Young Samurai: The Ring of Sky (5 page)

‘Where were you?’ gasped Jack,
massaging his bruised throat. ‘Why didn’t you help me?’

Benkei patted him on the back
affectionately. ‘You looked to be doing fine on your own.’

Jack was about to protest this, when the
rest of the patrol materialized out of the mist on the other side of the pond.

‘Let’s go,’ said Benkei,
racing off towards the remaining Hells.

Running virtually blind through the steam,
they weaved in between the deadly pools. A samurai cut across and blocked their path.
They switched directions. In his haste, Jack landed on one of the steaming vents. Crying
out in shock and pain, he stumbled and pitched forward. Directly ahead was a blood-red
Hell – its crimson waters waiting to strip the skin from his flesh. At the last second,
Benkei grabbed his arm and pulled him back from the brink. ‘This is no time for a
bath!’

Eventually they reached a rocky slope at the
edge of the Nine Hells, only to be faced with a roaring wall of white-hot steam. The
blast subsided, then roared again as if it were the pulse of the volcano.

‘Mountain Hell,’ explained Benkei.
‘We’ll have to go round it.’

They skirted the Hell until they came to a
boulder-strewn patch of ground at the base of a small cliff. As they searched for a
route up the rock face, the samurai patrol caught up and surrounded them.

‘Nowhere to run this time,’
declared the leader with a triumphant grin. ‘Surrender or die.’

‘Not much of a choice,’ remarked
Jack, turning to face them, ‘when the punishment for treason is death
anyway!’

‘True,’ agreed the leader,
giving the command to attack.

Jack unsheathed his
wakizashi
,
raising it over his head while keeping his
katana
poised in a front guard.
Despite the impossible odds of battling eight samurai at once, Jack realized their only
chance of survival lay in the Two Heavens – a devastating double sword technique that
his samurai guardian, Masamoto, had taught him.

Unfazed by the threat of a
gaijin
wielding two swords, the samurai patrol continued to advance.

‘I could do with some help this
time,’ said Jack out of the corner of his mouth to Benkei.

‘Don’t worry, I’m right
behind you,’ replied Benkei reassuringly.

Jack glanced back to see his companion
literally
shielding himself behind Jack’s own body.

The first two samurai attacked, their blades
arcing for Jack’s neck from either side. Jack blocked both sword strikes before
side-kicking the warrior to his left. He then spun round, slicing his
katana
across the other’s chest. The samurai barely
managed to leap away
in time, his kimono left in tatters by the sword’s razor-sharp
kissaki
.

Witnessing Jack’s deadly defence, four
warriors now charged at him. Jack’s
katana
and
wakizashi
became
a blur of steel as he fended off strike after strike. He ducked beneath a vicious sword
swipe for his head, then leapt over another blade. Quickly rolling between two samurai,
he cross-blocked a lethal attempt to cleave him in half by the leader himself.

‘So the rumours are true!’ spat
the leader, with something approaching respect. ‘You have mastered the Two
Heavens.’

His heart pounding and his lungs burning,
Jack fought like a warrior possessed. The samurai patrol couldn’t lay a single
blade upon him. But, with Benkei left unprotected, the attention of one of the patrol
was turned on him.

Benkei picked up a rock to arm himself – and
immediately dropped it.

‘Oww!’ he cried, blowing on his
fingers. ‘That’s red hot.’

The samurai laughed at his misfortune. But
his gloating was his downfall. Benkei hurriedly wrapped his hand in a piece of cloth
torn from his motley kimono. Then he snatched up another rock and hurled it at his
attacker. The missile struck the samurai square in the face, searing his flesh. The
samurai reeled away in agony.

Meanwhile, Jack fought his way back to
Benkei and they held off the patrol with a combination of sword and rocks. But the
demands of battling so many opponents rapidly drained Jack’s strength.

‘I’ve run out of rocks!’
exclaimed Benkei.

The patrol closed in for the kill.

As Jack prepared to make a final stand, the
ground started
to tremble. A rumbling noise deep below the earth grew
louder and louder.

‘The dragon awakes!’ cried a
terrified samurai, turning on his heel and sprinting off through the mist.

The next moment, scalding steam erupted into
the sky, followed by a jet of super-heated water. Beads of blistering rain pelted the
samurai and they fled in all directions.

Shielding himself with his pack, Jack
grabbed Benkei and ran too.

‘They’re getting away!’
shouted the leader in fury.

‘I forgot about … that last
Hell,’ Benkei panted as they dodged the thundering geyser. ‘
Tatsumaki
Jigoku
.’

Tornado Hell, how appropriate
,
thought Jack, recalling his violent encounter with the Pirate Queen of the same
name.

He stopped before Mountain Hell and caught a
glimpse of the forested slopes beyond. The wall of steam continued to throb in blasting
waves. ‘If we time it right, we can make it through.’

‘Are you completely mad?’
exclaimed Benkei, eyeing the scalding barrier.

‘Do you know the Heart Sutra?’
Jack asked with all seriousness.

‘Of course, everyone’s heard of
that Buddhist scripture. But what’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I was taught how to use one of its
mantras to walk across a fire pit,’ Jack hurriedly explained, remembering Sensei
Yamada’s lesson during the
gasshuku
training camp in Koya-san.
‘Essentially, by emptying your mind, you empty your body of all sensation, all
pain and all suffering. Have you ever meditated?’

‘Well … once or twice,’
blustered Benkei.

