The Twilight War (11 page)

The frozen lake began some fifty paces away, and the corner they would snip was perhaps a hundred paces across. Low cloud hid the huge lake's distant left bank and most of its centre. A corridor of clear air ran alongside the right bank, above a wide, gleaming finger of frozen water, tinged with blue. It stretched to the base of the mountain, to the edge of a small, snowy plateau. There, Rikichi promised, lay the Fuma base's back door.

‘What a great opportunity.' The freelance agent spoke fast. ‘Normally you can see the village from here, but the cloud's hiding it right now.' He turned quickly to Groundspider, his earnest eyes narrowed. ‘Which means they can't see us, either.'

Groundspider nodded sharply. ‘For the plateau, then. Before that cloud parts!'

The ashiko instantly proved their worth, their spikes biting into the frozen ground and giving them speed and stability as the three hurried to the lake's edge. They checked the cloud and, keeping their eyes on the plateau, moved cautiously onto the ice.

The first third of the crossing went without incident, the lake's surface barely squeaking under their feet. Then Groundspider ambled forward,
taking the lead, his pace accelerating. Suddenly, the white-blue crust beneath his feet started crackling.

A spiralling web of thin fissures appeared under the big shinobi's ashiko, expanding like ripples on the surface of a pond. Everyone stopped. Groundspider looked down.

‘Move to the left, slowly, stepping
lightly
,' Rikichi whispered. Groundspider did. ‘You never know exactly where the thin ice is,' the guide murmured softly. ‘Don't ever fall through. The water underneath is so cold you'll freeze to death in minutes.'

‘Great, more good news,' Groundspider whispered back as he tightened his long stride. ‘Say, why are we whispering?'

Rikichi thumbed in the direction of the village, keeping his voice low. ‘We can't see their huts, but that doesn't mean they're not close by. Look, I know a lot about these people. It's my job. They send out small patrols to circle the mountain, usually three or five archers at a time. Thanks to the area's landslides, fast-moving snowstorms and freak collapses of lake ice, they sometimes lose entire patrols.'

‘What's this got to do with us?' Groundspider said, forgetting to whisper.

‘Shh!' Rikichi held a finger to his lips. Groundspider winced apologetically. ‘If we encounter a patrol, can take them by surprise and dispose of them, the villagers may think an accident of nature did it. Even if they do realise the truth, it
could take them some time – and by then we can be in, out and gone. But not if they
hear us
first.'

Moonshadow groaned. ‘They already have.' He pointed. The others turned, following his gaze. Just off to the left of their intended path, the cloud in the centre of the lake had receded around a line of five bowmen. Two of them wore rice-straw cloaks, the others great jackets made from varying strips of fur: fox, bear and snow monkey.

A tall, fur-clad hunter at the end of the line of men grunted, then patted the bow string that crossed his chest.

‘Oh no,' Rikichi muttered. ‘That was an attack signal. Unsling your bows!'

The line of peasant archers smoothly unslung their own bows as one, nocked their first arrow in perfect synchrony and drew.

‘Evade, evade!' Groundspider barked as a volley of arrows
whooshed
into the air.

Moonshadow, quiver in one hand, bow in the other, dived into a shoulder-roll across the ice, immediately sliding out of control and gliding much further than intended. He looked back as he dug in one ashiko and came to a jarring halt. The ice behind him crackled as three black arrows slammed into it, forming a near-perfect line in his wake. The crust around him was thick, so no cracks formed, but still he gasped with alarm. These archers were
incredibly
accurate!

‘To the right!' Rikichi shouted, looking up from the arrow sticking between his feet. He brandished his bow. ‘Get out of their range, then reply with our bows!'

‘I like the sound of that.' Groundspider scowled at the arrow that had landed a handspan from his foot. ‘Let's go!'

The three turned and dashed across the squeaking ice, Groundspider almost slipping several times as they ran for the visible bank of the lake. Clicks and crackles told Moonshadow that another wave of arrows had landed, nearly clipping their heels. These peasants were fast reloaders, too!

‘We have the advantage with our ashiko,' Rikichi panted. ‘They use traditional reed snowshoes, so we're faster, more agile on the ice.'

As they neared the bank of the frozen lake, Moonshadow looked back. ‘Oi!' He caught his comrade's attention. ‘They're approaching the spot where Groundspider cracked the ice!'

‘Shoot back then,
now
!' Rikichi snapped, raising his bow, nocking an arrow. ‘Allow for the extra-heavy head, aim each side of them. Crack that thin ice
wide open
!'

They formed a skirmish line. Each of the trio dropped to one knee to make themselves a smaller target. Taking careful aim, they let fly back at the hunters.

