Lord Oda's Revenge (23 page)

Taro was becoming stronger by the moment, and now he turned all around, searching the scene that lay before him. He looked into Hiro's eyes, and his friend glanced down, and in that moment he knew.

‘Hiro,' he said. ‘Where's Hana?' The abbot looked at him strangely, and too late he remembered that she wasn't Hana here, she was Hanako. He didn't care.

Hiro still did not look up. ‘I think you had better come with us,' he said in a flat voice.

‘No,' said Taro, staggering. ‘No, no.'

Hiro's face was twisted with pain. ‘I'm sorry, Taro,' he said.

Earlier that night

H
IRO AND
H
AYAO
flew down the steps two at a time, rushing to catch up with Hana. When Hiro could fit it into the rhythm of his running, he struck the prayer wheels, awakening their prayers to the bodhisattva of compassion. He thought compassion was what the mountain needed tonight. The way before him was lit brightly, that was one thing at least.

It was the source of the light that was the problem.

Below, the Hokke-do's roof blazed fiercely. The trees around it were torches, the whole landscape seemingly transposed from the hell realm, where it was not terrible and unnatural for whole mountainsides to be on fire.

Hana was lighter than they were, more graceful. She flitted downward as if the steps were not even there. Hiro, on the other hand, was panting, his bulk getting in his own way, as if his own body were trying to frustrate his aims. Hayao drew ahead of him after only half the steps.

When she reached the bottom of the steps, Hana turned and headed straight for the burning Hokke-do. Hiro stopped, drew a deep breath, and shouted out.

‘Hana! No!'

She turned, and paused as she recognized him. Hayao stopped too, the three of them utterly still for one moment. She hesitated,
and Hiro began running again – he'd hold her still, if he had to. But then she gave them a little bow. ‘If anything happens,' she called, ‘tell Taro I'm sorry. Tell him. . .' She shrugged. ‘Tell him I'll see him in the next life. I'll always see him.'

She was already moving, too quick to catch, and then she was inside the building, as if swallowed by its toothy mouth, all red columns and darkness. Smoke billowed from inside it, and Hana disappeared into it like a ghost.

Hiro ran forward, Hayao beside him. The heat hit him like a massive, physical presence, forcing its fiery fingers into his nostrils, his mouth, his ears. He coughed, feeling the smoke curling itself into his lungs. He tried to move forward, but found that his feet simply would not obey, that they would not take him through that doorway.

What those scrolls must mean to her. . .

His eyes streaming with tears, his throat tearing like it was being ripped from his neck, he stumbled back, driven from the door by the force of the flames. He was surprised to see Hayao run into the building, roaring.

He'll die,
he thought.
But gods, he's brave.
He'd noticed Taro looking at the man with jealousy in his eyes, and now he could understand why.

A moment later, though, Hayao came stumbling out, and there was no Hana in his arms. His hair was on fire – he didn't seem to have noticed. Red weals stood out angrily on the flesh of his arms and face. He went past Hiro and collapsed to the ground, and Hiro rolled him in the dewy grass, flapping at his hair with his cloak until the flames went out.

‘I couldn't. . . I couldn't even see her,' said Hayao. Hiro saw that there were tear tracks on his cheeks, where his tears had been burned away, leaving salt on his skin. ‘I tried,' he whispered.

‘I know,' said Hiro. ‘I know.'

His eyes were always on the door where Hana had vanished, and as the moments went by he thought he saw her several times, but it was only a trick of the flickering light, and she didn't come.

Sweat prickling his skin, tears drying on his cheeks, he sat down heavily at the bottom of the steps, as the world burned around him. Flames licked at the columns of the Hokke-do, hungry to consume it, as hell is always eager to consume the things of our realm. There was an almighty crash as part of the roof collapsed, sending up showers of red sparks that glittered in the air like jewels. A blast of hot air rushed past Hiro's face, like a departing ghost.

She was not coming out.

He was surprised to note that a small part of his mind – a contemptible part, a base part – wanted him to get up and retreat, carry himself far from this fire that was threatening to kill him.

He ignored it. Only when the remaining beams crashed to the ground, sending up showers of ash and sparks – only when the flames had died down and the ground and air began to cool – did he feel a tugging on his arm, and then Hayao was hauling him to his feet.

‘She's dead,' said the samurai. ‘But you don't have to be.'

Hiro shrugged. He followed Hayao as the samurai began making his way slowly up the hillside. Behind them, the ruins of the Hokke-do – no longer a temple but a tomb – smouldered quietly in the gradually brightening air.

 

T
ARO STOOD ON
the mountaintop, and the devastation of the landscape was a mere echo of the devastation inside him.

