The Diamond Chariot (85 page)

‘All right, then, come to the crevice at midnight,’ Etsuko whispered. ‘And I’ll give you a hug.’

‘That would be very charitable of you,’ he said meekly, and start blinking very, very fast – he was so touched.

The place chosen for the rendezvous was absolutely perfect, all credit to the girl for that. At night there wasn’t a soul here, and it was a good hundred paces to the nearest house. They didn’t post sentries in Kakusimura – what for? On the other side of the crevices there were ‘singing boards’ under the earth: if anyone stepped on one, it started hooting like an eagle owl and it could be heard from very far away. That time when he and the master had climbed across the rope they’d had no idea that the village was ready to receive visitors.

With Etsuko everything happened quickly, even too quickly. There was no need to act like an inexperienced boy in order to inflame her passions more strongly – she came dashing out of the bushes so fast she knocked him off his feet, and a minute later she was already gasping, panting and screeching as she bounced up and down on Masa, like a cat scraping at a dog with its claws.

There wasn’t anything special about the
kunoichi
, she was just a girl like any other. Except that her thighs were as hard as stone – she squeezed him so hard, he would probably have bruises left on his hips. But she wasn’t inventive at all. Even Natsuko was more interesting.

Etsuko babbled something in a happy voice, stroked Masa’s stiff, short-trimmed hair and made sweet talk, but he couldn’t hide his disappointment.

‘Didn’t you like it?’ she asked in a crestfallen voice. ‘I know I never studied it … The
jonin
told me: “You don’t need to”. Ah, but do you know how good I am at climbing trees? Like a real monkey. Shall I show you?’

‘Go on, then,’ Masa agreed feebly.

Etsuko jumped up, ran across to the dead pine tree and clambered up the charred trunk, moving her hands and feet with incredible speed.

Masa was struck by a poetic idea: living white on dead black. He even wondered whether he ought to compose a haiku about a naked girl on a charred pine. He had the first two lines all ready – five syllables and seven:

The old black pine tree,

Trembling like a butterfly …

What next? ‘With a girl on it?’ Too blunt and direct. ‘See love soaring upwards’? That was six syllables, but it should be five.

In search of inspiration he rolled closer to the pine tree – he couldn’t be bothered to get up.

Suddenly Masa heard a strange champing sound above him. Etsuko dropped out of the tree with a groan and fell on to the ground two steps away from him. He froze in horror at the sight of a thick, feathered arrow-shaft sticking out of her white back below her left shoulder-blade.

He wanted to go dashing to her, to see whether she was alive.

Etsuko was alive. Without turning over or moving her head, she kicked Masa, so that he went rolling away.

‘Run …’ he heard her say in a muffled whisper.

But Masa didn’t run – his legs were trembling so badly, they probably wouldn’t have held up the weight of his body.

The night was suddenly full of rustling sounds. Dark spots appeared at the edge of the crevice – one, two, three. Black men climbed up on to the edge of the cliff at the point where the
shinobi
had their secret hoist. There were many of them, very many. Masa lay in the tall grass, looking at them, horror-struck, and he couldn’t move.

One of the black men walked over to where Etsuko was lying face down and turned her over on to her back with his foot. He leaned down, and a blade glinted in his hand.

Suddenly the girl sat up, there was a wheeze, and he was lying, but Etsuko was standing with a sword in her hand, surrounded on all sides by the mysterious newcomers. White among the black, Masa thought fleetingly.

The clash of metal, howls, and then the white figure disappeared, and the men in black were furiously hacking at something lying on the ground that crunched as they hit it.

Masa clearly heard a girl’s voice shout out:

‘
Kongojyo!
’

One of the killers came very close. He tore up a bunch of grass and started cleaning off his sword. Masa heard loud, sporadic breathing.

The pale light of the moon seeped through a thin cloud for a moment and Masa saw a hood with holes instead of eyes, a cartridge belt over a shoulder, a black jacket.

Don Tsurumaki’s men, that was who they were! They’d followed the
shinobi
’s example and covered their faces so that they wouldn’t show white in the darkness!

How had they managed to get past the ‘singing boards’? Surely they couldn’t have come through the underground passage? Who could have showed it to them?