Rikichi's arrow landed a few paces to the right
of the tall leader. Moonshadow cursed as both his arrow and Groundspider's whistled past the foes, off into the distance.

‘I need a few tries to adjust,' he grumbled. ‘The pull is misleading.'

Rikichi's tense words gave him no comfort. ‘Adjust
fast
! They're firing again!'

A wave of black arrows rose moaning into the air, fell, then slammed – in an almost perfect line – into the ice at their feet. They
were
out of range, but not by much.

The hunters looked to their leader, who nodded for them to move forward.

‘Their minds are on us, not that ice,' Groundspider said. ‘Quick, fire again!'

The mission team launched their second volley. This time Rikichi felled one of the hunters. ‘Good,' he chuckled. ‘That should put some real weight on
their
patch of ice!'

Groundspider's arrow slammed into the frozen crust ten paces from the nearest enemy. ‘I'm getting the hang of this bow,' he announced. ‘Everyone, shoot again, quick!'

Moonshadow's second arrow, to his great delight, had also landed close. As he hastily nocked his third, an ominous cracking sound came from the stressed ice around the remaining hunters. Nonetheless, they stubbornly advanced.

Obviously angry over the man he had just
lost, the lead hunter motioned at the intruders, then growled at his men, urging them to destroy this enemy who was now back in range. The ice beneath him gave off a long crackle, then another. He ignored it.

‘Why aren't they worried about the ice giving way?' Groundspider said as he started to draw his bow. ‘I am!'

At his side, Rikichi drew slowly. ‘Too confident.' He took a breath, aimed and paused. ‘Grown over-familiar with their terrain, a big …
mistake
!' He loosed his arrow.

Moonshadow double-checked his aim this time, so he fired a second or two behind the others. He watched his arrow chase theirs closely in an arc above the ice. Then a different set of airborne blurs drew his attention, and he heard Rikichi grunt in dismay.

The incoming black missiles hissed as they streaked past the mission team's arrows.

‘Aw.' Groundspider's big shoulders sagged. Moonshadow just gaped.

Both sides had fired at virtually the same time. The hunters' four arrows were descending for them and, from the angle, looked right on target.

Snowhawk heard the tiny bell ring again; one clear peal, its pure high voice echoing inside her mind.

A mind that, though a little vague right now, was still very much
hers
.

She opened her eyes and stared at the bell dangling in Sensei's hand. Snowhawk stretched slowly, taking in the chamber. Once again she was propped against a wall. Her interrogator sat in seiza before her. The same guards flanked the door, but as well as their back-mounted swords, each now also brandished a
kusarikama
, a sickle with a snaring chain and weight. Nasty weapons, even in the hands of poor fighters. Why had they appeared? Had the base gone to a higher level of alert? Despite her laboured, grinding thoughts, she weighed it all up and smiled. Maybe her rescue was already underway …

That third stick of foul-smelling incense had burned away now, leaving the uneven ceiling with a wispy layer of smoke and a mound of white ash in the tiny clay pot at her feet. The heated acupuncture needles in the back of her right hand and wrist twitched as nerves under the skin danced to a tune of their own. But she was holding up well.

The kunoichi she had once known as Sensei had been plying her trade for perhaps an hour now, and though feeling a little blurred and groggy, Snowhawk knew she was in no real danger, at
least so far, of being hypnotised. The gods had blessed her with a powerful mind and it was hard to subdue, as her teachers right here, in the heart of Clan Fuma, had told her themselves.

Her interrogator, like the young guards, wore a scarf over her nose and mouth to keep out the incense's active chemical. It was supposed to make people stupidly compliant. Well, not Snowhawk, who in this very mountain once honed an iron will and the ability to throw others – even exceptional warriors like Moonshadow – into a forced trance.
Moonshadow
. She half-smiled. He
would
come and save her.

‘Don't smirk, it's only just begun!' Sensei scowled, but there was a shard of grudging respect in her dark eyes. ‘A very strong mind for one so young,' she conceded, her voice muffled by the scarf, ‘and more stubborn than most
men
!'

Snowhawk broke into a silly grin. ‘If you give up now, I'll leave peacefully.'

Sensei stood and turned away, her little bell ringing several times. ‘I need tea and the scroll of obedience drug formulas,' she said, thinking aloud. Then she looked back at Snowhawk. ‘Be warned, girl, if you won't talk to
me
, you'll be turned over to someone far less subtle. Think on this!' She sneered and strode off, the guards quickly opening the door for her while continuing to stare, unblinking, at their prisoner. Snowhawk
saw a shinobi outside the door, a spear resting on his shoulder. He probably had a partner, too.

