by Nick Lake
Hiro dismounted, holding on to the reins as he approached the inn. The last he had seen of Jun – who had been a constant, if distant, companion at Mount Hiei – was in Edo, before they saw the shogun. The boy was a little strange – quiet, not friendly but not unfriendly, either. They had spoken numerous times, while Taro and Hana were ahead together on the road, and despite that, Hiro had little idea of what Jun really thought about anything. Often Jun would startle Hiro by appearing behind him, when he hadn’t heard the boy’s footsteps. Or by firing an arrow straight into the centre of a target even Taro would be proud to hit, when it had seemed at first to Hiro that he didn’t have much in the way of muscles or fighting spirit. And then the next day Jun would be with the abbot, poring over ancient scrolls, reading Sanskrit with ease.
An enigma.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Hiro. He began tying his horse to a post.
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ said Jun. ‘Come inside. Let’s talk.’
Inside the inn, no one was to be seen. Jun seemed to know the place, though – he went confidently behind a simple wooden bar and came back with a bottle of sake. He lit a candle on a small, round table and motioned for Hiro to sit. From somewhere he produced two bowls of rice and stock, steaming. Like a magician.
Several glasses of sake later, and Hiro had told Jun most of what had happened since they’d left each other in Edo, a lifetime ago, leaving out certain key details. Jun knew already about Kusanagi – Hiro supposed the rumour must have spread in Edo that Taro was looking for it. Hiro added only that he and Taro had fallen out, without saying why, or mentioning that Taro had found the sword, and that as far as he knew his friend was going to Edo and the dragon alone. Jun was still a mystery, and Hiro didn’t trust anyone, not any more.
‘Alone?’ said Jun. ‘To face a dragon?’ In the candlelight, it was hard to make out his age. He had black hair, fine eyebrows. No wrinkles on his skin. To all appearances a boy. Yet sometimes he sounded much older.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re afraid for him,’ said Jun. ‘You would give anything to help him.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes.’
Jun poured another two glasses. ‘Well, in that case it is your lucky night,’ he said.
‘It is?’
‘It certainly is. What if I told you that you could help Taro? That you could come to Edo with me, and help save his life?’
Hiro narrowed his eyes. He was being offered a chance at redemption, he realized. To salvage his honour. To save his friend. Yet he was instinctively distrustful, too. ‘Why would you help me?’ he asked.
Jun spread his hands and frowned in a gesture of humorous offence. ‘The abbot is very fond of Taro,’ he said. ‘Did you think he would just let him go, without making sure that friends were watching over him? There are people in Edo who are ready to assist him in killing that dragon. They want to see someone new on the throne of Japan. With Kusanagi, and with my powerful friends... Taro could have the throne. And you could be the one to give it to him.’
Friends watching over him. That was what Hiro wanted to be. A friend who watched over. Who watched... who looked after Taro. Give him the throne. The one to do it. That was what he wanted. Yes.
‘You want to help Taro become shogun?’ Hiro asked Jun. He remembered the prophecy that they had heard that night from the prophetess.
Jun nodded. ‘The current shogun is a disgrace,’ he said. ‘So, you’ll come with me?’
‘Yes,’ said Hiro. ‘Yes, I’ll come with you. To save Taro.’
Jun smiled and reached out his hand to shake Hiro’s. ‘A good decision,’ he said.
Hiro leaned back. He was warm and full and there was sake in his belly. Upstairs there was a soft bed; Jun had said so.
His emotions were a still pool of calm and gentle amber, just like the flickering candlelight.
CHAPTER 44
Near Edo
One week later
IT WASN’T HARD to find the dragon. What Taro had done was to follow the burned villages, the piles of ash and scorched earth. As he climbed upward, the devastation increased, the heat, too. A red glow came from the mountaintop, a constant reminder of what waited up there.
That was what was hard – not finding the thing but climbing up towards it, knowing that every step brought him closer.
