by Nick Lake
He spread his consciousness out, as he had that day in the shogun’s province crippled by drought. He let himself become every droplet of moisture in the sky above, every wisp of every cloud. He was a dispersed entity now, something made up of billions of elements that were all one, and he understood that this was in fact the nature of all things. Everything was separate – and everything was one. Concentrating on that idea of oneness, he began to pull himself back together, to compress himself, make himself less spread out.
All of this, of course, happened in less than an instant.
Then the water in the sky was gathered into one enormous ball, a giant counterpart to the little Buddha ball in his hand, and he pushed it until it couldn’t bear any more to be pressed into so small a space.
The heavens opened.
Rain came down, not like rain, but like a stream or water running from a pipe, a continuous pouring of water. There was no spray, there were no droplets, just a river falling from the sky. Taro pulled himself back from the ball into the human realm.
As the water hit the dragon, there was a great hiss, as of a blacksmith’s tool being plunged into water, or fat, and steam roiled out to fill the expanse of the cave – again, Taro felt what it was to be burned, but this was just a scalding, nothing compared to the agony he had endured earlier. He gritted his teeth, knowing that now he would have to do something that might kill him.
In his head was the constant boom of the dragon’s anger, like waves on rocks.
Darkness wove in and out of his vision as he limped over to the wall where he had thrown Kusanagi. It was almost as if the world was breathing – he would see through a narrow aperture, ringed by black, then everything would expand, till his one eye perceived the cave in almost too much detail, and then the whole thing would start again, rhythmically. He felt sick.
He was slow to get to the sword, and already when he picked it up the dragon was following him, limping too, damp smoke rising from its nostrils now. Taro kept moving, not letting that great head with its teeth get near him. He stumbled and slipped towards the middle of the cave. He was heading for the pool of blood that had formed where he had plunged the sword into the dragon’s neck. In his head was a picture of the past – himself, licking blood from the deck of Kenji Kira’s ship. He had no idea what dragon blood would do to him, but he certainly couldn’t fight the thing like this, his own melted flesh turned into a restrictive armour that hampered his movement.
The dragon was close when Taro got there – as he dropped to the ground, mouth open, one of its front legs came down on his foot, trapping it. He screamed into the blood, making it bubble and foam. He didn’t stop, though. He put his lips to it, sucked down.
Fire caught inside him. There was nothing but him and the blood, spreading through him, sending its fingers of flame into his limbs, his face, his hands. He had never tasted anything like it. Raw power was what it tasted like. Just as the pain had swallowed him from the outside, so, as he swallowed, the blood of the dragon consumed him from the inside, transmuting his body, turning it from muscle and bone and ligament into something made of fire.
No.
Must stop – no time.
He wrenched himself away from the blood, which he could have drunk forever, and rolled clumsily. The dragon’s teeth snapped closed on an unburned part of his cloak, or possibly some of his skin that had come away from his body. Either way, he didn’t feel any pain. And the dragon had taken its leg from his foot in order to strike with its mouth – a foolish move. He jumped to his feet. His eye was still gone, of course; his flesh was still ruined. But he could feel the heat of the blood coursing through him, making him strong.
He was a ninja. He was vampire. He was made to kill.
Circling, he had to force himself to limp again, to make the dragon see him as slow and useless. He favoured his unburned leg, made an effort to gaze around him stupidly, as if unable to see clearly. The dragon came at him, unguarded. It didn’t bother to get round him, to come at him from his weak side – just charged right at him, jaws open.
There was a sword kata that involved skating fluidly to the side, letting the other’s strike rush past you like a bull, before opening up his back with a slash on the turn. Taro did it now. Abandoning the pretence of the weaker leg, he slid finger-snap-quick to the right, sword already moving through the air. He noticed again its perfect weight, its perfect balance. It was a sword that wanted to strike out. It just needed a human hand on it to do it.
He wasn’t quite quick enough – but then he hadn’t expected to be. This was a dragon he was fighting, after all, big as a village. The teeth closed on his left hand, as his right brought the sword round and down.