‘Good, then recite this and it will
help protect you from the heat:
Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi
svaha …
’

Jack chanted the mantra until they were both
repeating the incantation in unison. A sense of calm amid the storm descended upon them
and Jack felt a familiar tingle spread throughout his limbs.

‘There they are!’ came a
cry.

Unable to wait for a lull in the blasts,
Jack grabbed Benkei’s arm.

‘No! Stop!’ shouted Benkei.
‘Didn’t you say the mantra was for fire?’

But Jack had already dived head first into
Mountain Hell, dragging Benkei through the steam along with him.

8
 
 

‘I’m red as a lobster!’
complained Benkei, inspecting his raw blistered skin as he stood cooling beneath a
waterfall on the upper slopes of Mount Tsurumi.

‘At least you’re a live
one,’ replied Jack, his legs dangling in a rock pool.

‘No thanks to that mantra of yours.
I’ve got burns in places I can’t even see!’

‘You’d be a lot worse without
its protection,’ said Jack, who’d escaped Mountain Hell with little more
than scalded feet. ‘Besides, we lost the patrol, so the gamble was worth
it.’

Benkei shook his head in astonishment.
‘You’re the craziest
nanban
I’ve ever met! And the deadliest.
Where did you learn to fight like that?’

‘I trained at the
Niten Ichi
Ryū
in Kyoto … until the school was closed by the Shogun.’
Having only just met Benkei, Jack decided to omit his time spent training as a ninja.
Discretion at this stage in their relationship was wiser and far safer.

‘And that’s another thing –
why’s the Shogun so desperate to kill you?’ asked Benkei. ‘I realize
you’re a foreigner, but that patrol leader said the order was
personal
.’

‘Kamakura has borne a grudge against me,
ever since I made him lose face by defeating his sword school in a
Taryu-Jiai
contest,’ admitted Jack. ‘Then I fought against him during the Battle of
Osaka Castle.’

Benkei whistled through his teeth. ‘No
wonder you’re in trouble! I’d heard rumours that they were hunting samurai
who’d taken up arms against the Shogun. A
foreign
samurai, though, is ten
times worse.’

While this was true, Jack knew that was only
half the reason. The other was Kamakura’s desire to get his hands on the
rutter
. The Shogun knew that the logbook could be used to control the trade
routes between nations, making it a very powerful political tool as well as extremely
lucrative. He intended to use it for his own gain. But Jack had vowed to his father
never to let the
rutter
fall into the wrong hands.

‘So what are you going to do
now?’ asked Benkei.

Jack hadn’t thought about that.
He’d been too busy
running
to worry about his next move.

‘I was headed to Nagasaki
until …’ From his vantage point at the edge of the rock pool, Jack gazed out
across the wide expanse of Beppu Bay. Clouds of steam rose into the evening sky before
scattering like departing spirits. The fading sun glimmered off the rippling waters of
the Seto Sea and his eyes searched for a mast-less skiff, adrift somewhere in the bay or
beyond. But it was futile. He was too far from the coast to see such things. And, in his
heart of hearts, he knew that the skiff could never have survived the storm and, in all
likelihood, now lay rotting on the seabed.

A tear rolled down his cheek and he felt his
throat tighten.
Jack wanted to cry out in anguish and anger at losing
his friends. But he clenched his fists in frustrated fury instead, banging them against
the rock. Since his arrival in Japan all he seemed to have known was
loss
: the
loss of his father at the hands of the murderous ninja Dragon Eye; the courageous
sacrifice of his samurai brother Yamato; the banishment of his guardian Masamoto; of
leaving his best friend Akiko time and time again … and now the tragic loss of
his loyal friends, Yori, Saburo and Miyuki.

Feeling heavy with grief, Jack bowed his
head. He thought of giving up there and then – sitting upon that rock until cold, hunger
or the samurai patrol took him. But he couldn’t allow all that suffering and loss
to come to nothing.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars
, his Zen master Sensei
Yamada had once said.

And there was one glimmer of light in his
black funereal sky. Jack realized the only way to bring meaning to their deaths was to
reach Nagasaki, return home and reunite with the sole family he had left – his sister,
Jess.

‘Have you listened to anything
I’ve just said?’ asked Benkei, plonking himself down next to Jack.

Jack glanced up, quickly wiping his eyes
with the back of his hand. ‘Sorry?’

‘I said, I’ll be your guide,
nanban
.’

‘To where?’

‘Nagasaki, of course.’ Benkei
gave him a concerned look. ‘Are you all right?’

Jack nodded. ‘Why risk your life to be
my guide? I’m a fugitive. There’s no need for you to be one too.’

Benkei laughed. ‘My mother always said,
Dip your toe in the water and you’re likely to fall in
. I’m
already up to my neck in this! Besides, who wouldn’t want to be chased, beaten and
boiled alive in a day?’ He clapped Jack on the back. ‘Just imagine what
excitement awaits us on the road to Nagasaki.’

9
 
 

The morning sun was a welcome relief to the
cold night spent on the mountain. Its warmth banished the stiffness from Jack’s
bones as he foraged for food among the bushes. Thanks to the fieldcraft he’d
learnt as a ninja, he knew what to look for and where, and had soon gathered a good
handful of nuts, berries and edible roots. Returning to the waterfall, he found Benkei
still fast asleep. His patchwork kimono made him look like a forsaken court jester and
Jack wondered who his new companion
really
was. So far he knew nothing of the
young man’s history – not even why he’d been buried alive on the beach,
although Jack guessed that had something to do with the magistrate. Until he learnt
more, he needed to be on his guard with Benkei. Nevertheless, he was grateful to have a
willing guide.