Lord Oda's Revenge (10 page)

Another man dropped to the ground behind them, and then more stepped out from the trees. Taro registered the peculiar detail that they all appeared to be wearing the loose robes of monks.

He backed against Hiro, and felt Hiro do the same – both of them covering their rears. Hana closed in with them. All three unsheathed their swords, Taro's of course in his hand long before his friends had drawn theirs. Oshi was opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

From the shadows of the trees ahead of them stepped an old man. He, too, appeared to be a monk. He was ancient, his head shaved and his eyebrows bushy, as if growing longer to compensate for his bald pate. His face was lined with deep wrinkles, and in one hand he held a staff. He seemed to be leaning on it as he moved, yet something about the heaviness of it made Taro think it might be a weapon, as well as an aid to locomotion.

The monk spat on the ground at Taro's feet.

‘We have been aware of your coming for some time,' he said.
‘We smelled the stink of corruption.'

Taro stared. ‘What?' He'd been expecting. . . he didn't know what he'd been expecting. Perhaps gloating at how easily he had been duped, how simple it had been to forge the message from his mother and so bring him here to die. He hadn't been expecting this.

‘This is a holy place,' said the monk. ‘We do not allow the tainted here.'

Oshi spread his hands. ‘It is not the samurai's fault,' he said, indicating Hayao in his cart. ‘He's haunted – we only brought him here to see if you could help. . .'

‘Not him,' said the monk. ‘Him.' He pointed to Taro. ‘We don't allow the spirits of night in this place.'

‘It's daytime,' said Hana. ‘Spirits of night don't go about in daytime.'

At this the monk frowned. ‘That is strange, certainly. But we are not mistaken. This one is a
kyuuketsuki
.'

Oshi gasped and took a step away from Taro, and at that moment the monks attacked. The old man, suddenly lithe and nimble, was in front of Taro in a flash. Taro brought his sword up just in time – and caught the staff as it hushed down through the air towards his temple. His arms ringing with the blow, he staggered back, aware of Hana and Hiro fighting too, their swords darting and circling.

Taro attempted to centre his
qi
, got himself into a better stance. He focused on the old man's eyes, reading his movements. His sword snapped left, blocked a strike – counter-struck at the man's arm. But the monk was quick, and he was never where Taro thought he would be. Clash. Block, parry – strike. The sword and the staff seemed locked in a complicated sequence of preplanned movements, so impossible was it to
gain any advantage. He was aware of Hiro, behind him, struggling too – he could hear his friend panting for breath, and that made him afraid because he knew how strong, how hard his friend had become.

He heard a small gasp from Hana and turned to see that she'd been disarmed – she stood quite still, composing herself, as the monk she'd been fighting stepped forward and picked up her sword.

No
, he thought.
No, we can't die here, just when the mountain is in sight. . .

Then a burst of pain in his head, flashing – just for an instant the forest scene before him transformed into a night-time sky, a constellation of bright stars in blackness.

He put one hand to his head, felt blood. With the other he jerked his sword, blade biting into the staff just as it was about to sweep his legs out from under him. He heard Hiro swear angrily.

There was an intent, serene expression on the monk's face. Taro had never seen anything like it. This man must be four times his age, and yet he was holding Taro – a trained ninja – at bay with seemingly no effort at all. The monk gazed back, his expression neutral. He met Taro's next strike easily, then seemed to lose patience for a moment. He flicked the staff and Taro's sword went flying, landing among moss and leaves to his left.

Taro took a deep breath. He glanced behind him and saw that Hiro, too, had lost his sword. The three of them, Taro and his two friends, stood in a tight circle, surrounded by armed monks. Oshi stood over to the side, an expression of pure confusion on his face.

‘Now, vampire,' said the monk. ‘Explain yourself. Why do you come to our mountain?'

Taro opened his mouth, but he was winded – no words
came out. He was still stunned that the monks had so readily identified him.

‘What about these others?' said the monk, gesturing to Hana and Hiro. ‘The girl is of high birth, I hear it in her voice.' He turned to Hana. ‘Did he hurt you? Did he bite you? How did he make you follow him?'

Hana gave a shocked laugh. ‘Did he – What? No. He's our friend.'

‘He's a bloodsucker.'

‘No. I mean, yes. But he doesn't kill. He didn't choose this. It – He was just a peasant boy, and then the ninjas—'

Taro glared at her, and she stopped talking.

The monk swung his staff in the air, as if unsure what to do.

‘What are you waiting for?' asked one of the others – a fat man with a red face. ‘Kill him. He is a spirit of night. He is evil.'

But still the old monk hesitated. ‘I will allow him to explain himself before he dies,' he said. He turned to Taro. ‘Talk,' he said. ‘Tell me why I should not destroy you for the corrupt spirit you so certainly are.'

‘If I still had my sword,' said Hiro, ‘I'd gut you for that.'

The monk smiled. ‘It is well that we beat you, then,' he said. ‘Not that it was difficult.'

Hiro scowled. Taro gave his friend a wan smile. He could always rely on Hiro.

He cast his eyes towards his sword. It was too far – he would never reach it. And anyway, the monk was too fast. He wouldn't stand a chance. Tears welled up, threatened to spill over. He could feel the earth below his feet, the cool breeze on his face. He could smell pine needles, and his own sweat.

‘I'm a vampire,' he said, trembling. ‘It's true. But I'm not evil,
I swear it. I know that most vampires kill, but I was taught not to. I was. . . made like this by a good man. His name was Shusaku, and he died trying to protect me. When he saw that I could stand the sunlight, he said. . . he thought. . . he believed that there was something different about me.' He stopped, breathing hard. ‘I learned from him to feed on the blood of animals when possible, never to kill if I could help it. I'm just trying to find my mother; I haven't seen her for so long. . .'

