Lord Oda's Revenge: Blood Ninja II E-Book

Nick Lake

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Blood Ninja
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 591

Beschreibung

Taro was just a fisherman's son... but then his father was murdered and he was forced to become a Blood Ninja, fated to live by night, doomed to live on the blood of others. But he has had his revenge. He has killed Lord Oda, the warlord who had his father assassinated. But Lord Oda is not quiet in his grave. He has found a way to reach beyond death and Taro and his friends soon find themselves facing samurai armies, a deadly enemy from the past and strange ghostly creatures who suck life from the living. Dangerously weakened, Taro, must recover the one object that Lord Oda was desperate to find before he died: the Buddha Ball, the source of limitless power. But if Taro is to complete his perilous quest - to save himself, his friends, his mother, and the girl he loves - he must go to hell and back and face his arch enemy once again. For Lord Oda has returned - as a Blood Ninja.

Leseprobe

LORD ODA’S REVENGE

NICK LAKE is an editorial director at HarperCollins Children’s Books. He received his degree in English from Oxford University. Blood Ninja and Lord Oda’s Revenge were inspired by his interest in the Far East, and by the fact that he is secretly a vampire ninja himself. Nick lives with his wife in Oxfordshire, protected by booby traps, poisoned darts and a fat, lazy tom cat, but why not pay him a visit on Facebook?

www.bloodninja.co.uk

ALSO BY NICK LAKE

BLOOD NINJATHE SECRET MINISTRY OF FROST

LORD ODA’SREVENGE

First published in the United States of America in 2010 by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, 10020.

First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Nick Lake, 2010

The moral right of Nick Lake to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 184887 389 6eBook ISBN: 978 184887 391 9

Printed in Great Britain

CorvusAn imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Acknowledgements

For my mother.Thank you for teaching me to read.

LORD ODA’S REVENGE

PROLOGUE

The Portuguese Port Town Of Nagasaki, Japan

1566

IT WAS NIGNT

It always had to be night.

The blind man traced his fingertips along the wooden wall of the warehouse, inching his way towards the door. He could smell the sea now, a sharp tang of seaweed and brine everywhere around him, as if the ocean were extending its fiefdom into the very air. It was raining heavily – the blind man could hear the drops pattering on the water, to his left.

The warehouse was longer than he had expected. It seemed he had been walking its length all evening. But then it had to be large. This was where the nanban – the barbarians from the south – stored the goods they brought over from China in their enormous, fat-bellied ships: silk, silver, china tableware.

And guns.

‘What do you see?’ he asked the boy, Jun, who was walking before him.

‘There is a barbarian ship at anchor. The lamp on the tallest mast is lit, but I can’t see any sailors.’

‘Good. And the warehouse door?’

‘Ahead, I think. There’s a patch of darker shadow.’

The blind man nodded. ‘Lead me.’

Jun took his hand – the blind man felt him shiver at the contact with the scarred, rough flesh – and the boy pulled him gently forward. They walked quietly, cloth slippers on their feet. The shadows concealed them from sight, and the pattering of the rain deadened the soft sound of their passing.

A perfect night for their work.

Jun stopped, and the blind man reached out in front of him, running his hands over the door, its hinges, its metal handle in the barbarian style. Then he frowned. Where the door should have met the jamb, there was a narrow space – a vertical fissure running parallel to the wall.

The door was open.

The blind man held his breath, while motioning for Jun to stay still. Between himself and the boy, they had set up everything – learning when the sailors would be drinking belowdecks, bribing the guard to meet them here at the side entrance to the warehouse. Then the blind man would knock him unconscious, and take the guns before they could be smuggled up-country and into the possession of one of the wrong lords.

‘Open the door very slowly,’ he whispered to Jun. ‘Tell me what you see.’

There was a light creaking sound. ‘A table,’ said Jun, under his breath. ‘There’s a kind of red meat on a plate, half-eaten. And a glass of blood.’

‘Beef and wine,’ said the blind man. ‘Not blood.’ He knew that the barbarians ate cow, which they called waca, after the Portuguese name for that gentle animal, and that they drank a red alcohol made from grapes. He’d also heard that they drank this wine in their churches, saying that it was the blood of their god, though he was not sure whether this was only one of the more hysterical rumours about the worshippers of kirishta.

