Young Samurai: The Ring of Wind (32 page)

‘This was the only treasure we found on-board,’ Li Ling informed Tatsumaki.

She placed it on the table and opened it to reveal the stack of gleaming
koban
.

‘That was the reward for my head,’ explained Jack.

‘And now it’s payment for your rescue,’ said Tatsumaki, closing the lid and taking possession of the gold. ‘Though
you
still owe me for saving your life.’

Jack realized it was a debt that would be hard to repay.

‘I also found this,’ said Li Ling, handing Tatsumaki the scroll with the
daimyo
’s wax seal. ‘It looks important.’

Tatsumaki broke the seal and read the contents. She scowled. ‘Where’s that traitor Skullface and his gang now?’

‘Dragon Eye tortured them to death,’ replied Jack gravely, recalling the gruesome scene.

‘Good.’ Tatsumaki crushed the pardon in her hands. ‘Saves me the trouble. We can now return to Pirate Island without further delay.’

Jack wondered whether he should tell Tatsumaki about Snakehead’s confession. If Dragon Eye had got away, then the Sea Samurai would probably launch an assault on the island. The Pirate Queen would be grateful for the warning. She might even trust him more; maybe release him and his friends as promised. Then again, a surprise attack could be just the opportunity they needed – in the confusion of battle, they might be able to slip away unnoticed. But it would be a risky strategy, since they could be caught or killed by either side. And Dragon Eye would be hunting him down too.

‘Something on your mind, Jack?’ asked Tatsumaki.

Jack realized that his best chance of survival lay with Tatsumaki and the Wind Demons. He took a deep breath before replying. ‘Snakehead revealed the location of Pirate Island.’

For a moment, Tatsumaki’s face appeared to turn to stone. ‘To whom?’

‘Dragon Eye and his samurai escort.’

The Pirate Queen’s expression relaxed slightly. ‘Then we have nothing to worry about. They’re all dead.’

‘Not Dragon Eye, though,’ reminded Jack.

‘I don’t see how that ninja can elude death a second time. If he’s no longer on the ship, he must have drowned.’

‘You should never underestimate Dragon Eye,’ said Jack.

‘But we’re in the middle of the Seto Sea,’ contended Tatsumaki. ‘Even if he managed to swim back to the island, it’s barren and he’d be marooned.’

‘Not if he found Skullface’s boat.’

Tatsumaki snapped her fan shut with such force that it sounded like a bone breaking. A second later, she was on her feet, ordering her pirates to stop plundering the samurai ship and set sail at once for the barren island. The
Koketsu
surged across the sea. But, when it rounded the headland, the skiff was gone.

Nihon Maru

‘WIND DEMONS! Will you
RUN
before the Sea Samurai?’ challenged Tatsumaki. The Pirate Queen stood atop the
Koketsu
’s dragonhead, her
naginata
in hand, her mane of black hair with its angry red streak billowing out behind her.

‘NO! NEVER!’ responded the Wind Demons, who crowded the walkways and jetty of Pirate Island, hungry for a fight.

‘Will you
BOW
before their pirate-murdering lord?’

‘NO! NEVER!’ they yelled, clashing their weapons furiously.

‘Will you
SURRENDER
your hard-fought riches?’

‘NO! NEVER!’

‘This island is
your
castle,’ pronounced the Pirate Queen. ‘Defend it with your lives.
Destroy all samurai with lightning and thunder!
’

She raised her
naginata
in a salute and the Wind Demons howled a battle cry so loud that it echoed round the lagoon walls and shook the vertical town as if the crater were erupting once more.

Jack stood with Li Ling on the jetty in front of the
Koketsu
. He glanced up to the citadel high above. Miyuki, Yori and Saburo would no doubt be looking down, wondering what all the shouting was about. Although he’d managed to get a message to them that he was alive and well, he hadn’t seen them since his return three days ago and they were probably thinking the worst. But, following his kidnapping, Tatsumaki was unwilling to let him out of her sight.

As soon as they’d docked at Pirate Island, Tatsumaki had summoned every pirate captain to a council of war. A few of the captains suggested relocating to a new island before their sworn enemy attacked. But the majority felt that
daimyo
Mori’s personal war against the Wind Demons had gone on long enough.

‘We’ve never been stronger!’ argued Captain Kurogumo, once again fighting fit.

In the end, they voted unanimously to stay the course and conquer the Sea Samurai, once and for all.

The ensuing days had been a blur of preparation. Weapons were sharpened; cannon were inspected and cleaned; iron shot and
daejon
fire arrows loaded aboard;
horoku
hand bombs assembled and primed; extra casks of gunpowder stowed below decks; defensive brocade curtains hung along the gunwales; and every ship made ready to sail at a moment’s notice.

A bell tolled three times.

‘TO YOUR SHIPS!’ cried Tatsumaki, knowing the Sea Samurai had been sighted.

The Wind Demons thundered along gangplanks, raised sails and took up oars.

Li Ling turned to Jack. ‘Being a pirate certainly isn’t dull,’ she said, forcing a smile.

‘A ship is safe in harbour, but that’s not what ships are for,’
replied Jack, recalling the words of his father. ‘I suppose it’s the same for pirates. If you want to be one, you have to go out and fight.’

‘For riches or for worse!’ she said, patting her sword and clambering aboard the
Koketsu
to take up her post. Jack, however, had other plans now that all the Wind Demons were distracted. He turned to head the other way back to the citadel. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Stay with me, Jack,’ said Tatsumaki pointedly. ‘The safest place for you is in the belly of the dragon.’

