Blood Ninja

by Nick Lake

  “It was my best bird,” said Shusaku. “It will come. And if not, then I will help you look for her myself. I swear it.”

  Taro smiled at the man. He believed him. “All right, then,” he said. He was suddenly overwhelmingly tired. “Show us where we sleep.”

  Shusaku led them into a cave that gave off the crater. Again Taro had to hold back a gasp. They followed a corridor that opened onto another corridor, and leading off to either side were passageways lit by candles, doorways from which people peered in open curiosity, and even pens from which pigs gazed with their friendly, mindless eyes. Taro recognized a stable as they passed by it at Shusaku’s customary fast pace. The horses followed him with their eyes, their long noses tracking him, their nostrils flaring. Even the horses could spot a new arrival.

  Taro was sure that he would never be able to retrace his steps. This was no cave—this was a network of roads, of alleyways. It was a village inside the rock. Every so often they passed an opening that didn’t give onto another tributary passageway. Instead he would get a glimpse of a dining room, the floor laid with tatami mats, small lacquered wood tables set with bowls and chopsticks, or a simple room furnished with cushions and decorated with painted screens. In some of these rooms people looked up as they passed and watched them with hard eyes.

  Finally they turned into a passageway deeper than the ones before, and then they came into another cave. This one was carved with wild animals, gods, and demons. And again, candlelight glowed in myriad sconces. This cave was filled with equipment: wooden horses, sword racks, tables on which had been laid a number of bows and crossbows. Armor lay strewn on the floor, and in some cases had been placed on straw-and-leather mannequins, which looked as a result like the headless ghosts left behind by some terrible military campaign. The whole scene made Taro think of an army encampment, transported by mischievous kami from the field of battle to this eldritch cave.

  Shusaku laughed. “Quite impressive, isn’t it? This is the weapons room. You’ll sleep here, along with the other children—including Little Kawabata, the son of the charming man you met out there. We like to accustom our young people to the presence of weapons.”

  “We sleep here?” asked Hiro. He poked at a leather chest guard with his foot.

  “Not right here, no.” Shusaku crossed the room and showed them where holes had been carved into the rock. These were the length of a man, and their mouths were shaped in a semicircle, flat side down. Each niche was lined with piles of blankets, and illuminated by a large candle set into the wall. They were snug little sleeping caves.

  “This,” Shusaku said, “is where you’ll sleep.”

  “Only if you’re lucky,” said Heiko. “Little Kawabata snores like a pig. You can wrap a scarf around your ears, but it does no good. Sometimes I think the little brat does it on purpose.” She looked at Taro. “Little Kawabata was the fat boy who glared at you out there.”

  “You know him already?” said Taro.

  “Yes. We have trained with him a couple of times, when his father came to consult with the abbess. He’s a nasty child.”

  “You shouldn’t speak ill of such a senior ninja’s son,” said Shusaku. But the amusement in his voice undermined his reprimand. “And anyway, to show personal dislike is unbecoming of a ninja. Remember, you should be always as passive and yielding as the river in its banks, which is soft and without desire or hatred but can cut through solid rock.”

  Heiko smiled, and bowed. “Of course, Lord Endo. I don’t dislike Little Kawabata. It’s merely that I’m jealous of him, because he is the son of an important man and has been better provisioned than I with intelligence, good looks, and skill.” She winked at Taro, then turned and walked with exaggerated elegance and bearing toward the beds.

  Taro had been hoping to get Heiko on her own, so that he could ask if she would accompany him down to the rice store when the others were asleep. He wanted the bow back, and he was going to do it without Shusaku’s help, even if that meant asking Yukiko instead. She knew how to pick locks, and she could fight. But Yukiko and Hiro were engrossed in the weapons, and Taro could not see how he would manage to get her alone. He would have to put off the expedition to the next night, and hope that the bow wasn’t moved between.

  Just then, Little Kawabata entered the room. The similarity with his father was astonishing—the same fat belly, the same waddling walk. He glared at Taro. “So, another samurai who has turned traitor and become a ninja. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that you thought you were just a peasant.”