Looking down the slope, he could see the winding stone steps, lined on either side with prayer wheels. There was a stiff wind, and as it blew the wheels turned, creaking, on their hinges – sending out useless prayers to a bodhisattva of compassion who was evidently not listening. Ash danced in the air, which itself seemed to be shivering – distorted by the heat of the small fires that still burned in the forest – so that it seemed the whole world was shaking with grief.

At the bottom of the steps was a pale grey oblong where the Hokke-do had stood. Taro could see monks moving over it, as small as ticks crawling on the skin of an animal, sifting through the debris to look for the scrolls, or any trace of Hana.

Because Hana was in there, or had been in there. Consumed by the fire. Taro had just left the body of his mother, and now he was expected to accept that Hana was dead too. He felt something tear inside his chest, and thought that thing might have been something he needed, in order to
be
Taro. Guilt opened its leprous, rotten arms and embraced him, covering him with its stink. If he had gone after Hana instead of his mother, then they
might both be alive. He could have gone into the flames, and come out with her. He was a vampire – the fire would have hurt him, but he would have healed better than a human. And if he had not been near his mother, then Yukiko might not have killed her to hurt him.

I made the wrong choice,
he thought.
I made the wrong choice and now this is hell that I'm living in.

He looked up at the abbot, his gentle old face framed by sunshine – a grotesque light from heaven that Taro would from now on despise, since it did nothing but illuminate things he could not bear.

‘Permit me to commit seppuku,' he said. What he wanted was to kill Yukiko and every one of Lord Oda's samurai – but he would settle for himself, because in the end it was he who had failed his mother and Hana.

‘You are one of Buddha's creatures,' said the abbot. ‘That is not in my power to permit.'

Taro cast his sword aside and opened his mouth. The sound that came out of it was the howl of a wild creature, not a human being, but the sound – like everything else apart from the fury of revenge, the decay of guilt – was a thing of no consequence at all.

 

Y
UKIKO STROLLED PAST
the tents. Between them were corridors of air, and in those corridors she could see beyond the tent tops to the mountain beyond, where she had left Taro with the body of his mother. Some of the samurai had died, of course, but there were still thousands. That was the thing about Lord Oda's army – it was like the waves. You could slash at it all you liked, but it would just keep coming.

There was still the problem of Lord Tokugawa, of course. His army camped on the other side of the river, tens of thousands of them. Lord Oda had requested their help with the assault on Mount Hiei, but they had declined. They had no quarrel with the Tendai monks, they said. They would continue with the siege of the Ikko-ikki.
Damn them,
thought Yukiko. If they had only joined the battle, the monks would be utterly destroyed now.

Well, they would be dealt with later. The time must come when Lord Oda would order war against Lord Tokugawa, and then all those smug samurai would die.

She glanced to her left, getting her bearings. About one
ri
away, on the other side of the river, fluttered a pennant bearing Lord Tokugawa's
mon
. The sight disgusted her – Taro was Tokugawa
too – but she had learned not to push Lord Oda on the topic. His surface alliance with Tokugawa was still necessary, he said, and so the farce of the two enemies besieging the Ikko-ikki monks continued.

She stepped over a large stone and turned right, counting out four tents before she came to one that was like all the others, if anything a little smaller and dirtier. Already she'd killed an assassin sent to the larger, more ostentatious tent at the fork in the river – the one decorated with the Oda
mon
and surrounded by well-armed, if inattentive, samurai.

Idiots.

She skirted a pile of what looked like horse manure. Really, you had to admire the man. If she were a daimyo, she would make her life all sake and tea and hot baths, when she wasn't hunting down her enemies anyway. She wouldn't live among sweating men and excrement. But Lord Oda was different. He did not mind discomfort. He only minded defeat.

Taking a breath to steady her nerves, she pushed aside the fabric covering and entered the tent. Light flooded in from outside, but she wasn't worried about that – Lord Oda might be a vampire, but he had been created from Taro's blood. The sunlight wasn't going to harm him. And when he finally turned her, the same would go for her. She would be vampire, but she would be free, like Taro.

Not that Taro would ever be truly free again. He would walk the earth with his mother's ghost behind him, like a shadow. Distractions might give him ease, for moments at a time, as when clouds cover the sun and your shadow disappears. But a shadow is stitched on, as is the most profound grief, and it will always come back.

Yukiko knew this intimately. She saw her sister everywhere, still. Even called to her sometimes. But the people who turned round were never her.

Lord Oda was conferring with one of his generals, but he waved the man aside when he saw Yukiko, beckoned for her to approach. The general subtracted himself ingratiatingly from the tent, walking backwards, bowing all the while.

Lord Oda looked up at her, his eyes taking in the blood on her kimono. ‘My daughter?' he said.

Yukiko was surprised that he would ask about the girl first, not Taro. ‘I heard she went into the Hokke-do when it was burning, to try to save the sutras. She didn't come out.'