‘Anything else?’ he whispered.

‘Next to the table is a long case on the ground. It has been smashed open.’

‘Is there anything inside?’

‘No. It’s empty. And there’s—’ An intake of breath. ‘There’s something on the ground. It could be wine, or. . .’

Blood.

He heard Jun stoop and pick something up from the floor. Then a heavy, cold object was placed in his hands. He turned it over, seeing it with his touch. A long bar, with two prongs jutting from either side.

A cross.

The blind man had seen these things, before his eyes were burned out. The kirishitan barbarians worshipped the symbol, saying that it was on such a cross that their god was nailed to die. The blind man thought it was strange to kneel down before the thing that killed your god – but he supposed that if you could eat the flesh of the cow, which the Buddha had declared holy, and you could drink blood in your churches, then celebrating your god’s death was nothing.

Not that he could reproach them, of course, when it came to drinking blood.

The blind man slipped the cross into a pocket sewed inside his kimono. There was a chain attached to the upper end of it, and he supposed that it had until recently hung around someone’s neck. The guard’s, perhaps. Something had happened here, and now the guns were almost certainly gone.

He cursed quietly. ‘We should go,’ he whispered to Jun. Someone else had heard about the guns, it seemed. Someone had come and killed the guard, or taken him away, and then they had stolen the precious merchandise.

He was irritated, but not surprised. As soon as he himself had heard the rumour, he had made his way south. The Portuguese had brought a new kind of gun in their latest shipment, it was said – one that used a spark created by a wheel of metal to ignite the powder, not a fuse, and could consequently be fired reliably in the rain. The blind man knew that many of the daimyos already had guns – Lord Oda was said to have constructed thousands of them on the original Portuguese model, and even trained regiments of his samurai to use them in battle. But they were long as spears, unwieldy, and made useless if the weather was wet.

The blind man had fought battles before and was familiar with the violent simplicity of the art of war. To possess weapons that could be disabled by the weather was not a good strategy. But to be the only one with weapons unaffected by the elements? That was worth killing for.

As he followed Jun back the way they had come, his fingertips stroking the wooden wall, he wondered who could have done it, who could have gone there before him. Oda was dead – killed in his own tower. It could have been Sumitada, perhaps, who had converted to the kirishitan religion and called himself Bartoromeo now. It was Sumitada who had given Nagasaki to the barbarians, receiving in return the first choice of silk, which had not been seen in Japan since the Chinese stopped sending it direct, protesting against the Japanese wako pirates who preyed on their ships.

But the blind man had some experience with the missionaries who ran the Portuguese port, and he knew they were not fools. They needed Sumitada for their port, but they knew he was not important to the countrys future – he was little more than a leaf, floating on a pool, and the ripples that moved that leaf were the powerful lords like Tokugawa.

Besides, Sumitada was a coward, not a strategist. He had become a laughing stock among the samurai for his conversion, and was hated by the peasants in his dominion. The blind man had even heard that once, Sumitada-Bartoromeo was walking in the countryside, when he came upon a shrine to a local cockerel spirit, adorned with a statue. He had smashed the statue, screaming blasphemous imprecations against the Shinto gods, talking madly of idols, and if he had been any less than a daimyo he would have been cut down where he stood for his disrespect.

Daimyo or not, the blind man didn’t think Sumitada would make it through another year.

There was a change in the sound of the rainfall, and the blind man realized that Jun had stopped. He heard footsteps, coming towards them from behind.

Many footsteps, moving fast.

‘Who is it?’ he said, as the footsteps surrounded them.

‘Barbarians,’ said Jun. His voice was quavering, nervous. ‘They have tattoos on their arms, and they are carrying daggers.’

‘Sailors?’ the blind man asked.

‘I don’t know. They are tall and white and have green and blue eyes, like cats.’

Portuguese, thought the blind man.

The blind man heard one of the men – he was just in front, to the right – say, in heavily accented Japanese, ‘Stop, thieves.’

The blind man held up his empty hands. ‘We have stolen nothing.’

The man – the blind man guessed he was the leader, perhaps even the captain of the ship – took a step forward. ‘Our guard is gone. Our guns are gone. And you are here.’

The blind man backed up against the wall. ‘We can settle this like—’

‘No. We settle this with your deaths.’ There was the sound of weapons being raised, and Jun screamed as the men closed in on them.