She lay against the cold wall, feeling strange and unsure of how much time was passing. Though it hadn't made her compliant, the invasive incense
had
heavily sedated her. She lapsed in and out of consciousness for a while, then woke abruptly, feeling physically drained but quite clear-headed. Furtively she scanned the chamber.
Voices.

The guards were whispering, their eyes briefly off her. She resumed a bleary, half-asleep appearance while she strained with her sharp ears to take in their discussion.

Suddenly a weird animal cry echoed through the tunnels and caverns without, so loud that even the heavy wooden door failed to muffle it. Snowhawk felt her flesh crawl. What was that? It sounded like some great beast, wounded perhaps. The cry echoed again, this time lasting twice as long. Not wounded, she frowned. Trapped. Like me!

Her hatred for the Fuma roiled inside her. Heartless, vicious people! What had they trapped, a bear? What poor helpless creature were they torturing in some deep subterranean pen? She licked dry lips. If she didn't escape or get rescued soon, she was in line for the same kind of abuse. Snowhawk tested her legs. Her head was fine now, but her body too had been affected by the incense.
She was strong enough to stand, maybe even fight. She sighed heavily. But with
speed?
No, she was too badly drugged.

Time would have to pass, these side-effects would have to wear off, before she could make a move. She returned her attention to the guards. If she couldn't fight yet, at least she could, like a true ninja, still gather information. It might even
help
her escape, and whatever she learned would benefit the Grey Light Order. Did they realise she had been taken against her will? No matter! Once she made it back to Edo with fresh, unexpected intelligence, nobody would doubt her loyalty. She concentrated, listening.

‘Lord Kotaro himself believes Silver Wolf
will
honour his promise to us,' the stockier of the guards whispered. ‘But he can't if he's dead, can he? So it's
very much
in our interests to protect him.'

‘Let him protect himself.' The leaner guard wagged his head side-to-side. ‘Momoyama castle is strong, Silver Wolf's army large and well-trained.'

‘True,' his companion nodded. ‘But this Lord Ukita is a warlord of equal power, the strongest of the western daimyos. They say he made the Bizen fiefdom great again. He's so wealthy from civil war plunder, he can even afford regular hunting trips to foreign lands. Now that he and Silver Wolf want the same thing, one of them
must
fall.'

‘Fine, then let Ukita of Bizen fall, since he
hasn't made
us
any promises. But that's easier said than done, huh? It won't be an easy task, taking Lord Ukita's head.'

‘The real question is, who could defeat Ukita's bodyguard Koga Danjo?'

Both guards glanced her way. Even as her mind sprinted into speculation, Snowhawk took great care to look asleep. So the rumour that Eagle had heard was true! The great Koga ninja master Danjo
was
alive! Alive, and protecting a rebel warlord.

Moonshadow's near-fatal duel with Danjo's protégé, The Deathless, in a gorge near Fushimi came rushing back to her now in vivid, unsettling detail. She too had been lucky to survive that encounter. And Koga Danjo was said to be even more dangerous.

Snowhawk marvelled as the pieces fell into place. This was just what Eagle had feared, and it
would
change everything! Even as Silver Wolf plotted to kill the Shogun and take his power, a second contender for the Shogun's office was lurking to the west. At least now, thanks to good timing and these talkative Fuma, she had learned their new enemy's name: Lord Ukita, daimyo of the province of Bizen.

If this Ukita was wealthy enough to hire the immortal Koga Danjo
and
fund hunting trips to foreign lands, he would most likely prove a
worse
foe than Silver Wolf.

Snowhawk made a noiseless vow. She would take in everything the guards said, and no matter what the Fuma put her through, memorise it. Then she would escape, or Moon would come for her and either way, the Grey Light Order would learn
everything
.

All she had to do was stay strong. A lump rose in her throat. Somehow!

The black arrows flashed at them. Hissing filled the air.

‘Evade!' Groundspider bellowed as he dived forward and went careening along the ice. Moonshadow threw himself into a half-controlled roll to the right. Rikichi darted nimbly to the left and kept his balance, his experience in the icy terrain serving him well.

The four incoming arrows hit the ice exactly where the mission team had stood.

Moonshadow's head snapped up, eyes darting to the line of hunters. He saw two arrows miss them narrowly, then a third – his own belated shot – slam into one of them.

With Moonshadow's arrow sticking from his collarbone, the hunter fell heavily. Suddenly the clicking of the ice around the peasant archers peaked into loud
snaps
. As Moonshadow stared, holding
his breath, the lake's crust came apart beneath their attackers. The hunters broke their line and tried to scatter in all directions to escape its tearing fissures, but wide stripes of freezing water appeared below them. Pointy shards of ice splintered and rose, irregular chunks of white bucked, as the three standing hunters, their leader included, plunged through the crust one by one and vanished.

