The Twilight War

by Simon Higgins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Moonshadow 3: The Twilight War

  ePub ISBN 9781742743141

  Kindle ISBN 9781742743158

  A Random House book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Random House Australia in 2011

  Copyright © Simon Higgins 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by

  any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except

  under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968),

  recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without

  the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Higgins, Simon, 1958–

  Title: The twilight war / Simon Higgins

  ISBN: 978 1 86471 977 2 (pbk.)

  Series: Higgins, Simon 1958–. Moonshadow; 3

  Target audience: For secondary school age

  Subjects: Secret societies – Juvenile fiction

  Dewey Number: A823.3

  Cover and internal illustrations by Ari Gibson,

  except stamp logo by Design Cherry

  Cover design by Design Cherry

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  The Furube Sutra

  Three Levels of the Eye of the Beast

  ONE: To fell a mighty cedar

  TWO: Doubts at dawn

  THREE: Scary rumours

  FOUR: A friendly bokken duel

  FIVE: Fire and iron

  SIX: A bundle of arrows

  SEVEN: Words and wiles

  EIGHT: Endgame

  NINE: Desperate measures

  TEN: Closing nets, turning tides

  ELEVEN: The cruellest question

  TWELVE: A dreaded order

  THIRTEEN: Tools of the trade

  FOURTEEN: Turning points

  FIFTEEN: Rikichi

  SIXTEEN: Back among the Fuma

  SEVENTEEN: Sharp ears, loose tongues

  EIGHTEEN: A tale of two hearts

  NINETEEN: Reunion

  TWENTY: Ever-changing odds

  TWENTY-ONE: Chamber of the pit

  TWENTY-TWO: Shared memories

  TWENTY-THREE: Extraction

  TWENTY-FOUR: No quiet exit

  TWENTY-FIVE: Fuma Kotaro

  TWENTY-SIX: Eagle’s fate

  Glossary

  Author’s note

  About the Author

  Random House

  To the heart of my own shinobi clan:

  Annie, as loyal and tenacious as Heron;

  Bronwyn, feisty and funny like Snowhawk; and

  James, as brilliant as Badger but far more

  charming.

  As a wave of dark clouds veiled the moon, Snowhawk leapt onto the wall’s tiled roof.

  The garden surrounding the lonely mansion stretched before her. Small iron lanterns illuminated white gravel paths and feature rocks at the base of arching trees. The enclosed garden looked deserted, but Snowhawk’s intuition whispered of unseen danger. She turned her head slowly, mouth open, straining to hear. After a few seconds she heard a soft, distant sigh. She nodded grimly. The first external guard. Where was he hiding?

  Her right hand curled over the handle of her back-mounted sword. The nimble fingers of her left hand brushed sweat from around her large eyes and then darted to the knots securing her purple-black head-wrap. Snowhawk probed them gently one by one, checking each knot’s tightness. Everything felt secure; she was ready now. Soon victory would be hers. She swallowed slowly. Victory and great reward, or a fast, brutal death.

  Faint rhythmic sounds broke the silence. Sandals crunching grit, each step sounding louder than the last. Her eyes swept the garden until she found the guard approaching through distant shadows. He seemed alert but relaxed, following a set route.

  Behind him, the great mansion loomed tall out of the night. Snowhawk marvelled; the Shogun’s country estate was indeed an impressive retreat, its location their ruler’s best kept secret. She smiled menacingly. Not any more.

  Blind to her watchful presence, the guard wove between manicured shrubs and trees then circled a pond ringed with rocks. He was tall, powerfully built and armed with a spear and a hip-mounted sword. A head-on duel with this samurai should be avoided!

  Apparently reaching the outermost point of his circuit, the guard turned sharply on his heel and paced away. A wide strip of unlit garden lay in his path.

  Snowhawk looked directly below her. A deep bank of plants, some kind of flowering groundcover, lay in shadow at the foot of the wall. Perfect! Snowhawk dropped. The plants crackled softly at her landing and a subtle mist of natural perfume rose from the crushed leaves beneath her sandals.

  Snowhawk breathed in the scent, smiled appreciatively and then followed the guard with quick, cat-like steps. Drawing her blade soundlessly, she leapt a rock, dodged another, and before he could re-enter the glow of the nearest lantern, caught up to him. She raised the iron pommel of her shinobi sword, ready to club him with it.

  Without warning, the guard flinched and snapped into a combat stance. Either instinct or a faint sound had alerted him.

  Before he could turn, her sword’s black pommel hit his skull with a blunt, sickening thud. He crumpled at once. With one hand gripping his topknot, Snowhawk controlled his descent all the way to a quiet landing. After sheathing her weapon, she hid his spear and dragged him back into the scented groundcover.

  Snowhawk made her way around the pond. Now only a well-lit strip of path separated her from the mansion’s double doors. She heard breathing, then footfall. Snowhawk froze.

  A second spearman strode out of the gloom, right across her line of vision. He stopped, half-turned, then angled his head and sniffed the air.