The blade bit down next to the previous wound he had inflicted on that massive neck. He put all the strength that remained to him, and all the strength of the dragon’s blood, into the blow. Flesh parted like rice below a chopstick, and the blade struck something hard. He realized it was the ground.
Pulling the sword out, he ignored the clamour in his head, ignored the dragon’s struggles, its head-thrashing that severed his left hand and most of his forearm and sent it flying, a bloody starfish, across the cave. Oh gods, my hand, thought Taro. The idea that it could just be gone seemed too enormous and awful to grasp.
Shaking, he realized that shock had seized hold of him, threatening to unbalance his mind. He steeled himself. He had lost an eye; now he had lost a hand. He would lose nothing else.
Pouring all his qi, all his focus into what he was doing, he brought the sword down again, the dragon’s blood covering him now, dripping on his face. He put out his tongue and caught it, like a child catching snowflakes.
The noise in his head was getting weaker now, quieter. He lost himself in a frenzy of sword work, hacking inelegantly at the neck, slashing like a farmer, not a samurai. Eventually he became aware that he was killing nothing but the blood-soaked earth of the cave.
Looking around him, he saw that the dragon’s head was lying motionless on the ground, separated from its body. The ugly butchery of his sword work was plain to see. Taro lurched away and began to walk back down the mountainside, burned beyond recognition, stained with blood – some his own. He made it perhaps half a ri before he collapsed, and before he passed out, a single thought crossed his mind.
It had not been an execution a samurai would take pride in.
But it was good enough, for a ninja.
CHAPTER 46
JUN WAS HIGHER up and saw the body first. Hiro broke into a run and caught up with the other boy as he knelt by Taro. Hiro saw him try to extract Kusanagi from Taro’s hands. He was surprised by how plain the sword was, how little ornamented. It was just a two-edged blade with a leather pommel. But it kind of... pulsed. Or throbbed. It was like being close to a very dangerous animal.
‘What are you doing?’ said Hiro.
Jun let go of the sword’s pommel like it was a snake. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I wanted to make him comfortable.’ It was true that Taro was gripping the sword hard, his fingers wrapped partly around its blade. Blood trickled from them.
Hiro stopped thinking about Jun then, because he saw what had been done to Taro. He gasped. ‘Is he alive?’ he asked. He felt that his stomach might drop out of his body; he was sickened, and he was horrified. This was his best friend, and Hiro was too late. He had not been able to save him. He had not been able to do anything. His best friend in the world was broken.
Dead.
‘Breathing. Just.’ Jun held up a mirror to Taro’s nose and showed Hiro the condensation that formed on it. Hiro let out all the breath he had been holding without realizing it. Tears were on his face. Alive! Taro was alive! He could smell blood, though, and charred meat. Emotions of black and red roiled in him like a whirlpool. Alive! But horribly, horribly injured.
Taro’s one eye was closed. The other was gone from its socket, that whole side of his face a twisted mess of burned and blackened skin. His clothes had been roasted from his
left-hand side, so that he was half-naked – though from a distance, such were his burns, Hiro had thought he was still attired all in black. His left hand was missing, along with a good length of his forearm. Blood soaked the ground on which he lay.
Beside him, shining in the grass, was the Buddha ball. Hiro stooped and picked it up. He tucked it into his cloak.
‘Come,’ said Jun. ‘You can help me carry him.’
Gently, ever so gently, Hiro took his friend’s legs as Jun got his hands under Taro’s shoulders, and they lifted him up.
‘At the next village,’ said Jun, ‘we’ll find a healer.’ Taro was still clinging to the sword; it rattled a little as they moved.
‘What happened to him?’ asked Hiro, his voice breaking. ‘What happened to my friend?’
Jun looked at Hiro and frowned. ‘A dragon happened to him.’
By the time they reached the nearest village – those closest to the mountain had been burned from the map by the dragon – many of Taro’s open wounds had healed over. Hiro doubted that his friend’s eye or hand would ever regenerate, though.
