Blood Ninja (10 page)

“You don’t see me?” said Shusaku’s voice.

“I s-see your eyes,” stammered Taro.

The eyes bobbed up and down.

Taro stared blankly.

“Oh, I apologize,” said Shusaku. “I was nodding.”

Taro continued to stare. Hiro turned to him. “What’s going on? You don’t see him? He’s right here. He has black writing all over his body. Kanji.”

Taro shook his head. “No, I don’t see him.”

He saw the disembodied eyes turn to the pile of clothes. A pair of
hakama
trousers rose into the air, followed by a cloak. They floated into position around a pair of legs and a torso, which Taro now saw clearly, beneath a pair of eyes that hovered in empty space.

A long, black scarf now drifted up into the air and wrapped itself around the invisible head several times, until what stood in the hut before Taro was again a man dressed all in black, with only his eyes visible. He knelt by Taro and gripped the arrow in his shoulder. “This is going to hurt,” he said, before pushing the point right through and out the back. Taro gagged, just as he did for the second arrow. But again, on looking at the wounds, he was amazed by how quickly his flesh healed over.

When the pain had died down, he looked hard at Shusaku. “Why couldn’t I see you, just then?” he asked. “Is that a ninja trick?”

“Not quite. It’s a trick
against
ninjas.”

“How does it work?”

Shusaku narrowed his eyes at him. “You can’t guess?”

“The tattoos,” said Hiro. “They protect you.”

Shusaku nodded. “Did you read them?”

“No. I can’t read.”

The ninja shook his head, as if disappointed. He turned to Taro. “And you?”

“No.”

“A disgrace.”

“I can’t
see
your tattoos,” said Taro. “And anyway, none of the villagers can read.”

“Precisely,” said the ninja. “The villagers are uneducated peasants.” Taro wondered what the man expected—he and Hiro were peasants too. Shusaku sighed, then rolled up a sleeve. The effect was disconcerting. For Taro, the man’s arm simply disappeared.

But Hiro could obviously see something. He leaned forward, as the ninja traced a gloved finger along empty air.

“
Shiki fu i ku, ku fu i shiki, shiki zoku ze ku, ku zoku ze shiki
. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Form is not different from emptiness, and emptiness is not different from form. It is the Heart Sutra. An old teaching of the Buddha. For spirits, it acts like a spell. It reminds them that form and emptiness are equal—and
so it conceals my form. Evil spirits, like good spirits, are incapable of denying Buddha’s truths.”

“But I’m not a spirit,” said Taro.

“You’re a vampire now,” the ninja explained. “And so you are part spirit. We vampires trace our lineage back to the days when the spirits were everywhere and walked and lived with men. Like I said before, there are people who say we are descended from the
kami
of night.”

Taro could think of nothing to say to this. So many years the villagers had joked that he was part
kami
—a descendent of the god-spirits that inhabited the streams and woods and mountains of Japan—and now Shusaku was saying that this might actually be true! He knew there had been more
kami
in every wood and seaside cove, before the Buddha chased them away, but …

Taro let these thoughts, which struggled against him like fish on a line, swim away for the moment. For now, he would stick with simple questions. “You’re a vampire,” he said. “And”—he took a breath—“you made me one too. Why would you make yourself invisible to your own kind?”

“So that I could kill them. And now we should be going. There are not many hours of night left, and we must reach the house of the woman I spoke to you about.”

They left the little hut and began to walk through the woods, Shusaku checking always to left and right in case any of the ninjas had been brave enough to stay.

“We must pass close to Nagoya,” he said, “to get to the mountains where the woman I spoke of lives. We must be very careful. If possible, we should find some sort of conveyance in which we can conceal ourselves. A cart, perhaps, or a palanquin. If he sees us like this, exposed, Oda will kill us in a heartbeat.”

Taro and Hiro both gasped. Lord Oda Nobunaga was a legendary figure in the Kanto. Both the impolite shortening of his honorific name—“Oda” instead of “Lord Oda”—and the idea that this upholder of the samurai ideals might want to kill them shocked them profoundly.

