Blood Ninja (38 page)

Shusaku thanked the man and returned to the group as the peasants left. “I don’t like this,” he said.

But they continued nevertheless, and it was soon afterward—and after passing several more people fleeing the other way—that they came upon a small village, little more than a couple of houses by the road, really, and saw a group of people gathered by the roadside. It was immediately obvious to Taro that these people were gathered around the dead man. They communicated with one another by means of expansive, frightened-looking gestures, seeming engaged in a sort of mummery designed to leave no passerby in doubt as to the violence to which they bore witness.

Taro and the others approached the group and, by jostling, were able to see what they were looking at. A man lay in the ditch right by the road, his head lolling to one side, a pair of circular wounds in his neck where the teeth had gone in.

Shusaku suddenly stiffened, then pushed through to kneel by the man.

“Are you a doctor?” said a woman.

Shusaku looked up, distracted. He was pulling aside the dead man’s lips to look at his mouth. “Ah … yes,” he said. “And I can tell you that this man is
definitely
dead. There’s nothing to be done.”

The woman stared at him, as if he were insane. Shusaku ignored her, stepping away from the body and then pulling Taro and Heiko by their arms, leading them from the scene. Hiro and Yukiko followed. When they were out of earshot of the group, still walking toward Nagoya, Taro turned to the ninja.

“What was it?” he asked. “What did you see?”

“That man was killed by a vampire,” he said. “But he was a vampire himself.”

Taro frowned. “You mean … he was a ninja?”

“Yes. Long, sharp teeth. Pale skin. And anyway, I recognize him from the mountain. He was called Yoshi, a good friend of Kawabata’s.”

“Why would a ninja kill another ninja?” asked Hiro.

“I don’t know,” said Shusaku. “As you have learned, it is forbidden by our law—though even I have broken that law when I had to. The strange thing, though, is that the other ninja
bit
him. Vampires feed on human blood. The blood of another vampire gives no nourishment. In fact, it is quite unpleasant to drink.”

“So … perhaps someone only wants us to think he was killed by a vampire?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sure a vampire did it. The bite wound was unmistakable. But the man’s neck had been broken—I felt the separated vertebrae. The bite was done after he died.”

“Wait,” said Taro. “I thought you said only decapitation or a wound to the heart could kill a vampire.”

“The perils of being a teacher …,” muttered Shusaku. “I meant the word ‘decapitation’ loosely. It’s the severing of the spinal cord that does it.
Usually
that means decapitation. It’s much easier to chop off someone’s head than to break their spine and cut off the nervous system.”

“But that’s what happened here,” said Hiro.

“Yes. And after that, a vampire bit him. We can’t assume the person who killed him and the person who bit him are the same, but it seems likely. It takes a lot of strength to pull the vertebrae apart like this—the kind of strength you find in a vampire.”

“But then why bite the neck after breaking it?” asked Taro.

“I think …,” said Shusaku, “it must have been a message of some kind. Whoever killed that man wanted it to be known that a vampire did it. And then, leaving the corpse by the road like that. It’s almost as if the killer wanted people to find it. Or wanted
us
to find it, even.”

Taro shivered. He didn’t like this plain anyway. The thought that someone might be ahead of them, waiting for them—someone who wished them ill, and was a murderer—made him feel even more vulnerable and exposed than before.

Shusaku must have been feeling the same thing, because he was scanning the road before and behind them. “We need to find a cart, or the like,” he said. “We shouldn’t stay out on this road.”

It wasn’t long before they managed to find a peasant with a fabric-covered cart who was willing, in return for some of Shusaku’s seemingly endless gold coins, to hide them in the back of his vehicle. The cart, when they found it, contained rice. Shusaku’s gold was enough that, some time later, rice sat by the side of the road in small shining heaps.

A keen eye would also have noticed pieces of cutoff wood and sawdust that indicated someone had been working with planks.

So it was that, rocking on the axles of the simple cart, listening to the lowing of the water buffalo that pulled them, they covered a night’s walk in the space of a handful of incense sticks. There was no need to stop for the sun either. The taut apron of canvas that covered the semicircular frame of the carriage kept the sun off them, as well as the light rain that began in late morning.

It was as they were passing through a small village that they came upon Kenji Kira and his men, and one of their number was lost forever—cast, twitching, on that darker shore.

Taro felt the cart come to a stop. The peasant, who sat up front holding the reins, talking nonstop to his buffalo, suddenly fell silent.

“Halt. What’s your cargo?”

Taro recognized the haughty tones of Kenji Kira, the so-called samurai who had killed the old man in the mountains, and who had been looking for
him
. An icicle of dread settled against his spine. Now he heard the grumbling neighs and shuffling hoof percussion of a group of horses forming themselves into a circle around the cart.

This was bad.

“N-n-nothing,” said the peasant.

“Nothing?” asked Kira very softly. “That is a very large cart for carrying nothing. What use could a man such as you have for so much nothing?”

“Er …”

There was the sound of a
katana
sliding from its scabbard. Taro
would have recognized it anywhere. It resembled the sound of blood hissing from a man’s neck, instants after being cut by that same
katana
. Taro hoped he would not hear the second sound.

“Now, sirs—,” began the peasant.

“Enough,” said Kira. “You are sweating. You seem incapable of simple articulation. You are transporting, so you claim, empty air in a cart large enough to hold a year’s supply of rice. Either you tell me now what you are up to, or I kill you. Whether or not you open your mouth to speak and tell me what I want to know, I
will
see inside that cart. I am seeking … an item of valuable contraband. We have it on good authority from a local hunter that what we search for is close by. Perhaps it is behind you as we speak.”

