above shifted his position, the tree creaked alarmingly. That sound evoked a strong sense of kinship in Kudo. Trees and men were not so unalike.

“You’d better come down and climb another,” Kudo said. The recoil from the musket might be too much for the wounded tree.

“Yes, lord.”

Kudo examined the line of damage more carefully. It formed an unusual pattern, almost like a—door!

The tree trunk exploded outward.

Kudo recognized the wild, resin-covered face at the same moment the blade penetrated his chest and cleaved his heart and spine. Not enough of his life remained for him to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing his intuition had been right all along.

Drenched in the traitor’s blood, Shigeru slashed at men and demons with both swords. Shouts and gunfire came dimly to his ears. He could barely hear anything other than the heavy fluttering of the huge metal dragonflies hovering overhead.

Their eyes were blinding beams of light.

Their circular wings rotated impossibly above them.

Their spawn, hideously elongated segmented worms of steel, shot past him at high speed, as if on tracks. Through their gaping pores, he could see the bodies of thousands of the doomed crushed against each other.

The gleaming blades of swords flashed in arcs and circles.

Gouts of blood fountained into the air.

Bodies and body parts littered the snow.

Men screamed and died until only one man remained screaming.

Shigeru screamed until his lungs were empty and his consciousness left him.

Only then did the dragonflies depart.

He woke to a vision of teeming millions. Humans swarmed like insects as far as he could see. Windowed pillars of stone, glass, and steel rose toward the clouds. Inside, yet more people jammed together like flightless drones in hives. More nests were below, for dull-eyed hordes shuffled into gateways and disappeared underground.

He stumbled back and fell over the corpse of a horse. Slaughtered men and animals covered the hill. His own horse stood a short distance away, regarding him suspiciously.

When he looked up, the vision was gone. For how long?

He went searching among the dead. Kudo lay faceup by the splintered trunk of a fallen pine. He lifted the body by the topknot and severed the traitor’s head. When he returned to Cloud of Sparrows, he would mount it on a spear and leave it to rot outside the castle.

“You won’t be lonely,” Shigeru said to the head. “Your wife and your children will be there with you.”

It took two hours of coaxing before his horse permitted him to remount. Shigeru rode north as fast as he could. He prayed it was fast enough.