“But Lord Oda is a great daimyo!” said Taro. “Why would he want to kill us?”

Shusaku paused. “He … does not take kindly to strangers. Two peasants and a ninja? It’s a suspicious combination.”

Taro laughed. “A samurai does not kill strangers for no reason. Lord Oda is a man of honor.”

Now it was Shusaku’s turn to laugh. “You think a man can hold on to the title of sword saint for so long if he fights honorably?”

“I think he probably doesn’t kill people who can’t defend themselves,” said Taro bitterly. “People who can’t even
see
him.”

Hiro drew in a breath at the insult, but Taro didn’t care. Who was this ninja to speak to him of honor? He was little more than a paid assassin, and he was content to murder defenseless men in cold blood. Hadn’t Taro seen him run someone through from behind; hadn’t he watched him prey on blind enemies, who had whirled around hopelessly, panicked, oblivious to where he stood?

The man seemed to have no conception of fairness, and Taro wondered if he was doing the right thing by going with him. Once that pigeon arrived, and he knew where his mother was, he could of course take Hiro and leave. He didn’t know if he could trust Shusaku, but he
did
know Hiro. For now, he would tread cautiously, bide his time.

Shusaku walked on in silence in front, not responding to Taro’s cruel words. The ninja held his head down, studying the terrain, and Taro could almost feel sorry for what he had said, but every time he was about to say something, he remembered what Shusaku had said about Lord Oda. The protector of Kanto Province, dishonorable! The effrontery of it repulsed him anew every time.

None of them spoke for a while. They simply moved steadily toward Nagoya, keeping always to the hidden ways and barely visible paths used by peasants and wild animals.

“Always avoid the roads,” said Shusaku finally, his tone even. “To a samurai or a ninja, a peasant or a wild animal is of roughly the same importance, and that either may have ways and passages beyond the knowledge of civilized men is unthinkable to them. It
gives us an advantage, because there will be ninja looking for us, you can count on it. Maybe even samurai, too.”

“Samurai do not kill peasants,” said Taro.

“No,” muttered Shusaku. “They just send them into battle armed with farming utensils.”

Taro ignored him.

Nagoya lay only around five
ri
away, but they had to creep at a slow pace through fields and across rice paddies, avoiding the roads where nobles, samurai, and
ronin
rode from town to town.

The weather, at least, was clear, and though their ankles soon became wet from rice water, the evening was cool without being cold, and the moon illuminated their way without being so bright that anyone would see their silhouettes from far away.

After walking for half the night, they came at last to a low hill overlooking Nagoya. They were hidden by a small copse of trees above the road into town. The road itself curved when it met the hill, creating a bend that was not visible from the town. Paddy fields descended in even steps on all sides of the rounded hill topped by Nagoya, their water flashing silver in the moonlight. Atop the rough wooden shacks of the bulk of the town rose the elegant curves of a palace, the sweep of its many red roofs suggesting dragons crouching on the town or, if you squinted, a flock of herons in flight.

The night sky was darkened only by the smoke that rose from the many chimneys. On the far side of town, a section of Lord Oda’s army had camped and was engaged in military exercises. The trio could see their armor flashing from where they stood, and hear low grunts and metallic clashes, which seemed plucked in concert from the soldiers by a greater intelligence, as an expert player derives music from the varied strings of the koto.

Shusaku gestured at the scene before them. The hill on which Nagoya stood was a single low dome in a wide, shallow valley. On the other side, past the town, mountains rose up into a cloudless, starry sky, as if reaching for the heavens.

“We have to get to those mountains,” said Shusaku. “But the
valley is all farmland. No hidden paths. There is only one road we can follow.” His finger traced a pale, sinuous line that cut across the great low valley like a scar. Crossing it was another road that led to the gates of Nagoya itself, and Lord Oda’s castle. This was the road that led to the low wooded hill on which they had stopped. “There will be traffic entering and leaving Nagoya, even at night,” he said. “We should not have too long to wait.”

