by Nick Lake
Coming up behind Taro, he brought his sword round in a tight circle, hoping too that the enemy was where he assumed it to be. An error as small as the width of a silk scarf, and he would kill Taro in an instant.
He felt the blade cut through flesh, but he could not tell whose.
His sword’s path ended, and he allowed himself to stand still, feeling everything that was going on around him.
A moment later he heard the dead person’s head hit the ground.
Then he heard Taro fall too.
He held his breath.
He sent up a prayer.
And then he heard it—
Taro’s blood, singing in the eternal darkness.
CHAPTER 19
TARO WAS MAKING it rain.
On Shusaku’s suggestion, they had climbed trees to wait out the rest of the night, then had forged ahead in the pale dawn light to the next reasonably sized village, where Shusaku had paid for shelter from the sun in a peasant’s hut. It was unfortunate that the older ninja couldn’t go out in bright sunlight – it meant they would have to travel at night, which was when the dead appeared to walk the earth, but it was a relatively small price to pay for having Shusaku back.
Shusaku knew about the quest to find Kusanagi, and said he had come to help. He was worried, he said, that Taro would be in terrible danger if he did find the sword. Many were the minor lords and samurai who would be tempted to kill him for it, to use it to bolster a claim to the throne.
Taro hadn’t even thought of that. In truth, he was extraordinarily grateful to Shusaku, for realizing the danger as much as for coming to his side. He’d known he missed his mentor, but he hadn’t realized quite how much. Indeed, it was a measure of how much he needed Shusaku, how foolish he still could be, that it had not even occurred to him that the quest might put him in danger, other than in putting him up against a dragon.
He and Shusaku had spent the whole night talking, catching each other up on everything that had happened since Shusaku left the monastery. And Shusaku had blood, too, in a water skin. He gave it all to Taro to drink, saying that Taro needed his strength back. Taro had drunk deep, relishing the iron taste of it, not asking where the ninja had got it from. He didn’t want to know.
Shusaku had no more idea than they did of why the dead were walking the earth. ‘These are troubled times,’ he had said casually. As if the waking of a dragon and the waking of the dead were minor inconveniences. Still, with him by their side, they would have a better chance against the reanimated bodies, and that was a good thing.
‘But the dead don’t just walk the earth,’ said Taro.
Shusaku had shrugged. ‘Perhaps something has happened to Enma,’ he said. Enma was the guardian of the underworld, the man who judged you when you died, decided which realm you would be sent to. Taro would have thought he was an invention, if he hadn’t seen him with his own eyes, sitting at his chair with his demon attendants.
‘You think that could happen?’
Another shrug from Shusaku. ‘Enma’s meant to be human, isn’t he? Only he lives for a longer time than any normal human. And he dies, eventually, to be replaced by another. Maybe one Enma has died and another has not yet been found to take on the job.’
‘You’re saying the dead are getting out of death because of a problem of inheritance?’ said Hiro.
‘Problems of inheritance are serious things,’ said Shusaku. ‘I’ve assassinated a lot of people because of them.’
And that, it seemed, was about as much as they were going to understand about the dead walking the earth.
For now, though, Shusaku was safely inside, and Taro sat with Hiro and Hana in a shady courtyard between several huts. The village was protected by a stockade of stakes, and a ditch. Besides, Taro knew how to deal with the dead now.
He would simply use the Buddha ball and burn them.
All night it had rained over the forest, following Taro’s calling of the lightning, but now the storm clouds had passed, taking with them the rain. In this village, they hadn’t even seen it, though some said they had heard the sound of thunder. But the companions had seen, again, the damage done by the drought. Fresh graves, outside the village. Starving people, begging them for water and rice.
Well, Taro couldn’t give them rice. But he could give them water.
Looking down at the wrapped Buddha ball, he reflected that he should have done this earlier. So much suffering could have been allayed, if not prevented. He glanced at Hana, who was leaning up against the wall of a hut, eyes closed, resting. She looked so serene and so beautiful – it was hard to imagine that only hours before she had been decapitating the dead.