Masa crawled on all fours into the undergrowth, jumped to his feet and ran.

The Black Jackets didn’t waste any time. He heard a muffled command behind him, and fallen pine needles started crunching under rapid footsteps.

He had to get to the houses quickly, to raise the alarm! The Don’s men wouldn’t bother to find out who was a
shinobi
and who wasn’t, they’d finish off everybody regardless.

When he had only twenty paces left to go to the first hut, Masa was unlucky – in the darkness he ran into a branch, tore his cheek and – worst of all – he couldn’t stop himself crying out.

The men behind him heard and realised they had been discovered.

‘TSUME-E-E!’ roared a commanding bass voice.

The response was a roar from many voices.

‘An attack! An attack!’ Masa roared as well, but shut his mouth almost immediately, realising that he was only exposing himself to unnecessary danger.

The attackers were roaring and tramping so loudly that the inhabitants of Kakusimura couldn’t help but hear them.

Now, if he wanted to live, he had to think very quickly. So Masa didn’t run towards the houses, he hid behind a tree.

Less than half a minute later a crowd of Black Jackets went rushing past, spreading out and forming into a half-moon in order to take in the whole width of the island.

Torches blazed into life, thrust into the ground along a line at intervals of five paces. The chain of fire cut across the entire forest, from one edge to the other.

‘Fire!’

Rapid, crackling salvoes of carbine fire. Masa could hear the bullets thudding into the wooden walls and the squeal of splinters flying out.

Ah, what a disaster! How could he save his master from this hell? The Black Jackets would riddle the first three houses with bullets now, and then they would set about Tamba’s home.

Masa dashed about between the pines in despair and saw that he couldn’t possibly slip through the brightly lit zone and the cordon.

A crunch of branches. A man running with a limp from the direction of the crevice. Black jacket, black hood – he must have fallen behind the others. Masa attacked him from the side, knocked him down with a single blow and then, to make sure, squeezed the fallen man’s neck with his knee and waited for it to crunch. He didn’t have to worry about the noise – all the shooting that was going on was deafening.

He pulled the trousers and jacket off the corpse and put them on. He covered his face with the hood – it was very helpful that the Don’s men had decided to wear such a useful item.

While he was still fiddling about, the shooting stopped. The wooden walls that had been riddled with bullets were covered in black dots, like the poppy-seed bun that Masa had given Netsuko as a treat. It was almost as bright as day, there were so many torches all around.

One by one the gunmen entered the houses, holding their carbines at the ready. Then they came back out – in twos, dragging dead bodies that they laid out on the ground. The commander leaned down, looking into the dead faces.

Masa counted nine big bodies and four little ones. There were two adults missing.

‘Tamba’s not here,’ the commander said loudly. ‘And the
gaijin
’s not here either. They’re in the house on the edge of the precipice.’

And he walked away, but not far, only a few steps.

Suddenly one of the bodies came to life. The man (Masa recognised affable, talkative Rakuda) arched up like a cat and jumped on to the commander’s back. A knife blade glinted, but the leader of the Black Jackets proved to be very adroit – he jerked his head to dodge the blow, threw himself backwards and started rolling about on the grass. Men dashed to help him from all sides, and a shapeless black octopus with arms and legs sticking out in all directions started writhing on the ground.

Taking advantage of the commotion, another body started moving, this time a little one. It was eight-year-old Yaichi. He rose halfway to his feet, staggered and then shook himself. Two Black Jackets tried to grab the boy, but he wriggled between their outstretched arms and scrambled up a tree in an instant.

‘Catch him! Catch him!’ his pursuers shouted. There was a rumble of shots.

Yaichi flew across to the next tree, and then the one after that. The branch he was holding broke off, smashed by a bullet, but he grabbed another one.

Meanwhile they had finished off Rakuda. Two Black Jackets were left lying on the ground. The others dragged the dead
shinobi
away and helped their commander to get up. He pushed their willing hands away angrily and pulled the hood off his head. A revolver glinted as he aimed the barrel at the boy skipping though the trees. The barrel described a short arc, spat out a gobbet of flame – and Yaichi came tumbling down like a stone.