Then he turned to Taro. “What do you see? Any obvious risks?”

Taro stared at the landscape before them. “I don’t know … the brightness of the moonlight?”

Shusaku tutted. “Hiro?”

Hiro narrowed his eyes. Then he pointed to a spot just beyond the town, at the base of the hill’s broad flank. It was a place where the road narrowed to cross a wide river. “Those soldiers. They’re not involved in the exercises.”

Taro squinted. Ah, yes—he could see it now. Camped beside the road on either side as the route left the river and entered the endless rice paddies beyond the town, was a small group of well-armed samurai. Anyone approaching them would have to come across the bridge—unless they were willing to swim the river—and so the samurai had a stranglehold on the road’s traffic.

“A checkpoint,” said Shusaku. “They’re watching the travelers heading for the mountains.”

“Or the travelers
coming
from the mountains to the town,” said Taro. “Perhaps Lord Oda fears attack.”

“Perhaps,” said Shusaku. “But I don’t know if Lord Oda fears anything but failure.” He turned his attention back to the branch of road beneath them. “The checkpoint is a hindrance. It means a cart will be of no use. They’ll thrust swords into rice, or hay. We’ll have to wait here in the woods for a palanquin to come along, then we’ll ambush it.”

“How honorable,” murmured Taro.

Again, Shusaku ignored him. He led Taro and Hiro to the other side of the hill, where they could watch the traffic.

It was thin. The hour was late, and few people would venture outside by moonlight, now that
ronin
were so numerous in the countryside of Japan. The three companions waited a long time—enough for several incense sticks to burn to the end.

Finally Shusaku pointed. Two men were approaching from the town, bearing a palanquin that befitted the station of a minor noble. Shusaku took a long, slim tube from his cloak. Taro could not imagine where he had hidden it. The ninja conjured a small dart with his fingertips, seemingly from nowhere, and fitted it into the tube. “It will only make them sleep,” he said, anticipating Taro’s question.

Taro nodded. “Just don’t kill them.”

Shusaku crept down the hill. Even Taro, who knew where Shusaku was, found it difficult to spot him after a while. And yet he was fully clothed this time. He glided between the bushes like a ghost.

There were two light puffs. The men carrying the palanquin dropped to their knees, causing the covered chair to fall abruptly to the ground. Taro heard a startled shout.

Shusaku surged forward, reaching the palanquin in a few bounds. He reached inside and pulled out a fat man in an opulent kimono. Before the man could protest, Shusaku did something with his fingers to his neck, and he crumpled to the ground. Shusaku began to search the man’s clothes, then called to Taro and Hiro. “Come down and help.”

They went down to the road and assisted him in pulling the bodies into the bushes, where they laid them down, concealed from sight. Shusaku used the tie strings from their kimonos to bind their hands and feet. Then he pointed at Taro. “Bite one of them. Drink his blood. I will tell you when to stop so that you do him no lasting harm.”

Taro stared down at the unconscious men. It seemed dishonorable, appalling even, to feed on a man who couldn’t resist. But he was so hungry …

“Hmm,” said Shusaku, holding up a scroll that he had taken
from the nobleman who had been riding in the palanquin. “This is both good and bad.”

“What is it?” said Hiro.

“This man’s a messenger. He bears a note from Lord Oda to the shogun. The bad news is that we’ve ambushed the palanquin of someone very important indeed.” He smiled. “And that is punishable by death. The good news is that we’ll be carrying a message to the shogun, and that should get us through any checkpoints. He may only be a lad, but the office invested in him is a powerful one, and people remember his father’s strength.”

The shogun was the true ruler of Japan, holding all the military and financial power that was denied to the emperor, who had been reduced to the role of a figurehead. The current emperor was a sickly young boy, ruler of a pleasant palace and very little else.