Slowly, gingerly, Taro removed the layers of cloth covering the ball. He was always amazed, every time he saw it, by how beautiful it was. The delicate glass, the tiny world inside, interlocking green and blue. He steeled himself, then seized the ball in his hands.
He was gliding along a river, it seemed, as night fell. He could smell pine trees, could feel the motion of the river, hear its softly whispered song. He tried to stop it, tried to remain Taro, the rain pattering on his head. I’m in a village, I’ve just made it rain. I’m Taro. But the pine trees and the river were strong, they were unstoppable, and they pushed the present out of his head.
And then he wasn’t Taro at all any more.
He was Sato.
He stood in a forest glade, moss underfoot. Samurai surrounded him – his enemies, come to finish him off. He had hoped to outpace them, to follow the river to safety, but it was impossible. He had already lost too much strength, since the attack on his father’s men, since he was forced to start running. He spun, countering their blows as best he could, but there were too many of them – a dozen, perhaps, and he was on his own.
Then the nearest samurai was on him, burying a sword in his stomach.
Sato stared down at the horrifying wound.
He choked, gasped, cried . . . he felt his blood pooling at his waist, soaking his silk trousers, something no man should ever have to feel. The samurai held the sword there, face close, looking into Sato’s eyes. There was a cruel light in the other man’s eyes. He wants to see me die, thought Sato. He enjoys it.
A sudden desire washed over him, to not give this man what he wanted. Stupid of the samurai, also, to come this close to a downed animal. A downed predator, because what was man but the greatest predator?
Sato was strong, nimble. He raised his hands, grabbed the man’s face. He put all his remaining strength into a single twist, heard the samurai’s neck break. Then he let the body slump to the ground as he pulled the sword out of himself, a long sigh of pain escaping him. He could hear someone approaching from behind and to the right – he swung the sword, a scything motion, low.
A scream, so satisfying. He craned his head and could just see the foot, severed at the ankle. The form of the samurai he had mutilated lay writhing on the ground.
Something exploded in his head, throwing up sparks in front of his eyes.
And then, mercifully, he blacked out.
When he opened his eyes again, there was a face in front of him – actually just eyes, really. The rest of the face was covered by black cloth.
‘You’re strong,’ said the eyes. They were huge, black. Sato didn’t know how much time had passed, but it must be midnight or beyond. There was hardly any light. ‘You fought.’
Sato couldn’t manage to say anything; his tongue felt like a foreign body in his mouth, big and clumsy as a slab of hanging meat.
Other figures emerged from the gloom behind the man, also dressed in black, also masked. Is this a dream? Is this death?
No. He knew what this was, if he was honest with himself. He knew what these men were, though he had only ever half believed in their existence.
Ninjas.
The closest one put out a hand and touched Sato’s arm, very gentle, very compassionate. Sato almost wept. ‘Join us,’ he said, ‘and you have a chance to survive.’
Sato opened his mouth, let out a croaking imitation of speech. ‘I . . . am . . . samurai.’
‘Not any more,’ said the ninja. Then he pounced, a blur, and sank his teeth into Sato’s neck—
‘Taro!’
‘Taro!’
Taro opened his eyes slowly. Hiro and Hana crouched in front of him, brows furrowed.
‘Are you all right? Your eyes rolled up in your head. We thought you were having some kind of fit . . . ’
Taro looked down at the ball in his hands, bracing himself for Sato’s voice, for Lord Oda’s voice, for more scenes from Sato’s past. But there was nothing. It sat there, inert, just a glass ball with the world in it. But he had lived Sato’s death. He had been there, he had been Sato for that moment, which was the same thing as being Sato forever.
‘It’s . . . the ball,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s so powerful.’
Hiro crouched down farther. ‘You don’t have to use it,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.’
Taro shook his head. ‘I do. People are dying.’