  Snowhawk’s heart began to pound. He was good, very good. He could smell her. Simply rushing him was out of the question. The guard turned a circle on the spot, nostrils flaring. Snowhawk cursed inwardly. She had to drop him fast, before he confirmed his suspicions and raised the alarm.

  She reached inside her jacket to a horse-leather holster that was secured under one arm and ran down the side of her ribs. From it she carefully slid a short, black, painted bamboo tube. Snowhawk raised the blowpipe in front of her lips, her eyes tracking the guard as he scanned the shadowy garden right beside her with a frown.

  As she drew in a deep lungful of air, Snowhawk plucked a dart from a quiver stitched into the back of the holster. She checked the projectile’s bindings with the tips of her fingers. There were four distinct ridges,
which meant that it was tipped with sleeping potion and not poison. Just what she’d been after.

  The dart loaded, she touched her lips to the end of the pipe. Immediately the spearman hunched, training his eyes hard on the very shrubs she lurked in.

  He’d seen her!

  The guard stood bolt upright and gulped in a breath, about to roar a warning. Desperately Snowhawk aimed and blew hard; a short, sharp, controlled jolt of air.

  The samurai’s hand flashed to the side of his neck as if swatting a mosquito. Then he gasped and bent forward at the waist, gripping his chest. Letting out a low croak, he swayed on the spot. She dropped the blowpipe and scrambled forward silently as he began to collapse, reaching him in time to catch his spear and support him as he sagged.

  As she hid the spearman deep in the shrubs, Snowhawk heard distant, slightly muffled sounds. A man coughing painfully, somewhere off to the right and behind the main mansion building. Her eyes locked on the gloom in that direction. What was back there? A secret lodge, a house not recorded on her map? She heard another coughing spell, long and wheezy, the way a man with ailing lungs might sound. Her skin prickled. The Shogun was known to suffer from a chest complaint caused by an old war wound.

  Her eyes flashed back to the imposing mansion. So the guards she had just overcome were part of some ruse set up to draw attention to the wrong building!

  Huddling low, Snowhawk crept to the corner of the garden wall. She turned and squinted down the wide, dark strip that ran between the mansion’s right-hand side and the wall. Her eyes – sharp from years of training and a diet laced with circulation herbs – soon made out the silhouette of a small cottage. She edged closer, studying it.

  Its thatched roof and drab, dark wood walls lay in the shadow of the far more splendid mansion, so it was most likely a caretaker’s or groundskeeper’s lodging.

  She craned forward with excitement. That cottage was also her target’s real hideout. Their cunning diversion had failed! Snowhawk’s heart skipped a beat as she launched herself straight at the concealed house in a series of low shoulder-rolls. She halted in a crouch just below a small railed porch at the front of the cottage.

  A soft yellow glow, from a single indoor lantern perhaps, lit the latticed paper screen of the building’s only shoji sliding door.

  Snowhawk loosened her face-wrap, then sniffed the air and listened. Two odours came from the little house: whale-oil burning in the lantern, and anxious human sweat.

  Someone paced up and down inside, their cotton tabi boots swish-swishing over tatami, the woven and packed reed mats the wealthy used for flooring. Snowhawk broke into a knowing grin. Tatami! More proof that her target was here: a groundskeeper’s cottage was usually a humble building with a packed dirt floor sealed with rugs or straw.

  Swish-swish. The man never stood still. He had to be the top bodyguard. Snowhawk stalked low across the porch, watching its scoured planks for signs of tetsubishi or traps. Where exactly in that room would he have placed his sick master?

  On a generous pile of futons, inside a suspended mosquito net, of course. Which meant putting the sick bed directly under a ceiling beam. It would be well back from the door for safety reasons, yet close to a window for fresh air. Combined, those factors narrowed the choices to one of the room’s two back corners.

  Snowhawk waited at the foot of the screen door, listening to the swish-swish of tabi on tatami. A shadow fell across the paper squares. She caught her breath.

  At last the bodyguard had stopped, foolishly close to the door. Judging by his outline he was lean like her, with long thick hair tied in a high tail behind his head. That hairstyle was worn by shinobi, but it could also mean a ronin – a ‘wave man’, a samurai no longer bound to one noble house. Whatever he was, she vowed grimly, soon he’d be just a corpse.

  Her blade glided from its scabbard without a sound. She rose smoothly, spreading her feet for balance as she aligned her sword’s tip with the chest of the silhouette hovering on the screen. The bodyguard muttered something irritably then flicked his ample hair. The shoulder of his silhouette began to turn. He was about to resume pacing.

  … Now!

  She lunged hard and her blade tore through the paper screen to its mark, the impact jarring her wrists.

  With a loud gasp the Shogun’s bodyguard hunched over hard and as Snowhawk withdrew her sword and bounded back, he staggered towards her. Lurching off-balance, he burst through the paper screen, snapping its thin wooden latticework as he stumbled onto the porch. The bodyguard collapsed to his knees, gripping his chest, almost at her feet. She quickly looked him over. His hands held no weapons. He wore a plain black robe, an undrawn sword on his back, and no visible armour.

  She quickly checked the room beyond him. Empty. Not even a bedroll.