Jun produced money from somewhere. Gold, Hiro noticed. Jun asked for directions to the healer and paid the old crone to take Taro, to cover him in poultices that Hiro suspected would be less effective than Taro’s own vampire blood. Jun knew that Taro was a vampire, of course, but that didn’t mean he knew what to do with an injured one.
Taro had still not woken up. Then, after finally managing to extricate the sword from Taro’s grasp, so that the crone would not be tempted to steal it, Hiro and Jun returned to the mountain. Jun felt they needed proof of the dragon’s death, so that Taro could claim the reward when he woke.
To begin with, Jun took Kusanagi, but Hiro just looked at it and shook his head. Jun shrugged, handing the sword over. Hiro strapped it to his side, noticing as he did so how light it was.
They climbed up into hell.
Coming into the cave, Hiro was appalled. Blood and scorch marks were everywhere, but these were nothing to the dragon curled dead in the centre. Hiro had never seen a dragon before. He hoped, now, that he would never see a living one. It was huge – easily the size of a city street, with teeth as long as a man’s arm. Its lifeless head lay close to its body.
‘Gods,’ said Jun. ‘What a mess.’
Hiro looked at it. Something struck him: this wasn’t the aftermath of a fight for a title, for twenty thousand koku. This was something else. He understood suddenly what Taro was doing. He was fulfilling what he thought was his destiny. Killing the dragon, taking Kusanagi back to Edo.
He intended to become shogun. Even if he didn’t know it consciously, it was what he was fighting for.
Jun and Hiro approached. Close up, it was obvious they would never be able to lift the head, much less carry it back to Edo. Jun took out a knife.
‘We’ll take a horn,’ he said.
Alternating, for it was arm-deadening work, they sawed one of the horns from the dragon’s head. Even this was cumbersome and heavy. Hiro carried it, of course. Jun was a stripling next to him.
For what felt like hours, they traipsed down the mountainside, Hiro sweating under the weight of the horn. When they came back to the healer’s hut, she was muttering incantations over Taro’s body, waving mamoni charms in the air. Hiro came and stood next to his friend.
Just then Taro’s eye opened.
‘The spirit is expelled!’ said the old woman. ‘The charms have worked their magic!’
Hiro smiled. Let her think so.
‘Need... speak... alone,’ whispered Taro.
Hiro nodded to the old woman. She bowed and left them. Jun, too, left and closed the door behind him.
‘What is it?’ said Hiro. He thought perhaps Taro would apologize for cutting him off, for his reaction to Hiro’s betrayal. He was prepared to tell him to forget about it. He would say that if Taro could forgive him for going behind his back, then he could forgive Taro his anger.
‘Blood. Need... blood.’
Hiro closed his eyes a moment. He understood – Taro was always a survivor. He didn’t hesitate, however, just rolled up his sleeve. He cast around for a knife but didn’t see one. Just Taoist charms, sutras, candles. He remembered Kusanagi at his waist. He took out the sword, unsheathed it. Drew it along his palm, biting his tongue. The sword was shockingly sharp – he cut much deeper than he had intended to.
Then he held his hand over Taro’s mouth, the gesture almost like smothering, though he was giving life, not taking it away. Taro latched onto the wound, began to feed. Hiro stood, eyes closed. He could feel himself begin to sway, and the room began to rock like a ship on the sea.
When he couldn’t stand it any more, he pulled his hand away and tucked it under his other armpit, stanching the bleeding. Taro levered himself into a sitting position. Hiro imagined they had swapped skin tones – Taro’s was ruddier now, more healthy. Hiro, on the other hand – he checked his reflection in the shining side of Kusanagi – yes, he was paler, some of the force leeched from him. But Taro was his best friend and had saved him once. He owed him more than a portion of his blood. He owed him it all.
‘My eye?’ said Taro. He was blinking with his good one, trying to assess the limits of his vision, it seemed.
‘Gone. I’m sorry.’
Taro looked down at his missing hand. ‘I am a little reduced,’ he said.
‘But you killed the dragon,’ said Hiro softly. ‘You’ll be the most famous man in Japan.’