  “He didn’t ask for any of this,” said Shusaku.

  “Of course not,” said Little Kawabata. “Nor did you, when you took my father’s rightful place as leader. That ninja girl turned you for love, isn’t that your story?”

  Shusaku sighed. “I was dying. She bit me to save me.” His voice sounded weary, as if he had gone over this many times.

  “Yes, yes, so you say. And then she just happened to die, on a day when there wasn’t even any fighting! How convenient.”

  Shusaku took a step toward the boy, his fists clenched, and Taro thought for a moment that he was going to strike him. But he just rubbed his mask with his hand and stretched his neck, cracking the bones. “Run along now,” he said. “Your father cast these aspersions before you, and you’re the only person to whom they ever stuck.”

  “I don’t know why he wasted his time with accusations,” said Little Kawabata as he turned on his heel. “He should have just had you executed as a murderer.”

  CHAPTER 39

  That same night Junichiro the tanner’s son walked down the mountain stream toward the tanneries, which were downriver so as not to pollute the village’s drinking water. He was on the lower slopes of the sacred mountain, far below the small hut by the cliff that they said was haunted and should never be approached. But even here it was steep enough that walking demanded concentration, and often levied a fine in the form of a twisted ankle if that tribute were forgotten.

  He kicked at a pebble, sending it skittering into the water. Once again the other children had not wanted to play with him, something that had been abundantly clear to Junichiro when they had begun to pelt him with mud and stones, sending him running back toward his house. This was the last time he would try.

  Junichiro was eta —untouchable. His family made the leather that adorned the bodies and horses of samurai. But because the preparation of leather involved rubbing skins with brain mash and urine, the very same samurai scorned the eta, and their children, as well as the children of peasants, were taught from an early age to hold them in contempt. The Buddha forbade the killing of animals, and so no right-thinking person would involve themselves in the preparing of a material that depended on such death.

  Of course, the Buddha didn’t forbid wearing leather. He merely required that other people—untouchables—be the ones to make it.

  As Junichiro descended the hill, he could smell the sour-sweet stench of macerating animal skin.

  Junichiro had never considered himself to be unclean. He bathed daily like anyone else, and growing up he had not realized he was different. So stubbornly, with childlike hope, he had tried to join in with the village children’s games. But his hope had been beaten out with sticks and stones, his stubbornness weakened by flying mud. He would not try again.

  Food was another thing. The harvest had been bad this year, so Junichiro’s father had said, and the share of the rice that was normally given to the eta in payment for their work had been halved. Everyone was hungry. Junichiro had seen elderly tanners, distant members of his own family, sucking leather to draw some strength from it. Guards had been posted on the grain store, to protect the village’s food reserves from marauding bandits, or the hungry populace of other villages.

  So when Junichiro saw a fat pigeon approaching from down the hill, flying with smooth powerful strokes, he reached automatically for his sling. He bent down and picked a round pebble from the ground, then set it snugly into the le
ather pouch. His mother would be pleased if he brought something home for dinner—real meat! The eta were already outcast and beyond the love of Buddha, so he had no fear of the terrors that were supposed to await those Buddhists who killed other living beings. This was why the samurai relied on them, to provide them with leather. And while the peasants ate only rice and the occasional fish, the eta survived on whatever they could scavenge.

  Junichiro wrapped the thongs around his fingers just so, whirled the sling around his head, and let the pebble fly. It struck the pigeon, which was now just overhead, with a dull crunch, and the bird plummeted to the ground, landing on a stone by the stream. Junichiro ran to it and snapped its neck before it could suffer too much or, more important, flap and struggle its way into the stream, to be borne down and away.

  He was tucking the pigeon into his robe when he noticed something white that had been wrapped around its leg. He untied it and found that it was a small note, written in very neat, delicate characters. If he could have read, he would have realized that the writing was feminine in its strokes. If he could have read, he would have understood the short message it conveyed:

  My dear Taro, I am hidden at the Hokugawa monastery, near Fuji mountain. Ask for the lady hermit when you come.