‘Just . . . look after yourself,’ said Hana. ‘I don’t know what happened there, but it was terrifying. One moment you were sitting there perfectly normally, the next your eyes went strange, and you were gone . . . ’
‘It’s all right now,’ said Taro. ‘I can feel it.’ He wasn’t lying – he couldn’t sense anything from the ball now, no insistent voices of the dead. The only thing that was good about Sato’s death was that at least he had replaced Lord Oda, for the moment. The bad thing was that it wasn’t just a voice – it was a whole being, it was a kind of possession that took hold of Taro as soon as he touched the ball. It’s because I drained him, he thought. It’s because I have so much of his blood inside me. He wished he hadn’t killed Sato, but what could he have done? The man had been trying to kill him.
It’s whoever sent him, Taro thought. Whoever sent him is to blame.
But he didn’t entirely believe it.
Now, though, was not the time to think about it. Now was the time to make it rain. Closing his hands tight around it, he dropped into the ball, and his awareness shrank and expanded at the same time, till he was moisture suspended in air, high above the ground.
The clouds began to mass soon afterwards, drawing in from all over the country to gather over this province. Dimly Taro heard people exclaiming, from all over the village.
‘Come and look!’ they said. ‘Clouds!’
For a moment, Taro remained diffuse, spread out over many ri; he was a constellation – a thousand constellations – of droplets of water, hanging in the grey sky, separate. Then he contracted, pressing all that water together, tightening it, until it could no longer occupy the same air.
Rain poured down.
When Taro came back fully into the ordinary world, he found that he was soaked through. Hana and Hiro were holding out their water skins, and the rain was coming down so fiercely that they were filling quickly.
‘That rice might grow now,’ said Hiro.
Taro hoped so.
Just then, someone came running towards them. A woman, grinning from ear to ear. ‘We’re saved!’ she called out as she passed. ‘The gods have saved us.’
Taro looked down at the ball, feeling ashamed again. He should have used it earlier, but he had been afraid. In his mind had been the picture of Lord Oda bursting open, blood spraying everywhere.
‘Did you hear that?’ said Hiro, distracting him. ‘You’ve been promoted again. Already the son of a daimyo and now a god. Should I address you differently?’
‘Don’t give him ideas,’ said Hana. ‘He can barely read, and his manners are appalling. I only put up with him because he makes quite a good sparring partner.’
Taro smiled. He might be a killer, and he might be afraid much of the time, but he couldn’t be all bad. Otherwise he wouldn’t have friends like these.
Taro and Hana walked hand in hand, Hiro and Shusaku somewhere behind. Ever since Taro had decided to take up the shogun’s challenge, a distance had grown between him and Hana, a discomfiture. Hana hadn’t spoken about it again after that day under the sakura blossoms – indeed, she was friendly to him now, affectionate, even. But the accusation she had made, that he found a quiet life with her boring, hung between them. It made it impossible for them to be natural with each other. They slept conspicuously far from each other at night.
Now, though, with the world fresh and dewy around them, their embarrassment was starting to lift. When they had woken, Shusaku shaking them into wakefulness before dusk, she had walked over to him and kissed him.
‘That’s for the rain,’ she had said.
Now they walked through a sparkling land, surrounded by full rice paddies, the croaking of frogs. How the frogs had survived the drought Taro didn’t know. Perhaps they had buried themselves in the mud. He suspected they had been luckier than the snails. Everywhere they passed smiling peasants – still thin, but hopeful now, their eyes no longer haunted. In most places could be heard the rhyming refrains of rice-planting songs, as the seeds – useless without water – were laid out in the paddies.
‘Have you ever—’ began Hana, then broke off.
‘What?’
She brushed hair back from her forehead, tucking it behind a perfect ear. It was in small gestures like these that her beauty hit him like a punch. ‘I wondered . . . if you had given any thought to the prophecy lately.’
‘The one about being shogun one day?’