Gradually he realized that there was a very strange expression on the monk's face. He trailed off.

‘Shusaku?'
said the monk. ‘Endo no Shusaku?'

Taro nodded.

‘And he's dead?' The monk put a hand to his chest.

‘Yes. He died in Lord Oda's castle. We were – well, we were there.'

The monk rubbed his forehead with his hand. He took a long, deep breath. ‘I'm sorry to hear that,' he said. ‘More sorry than you can know. Still, if Shusaku thought you were special, perhaps. . .'

To Taro's surprise, Oshi came to stand nearby. ‘The boy can see ghosts,' said the priest. He pointed to Hayao again, curled up in the cart, for all the world like he was sleeping. ‘I brought this samurai to seek your help with the
gaki
that is haunting him. The boy can see her. He near keeled over dead with fright the first time we met. I've never met anyone who could see them before – save for the haunted party, of course. I should say that makes him special.'

Taro stared dumbly at Oshi, grateful beyond words.

The monk continued to run his hand over his brow. ‘I know why
you're
here, then,' he said to Oshi eventually. ‘But what about the boy? What's a vampire doing approaching the holy
mountain – even a vampire turned by Shusaku?' He turned to Taro and inclined his head, waiting.

Taro fumbled for the message in the sleeve of his cloak. ‘I had – I came – I wanted to—'

‘Taro is looking for his mother,' said Hana. ‘She sent him a message, saying she was at the monastery on Mount Hiei. We thought perhaps it was a trap, but—'

The monk had gone pale.
‘Taro?'
he said. ‘You're Taro?'

‘Y-yes.'

‘Well, why didn't you say?' The old man stooped and picked up Taro's sword, returning it to his hand. ‘We have been waiting for you for so long,' he said. ‘Your mother had quite given up hope.'

 

T
HE THING ABOUT
being blind was that he perceived all the people around him as blood and shadows, not seeing the individual contours of their faces or the secrets in their eyes, and so to him they were nothing more than ghosts – or prey.

It tormented him, and it made him a monster at the same time.

It tormented him because he had enough ghosts already; they gathered around him, dragged at him, trying to pull him down. He had killed far, far too many men, and this evil was a cloak that he wore always.

And it made him a monster because the people he was aware of, those close to him, were not people in the true sense, they were just branching, treelike structures of blood, pulsing red in the darkness. Even Jun was nothing but blood to him, the sound of a heartbeat, the smell and whisper of veins and arteries.

He sensed Jun's hesitation.

‘Someone?' he whispered.

‘Yes,' said Jun. ‘Ahead. A patrol, I think.'

They were close to the cliffs that led to the temple of the Ikkoikki. They had crept through the camp on the Tokugawa side, Jun acting as the eyes and Shusaku the ears of their composite
person, Shusaku perceiving the camp as a conglomeration of sleeping bodies, their blood-skeletons pulsing in the blackness that was his entire world. No one had woken, and no one had been abroad – save for one guard, whom Jun had wanted to kill, and whom Shusaku had insisted on skirting, so that they were forced to travel farther.

Now they had reached the cliff, and this was where the guards would be most thickly distributed. It wasn't unfeasible that the Ikko-ikki might send raiding parties at night – strong young monks to climb down the cliffs and enter the enemy's camp, sowing death and disruption. This, Shusaku reflected, was where the spilling of blood would become unavoidable.

Jun led him slowly forward, and at length he became aware of the men. They were gathered at the foot of the cliff, and Shusaku could feel the heat – and smell the smoke – of the fire they had built. They almost deserved to die, he thought. Certainly their commanding officer would kill them, if he saw them. A fire was an idiocy, pure and simple. What did they think, that the Ikko-ikki would be courteous enough to come to their hearth and introduce themselves – that they would be drawn to the warmth as a moth to a flame? All the soldiers were doing was telegraphing their position.

He sighed. None of this made it better, of course. He would like to think that these men were requesting their own deaths, that their stupidity made them deserve it – but really he was just going to send more people to the Pure Lands or to hell, depending on their karma, just to further Lord Tokugawa's ambitions.

Lord Tokugawa saved you
, he reminded himself.
He took you in when you were made a vampire, when anyone else of his class would have disowned you.

He took Jun's wrist, made him stop. ‘Sneak round to the
other side of them. When I snap a branch, that's my signal. Go to them and ask if they've seen an old, blind man. Say you've lost your grandfather. Or something. It doesn't matter.'

‘Right,' said Jun. He flowed into the night, taking his blood with him, its ceaseless whistle and whisper.

Shusaku waited. He had a
wakizashi
in his hand – the gun, his precious cargo, was strapped to his back. He edged closer and closer to the fire, his slipper-clad feet silent on the pine needles. He was conscious of trees to his right and rock to his left – the air sounded different as it passed over each of them.

Soon the men resolved into three branches of beating blood, arranged around the heat and nostril-clogging scent of the fire. He heard Jun address them.

‘Excuse me. . .'

He didn't listen to the rest. He moved forward, hobbling a little, deliberately. He let the sword hang behind his back.

‘That him?' he heard one of the men ask. ‘Gods, boy. What are you and the old cripple doing here, anyway? Don't you know there's a siege going on?'

‘He wanders off sometimes,' said Jun. ‘He's blind, and his mind isn't right either.'

‘Be a kindness to finish him off, sounds like,' said one of the men, and another guffawed.

Shusaku shuffled closer. He could hear the heartbeats of the men and they were calm, relaxed – the slow rhythms of men who don't know they're already dead. He took off the first's head even as he was laughing, and the laughter continued for a moment as the head was severed from the body, the lips still moving. Shusaku stuck out his tongue, felt the blood patter on it, like snow when he had held out his tongue to it as a child.