‘Kusanagi?’
Hiro handed back the sword, still slick with his blood. Taro weighed it in his hands, nodding. Then he put it down beside him.
‘What about the ball?’ he asked. His tone was neutral, but there was a charge in the air, and Hiro felt that this was a moment on which everything depended.
‘It’s here,’ said Hiro, withdrawing the ball from his cloak. ‘I can take it away if you like. Hide it. Throw it in one of the ravines, where the fires are still burning.’
‘No,’ said Taro. ‘You were right to save it.’ He reached out and took the ball. ‘It saved my life, actually.’
‘It...’ Hiro felt a weight he hadn’t known was there lift from his heart. He hardly dared to believe that his decision, when he pulled the ball from the sea, might have been right.
‘Helped me to kill the dragon. Without it I would have died.’ Taro fixed his good eye on his friend. ‘Your debt is paid,’ he said, in a more solemn tone. ‘I saved your life. Now you have saved mine. You’re free. You don’t have to stay with me any more.’ Taro turned away, and Hiro thought he saw the light catch on moisture in his one working eye.
Hiro paused.
‘What if I wanted to stay with you?’ he said finally.
Taro turned back to him. ‘You don’t want to leave?’
‘No.’
‘Well,’ said Taro, ‘if I wasn’t a fearless, fearsome dragon slayer—’
‘Which you are.’
‘Which I am... I would say that you’re my best friend and that I love you, and that I’m sorry for how I treated you after the inland sea.’
‘It’s a good job you are a fearless, fearsome dragon slayer,’ said Hiro.
‘Why?’
‘Because otherwise you’d be in danger of turning soft.’
Taro laughed, and Hiro laughed with him. He touched Taro’s shoulder.
Taro laughed, and Hiro laughed with him. He touched Taro’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘And the other stuff you said. Now let’s go and make you shogun.’
‘Did I say that was what I wanted?’ said Taro, surprised.
‘No,’ said Hiro. ‘You didn’t have to.’
CHAPTER 47
IT WAS AS they crossed the Nihonbachi Bridge that they noticed, for the first time, the lack of guards.
Taro leaned on his stick. He had walked with it for the last five ri, having been carried before that by Hiro and Jun on a stretcher. After a while he had no longer been able to bear the humiliation. No
w he hobbled along, using a staff Hiro had carved from an oak sapling. His eye had not grown back, of course, nor had his hand. But his skin, which had been a mess of bleeding and suppurating wounds, had healed to a silvery mass of scars. They had stopped at every inn they came to – not because they wanted to drag out the journey, but because Taro couldn’t manage any more than a couple of ri a day. On the stretcher, the pain of his knitting skin was too great. With the stick, he grew too frustrated, hating his slow pace.
And tired. That too.
Hiro and Jun were a little way ahead, Hiro holding the cloth-wrapped package that contained the dragon’s horn. The three of them had fallen into an easy companionship, though Taro didn’t think Jun would ever be a friend. He was a strange boy, still quiet of disposition. Useful, though. He had money, and contacts, and had made the journey much easier than it could have been. What was nice for Taro was to speak to Hiro again, and the pair of them had spent much of the journey on their own while Jun scouted ahead, or hunted. They discussed Hana, her staying in Shirahama, what this meant for the future. Taro was no closer to a solution, but it was good to know he had a friend with whom to work on one.
The other thing Taro didn’t know was what he was going to do when he got to the palace. Hold up Kusanagi and demand that the shogun step down? Challenge the boy to a duel? Both ideas seemed absurd – and no others were presenting themselves.
Now Jun peered over the bridge, discussing something with Hiro. Taro drew level with them. There was something odd about the way the people on the bridge were moving, and it took Taro a while to work out what it was.
Then he did.
They were all leaving Edo, not a single person going in their direction, into the city. And they were moving too quickly. Hurrying. The impression Taro had was of nervousness. Heads glancing back. Then he spotted that many of them were carrying belongings with them.
‘Where are the guards?’ asked Hiro.