Taro felt Shusaku’s hand on his arm as he knelt, holding his breath, to look out through a low crack between the boards of the cart, which he kept stuffed at most times with a scarf in order to block out the light. “Stay,” the ninja whispered. “Don’t do anything hasty. There are a lot of them.”

Taro nodded, though he itched to get outside and protect the old peasant. And part of him burned with the old anger against Shusaku, and the ninja’s lack of honor. Taro refused to watch Kira kill another innocent man, even if he had learned some of the older ninja’s pragmatism. For the moment he would stay still. But if it came time to act, he would act.

He put his eye to the crack, moving the scarf just so much that he could see, without allowing light in to hurt Shusaku.

Taro concentrated. Outside, Kira was sitting on his horse just in front of the buffalo, separated by it from the peasant who sat on his raised platform, holding the reins in trembling hands.
That’s good
, thought Taro.
It will take Kira a moment to ride forward and strike, if he decides to kill the man
.

But Kira’s sword was drawn, as were those of the men who sat on either side of him on their horses. There were at least a dozen of them, all wearing the horned helmets of Oda’s samurai, and armored so heavily that arrows would be useless against them. Taro cursed.

Nevertheless, the blood pounded in his ears.
Honor
, he thought.
When I was young, I dreamed of honor. I wanted to be a hero. Perhaps it was not so stupid to dream of such things
.

He turned to Shusaku. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and moved quickly toward the rear of the cart, and the outside world—

And fell, hard, to the wooden floor. He felt and heard his nose break, warm blood splashing into his eyes. The pain was excruciating. “What the—,” he said, feeling the rope that bound his ankles together.

He heard Kira, outside, say, “What was that?”

The man’s voice was sharp and as hard as steel. Again the peasant stammered an incoherent response.

Taro twisted, his vision strobing with the pain of the impact, and saw that Shusaku looked as confused as he was. The ninja raised his hands in a gesture that did not say
I’m sorry
. It said,
Not me
. Then a dart appeared in Shusaku’s neck, feathers fluttering. His eyes crossed and he collapsed against the cart wall, unconscious.

That was when Heiko swam into Taro’s vision, leaning over him. She had wrapped her black scarves around her face, concealing everything but her eyes. She cast aside a blowpipe and took Shusaku’s short-sword. She pulled Taro up and dragged him back to his place beside Shusaku. Taro was surprised by her strength. He saw that Hiro and Yukiko were also lying on the floor, darts visible in their flesh. They didn’t stir.

“What are you
doing
?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” Heiko whispered. “But you would have gone. Do you see? You would have gone, and you would have died, and so would my sister. But you are Lord Tokugawa no Taro. One day maybe you’ll kill Lord Oda, and avenge yourself for your parents and mine. And so I have planned for this moment, when I would save you. You too have a task, however. You will remember me as I wish to be remembered—dying by steel, with honor, so that the true shogun may overthrow our enemies. That is why I left you conscious, so that you would witness my sacrifice. Tell my sister of it.” She kissed him, once, on the cheek, and he felt her hands dig
into his back as she hugged him. “And watch out for Shusaku. Remember Hoichi, and what the prophetess said.”

Then she
moved
.

In an instant she disappeared through the hole in the floor that they had cut for that purpose, leaving behind her a flash of daylight that framed her leaping silhouette for a moment, as if to fix it forever in his memory. Then the trapdoor fell closed again and the cart was once again thrown into gloomy twilight.

Taro bent over and struggled against the tight, yet carelessly tied knot. He would have it undone in a moment, and then—

But his fingers fumbled clumsily and the carriage appeared to rock. The motion of it left trails on his vision, like slow ghosts of the objects he saw.

A dart. She had drugged him.

He fell to his knees, as if in prayer, unable to stand.

Head spinning, vision blurred by blood and tears, his face was now pressed—as surely Heiko had intended—to the crack. He remembered looking out from another wooden carriage, on another ambush. He remembered Shusaku fighting those two ninja and defeating them.

This would not end so well.

Heiko walked very calmly up to Kenji Kira, unseen by him or his samurai. Taro’s vision was watery and blurred, whether by the drugs or the tears, he was not sure. He could no longer move, but he watched the events unfold as if underwater.

The samurai, noticing her later than they should have, for she walked as quietly as a fox, soothed their horses as they shied away from the figure all in black.

She was magnificent. In her black cloak and
hakama
, her scarves covering her face, she looked like a ninja from a story, all grace and controlled violence.

She stepped up to Kenji Kira, who looked down at her from his horse, his face revealing a struggle between various emotions: surprise, happiness at facing his enemy, but also—Taro was sure—fear.

“I am he whom you seek,” said Heiko in a deeper voice than she normally used.

Taro breathed in hard.

Kenji Kira only smiled. “Taro. Perhaps you think I will fight you honorably. If so, you are
gravely
mistaken.” He turned to the samurai that surrounded him. “Kill the boy. Then kill the peasant. His lies are an affront to me.”

Heiko raised a hand as the samurai moved forward. “Wait.” They stopped, waiting to hear what she had to say.

“Please, leave the peasant alone,” she said as the samurai held their hands, wavering, over their sword pommels. “He knows nothing.”

Kira laughed. “He knows nothing, and he transports nothing. Truly, it seems his whole life amounts to nothing.” He paused. “Which is fitting, really.”

It all happened so fast.

Kira lunged forward, his horse responding instantly to the cue and leaping toward the peasant. The man flung his hands up, as if that could stop the sword that was even now descending toward his neck—