The blind man was not yet old, and he feared death. But he was here of his own will – the boy was here because he was paid. He gripped Jun’s arms and pulled him against the wall, turning his own body to cover him. Then – and in the same heartbeat – he formed his hand into the karana mudra for expelling demons, the index and little fingers extended, which was a weapon disguised as a tool for meditation. He struck at the boy’s neck with his hardened fingers, finding the pressure point that would put him out for an incense stick, at least. The boy slumped to the ground. Good. Better that he lie there, unharmed.

The blind man felt the souls of all the men he had killed crowding around him, as if they had returned as hungry ghosts from the realm of annoyo to weigh him down, to cling to him like pale parasites. He had lived a long time, and in the last month he had promised himself that soon he would retire from the world, enter a monastery, and kill no more men.

But not just yet.

Yes, the blind man feared death. He had made so much of it, sent so many men to Amida Buddha, that if he was lucky he would be reincarnated on four legs, and if he was not, he would spend his next lifetime being boiled in a pot, the souls of his victims feeding insatiably on his being, for the dead are always hungry.

And now he would be forced to make more.

As if he were holding a magnifying glass to a scroll, he brought the world into focus, centring his qi. He could hear every raindrop, and he knew where they hit the ground, and where they were prevented from doing so by the bodies of men. Then there was the smell of them. A blend of sweat, sea salt, and rum – and underneath all that, the iron scent of blood. The blind man had heard that when Lord Oda lost the use of his right arm, he learned to wield his sword in his left, compensating for his loss. Something similar had happened to the blind man, his sense of smell becoming so acute that he could almost see these barbarian sailors, glowing in the dark around him like skeletal assemblages of red tubing, pulsing, pulsing with fresh blood.

He felt the first man move towards him, swinging something in his hand – he could hear the whum, whum, whum it made as it rotated. It could have been a sword, or it could have been a rope.

It didn’t matter.

He heard the man sidestep to hit him with the thing that sang in the air, and he felt pity. These men were corpses, and they didn’t even know it. The blind man ducked, turned, struck out with his heel. The barbarian dropped to one knee – it made a crack sound against the stone – and cried out, but the sound was cut off as the blind man drew his concealed blade and let it leap for the man’s throat.

Another one approached him from behind, the rain pattering on his head as loud as temple bells, and the blind man threw his left hand back while his sword impaled another man before him. The fingers of his rear hand struck the same spot he had aimed for on the boy, though this time he did it harder. The man behind fell, as the one in front screamed, trying to pull himself off the blind man’s sword. With a twitch of his wrist, the blind man withdrew the blade, thrusting it up and to the side in the same movement, cutting another’s throat.

The other men had a better idea of what they were dealing with now, and two of them came at him from either side, throwing out their arms to try to contain him. But they would sooner catch one of the raindrops that gave them away; they would more easily spear the very wind. He moved back, so quickly it made the attackers’ movements seem exaggerated, as if they were moving through a different medium – they were creatures of liquid, and he was a creature of the air.

They were still bringing their arms together, still believing he was there, when he gutted them. Now three men attacked him at once, and he was forced to adapt his tactics. He brought his foot up, hard, between the first man’s legs, while striking behind him with his sword, and simultaneously driving his left palm up to smash the middle sailor’s nose. Fighting fair might be the best way to accumulate good karma, but as far as this realm of samsara went, it was also the best way to get yourself killed. Without pausing, he followed his punch with a dose of steel to the gut, then stepped forward. The man he had kicked in the groin was still doubled over, and it was the work of a child to behead him.

The blind man heard curses, presumably Portuguese. He was no longer thinking now, but was lost in a type of Zen meditation, where the question of what belonged to his body and what was outside of it became meaningless. He was the rain, and the wind, and the stone below his feet.

A very faint voice at the back of his mind told him this fight was unfair, but he knew that there was no fairness in fighting – only the dead, and the living.

He was living. Everyone else was dead.

He avoided a blow from an irrelevant weapon, dimly hearing the whap as it sliced the air where he had been standing a moment before, and then he brought his sword up to eviscerate the barbarian. The man screamed, shocked, as if this were not to be expected. The blind man sighed inwardly. As soon as these men had stepped onto the quay, they had been dead. Better that they accept it – otherwise they would not believe they were in annoyo, and their reincarnation would be hard on them.