‘A pity we couldn't just escape them,' Moonshadow said as the group reunited.

‘So I brought Mantis with me after all.' Groundspider sighed. ‘Kid, we had no choice. That was us or them. And this is war, do you get it?'

‘I too had a compassionate teacher,' Rikichi said gently. ‘But there
are
times …'

Moonshadow nodded. What his companions said was all true, but it didn't make him feel any better. Thanks to Mantis's influence, he'd avoided killing for so long – never an easy feat for a shinobi. But as of this morning he was also a soldier, fighting in a real war. Lives were going to be lost, probably many, on both sides. He closed his eyes.
Scatter not one grain of life.
He opened them and sighed. Unless there
was
no choice. He had always known that one day, he
would
be forced to slay a foe, but Moonshadow had always imagined a face-to-face duel or a pre-dawn stealth kill, not distant, faceless targets abruptly vanishing into the land itself. He hung his head. There was no glory in this win.

The cloud was expanding, hiding more of the lake. The light began to wane, the setting sun blocked by Fumayama itself. Moonshadow felt the air's frosty tang grow stronger, its cold stabbing through his layers of clothing. Time to get underground!

They hurried across the shadowy ice in silence. Once over the lip of the snowy plateau, finally at the threshold of the mountain, they crept in single file, hunching low as they wound through a snow-mottled field of fallen, cracked rocks.

‘Time for leg armour and gauntlets, eh?' Groundspider whispered. Moonshadow gave a nod and together, behind a white-capped boulder, they broke out the last of their equipment. After tying the scaled gauntlets and leg armour sections in place, they checked the release mechanisms on the pouches that held the rock-trick cloaks. Finally they packed the legging's pockets with shuriken, smoke bombs, lock-picking kits, and one of Groundspider's favourite evasion tools: tetsubishi – small iron caltrops.

As Rikichi slowly fed the bows and quivers into the sack on his back, Moonshadow looked from the armour on Groundspider's thick leg to the nearest exposed surface of local rock. Even in twilight the two looked similar, so should match each other brilliantly by candle or lantern light! This whole crazy thing
might
just work.

Rikichi kept watch, peeping over a nearby boulder. ‘They always post a single guard on this exit … there he is!' Rikichi smiled coldly. ‘He's mine.'

While the pair hid and watched, Rikichi crept along the ground, moving from the cover of one rock to the next, closing on the lone sentry. Moonshadow studied the freelancer's target. He was a big man, who moved more like a hunter than a ninja. He wore a muffler, a straw hat, and a long, fur-lined, wadded jacket to protect him from the cold. His only visible weapon was a spear.

Looking very bored, the fellow briefly turned to face a man-sized cleft in the rock face behind him. Inside it, Moonshadow caught sight of a weathered black door. As he looked on, Rikichi flashed up from the ground, tore between two rocks, and leapt onto the huge fellow's back. With impressive speed the guide covered the sentry's mouth with one hand, striking hard with the other – a blurring fist – to the side of the guard's neck.

As Rikichi slid from the sentry's back, the big peasant fell forward stiffly into the snow. Despite his size, the impact made only a soft
ffft
.

Groundspider and Moonshadow ran from their hiding place. While Groundspider dragged the guard out of sight under an overhanging crag of stone, Moonshadow drew a small, slender iron
hook from his leggings. Then he attacked the lock on the black door.

The mechanism gave a dull
click
of surrender. The three gathered round the doorframe, hands ready on their swords. Using his foot, Groundspider gently pushed the door open. It swung inwards, iron hinges faintly creaking. Inside, a narrow tunnel snaked through the rock, lit at intervals by small wooden box lanterns anchored to the walls.

With Rikichi in the lead they crept into the tunnel and took their first glimpse inside the Fuma base. Moonshadow also took heart. The winding tunnel's walls, floor and ceiling matched the new Grey Light Order suits and armour splendidly. Muddy-brown and slate-grey strata bled together everywhere, mirroring their suits and leggings.

Holding up a hand, Rikichi dropped into a crouch. The pair behind him did the same. Rikichi pointed at a protruding rock in line with his face. ‘Here it is,' he whispered. ‘The only writing I've ever seen on the walls here. It's old, that's all I know.'

Groundspider and Moonshadow shuffled forward to look over the kanji they had been briefed to expect. The characters verified that they were indeed just inside the Fuma's back door. Dark, carved lines formed two words only:
hell
and
lips
.