by Nick Lake
‘Thank you, Hayao,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Yes, please, go. I will see you again when this is all over. Hiro – go with him. Protect her. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Hiro. ‘I don’t—’
‘No,’ said Taro. ‘Go after Hana. Please.’
He closed his eyes for a moment.
Forgive me, Hana.
Then he threw himself down the slope towards where his mother was.
CHAPTER 22
KENJI KIRA WATCHED the roiling mass of the arquebusiers, the chaos of their panicked movements as they dropped their weapons. Rain hammered on his helmet and breastplate, like percussion.
Now this, he thought, this is war.
The monks who had survived the volleys of fire were surging through the disarmed arquebusiers, who scurried, bewildered, with their useless sticks. The monks cut them down where they stood, their katana finding in this moment the perfection of their purpose, drinking down blood.
A man with a gun ran past Kenji – or nearly, anyway, for there was a protective cordon of armed and armoured samurai around Kenji, keeping him at arm’s length from the mess of the fighting. Kenji had kept his elite guard back, behind the guns, ready for the hand-to-hand engagement. It was going to come a little quicker than he had planned, of course. But he was looking forward to it. His sword was thirsty.
As he ran past, the arquebusier shouted something about Susanoo, the kami of storms, and how he was punishing them for their arrogance. Kenji sighed. These men would fight to the death, commit seppuku over the tiniest offence if you asked them to, but allow for a single moment the seed of superstition to plant itself among them, and soon a great tree of fear would surge upward, its expanding branches sending the men scattering.
Now the gunmen were running around in a panic, aimless, their very movements chaotic – as if they were things that had only entered human bodies, possessing them, and had little idea of how the joints were meant to articulate. They were no match for the ruthless, organized monks, who cut them down mercilessly.
‘Should we help them?’ said one of the samurai.
‘No,’ said Kenji. ‘Leave them to die.’ He felt angry with the gunmen for failing him. A small voice at the back of his mind told him that it was he who had ordered the attack when clouds had been gathering, but he ignored it, as he found it was best to do with such troublesome voices. He dismounted from his horse, gesturing for his men to do the same. The mounts would be hopeless on this treacherous mess of dead bodies.
He looked up the slope. There were not many monks left, anyway. All the rain was doing was bringing forward the final part of Oda’s battle plan, when the best of the samurai would storm the mountaintop with swords in hand, raze the buildings, and exterminate the last of the Tendai monks. Already he could see the smoke from the other side of the rise, where a picked detachment of his men had set fire to the Hokke-do. Lord Oda had specially ordered that part of the temple burned to the ground – the scrolls were the heart of the Tendai Order, he said, and without them the monks would wither and die.
And the sweetest part of all – to humiliate the boy before Hana, maybe even to kill him, if he was forced to it. Lord Oda would simply have to accept that these things happened, in war. Then he would claim his rewards. Hana, perhaps.
Of course, he had hoped that the casualties on his side might be minimal, so as to increase the glory of his victory. But the guns had not been his idea in the first place. He was happier here, with his samurai, fighting the traditional way. And he knew that his samurai guard – the elite of Lord Oda’s army – would respect his wishes if his karma did not hold good, and he died. They would take his body and ensure that it was burned immediately, so that no insects could make it their home. Then they would scatter him among the rocks at the base of the mountain, so that he would be forever stone, impermeable and eternal.
He stalked forward, pushing through the last remnants of the panicking gunners. Suddenly a monk leaped up – apparently he had been feigning death. He had a sword in his hand, and he ran straight at Kenji Kira, screaming.
‘Face me like a man!’ the monk shouted.
Kenji Kira waved a hand, and two of his samurai stepped forward, pincerlike, and caught the monk on their swords, cutting him in half at the waist. If these monks expected Kenji Kira to fight with honour, then they were greater fools than he had taken them for. Not that he would not kill, if it came to it. In fact, as he fought his way up the hill he met a great deal of resistance, and he had cause to remember Lord Oda’s maxim that a man defending his home is worth ten samurai.