  From your loving mother.

  But he couldn’t read, so he merely shrugged, screwed up the note, and dropped it to the ground. For those as hungry as he, the concept of a messenger pigeon was utterly unknown. There was only the concept of food.

  CHAPTER 40

  Though Taro remained worried about his bow, he wasn’t able to sneak out the next night either, nor the night after that.

  He was too exhausted.

  There was Little Kawabata’s snoring, of course, which was just as bad as Taro had been warned, and kept him awake much of the night. Then there was the training.

  The first morning after they arrived, it seemed as though Taro had hardly slept when he was awoken by a rough hand shaking his shoulder. He looked up to see Shusaku looking down on him. “Come on,” the ninja said. “It’s time you learned to handle yourself with weapons. Now that we are in the crater, we can train before nightfall, thanks to the caves and the covering over the main hall.”

  Hiro, Yukiko, Heiko, and Little Kawabata joined them, though Little Kawabata wouldn’t speak to Taro, or even meet his eye. In that first lesson Shusaku showed them the basic principles of taijutsu—unarmed combat.

  Hiro challenged Yukiko to a fight straight after their lesson.

  He lost.

  Soon they progressed to the sword, which all of them took to naturally, as if they had spent their early childhoods wielding katana, and had simply forgotten about it. Initially they were given wooden bokken to fight with—unable to cut flesh, but hard and heavy enough to break bones if the attacker—and the defender—were not careful. However, Taro progressed so quickly with the main forms of kenjutsu that Shusaku soon entrusted him with a katana. Taro loved the elegant blade, despite the nicks and scratches in its body. He slept with it next to him, encased in a silver-chased sheath.

  Little Kawabata, too, was rapidly fighting with a real sword.

  When Shusaku wasn’t instructing them, Yukiko and Hiro would go off together, wrestling or sparring. They were both excellent sword fighters, and often as Heiko and Taro played, there was the ringing sound of metal on metal, for they had all been allowed to practice with real swords, so quickly had they progressed.

  Though none of them were as good as Taro.

  He had never felt anything like the joy—the rightness—that he felt when wielding the sword. It was one with him; it was meditation in movement. There were the stars of the crater, and the tedium of lessons; there were the games of Shogi with Heiko, who had taught him to play, and the conversations with his new friends; but always in his mind’s eye there was the flash of steel.

  And always there was the joy of swift movement, the cutting of the air.

  But on this occasion Shusaku did not want to spar. He wanted to show Taro one of his own kata, a formal sequence of movements that a swordsman practiced over and over again, until its execution flowed from a particular mistake of the opponent’s as quickly and unstoppably as ripples from a stone dropped in water.

  “Can’t we just spar?” asked Taro. “Learning sequences by heart is not going to help me in the real world.”

  Shusaku sucked his teeth. “Most sword fights in the real world,” he said, “are over before your heart can beat twice. If you practice these katas every day, so that you can perform them without thinking, you will have an advantage over your opponent.”

  Taro nodded, unconvinced. He liked the random spontaneity of sword fighting, the sense that the fight itself was alive, evolving all the time out of the movements and snap decisions of its violent actors. Katas seemed to him boring and rigid, like the rules that governed a geisha’s life. They didn’t seem suited to ninja, who should be cunning and unpredictable, rather than restricting their motions to rote patterns.

  Shusaku gave a little bow, which Taro returned. Then the ninja raised his sword. “Get ready,” said Shusaku. “Hold your sword as you normally would, ready to block me if necessary.”

  Taro warily drew near, his eyes fixed on the ninja, his sword trembling slightly in his hand. “Good,” said Shusaku. “Now imagine we are deadly enemies. Try to destroy me quickly. React as you normally would.” As he said this, he moved forward, tipping his sword a fraction to his right, but keeping his eyes low, on Taro’s face.