Fifty pirate ships in all left the lagoon and entered the straits. The
Koketsu
was at the head of the fleet. No longer a secret weapon, it was now the flagship of the Wind Demons in a battle that would ultimately decide who ruled the Seto Sea.

Jack looked out of the front porthole with Tatsumaki and Li Ling. He gasped at what he saw. It seemed as if the pirates’ fate was already sealed. Stretching from east to west was a formidable armada of over a hundred warships. A deadly combination of swift
kobaya
, warrior-bearing
seki-bune
and heavily gunned
atake-bune
were closing in on Pirate Island. The Wind Demons’ ships were outnumbered two to one. But if the Pirate Queen was unnerved by the samurai’s display of force, then she didn’t show it.

‘We know these waters,’ she said. ‘We have the advantage.’

‘I must be seeing things,’ said Li Ling, pointing to a structure in the middle of the Sea Samurai fleet. ‘That looks like a … castle?’

‘That’s the
Nihon Maru
,’ replied Tatsumaki darkly. ‘
Daimyo
Mori’s command ship.’

Jack stared with Li Ling in disbelief at the massive floating fortress. Dwarfing even the biggest
atake-bune
, the immense vessel looked like a replica of
daimyo
Mori’s
Mizujiro
castle that stood watch over the Kurushima Straits. Its wooden sides were raised into defensive battlements and there were two open fighting towers, one in the bow and one in the stern. An entire army appeared to line the ramparts and cannon thrust out of every porthole. It even boasted a three-storey keep in the centre, complete with whitewashed walls and graceful curved roofs of green tile, on top of which sat a large golden shell. With its three massive sails dominating the skyline, the command ship was like a leviathan of the deep: colossal, terrifying and invincible.

‘How will we ever defeat
that
?’ whispered Li Ling to Jack.

Jack had no idea. He just prayed Tatsumaki did. Otherwise they were all destined for a watery grave.

Fire Ships

The stretch of water between the two opposing fleets glistened brightly in the morning sun. A lone albatross dived into a wave and snatched a fish from the sea. In the distance, the low resonating tone of a
horagai
trumpet sounded. A moment later, the water exploded in a plume of white foam, the idyllic scene shattered by the concussion of cannon fire from the
Nihon Maru
and its fleet. Then trails of smoke scorched the sky as
daejon
fire arrows rained down in retaliation.

Jack steadied himself against a beam as the
Koketsu
was rocked by a blast landing off their port bow. Sea spray shot through the open portholes, drenching and chilling the gun crews.

‘They missed!’ cried Li Ling in delight.

‘First one’s always short, remember?’ said Jack, and Li Ling’s grin vanished.

Tatsumaki shouted commands and the oarsmen strained to the fevered beat of the drummer. The
Koketsu
spun on its axis, its broadside pivoting towards the approaching enemy ships.

‘FIRE!’ she yelled.

The deck shook with cannon bursts, ten in quick succession. Gun carriages recoiled and the crews immediately set to work reloading. As the sulphurous smoke cleared, Jack saw the iron shot and
daejon
arrows bombard the samurai fleet. Many fell short into the sea, but a few struck their targets first time. The starboard side of a
seki-bune
was ripped asunder by a
daejon
fire arrow, while a
kobaya
of samurai troops was holed and rapidly sank beneath the waves.

The Wind Demons cheered, then Jack’s ears rang again as they unleashed a second round of shots. A retaliating barrage from the Sea Samurai followed and there was a deafening
thunk
as a cannonball bounced off the armoured roof.

‘That must have left some dent!’ cried Li Ling, who’d clapped her hands to her ears against the noise.

Grateful to be shielded within the
Koketsu
, Jack saw that the other pirate ships didn’t benefit from such protection. A pirate galley had been caught by a vicious strafing of grapeshot and had lost half its oarsmen. Another ship was fast taking on water, having been hulled by a cannonball. Captain Wanizame’s
Great White
had suffered a direct hit to its main mast and the sail now burnt fiercely. Her crew was fighting to hurl the flaming canvas overboard before it engulfed the entire ship.

If the Wind Demons continued to suffer losses at this rate, Jack realized they wouldn’t survive long.
Daimyo
Mori was going to tear their ships apart.

Tatsumaki read his thoughts. ‘The Sea Samurai’s cannon are no match for our Korean guns,’ she declared. ‘Just watch what we can do to them.’

She pointed in the direction of Captain Kujira’s
Killer Whale
. An enemy boat strayed into the ship’s line of fire and moments later disintegrated like matchwood as Captain Kujira targeted it with devastating accuracy. The
Killer Whale
boomed repeatedly with its Heaven and Earth cannon and another samurai ship was crippled. Every so often the pounding blasts were punctuated by the thunderous detonation of Captain Kujira’s ‘pride and joy’. Each time Jack heard Crouching Tiger roar, a samurai ship would heel to one side, mortally wounded by the mammoth gun.

Yet the Sea Samurai continued to bear down on the Wind Demons,
daimyo
Mori’s command ship, at the heart of the armada, invulnerable to the pirates’ relentless barrage. Archers on-board the samurai boats unleashed volley after volley of arrows that flew through the air like swarms of deadly bees. It was as if the sky was raining death. Pirates screamed as steel tips pierced their bodies and they dropped to the deck, writhing in agony.

‘Send in the fire ships!’ snarled Tatsumaki. ‘Before these samurai get close enough to board us.’

Li Ling raced off to raise the signal flag that would relay Tatsumaki’s command to the other pirate captains. Shortly after, six small boats piled high with rice straw and gunpowder charges pulled ahead of the Wind Demons’ ships. Jack was stunned to see a skeleton crew on-board each boat – their mission being suicidal.