Taro stopped to rest on a large rock, warmer than the sun should have made it. His muscles were burning. He tried not to think that soon they might really be on fire. He was near the top now – could see the red-lit peak just above him. Where normally there would be snow, instead there were rivulets of molten fire, running in ravines and gullies. He had to tread carefully, even this far away. Twice he had nearly fallen into one of these cracks in the earth. He would melt like a candle if he did, he knew.
He thought about what it would be like to feel his own flesh burn. He really, really didn’t want to find out. He tried to think about other things. He tried to concentrate on his surroundings.
There were no trees up here. No vegetation at all, actually – just bare rock, sweating and shimmering in the heat. When Taro turned, though, he could see forests extending out below him, a cool green blanket, uninterrupted until the great city of Edo. He wished he could take to the air like a bird, fly back out over that expanse of green, dive into it, and into Edo, too – he could see the canals and rivers of the capital, from this height looking like cool blue veins, spreading through the body of the city, filling him with a desperate thirst that confused the concepts of water and blood in his mind.
He thought of the deer he had brought down the previous day, and before that the pilgrim, who had been going to Edo on the way to Mount Hiei, and who Taro had knocked out with a branch, before drinking as much as he dared from the man’s veins. Enough to give Taro strength. Hopefully not enough to have killed the man. Taro hadn’t stuck around to find out.
Imagining the blood filling his mouth, his legs trembled and he nearly went down. He had not drunk nearly enough yesterday. He was meant to face the dragon, and instead he was gazing at distant cities and thinking of water and blood.
For strength, he touched Kusanagi, unsheathed at his side. He had travelled all this way – he wasn’t going to turn round now.
He thought of Hiro, and Hana. Where were they now? Was Hana still in Shirahama? He had not stopped in Edo, so there was no way of receiving news of them. All he knew – because he had been careful to ask passing travellers – was that the dragon had not yet been defeated. Another ten young men had died in the attempt, though. Some said twenty.
In this way Taro stumbled on, thinking about his absent friends, craving blood. Craving water.
The mountainside got steeper and steeper. In places he was forced to use his hands as well as his feet, scrambling over scalding-hot rocks. He hadn’t really thought through what he would do when he reached the dragon’s lair. He did have a clear picture of afterwards, though – he would walk into Edo over the Nihonbachi Bridge, the dragon’s head in his hands. Or in a cart, if it was too big to carry. People would swarm out to thank him, to hail him as their saviour. Then he supposed he would fight the shogun and take the throne. After that the details of his plan were sketchy. But he would make things better, he was sure of that. No one would starve, when he was in charge.
He came to a kind of channel in the rock, not dissimilar to the one in which Shusaku had died, only much steeper. It was when he followed this, turning sharply to the right, that he wished he had thought a little more about what he intended to do with the dragon.
In front of him was a vast, dark, deep cave, and at the back of the cave was a pair of red, glowing eyes. Black burn marks were everywhere on the walls. Some of them surrounded the outlines of human beings, their shadows fixed to the walls in attitudes of utter terror. Up above, a thin crack of afternoon sunlight showed through the broken rock.
Taro had encountered a similar voice in his head before, in a very different cave under the sea, but he was still not
prepared for it.
‘I used to ask questions,’ said the dragon. ‘But after a dozen or so I stopped. You all say the same things.’
Taro drew Kusanagi. ‘I don’t have anything to say,’ he said.
‘Then you are different,’ said the dragon. It didn’t speak further – just rolled up into the air, moving like an airborne snake, or a wave across a bay. It moved quicker than thought; one moment it was a pair of eyes, like great coals in the darkness, the next it was filling the space of the cave, scales and horns and teeth, enormous, a force beyond human comprehension that wanted Taro dead.
Roaring, blowing smoke, it descended on Taro. He noticed that the dragon had little legs on its underside, stunted ones. They would almost have been amusing, if the dragon wasn’t bigger than four houses, with teeth the size of battle swords. Then Taro wasn’t thinking any more – he was ducking and rolling. He judged it almost right. He hit the ground hard, knocking the breath out of himself, turning to slash his sword at the leg that rushed past him, faster than a galloping horse.