  Taro glanced down at the ninja’s feet, looking for the telltale muscle contractions the older man had taught him about, the ones that revealed a person was about to spring forward, lowering his sword.

  Shusaku’s feet were perfectly flat on the ground.

  Taro grinned inside. He recognized the ninja’s intention. Shusaku wanted him to believe that he was about to lunge, but in fact he was going to slash across Taro’s body. Taro had seen the slight movement of the sword’s tip, and knew that the ninja planned a strike from the right—and that, by readying himself for it, he was leaving an opening. Seizing his chance, Taro snapped his sword up and then round in a tight curve, through the channel of empty air that led to the ninja’s neck.

  But Shusaku’s sword was suddenly raised in a vertical block that stopped Taro’s blade, and then in a continuation of that blocking motion the ninja flipped his wrist over, bringing his sword under Taro’s.

  Taro looked down.

  Shusaku’s blade was pressed against his stomach.

  “That,” said Shusaku, “is a kata. I call it the high block and gut-slash. And if we were fighting for real, you would be dead.”

  Taro swallowed. The whole thing had been so fast. He’d moved to exploit the man’s opening, and a heartbeat later he had been dead. In theory, anyway.

  “Show me again,” he said.

  Shusaku’s eyes sparkled. “Of course. But remember, this one only works if your opponent underestimates you.”

  Taro blushed. He had underestimated the ninja. He had thought he’d learned so quickly, had grown so strong. But of course he’d only been there a few days, and it was arrogant to think that he would have advanced so far in such a short time.

  Taro lifted his sword.

  “This time,” said Shusaku, “you try it. Come a little closer to me, then let your sword tip waver a little to your right, as if you’re planning a high slash. Not too much. Yes, that’s it. Now I think I can strike at your neck …”

  Shusaku went for the same attack that Taro had adopted, and Taro raised his sword to block it. Then he tried the wrist flip to turn the block into a low belly strike, but he wasn’t quick enough, and Shusaku blocked him in return, before bringing his sword to shivering rest against the skin of Taro’s neck.

  It felt cold.

  “Not fast enough,” said Shusaku. “That’s why you practice over and over.”

  Taro nodded, a little ashamed. “Yes. I see. Sorry for—”

  But Shusaku
waved the apology away. “Until you see how quickly it is possible to lose a sword fight, you don’t know how important it is to be quick, and to move without thinking. The kata should become unthinking reactions, just the way that your body responds to certain attacks. In a way, they’re spontaneous. It just takes a lot of boring practice to make them so.” He laughed.

  Taro laughed too, although the muscles of his forearms ached already. “So,” he said. “This wrist flick …”

  Shusaku stepped closer and put one hand on either side of Taro’s wrist. “You turn it like this,” he said, pressing down with his top hand. “As it goes over, push your forefinger forward. That will help the sword to bite forward in a low arc, and you only have to give a little push with your arm to finish the slash.”

  Taro tried it, and again he wasn’t quick enough, and again Shusaku put his hands on his wrist to show how it was done. Taro was reminded of when his father had taught him spearfishing, patiently repeating the wrist flick time after time as they shivered in the cold water of the bay.

  At that thought, he fumbled the movement, and more than just being slow this time, he twisted his hand too hard and caused the sword to drop from his fingers. He cursed.

  “Something wrong?” asked Shusaku, concern in his eyes, and again Taro was reminded of his father’s solicitude, the way that he had so patiently showed Taro time after time how to make the spear leap forward from his hand.

  And now his father was dead, and he was standing in a crater many ri from home, practicing katas with an assassin who had not only subtracted Taro from his old life, but had imposed on it too a new and terrible addition—a real father, a samurai, a stranger.

  But for Taro there would only ever be one real father.

  Ignoring the sword at his feet, he stepped back from Shusaku’s well-meaning touch as from a snake.

  Shusaku bent to pick up the sword. “It takes time,” he said. “You’ll get it eventually.”

  Taro walked away, not bothering to tell the ninja that it wasn’t the kata he was worried about.