  Another decoy!

  ‘Where is your mast–’ Before she could finish her question, Snowhawk’s gaze met the face of the young bodyguard she had just mortally wounded. Her mouth fell open in shock, sword drooping in her hands. She knew that long face only too well. Her startled eyes tracked over the youth’s high cheekbones, his straight nose, thin lips and pointy chin …

  Moonshadow! Moonshadow of the Grey Light Order.

  From below flickering lids, dark, cat-like eyes locked on her face. Moonshadow drew a laboured breath and scowled up at her.

  ‘Traitor!’

  Hands over his chest, he collapsed.

  Moonshadow sat up on his bedroll with a loud gasp. He gripped his chest tightly with both hands. A word rang in his head like a temple bell.

  Traitor.

  He remembered shouting it in his nightmare, an instant before dying.

  Dying – at the hands of Snowhawk! Had he really shouted it? He rubbed one eye and looked self-consciously in all directions. Had he startled anyone? Moonshadow drew in a calming breath.

  Another summer dawn was breaking, its pink light streaming in through the narrow window high on one wall of his tiny room. He looked at the two furry heads that rose on either side of his bedroll. Moonshadow watched the two animals stand, then stretch. After tossing their heads to shake off sleep, both beasts stared hard, right at him.

  On the left of his bedroll stood an Akita Matagi, a long-haired, wolf-like dog with a pale coat, deep chest and broad back. The powerful animal tilted his great head inquisitively. Opposite him, a black-and-white cat – the kind often called a kimono cat – fixed unblinking eyes on her host. Generally, such cats had short, broad, almost triangular tails. This one’s tail was inexplicably long. Considered sacred because of their unique markings – a coat pattern eerily resembling a woman in a kimono – these cats usually lived in the grounds of temples, hence their other name, temple cat. This one lived here.

  Moonshadow gave the pair a reluctant grin. Originally unwanted roommates, the beasts had used every animal charm, and a great deal of raw, stubborn persistence, to wheedle their way into living with him. His eventual decision to let them sleep in his room had put an end to their noisy pre-dawn games with Saru-san, Brother Badger’s pet monkey. It had also brought great relief to the rest of the Grey Light Order.

  As he opened a dry, stale mouth to speak to his four-legged companions, an overwhelming flashback of the dream swamped him. The small, quiet room vanished.

  Instantly he was again part of Snowhawk, looming at the shoji; steely, relentless, lining up her blade with his hovering shadow.

  Driving the sword through the paper screen into –

  He snatched control of his thoughts, shivered, then muttered forcefully, ‘Fool! Still your mind!’ More shrugging off was probably just what he needed. If another such flashback assailed him, he’d recite the furube sutra until his thinking became as clear as a mountain rock pool. Moonshadow sighed, shaking his head at the bizarre nature of the mind.

  In the nightmare, Snowhawk had no longer been his best friend and a valued member of the Grey Light Order, but a ruthless enemy. Yet at the same time – impossibly – he had shared her mission. Fe
lt her feelings. Heard her thoughts.

  As well as being one of her targets, he had somehow been merged with her, and, during that time, he had tasted firsthand the crazed zeal of her rogue mission to assassinate their master, the Shogun of all Japan.

  What madness indeed, Moonshadow thought with a scowl.

  For the Shogun, Ieyasu of the Tokugawa clan, had proved himself a clever, insightful lord, bringing peace to Japan after a century of civil war. It was the Grey Light Order’s honour to be his secret service, his roving eyes and ears and, when required, his outstretched hand of justice.

  Snowhawk, like all of them, had pledged to protect the Shogun’s life with her own, and to do all in her power to encourage his new age of peace, so that a more cultured Japan could rise from the blood-drenched soil of its past. Rise and bloom, like a garden of flowers. That was the Shogun’s vision of their empire’s future.

  The young spy blew air hard between his lips. What a deeply unsettling nightmare: Snowhawk hunting the man behind that vision! In the real world, she was a trustworthy comrade in the fight against the Shogun’s enemies, those rebel warlords and merchants with a very different vision of the future.

  The rebels’ plan involved slaying the Shogun and replacing him with their preferred leader, the blood-drunk and power hungry Lord Silver Wolf. Once he ruled, it was rumoured, Korea would immediately be invaded. Then other neighbours would suffer unwarranted attack. Silver Wolf, sources claimed, yearned to master the entire world.

  Snowhawk would never change sides to serve a warmonger like –

  Then Moonshadow felt it. Cold, hard doubt. He hissed at himself. Idiot! It was a dream. There was no real reason to doubt her loyalty. He bit his lip. Or was there?

  After all, hadn’t she already changed sides once? Then why not a second time?

  He sat up in a hunch on his bedroll. Chin propped on his knees, Moonshadow used his fingers to comb back his matted hair. Taking this behaviour as an invitation, the animals bounded onto his bedroll. The cat enthusiastically rubbed her shoulder and ribs against Moonshadow. The dog nuzzled his hand firmly with a wet nose, then planted one huge, heavy paw on his leg.