The monks were desperate. They fought viciously, with great skill. But they were horribly outnumbered. The rain had stopped the guns, but much too late to do any good – already the bullets had claimed most of the monks, leaving an embattled minority to defend the temple. Kenji Kira glanced to his side and saw Yukiko, cartwheeling elegantly over a startled-looking monk, landing in a graceful crouch on a corpse behind him, and eviscerating him from behind. Kira saluted her, raising his sword.
She didn’t respond – and indeed he regretted the gesture a moment later when a monk brought his sword up in a glittering arc, taking advantage of Kenji Kira’s exposed flank, nearly opening his chest. He blocked just in time, stumbled on the armour of a dead man at his feet, and had to catch one of his samurai by the shoulder to keep upright. The samurai spun on the monk, but another monk swung at the same time, and his sword met the samurai’s throat, ruined it.
Kenji Kira snapped his sword down, to parry another strike – the monk who was attacking him was no older than fifteen, but he fought with hard-eyed conviction, no doubt spurred on by the carpet of his dead friends at his feet. The young monk settled into a strong fighting stance, careful not to slip on the blood and guts below him. His sword rose very gently up and down in his hand, as if it were breathing. Kenji Kira looked up to see more monks flowing down the hill behind him, forming a semicircle he and his few remaining men would have to fight their way through.
Well, so be it.
Kenji Kira let the dagger in his sleeve drop into his left hand, then flicked his wrist. The monk’s face twisted into an expression of surprise, as the dagger thwacked into his chest. Kenji Kira didn’t even waste movement – he leaped at the other nearest monk, his sword a silver rainbow in the rain, and took off the man’s sword arm at the shoulder. The men behind him disappeared, and so did the mountain – there were only the monks, and their swords. This had happened to him only rarely, yet he embraced the battle rage as if it were an old friend. The world shrank to the point and edge of his sword. He was lost in the battle.
Two monks came at him together, swords flashing, but wherever the swords were, it was so easy to be elsewhere. Time seemed to have slowed down – he could see the blades coming long before they moved, and when they did move it was as if they dragged through sap, not air. He almost found it too simple to evade the clumsy hacks and slashes, as he danced with his sword, killing each monk in turn. His vision had gone red – he didn’t know if that was a symptom of his battle rage, or a mist of blood in his eyes.
He turned, and jumped, and cut and thrust, and when he came back to his senses he found himself in a circle of dead men, his sword arm trembling. Some of the dead were samurai, and some small voice inside him said he had probably killed them, too.
Well, so be it.
He looked up and he saw that he had reached the main hall, the accommodation hall where he was sure Hana would be. He turned to look for Yukiko but could see her nowhere. She would be inside, no doubt. He just hoped she wouldn’t get to Taro or Hana before him.
He raised his sword for attention. ‘Kill the remaining monks here,’ he said, ‘then move up the hill. If you see a girl of noble appearance, leave her for me.’
CHAPTER 23
TARO MOVED THROUGH the hall like a ghost. He could hear the clash of metal on metal, the screams of men.
There was a samurai ahead of Taro, grappling w
ith a monk. Taro waited till the monk’s body was clear, then stabbed the samurai through the gap in his armour, a clean cut through the chest. The man fell forward, blood bubbling from his mouth.
The monk began to thank him, but Taro kept moving, flitting from shadow to shadow. In the courtyard, two monks ran roaring at a samurai with a gun. The samurai fired, his fuse spared from the rain by the leaves and blossom of the plum tree. He hit one of the monks, but the other kept going, his sword arcing up in a classic ii-aido move. The samurai’s gun hand – and the arm and shoulder attached to it – cleaved off and thudded to the ground.
The monk turned to Taro, his sword still up, ready to attack.
‘I’m with you!’ said Taro. ‘I’m looking for my mother.’
The monk nodded. ‘The guests are in there.’ He pointed to the room where Taro had last seen his mother.
Taro grunted a thanks, then banged on the door. ‘Mother!’ he called. ‘Let me in!’
The door creaked open, and his mother ran out to embrace him. ‘You’re alive,’ she said. Then she saw the blood on his shirt, the hole where the bullet had penetrated, and her mouth formed into an O of shock. ‘You’re hurt.’
