Young Samurai 06 - The Ring of Fire (18 page)

As they returned to the farmhouse for breakfast, they spotted Kunio running up the road, waving his arms wildly. He stumbled in the snow, got up again and dashed over to them. He was breathing so hard he could barely speak.

‘I … saw … them …’ he panted. ‘BANDITS!’

30

SCOUTS

‘Black Moon’s come early!’ exclaimed Junichi, bursting from his farmhouse to see what all the commotion was about. The villagers around him began to panic.

‘My moat’s not finished,’ said Saburo in alarm.

‘Nor’s the bridge,’ added Hayato, pulling his bow off his back.

Jack noticed the metal rings on Yori’s staff trembling. Although Yori put on a brave face, he knew his friend was not at heart a warrior. But he wasn’t the only one to be nervous. All the young samurai looked tense. The moment of truth had come and there was no turning back. Ignoring his own fear, Jack attempted to reassure them.

‘We’ve trained for this. We’re samurai –’ he glanced at Miyuki – ‘and ninja! Now gather your units and take up your positions as planned. We still have the element of surprise on our side.’

Turning to Yori, he placed an encouraging hand upon his shoulder. ‘Stay with me. I’ll need your wisdom during the battle.’

Heartened by Jack’s confidence in him, Yori held on tighter to his
shakujō
.

‘Kunio, sound the alarm,’ ordered Jack.

‘But there’s only … two of them,’ explained the breathless farmboy.

Upon hearing this, Hayato halted in his tracks. ‘Junichi, you said there’d be
forty
.’

Junichi nodded. ‘Usually there are.’

‘You can leave them to me then,’ offered Yuudai with a grin, rolling up his sleeves. ‘I’ll have them for breakfast.’

‘They could just be a scouting party,’ said Miyuki. ‘We don’t want to forewarn Akuma of our presence.’

‘I agree,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s take a look at our enemy first. Kunio, where are they?’

Kunio pointed behind him. ‘Down by the bridge.’

Sprinting to the village’s eastern boundary, the young samurai ducked behind a defensive wall of hay bales beside the last house. Peering down the main track to the bridge, they spotted two figures on horses approaching the mill. Dressed in mismatched armour and loaded with weapons, they were the embodiment of lawless bandits.

‘Definitely scouts,’ said Miyuki, seeing them inspect the crossing point and scan the horizon.

‘It’s lucky we haven’t dismantled the bridge yet,’ said Hayato. ‘That would have been a dead giveaway.’

‘What about my moat?’ asked Saburo.

‘From their position, it should look like a drainage ditch,’ Miyuki explained. ‘Unless they’re ninja, they won’t realize its true purpose.’

‘Do you recognize either of them?’ Jack asked Kunio.

The boy nodded fearfully. ‘The man on the right is Nakamura Scarface.’

‘A fitting name for such a handsome warrior!’ remarked Saburo, swallowing uneasily at the sight of him.

The bandit in question boasted a large battleworn axe, thick leather armour and a crescent-moon helmet. His weather-beaten face was consumed with a ragged beard, sliced clean through on the left cheek by a thick red scar.

‘The other bandit is Sayomi the Nightwoman.’

A mane of long black hair cascaded down the back of her blood-red armour. Strapped to her horse was a vicious double-edged
naginata
and she carried a bow and arrow as well as a
katana
. Her face was ghostly white, her eyes dark and shadowy, and her thin scarlet lips looked as poisonous as holly berries.

Jack shuddered at the sight of her. Only now did he appreciate why the villagers felt such abject terror at their coming. Any resistance to them would be met with a savage fight to the death. As the young samurai appraised their foe, an old woman tottered out of the mill, waving a stick at the two bandits.

‘That’s Natsuko!’ exclaimed Kunio. ‘Junichi’s mother.’

Hayato stood up to fire an arrow, but Miyuki pulled him back down. ‘You’ll be seen.’

‘They might kill her,’ Hayato snarled, wrenching himself from her grip.

‘Hold fire, unless you
have
to,’ hissed Jack. ‘If the scouts don’t return alive, Akuma will be alerted to us. And we’d lose our greatest advantage.’

‘You’re the leader,’ stated Hayato reluctantly, keeping his arrow primed in readiness.

The bandits were laughing at the woman’s feeble attempts to shoo them away. Then she managed to catch Nakamura across the shin with her stick and he howled in pain. Sayomi laughed even harder at this display of weakness. Shock giving way to humiliation and rage, Nakamura kicked the old woman to the ground, then spat on her.

‘See
you
on the black moon!’ Nakamura yelled at the still-defiant Natsuko, who was shaking her fist at him.

Crouching low, Hayato kept his arrow trained on the bandit as the man turned his horse and rode off with Sayomi in the direction of the mountains.

‘I’ll follow them,’ said Miyuki.

‘Why on earth do that?’ said Saburo, aghast. ‘The further away from those two we are the better!’

‘They’ll lead me straight to Akuma’s camp.’

‘Do you need to take such a risk?’ asked Yuudai. ‘When the bridge is down, the village will be like a fortress.’

‘
Know yourself, know your enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories
,’
replied Miyuki. ‘Our Grandmaster believed in a similar strategy to the honourable Masamoto. We must find out exactly how many enemy we’re facing and what weaponry they’ll be using. If all the bandits are like those two, we’ll need every advantage we can get.’

‘It’s a good idea,’ Jack agreed. ‘But you can’t go alone. It’ll be too dangerous.’

‘I’ll go with her,’ stated Hayato, to both Jack and Miyuki’s astonishment.

‘I should go too,’ said Jack, not trusting them alone together. ‘I need to see this Akuma for myself. It will help me decide our best tactics.’

