Lord Oda's Revenge (42 page)

He came to the body on the ground – monks surrounded it, muttering.
They sound scared
, Taro thought. The idea sent a frisson down his spine.

He pushed through the monks and saw the body up close. It was one of their own order, lying dead on the ground, his eyes open and white. His neck was bent at an unnatural angle, as if someone had snapped it, but it would take force no human could
possess to break it so fully. The head seemed attached to the body by little more than a flap of skin.

‘Gods,' said Hana. ‘What did that to him?'

One of the monks turned to them. He pointed to the bier behind that of Taro's mother. Taro hadn't noticed it, because he had been thinking only of his mother, but now he saw it was empty. He stared at it.

That's where Kenji Kira's body was
, he thought. A sickness had taken root in his stomach and was growing, spreading branches through his limbs.

‘The b-b-b-body got up,' said the monk. ‘It got up!' He burst into tears.

Another monk put a hand on his shoulder and looked at Taro, terrified. ‘He saw it – it's quite unhinged him.'

‘Saw what?' said Hana. She still didn't understand – she hadn't known where Kenji Kira's body was laid.

‘The dead man got up,' said the second monk. ‘That's what Yamada says. He got up and he killed that monk because he was in the way, and then he went down the mountainside. He was shouting something, apparently.'

‘Shouting what?' said Taro.

‘It doesn't make sense.'

‘Shouting what?'

‘Yamada says he was saying, “Yukiko”. Over and over.'

Taro shivered.

‘
What
dead man?' said Hana. ‘What are you talking about?'

Taro was looking at the broken neck of the man on the ground, and at the empty bier, and that sickness was everywhere in him now.

He pointed at the bier. ‘It was Kenji Kira,' he said. ‘Yukiko killed him, and we laid him down there.'

‘But. . . he was dead,' said Hana. She had gone very pale.

‘So was my mother,' said Taro. ‘I still saw her again.'

 

A
S MUCH AS
it could, the world returned to normal.

Kenji Kira's dead body was abroad somewhere, if the hysterical monk was to be believed – the man spent a lot of time in a darkened room, these days – but what was there to do? The abbot and his monks had surrounded the mountain with charms and Buddhas, to ward off evil. If Kenji Kira came back, he would want Taro, no doubt – but for now he seemed to be after Yukiko. And anyway, lots of people wanted Taro dead. He was getting used to it.

Often, Taro practised the sword with the abbot. He still couldn't move as fast as the other man, couldn't see how to manipulate the sword with the same dexterity.

‘Do you still have the scroll?' the abbot had asked, on the first day of their training.

‘Yes,' Taro had said. ‘I still don't understand it.'

‘Well,' said the abbot, ‘keep reading it. One day you might.'

This evening, though, Taro was working with the Buddha ball. The trick was to be inside the ball and in the earthly realm at one and the same time, seeing the same thing from two angles; one part of you floating above the surface of the miniature world, the other standing in your own skin on the solid, undeniable ground.

The oak tree, then, was both below and before him.

He reached out with his mind, inside the ball, and pulled. As one, the leaves dropped from the tree, and he caught them with the wind, swirling them up into a spinning column that gleamed green and gold in moonlight. He'd been working all day, and now, in the dead of night, he had started to get the hang of it.

He concentrated. Slowly the turning leaves began to take on a shape, round at the top. He fashioned arms, then legs. A man of leaves opened his arms in an embrace and stepped towards Little Kawabata.

Startled, Taro's friend drew his sword in a quick, lithe movement and slashed through the leaves and air that were approaching him.

Taro let the leaves fall to the ground, then grinned at Little Kawabata.

‘Yes, very good,' said Little Kawabata. ‘But it's just leaves. Go on – make
me
take a step forward.'

Taro's sense of achievement faded. He couldn't move people – just air and water, fire and earth, the four elements. He had not
tried
fire yet, but he sensed it would work. Yet try to command a person to do something – to do anything they didn't want to do – and the ball became useless. It seemed it was one thing to control nature and another thing to control people. What use was power, if it didn't extend to individuals? He couldn't hope to defeat Lord Oda with leaves; he couldn't hope to stand up against the reincarnated body of Kenji Kira with nothing but air.

At first he hadn't wanted to think about Lord Oda, or about violence of any kind. He remembered those men he'd killed in Shirahama, the emptiness he'd felt afterward. He didn't want revenge any more, he knew. But Hana had reminded him of how desperately Lord Oda wanted the ball.

‘He won't stop until he's got it,' she'd said. ‘He'll kill us all – me, Hiro, Hayao. You, if he gets the chance. The only way to stop him is to kill him first.'

Taro had argued, but in the end he had seen it was true. Now he had only to master the ball, so he could do it. He'd help the monks destroy Lord Oda's remaining army, and then he would go somewhere else. He was thinking of a fishing village, perhaps. He'd mentioned it to Hana, and she had smiled.

‘I will go anywhere with you,' she'd said.

Peering into the ball, he brought himself again to the spot on which he stood, until he was hovering over his own self, a floating consciousness without form. He reached out with his mind and plucked at Little Kawabata's legs, as if he were a puppet.

Nothing happened.