‘Yes. It must have occurred to you that if we find Kusanagi, you could keep it for yourself. Even if you don’t want to think about that, other people will, believe me. As soon as you have that sword, and others know about it, it will be like having a warrant out on your life.’
Shusaku had said much the same thing. Taro scratched his head. ‘You think it’s that dangerous?’
‘I think it’s more dangerous than you can imagine.’
‘Well, I mean, it’s a great sword, but . . . ’
‘But nothing. It’s not the sword – it’s what it means. Listen: imagine you are a noble, or Lord Tokugawa even. Would you go and kill the shogun right now, assuming the opportunity arose? Would you remove him and take the throne?’
‘Of course not,’ said Taro.
‘Why not?’
‘Because the shogun is the shogun. It’s a birthright. The country would rise up in arms.’
Hana raised her eyebrows. ‘Perhaps there is something inside your head after all,’ she said breezily. ‘No one can challenge the shogun’s right to rule. Unless they can prove that the shogun has been using a fake sword, pretending to possess the three sacred objects, when really he has only two.’
‘But if someone had the real sword . . . ’
‘That would be more than enough proof, yes.’
Taro’s head reeled. He’d been thinking of the sword only as a tool with which to kill the dragon, despite Shusaku’s warning. But it was so much more than that, of course it was. There was someone else who would kill him for it too, for quite the opposite motive – and that was—
‘The shogun,’ said Hana. ‘He’d assassinate you and take the sword in a heartbeat also. Better that than risk the truth coming out.’
‘Gods,’ said Taro. ‘I don’t know if I want it any more.’
Hana shook her head. ‘I didn’t say that. You just need to be careful, and you need to be absolutely sure what you’re doing. Don’t take the sword if you’re not prepared to take the consequences.’
‘You mean . . . becoming shogun, or getting killed?’
‘I would prefer the former,’ she said with a smile.
Strangely, he found that the idea of being shogun frightened him more than the idea of being killed. He’d been to death itself, after all, he knew what it was like. And if anyone chose to attack him for the sword, well, he could deal with that when it came.
But the shogunate.
It had occurred to him, of course it had. With the sword, the true sword
, he wouldn’t just be a dragon-slayer. He would be a person in possession of one of the most important and powerful objects in the land, the birthright of the first emperors. Of course it had crossed his mind that there might be too much coincidence here: the prophetess had told him he would be shogun, and now here he was searching for a sword that might just help him to do it.
The question was – did he want to be shogun? He knew it was his destiny, but destiny and what he wanted were different things.
Hana peered at him. ‘The thought of being shogun frightens you?’
He could feel the tension in her hand, feel that she was nervous. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘It just seems so . . . unlikely. I don’t know the first thing about ruling a country.’
‘But look what you’ve done. This entire land is supported by rice. It pays the daimyo. It feeds the troops. It keeps the peasants alive. With the Buddha ball, you could ensure that the rice crops never fail. It would be the greatest gift a shogun could give.’
He hadn’t thought of it that way. He watched a heron land in a rice paddy close to them, raising one leg to peer down into the water. It darted its beak like a spear and came up with a frog.
‘Is this why you want me to be able to read so badly?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.
He was joking, but she nodded. ‘A shogun has to be able to read,’ she said. ‘Even if the people are more impressed by famous swords.’
He closed his mouth, surprised.
‘You must understand me,’ said Hana. ‘I don’t like you because I think you’re going to be important. I like you because you’re kind, and thoughtful, and brave. But I think you’d be a good shogun, too.’
They didn’t speak much after that; Taro was too busy thinking, questioning his motives. Hana had spoken with the best of intentions, but her line of thought worried him. He wondered now if he was impelled by ambition or instinct, if deep down he wanted Kusanagi because he wanted to be shogun, and having the legendary sword would strengthen his claim. He didn’t think so – as far as he was aware, he was doing it because he wanted to kill the dragon, claim a territory and marry Hana. But what if there was a part of his mind that operated without his knowledge or consent, and it had another idea?