‘Yes. No.’ He touched the already forming scar on his shoulder. ‘I’ll explain later.’ There was the sound of footsteps behind him, and he whirled, ready to face one of the samurai.
And then Kenji Kira appeared in the doorway of the hall.
Lord Oda’s retainer was smiling. In his hand was a sword, which dripped blood – tap tap tap tap – on the wooden floor. He had lost even more weight since Taro had last seen him, so that he appeared almost as a gaki, a vengeful ghost come to feed on Taro’s strength. Against the shadow of the doorway, his skin was almost translucently white, and his eyes bulged out of a horrific visage, a death mask of hollow cheeks and taut, fleshless lips.
‘You must be Taro,’ he said.
Taro said nothing. He knew that Kenji Kira had never laid eyes on him before, but Taro had seen him. He’d watched from his hiding place, on two separate occasions, as Kira had murdered defenceless people. First, he had seen him kill an old peasant man, just for harvesting some honey in Lord Oda’s forest. And then he had been present when the revolting man murdered Heiko, the brave older sister of Yukiko. Heiko had sacrificed herself for Taro’s sake, distracting Kenji Kira and allowing the others to escape. It was, in part, Heiko’s death that had warped Yukiko’s mind and led her to turn against Taro.
Taro relaxed into the stance of combat, his sword steady in his hands. This time it was different. This time it would be him facing Kira one-on-one. And he was far from defenceless.
His mother held his arm tightly. ‘Who is that?’ she whispered.
Taro cracked his neck. ‘Kenji Kira,’ he said, not bothering to lower his voice. ‘He killed my friend. I swore I’d kill him if I ever met him again.’
Kira rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure you did. And now I’m going to take you to Lord Oda, where you’ll be tortured and most likely die. There’s no need to be theatrical about it.’ A couple of samurai appeared at his side but he waved them back irritably. ‘The boy is mine,’ he said.
‘Lord Oda is dead,’ said Taro.
Kira looked genuinely confused. ‘I saw him this morning,’ he said. ‘He is very much alive.’
Taro frowned. ‘But. . .’
‘You thought you killed him?’ said Kira. He laughed hollowly. ‘He was injured, the night you stole Hana away. But he did not die. You are a boy – how could you hope to kill a sword saint such as he?’
Taro felt faint. He concentrated on the ground beneath his feet. Well, perhaps Lord Oda was not dead – it did seem strange that no rumours had reached them of his demise. But Taro had defeated him once. He could do it again. He shrugged.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, more bravely than he felt. ‘I will fight you, and I will fight him if he comes for me. I’m not afraid of you. I intend to kill you. So if you want me, you may have to kill me.’
‘I’m prepared,’ said Kenji Kira, ‘for that eventuality.’
Taro turned to his mother, put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Get behind me,’ he said.
When he turned to face Kenji Kira again, the man was frowning. ‘Your mother is here,’ he said. ‘But where is Hana?’
Taro stared. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Hana. Lord Oda’s daughter. Where is she? I’m. . . concerned about her.’
‘She’s far from here,’ said Taro, hoping that it was true. The last he had seen of her, she had been running towards the Hokke-do as it burned, driven by a mad desire to save the scrolls.
Rage crossed Kenji Kira’s face, like a taifun over seawater, and then was gone just as quickly as it had arisen. He slashed his sword through the air experimentally, then nodded to Taro. ‘Come, then,’ he said, pointing to Taro’s katana. ‘Let’s see what you can do with that thing. Either I kill you or I return you to Lord Oda alive. Both outcomes would please me.’
Taro closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the few drops of rain that made it past the overhang of the roof and through the branches of the plum tree. He concentrated on the feel of the grass through his thin tabi slippers. In his hand, the sword was light, the sword was nothing. He let himself become one with it, and then he moved.
Kenji Kira met Taro’s first strike with a textbook deflection, using a smooth, classic kata form. He spun, meeting Taro’s next strike with a low parry. Then he pressed forward, his sword flashing in the semi-darkness. Taro allowed himself to fall back, watching not the moves that Kira made, but the rhythm of his whole body, his attitude, his style. He tried a lesser-known attack – a low feint, followed by a tricky reversal into a neck-strike. Kira responded with the perfect kata for the occasion.