‘But we still need to protect the village,’ Yori reminded him.

Jack smiled at his friend. ‘That’s why you’ll be in charge while I’m gone.’

Yori blinked in shock at this unexpected responsibility. ‘But –’

‘I have every faith in you,’ said Jack, not allowing his friend to doubt himself. ‘Besides, Saburo will be here finishing the ditch with Neko and the rest of the villagers, and Yuudai will lead the army training.’

‘But what if a snowstorm covers the bandits’ trail?’ asked Yuudai, glancing up at the sky.

Jack gave Miyuki a knowing look. ‘Ninja are
excellent
trackers.’

31

TRACKING TRAILS

Gathering the minimum of supplies, Jack, Miyuki and Hayato prepared to leave.

‘Wait!’ said Junichi, hurrying over to them. ‘You’ll need a guide. The mountains are treacherous in winter.’ He turned to the farmers behind him. ‘Where’s Toge?’

They looked around blankly and shrugged.

‘We don’t have time to wait,’ said Miyuki, pulling on the hood of her white
shinobi shozoku
.

‘I’ll go,’ volunteered Sora, clearly nervous at the prospect but determined to help.

Miyuki shook her head. ‘Sorry, but I can’t risk you slowing us down, especially if we need to make a quick escape.’

‘We need local knowledge, though,’ argued Hayato.

‘True,’ she agreed.

‘And I’m faster than I look,’ said Sora, grabbing a walking-stick from beside his door.

‘Let’s go then!’ said Jack, putting on his
ronin
’s straw hat.

The four of them hastened out of the village and across the bridge. Natsuko was sitting on a stool outside her mill, still fuming.

‘You tell that Scarface, I’ll break
both
his kneecaps the next time I see him!’ she crowed, waving her stick like a battleaxe.

Buoyed by her resilience, they promised to deliver her message if they had the chance.

If only all the farmers were as fearless as her
, thought Jack.

Following the riverbank, Miyuki led them across the edge of the Okayama Plain and up into the forested slopes of the mountains. The bandits’ trail wound along a narrow path and over a ridge. They followed it until they came to a fork in the road.

‘Which way now?’ asked Jack, looking at the confusion of prints in the snow.

Miyuki bent down to examine the trail.

‘That way,’ she said, pointing to the left.

‘How can you be so sure?’ asked Hayato.

‘Those are the tracks of a large stag, those of a wild boar and
these
are horse’s hooves,’ replied Miyuki, indicating each set of prints as if she was teaching a child.

‘They all look the same to me,’ said Hayato, his pride ruffled by her patronizing tone.

Jack shot Miyuki a warning glance, pleading with her to be more tolerant. The last thing he needed was for the two of them to start fighting.

With a heavy sigh, Miyuki took the time to explain to Hayato, ‘I’m not looking at the shape of each print. The first rule of snow-tracking is to identify the animal’s track
pattern
. Even when the prints are windblown and obscured like this, their gait is often still identifiable by its distinctive arrangement in the snow.’

‘Now I understand,’ he replied, clearly appreciating her insight.

‘And do you see that track?’ she said suddenly, indicating a completely blank patch of snow.

Baffled, Hayato shook his head. Jack also strained to see what she was pointing at.

‘That’s a … ninja trail!’ she exclaimed, bursting into laughter.

Getting the joke, Jack joined in too.

‘I’ll certainly watch out for
those
,’ said Hayato, managing to crack a smile as well.

Chuckling, Sora trudged past. Despite his age, he was proving as surefooted and hardy as an old mountain goat and had kept up a steady pace since leaving Tamagashi village.

‘And these are bear tracks!’ he said, prodding his walking-stick at a set of huge paw prints in the snow. ‘We should keep moving. Bears can be more dangerous than bandits.’

Miyuki walked over and examined them. ‘They’re fresh!’

At that moment, a low growling was heard coming from the undergrowth. The branches surged forward in a wave towards them and a massive bear, jet black apart from a patch of white fur on its chest, thundered out. Stopping in front of them, it sniffed the air, then snapped its jaws viciously.

‘There’s only one thing more lethal than a bear,’ said Sora, taking several nervous steps backwards, ‘and that’s a
hungry
bear!’

‘What should we do?’ whispered Jack. ‘Run?’

‘No!’ Miyuki hissed. ‘Gather together so we look bigger, more threatening.’

But the bear wasn’t intimidated. It reared up on its hind legs, towering over them. Its razor-sharp claws were extended and ready to carve them to pieces.

Jack reached for his sword and Hayato went for an arrow, but at this range the bear would kill at least one of them before they could land their first blow.

A rock suddenly struck the animal in the chest. Another quickly followed – hitting the bear directly on his nose. Howling with rage, it turned on its attacker. Having appeared out of nowhere, Neko jumped up and down, waving her arms to distract the beast. With a great roar, the bear charged her. Neko spun on her heels and ran into the forest, leading the ferocious animal away.

‘No!’ cried Miyuki, sprinting after Neko, no longer concerned for her own safety.

Jack and the others followed close behind. Branches tore at their clothes and faces as they forced their way through the dense thicket. Ahead, they could hear the bear crashing through the undergrowth and see Miyuki speeding after it.

‘Wait, Miyuki, WAIT!’ cried Jack as they fell behind, the bear’s roar growing ever more distant.

They eventually caught up with her beside a mountain stream.

‘Where’s Neko?’ asked Jack, breathless.

Miyuki turned her tear-filled eyes upon him.

‘The bear went that way,’ she sniffed, pointing across the stream. ‘But Neko’s tracks stop
here
.’