Amida Buddha, he called out silently, as he leaped towards the last of them. I call on you and on all good karma to assist these souls in their journey. With hands of iron, he snapped the man’s wrist, hearing his dagger clang on the stone. Then he gripped the man’s head and angled his mouth to bite his neck, feeling the blood flow into him, making him stronger.

He drank deep.

Breathing hard, letting the body of the barbarian fall to the ground, the blind man slowly sheathed his sword – it slid into a scabbard that lay snug against his side, under his robe. He was turning to the boy when there came a metallic scraping sound from towards the sea. He froze. From the other side, by the warehouse wall, came another. Then another, from the left. And the right.

Slowly he turned full circle, listening to the rain. A dozen men, at least, were encircling him, keeping a safe distance. He concentrated. Each of them held something out in front of him – something long and hard.

Guns.

‘It’s raining,’ he said, conversationally. ‘If your guns don’t fire, you will have to engage me hand to hand. And then you will die.’ He said this with resignation, not pride.

‘No,’ said one of the men, his accent that of the samurai class. These men were Japanese. ‘These guns are new.’

‘They fire—’ began another of the men.

‘With a spark,’ said the blind man, nodding. Of course. Perhaps it was finally time to face the afterlife, and see what torments awaited him there.

‘Father Valignano said there was a ninja in town,’ said another voice, and it was a voice the blind man knew well. Oh, so very well. ‘He didn’t say you were blind. Before we kill you, I would like you to tell me what you know about these guns. Where did you hear of them? Do you know of my plans for them?’

The blind man didn’t answer, only lowered his hands to his sides. ‘My lord,’ he said, kneeling on the cold, wet stone.

There was a grunt of surprise from the darkness that was all he would ever see. ‘You know me?’ said Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu.

‘Of course,’ said the blind man. ‘I have served you long enough.’

Lord Tokugawa took a step forward – the blind man could hear, from the pattern of the rain’s pattering, that he wore his full samurai regalia, the horned helmet included. The blind man wondered, in a distant corner of his mind, why Sumitada had allowed Lord Tokugawa to come here. He must have thrown in his lot with the most powerful daimyo, the blind man supposed, now that Oda was dead.

‘Shusaku?’ said Lord Tokugawa.

CHAPTER 1

The ninja mountain, somewhere on Northern Honshu Island

The same day

WATASHI WA. . . HIRAGANA O. . . yomu koto ga dekimas. . . Taro traced his finger along the line of symbols, speaking the sounds out loud. ‘I. . . can read. . . hiragana.’

‘You can,’ said Hana, smiling.

Taro grinned. For now, it was only the hiragana that he had mastered – the simplified form of writing that was used mainly by women. But now that he had learned these forms, he would be able to progress to the kanji, and eventually be able to read and write the language of the nobles. Hana had already shown him the character for the word ‘field’, and he could see how it showed a field from above, subdivided into sections, and he marvelled at how the Chinese had created tiny, perfect pictures of the things around them, to make them into words.

‘Now,’ said Hana, ‘you owe me some sword practice.’ The previous autumn, Taro had fought against Hana’s father, Lord Oda, a sword saint whose skill with the blade was feared and admired throughout the land. Taro had held his own – and in the end the cruel Lord Oda had died, falling down the stairs of his own castle. Since then, Taro’s mastery of the sword had only increased, to the point that even here, at the mountain stronghold of the ninjas, there was no one who could teach him anything new.

‘Well, if you want to be beaten again. . .’ From beside the writing table, Taro pulled out his katana. It had been given to him on his return to the mountain, a gift to celebrate his victory over Lord Oda. As a ninja, he would use a short-sword called a wakizashi for most missions, but there was nothing to compare to fighting with the full-length sword.

That was if he remained a ninja, of course. Taro was no longer sure what he should do, now that his mentor Shusaku was dead. It had been Shusaku who had always known what to do, Shusaku who had saved Taro’s life and then led him and his best friend Hiro through every subsequent trial. Taro knew that he couldn’t stay here on this mountain forever, pretending that the world outside no longer existed. But what could he do? He didn’t know if he could go to Lord Tokugawa and present himself as the daimyo’s long-lost son – Shusaku had said that the lord would be horrified to have a vampire for a child. Of course, Lord Tokugawa’s other sons were dead now, so perhaps he would welcome Taro, no matter what had happened to him – but it was an enormous risk to take.