But that was the thing, Taro was realizing. The man only had the kata – taught movements and deflections; not the innate instinct for the weapon that had marked Taro out from the start. He held for a moment longer, even letting one of Kira’s lunges slash a wide cut in his thigh, which made his mother gasp. He ignored it, and her, keeping his balance while he used a high attack to make Kira back off.
‘You’re weak,’ said Kira. ‘Your dead ninja friend didn’t teach you well enough.’
Taro bit his lip, forcing himself not to respond. He was concentrating most of all on not killing the man too quickly.
‘I was surprised you came,’ said Kira, dancing to the side as Taro made an obvious play to cut open his stomach, pretending to be less skilled than he truly was. ‘When we sent that pigeon, we didn’t think you would take the bait. Your mother must mean a lot to you.’
‘Yes,’ said Taro. ‘She does.’
‘Still,’ said Kira, ‘you must be either very brave, or very stupid. To walk into a trap like that.’
‘Well,’ said Taro through gritted teeth, his sword hand yearning to be freed, ‘I didn’t know for sure it was a trap.’
‘Ah. Stupid, then.’ Kira feinted left and then threw his sword forward, trying to run Taro through, but Taro had seen the intended move and was no longer in that spot when the blade transfixed the air. He aimed a low cut at Kira’s legs, and was rewarded with a red gash on the man’s thigh, to match his own.
‘Gah!’ said Kira, angry now. He redoubled his efforts, making a series of fast, aggressive strikes, pushing Taro back. Taro looked into the man’s eyes and saw only vanity, selfishness, and pride. He was almost disappointed – the man who had murdered his friend was nothing but a bully. He decided he had played long enough with this mouse. He got his blade inside Kira’s and turned it aside with a flick of the wrist. Then, in a movement fast as the flash of sunlight on a darting fish’s scales, he raked his sword along Kira’s, to the hilt, and pushed hard to the side.
Kira’s sword fell to the ground, and he looked at Taro, his breath ragged. He was if anything even paler now, a man made of snow. Taro saw blossoms falling, impossibly slowly, and one of the flowers settled on Kira’s forehead. He felt the benedictio
n of the moment, and he raised his sword for the kill.
Pain exploded in Taro’s stomach, and he looked down to see a dagger hilt protruding from it. Kira’s arm was outstretched – he must have thrown the knife, though Taro hadn’t seen him move. He stumbled, as Kira – quick as a cat – leaned down and picked up his sword. Taro just got his own blade up in time, as Kira brought his sword round in a viciously fast strike, aimed at Taro’s neck. As the swords clashed together, Taro felt a tearing agony in his stomach – he was aware of the dagger falling from it, his blood rushing after it, as if to catch it. The pain was astonishing, staggering. It was a shadow that spread from the wound, enveloping him, and he was a scared child cowering inside that darkness.
He could hear his mother screaming and he blinked, realizing that Kenji Kira was no longer in front of him. Instinctively he raised his sword, two-handed, so that it was behind his head – and he felt the impact when the blow Kira had meant to decapitate him was absorbed by the blade and his jangling wrists.
He somehow turned the older man round, moving just quickly enough with his sword to defend against any lethal strikes. Then Kira ducked, spinning round as he kicked, and Taro felt his ankle give way. He crashed heavily to the ground. With an effort, he got his sword up just in time to block the next blow – but his strength was slipping away from him, and the older man’s sword carried enough momentum to bite into his shoulder.
Aghast, Taro looked up at the skeletal face of Kenji Kira, contemplating the hideous idea that this might be the last thing he saw.
He was preparing to die when there was a flurry of movement from the doorway, and a flicker as of someone moving very quickly towards Kira from behind, almost flying, and then there was a handspan of steel jutting out from the older man’s chest.
Taro and Kira both stared at it, then raised their eyes to each other, their puzzled expressions mirrored for a slow instant. Blood welled in the older man’s chest. He raised one hand to touch the sword that had impaled him, as if to check that it was real. He opened his mouth and let out a low groan. It was a sound like emptiness.