The legs might have looked funny against the size of the dragon, but they were still big – and tipped with nasty talons. Even as he opened a wound in the one over his head, and dragon blood spattered him hotly, one of the talons struck his left shoulder, tearing a gouge in him a hand-span deep, ripping his shoulder blade from its socket. He screamed, crawling out of the way as fire scorched the earth beside him.
One leg – he’d wounded one of its legs and it had cost him his left arm. How many legs did it have? Dozens. He shouldn’t have been so focused on its legs, though. Its head snapped on the air he had been occupying an instant before; he side-stepped, but his hip was caught. The sword-teeth went through his flesh like a rake through leaves, scraping against bone. He was spurting blood, from hip and shoulder. He staggered.
Stupid. Stupid.
He’d fought people before, with swords. Had thought that made him strong. He wasn’t strong. Not next to a dragon. He was a mouse taunting a lion.
Images flashed in front of his disoriented eyes. Scaled skin. Red eyes. Flames, to either side of him, over his head, burning off his hair when he ducked. He could deal with human opponents – this dragon, though, was all around him, all over him. He thought it must be toying with him. He should be dead.
The dragon roared. A sentence with no words ached and throbbed in his head – it was the dragon’s hatred, the dragon’s fury that he had hurt it, had cut open its leg. He could see that wounded leg as the dragon flew round him, could see how it hung down limply. He could also feel, in his mind, how the dragon intended to punish him for it. He saw its jaws open, as the bearded head came at him fast and massive as a landslide.
I’m going to die here, he realized. Even with Kusanagi, I’m going to die here.
At the last moment, though, his muscles took over. Bringing the sword vertically upward, he flipped it in the air, and dropped his hand so that the sword went tip-first down the back of his shirt. It cut his back as it did so, but he didn’t care. This was some survival instinct manipulating his limbs, some desire to live and fight that had seeped into his bones from all his training with Shusaku.
He flicked his eyes at the wall just to his right, measuring distance. As the head neared him, he feinted left, then shot to the right. A hot breeze on his skin, as the head went past him. His feet hit the wall; he ran up its sheer side for three steps, then pivoted off the ball of his foot, somersaulting backwards.
For a moment, no gravity. He was floating in a world of heat and pain.
Then he crashed down, stomach-first, on the dragon’s back. He twisted, getting his knees round it, riding it like a horse. He was just behind its head. He reached forward, seizing its horns. It twisted and bucked angrily – again that inferno of anger rushing through his thoughts. He reached round to his back and seized the pommel of Kusanagi. When he pulled it out of his shirt, he cut himself again. He didn’t care this time either. His shoulder and hip and back throbbed; his clothes were soaked with blood.
‘Have you heard of Kusanagi?’ he shouted.
There was only one word of the dragon’s in his head – it was die.
Die, die, die.
‘No,’ Taro said.
He brought the sword down hard. It buried itself pommel-deep in the dragon’s neck, and Taro withdrew it, with a meaty sliding sound. Blood erupted. Taro’s head was filled with a sound like thunder, like a tsunami, like lava consuming a village. He clutched his hands to his ears, his knees weakening, and fell from the dragon’s back. They were high up – he was weightless for several moments, longer than when he had somersaulted, and then the landing punched the air out of him, snapped his ribs, left him bleeding and whimpering on the ground. He spat out broken teeth, bloodstained grass filling his vision.
He braced for the dragon to fall on top of him.
It didn’t.
Instead there was a deafening crash as its body slammed into the opposite wall, then slithered down it. The dragon tried to lift into the air again but fell to earth. It got onto its legs, one of them continuing to bleed profusely, the blood steaming in the air. Favouring its other legs, the dragon moved towards him. Its head hung heavy, bearded with blood, but it didn’t stop.
All the time, it fixed Taro with its red eyes. Its voice sounded in his head again. ‘When a samurai acts as second for his friend’s seppuku,’ it said, ‘he must try to sever the neck in one clean blow. It is a matter of honour. You should have done the same. In your case it is a matter of survival.’