Masa froze open-mouthed, astonished by the gunman’s accuracy and the gleam of his smoothly shaved head. He had seen this man before, only a few days earlier! The itinerant monk who had spent the night at the village hotel with Kamata’s ‘construction brigade’, that was who it was!

And everything was finally clear.

Don Tsurumaki was a prudent man. He hadn’t relied on the faithful but dull-witted Kamata. He had attached a spy to the brigade, a man who had watched everything and sniffed everything out without making himself known. He had seen the massacre on the mountain, noted where the entrance to the underground passage was, and the hoist … Neat work, no two ways about it!

The Monk (that was what Masa called the Black Jackets’ commander now) was obviously afraid that another dead ninja would come back to life. He pulled a short sword out of its scabbard and set to work. The blade rose thirteen times and fell thirteen times and a pyramid of severed heads rose up by the wall of the house. The Monk handled the sword deftly, he clearly had a lot of experience.

Before moving on to the concluding stage of the storm, the commander ordered his unit to form up in a line.

‘Our losses are small,’ said the Monk, walking along the line with a springy step. ‘The naked girl killed two, the dead man who came to life killed two more, one was hurt when he fell off the hoist. But the greatest danger lies ahead. We shall proceed strictly according to the plan drawn up by Mr Shirota. It’s a good plan, you’ve seen it. Mr Shirota assumes that the house of the werewolves’ leader is full of traps. And therefore – extreme caution. Not a single step without orders, is that clear?’ Suddenly he stopped, peering into the darkness. ‘Who’s that there? You, Ryuhei?’

Realising he had been spotted, Masa slowly stepped forward. What should he do? Walk over or take to his heels?

‘So you got up after all? Didn’t break any bones? Good man. Get back in line.’

Most of the Black Jackets had followed their commander’s example and taken off the hoods, but a few, Buddha be praised, had left their faces covered, and so no one suspected Masa; only the man next to him in the line squinted at him and nudged him in the side with his elbow – but he thought that must be a kind of greeting.

‘Twenty men cordon off the clearing,’ the Monk ordered. ‘Hold your carbines at the ready, stay awake. If one of the
shinobi
tries to break through, drop him on the spot. The others come with me, into the house. No crowding, in line, two by two.’

Masa didn’t want to join the cordon. He attached himself to the men who would go into the house, but he couldn’t get into the first row, only the third.

The plan of the storm had clearly been worked out in detail.

The long double column trotted to the clearing with the
jonin
’s wooden plank house standing on its edge. The twenty-man cordon took up position round the edge of the clearing and stuck torches into the ground.

The others stretched out into a long dark snake and moved forward.

‘Carbines on the ground!’ the commander ordered, keeping his eyes fixed on the house, which was maintaining a sinister silence. ‘Draw your daggers!’

He dropped back a little bit from the men in front and stopped, as if feeling uncertain.

He doesn’t want to stick his own neck out, Masa realised. And he’s right too. Rakuda (whose heroic death had probably raised him to the next level in the cycle of rebirth) had said that when there was danger, Tamba’s house became like a prickly hedgehog – there were some secret levers that had to be pressed for that. The inhabitants of the house had had plenty of time, so there would be lots of surprises in store for the Black Jackets. Masa remembered with a shudder how the floor had tilted under him that night and he had gone tumbling down into darkness.

The Monk was a cautious man, and there was no point in pushing forward too fast.

And then immediately, as if to confirm this idea, it started.

When one of the two men at the front was just a step away from the porch, he disappeared, as if the ground had opened and swallowed him up.

Or rather, there was no ‘as if’ about it – it did swallow him up. Masa had walked across that spot a hundred times, and he had no idea that there was a pit hidden under it.

There was a spine-chilling howl. The Black Jackets first shied away from the gaping hole, then swarmed round it. Masa stood on tiptoe and looked over someone’s shoulder. He saw a body pierced through by sharp stakes, still jerking about.

‘I only just stopped myself, right on the very edge!’ the survivor from the first row said in a trembling voice. ‘The amulet saved me. The goddess Kannon’s amulet!’