Hana was practising sword katas under the trees, and she laughed at Taro's expression of frustration. ‘Forget the ball for a moment,' she said. ‘You should focus on your own skills.' She beckoned with her sword. ‘Come and spar – you look like you've become slower since I've been sleeping. Slower, and fatter.'

Taro snorted. ‘Look who's talking! A month curled up asleep hasn't done your forms any good – or your form, either. . .'

‘Nonsense,' said Hana. ‘It was beauty sleep.' She dropped into the sword stance again and whipped out at a tree with a perfect high strike – if anything, Taro thought, she was quicker and more centred than she had been before, almost as if she had carried something of Enma's realm back to this one, some lingering knowledge of the true nature of things, clinging to her like smoke.

Turning away from her, Taro again concentrated on the ball, trying to make Little Kawabata trip himself up and fall to the ground.

Absolutely nothing happened. He cursed angrily.

The abbot, who was sitting under the tree meditating, looked up. ‘She's right, you know,' he said. ‘You would do better to practise the sword. I don't think the ball will work – at least not for your purposes.'

‘Why not?'

‘The ball belonged to Buddha. Do you think it is in the nature of his conception of
dharma
to control others?'

Taro thought about the teachings of Buddha, which he had been discussing often with the abbot over the last few days. ‘No,' he said eventually. The Buddhist way was one of compassion, calm, and freedom from bonds. For one man to be enslaved to another was a violation of the Eightfold Path.

‘It's one thing to have power over leaves, the wind, the weather even,' continued the abbot. ‘We already have such power, in fact, when we farm, and when we build boats whose sails catch the air. But people are different.'

Taro sat down. ‘So the ball is useless.'

‘No,' said the abbot. ‘
Nothing
is useless. The ball is merely an instrument of
dharma
, but that doesn't make it any less powerful. I believe that it will help to further the true way – it just won't
interfere
with the way.'

‘I don't understand,' said Taro.

The abbot stood up. He drew a
katana
from beneath his robe and held it out in front of him. ‘Pick it up,' he said. Taro stepped forward. ‘No. With the ball.'

Taro focused, then slowly raised the sword into the air. It was made of metal, and he could feel the true name of metal, and was able to command it. He let the sword hover in the air.

‘Now run me through,' said the abbot.

‘What?'

‘I said, run me through. Strike.'

‘But—'

‘But nothing. I'm older and wiser than you, and I have quick reflexes, which is more important. Just do it.'

Taro had no intention of hurting the man, but he sensed it would be foolish to disobey, so he compromised – he sent the sword slowly forward, tip pointing at the abbot's chest. But then he grunted, surprised. The sword stopped in mid-air, as if pressing against a solid barrier of rock, or steel. He pushed. It didn't move.

The abbot smiled. ‘You can't do it, can you?'

Taro was really trying now. He felt the muscle of his mind strain as he attempted to force the sword forward. Eventually he gasped, and the sword fell from his invisible grasp and landed with a thud on the ground. He sank back into the grass, looking up at the sky.

‘Useless,' he said. ‘How can I do
anything
with this thing?'

‘You can do
good
things with it,' said the abbot. ‘I think that's rather the point.'

Taro laughed hollowly. Actually, there was one positive thing about this – the ball would be completely useless to Lord Oda, too. The daimyo had expended so much time and effort – killed people even – in order to possess it, and it was nothing like he had imagined. It didn't grant power over the world, not even a little. It only allowed the holder to bring about, perhaps more quickly, the good and right progression of events. It was almost funny.

The murderous Lord Oda had killed Taro's father – at least, the man Taro had thought was his father – and Shusaku, and all the ninjas of the mountain, just to try to get hold of a ball that was a pure instrument of goodness, and would be as helpful as a rock in his hands.

Still, it wasn't that funny. Because Taro was now stuck on the mountaintop, close to Lord Oda's encampment, with nothing but a vampire who had once tried to kill him, a stocky friend, and a girl – even if she was good with a sword. There was Hayao, too, of course, though Taro had seen little of him since Hana had woken. He thought maybe Hiro had said something to him, about Taro's stupid jealousy, and the man was giving him and Hana some space. He was grateful; and he was grateful still to the samurai for coming over to the cause of the monks. But that didn't improve their odds much, did it? Some few monks, the meagre survivors of the battle on the mountainside, Little Kawabata, Hiro, Hana, and a traitor who was still weakened by his long haunting.

That was all that stood against Lord Oda.

And Lord Oda didn't know the ball was useless. He still wanted it.

We're all going to die
, thought Taro.

Just then, as he was thinking about death, a man in a hooded cloak stepped out from among the pine trees. He pushed the hood back from his head and it fell to his shoulders, leaving nothing but empty air where the face should have been. Taro stared in horror at this invisible newcomer, and was just remembering when he had last seen something like it when –

‘Taro, Hiro,' said the man. ‘It is good to see you. I have had a very long walk.'

Taro stared. He'd seen this figure before.
Gods
, he thought.
Was it not enough with my mother – must they follow me always, these dead people?

It was the ghost of Shusaku.

 

T
ARO STEPPED BACKWARDS,
holding the ball tight in his hands. His mother hadn't returned on the shade-boats at the end of
obon
, and it seemed Shusaku hadn't either – somehow their spirits had remained in the earthly realm. And now, just as Taro had saved himself from his mother's ghost and given her peace, his old mentor had come to haunt him too.