It took in a deep breath – Taro felt the cooling on his skin as air was sucked from around him, so hard that he was drawn forward, his feet skating over the dust of the ground. He flinched, tried to curl into a ball, tried to turn, but it was all too late. At the last moment he threw Kusanagi aside, so that it would not melt – he was about to die, but the sword was a legend, more than a sword, a key, a key that unlocked the country. It should not be destroyed.
Fire flowed forth from the dragon like a hurricane, like a demon wind. It rolled over him – his clothes burst into flame, as did the grass at his feet.
He found out, then, what it was like to feel his own flesh burn, to know the sensation of his melting eye running down his cheek.
It was unpleasant.
The merciful thing was: it didn’t last for long.
CHAPTER 45
THE DRAGON PACED the cave, groaning, shuffling.
Taro opened his one, unruined eye. He was on his knees, near the wall of the cave. Against the rock was his own outline, his own silhouette – a crouching boy, surrounded by black. The grass around him was gone, everything burned to a thin, pale ash.
On his left side, his clothes had gone, or were fused with his flesh. His eye was destroyed. The left side of his face hurt like... well, like a dragon had burnt the flesh from the bone. He thought to himself that at least the wound in his shoulder had probably been cauterized, and he had to stifle a delirious giggle. Colossal, unbelievable pain surrounded him, like a beast that had swallowed him. It was total and all-encompassing. He was surprised he was even conscious.
Taro turned his head, felt every nerve on his left side call out in agony. His vision – his one-eyed vision – went black for a moment. The dragon was curled up on the other side of the cave now, licking its wounds, like a cat. It didn’t see him looking. It occurred to Taro, then, that the dragon was used to killing people. It might never have fought a vampire, and so it would naturally assume he was dead. He should be dead. He had lost a lot of blood and had suffered appalling burns.
He wished he was dead.
He cursed Shusaku for turning him.
As Taro twisted back, something shifted at his side, then dropped heavily to the ground. He stared dumbly at the ground at his feet.
Lying there, unharmed, was the Buddha ball – it had fallen because the cloak that held it had burned away. He considered its cool, round surface. He glanced back at the dragon. Even through the red mist of pain he
could see an idea forming.
Gods bless Hiro, he thought. He wondered where his friend was now. He’d cast Hiro out for retrieving the Buddha ball, but maybe the ball was the answer to everything. He wished Hiro could be here – he wished he wasn’t alone with this staggering pain.
But he was alone. So he got on with it.
Leaning down, his whole back and side screaming out, he picked up the ball with his right hand – his left was a blackened, swollen lump, split in places, like a soft fruit left out to rot. Even if he survived, his injuries would be catastrophic. He would never move like a ninja again, swift and agile. But he could think like one. He could think like a ninja.
And it was possible that he could survive.
And if he survived, he would still possess Kusanagi.
He had come here to kill a dragon. He realized now that he had come for so much more. He had come to destroy everything that was holding the world in tyranny – not just the dragon, which was destroying people and villages, but also the shogun, who was starving them with his taxes, and the daimyo, who were taking their men to be fed into their great man-eating machine of war.
He put his hands on the ball, and immediately Sato’s voice was threading through his mind, like blood in water. And somewhere far away, he thought he heard Lord Oda’s voice, crackling abuse, but he tuned it out.
Looking down into the ball, he dropped into its sunlit sky. He fell through thin blue air, and then clouds, and then he was careering down towards a mountain that was rushing up at him, running with red fire like blood.
He snapped out of the ball, held himself inside and outside it. The dragon must have sensed something happening, because it looked up, weary, and its huge red eyes might even have been expressing surprise when it saw him struggle to his feet.
It lumbered up too, blood still dripping from its neck. It was badly wounded, Taro could tell. It came towards him, fixing him with those burning-coal eyes.
‘You’re brave,’ it said. ‘I will allow you that.’ Then it sucked in breath, and Taro felt that sensation again of air slipping past him, racing to fill the dragon’s fiery lungs.