He knew, too, that he couldn’t go looking for his mother, though he was desperate to do so. On the night when he and Shusaku left his home village of Shirahama, Shusaku had given her a pigeon, telling her to set it free with a message when she was safe. But the pigeon had still not arrived at the ninja mountain – it had been the first thing Taro asked when he returned here from Lord Oda’s castle. So he was trapped at the mountain. He couldn’t leave, because if he did he might miss her message when it came. At the same time he was conscious that all the time he waited here, she was somewhere out there, alone. He wanted so much to see her again and run into her arms – he was a ninja now and he had killed men, but he still needed his mother.

And then there was Hana. The girl was the daughter of a daimyo – she had spent her life being groomed for marriage to another lord. Taro wasn’t sure that, deep down, she could really want to settle for him, a peasant and a ninja. It was true that his real father was Lord Tokugawa, but blood wasn’t everything. There was also training, etiquette, an appreciation of the arts. He was only just learning to read. For most of his life he had done little but fish and hunt for rabbits. Even if Hana did want him now, would she feel that way in ten years’ time, when she realized that he couldn’t offer her gardens, and tea ceremonies, and serving girls, and beauty?

Yet he knew, too, that he could not give her up. The selfless thing to do would be to release her, to send her away, to live the life she’d been meant to live. Only where would he send her? She could not return to her father, Lord Oda, now that Taro had killed him. And besides, Taro was not selfless. Every time he looked into her deep brown eyes he knew that he would keep her if he could.

He had not spoken to her of this – had not even told her his feelings – but his deep desire was to one day marry her. The problem was that he could not condemn the daughter of a lord to the life of a ninja’s wife, and so he would have to make more of himself, somehow. If he could not do it by claiming his birthright as a Tokugawa, then he would have to do it some other way. Learn to read. Learn to write. Learn the sword, and how to make music, whether with a koto or with steel. Then perhaps one day he could become a samurai in Lord Tokugawa’s guard, never revealing his true identity – perhaps, if enough time had passed, Lord Tokugawa would not recognize Hana.

One day. But right now, Hana turned as she walked down the stone corridor, and gave him a dazzling smile, and Taro shook the thoughts of the future away, like summer gnats. For just a little longer, he would stay here in the mountain, where everything was simple, and he could pretend that the bad things had never happened – his adopted father’s death, Shusaku’s sacrifice at Lord Oda’s castle. As long as he was here, he could imagine, even, that Shusaku still lived, and that one day he would see the ninja step out from some hidden alcove and take up his training again.

Leaving the cave, Taro and Hana followed the long tunnel that led to the main hall, which was the crater of the volcanic mountain, cut off from daylight by an enormous sheet, painted with stars. When they stepped into the wide, twilit space, they saw Hiro, practising alone. His sword in his hand, he went through the kata, a sequence of formalized movements the ninja student was expected to master completely, so that they could be called up in a fight without thinking.

Taro had learned them but didn’t use them for practice or for fighting – he didn’t need to, he was so fast that he could invent his own moves, reading the movement of his enemy’s sword by keeping his eyes locked on theirs.

‘Hiro,’ said Taro. ‘Would you like to spar with us?’

Hiro turned to him and smiled, though his eyes no longer contained his old joy. ‘No, that’s all right. I’ll continue with these moves.’ He held his sword out straight, knees bent, and leaped into a feint-strike. His mind and muscles had been hardened by the events at Lord Oda’s castle. He wasn’t Taro’s fat, jolly friend any more – he was something more serious, more considered, more angry. Their betrayal by Yukiko, a ninja girl who had taken Lord Oda’s side against them, had shocked him deeply, as had the death of Shusaku, the guide and mentor who had looked after them ever since the father who had raised Taro was killed by ninjas in Lord Oda’s employ, and his mother sent away into hiding who knew where.

Taro watched Hiro move, and wished that he could see him grin instead, and tell stupid jokes. But who could blame him? Taro felt the pain of Shusaku’s death too, every day – and it was worse here in the ninja redoubt, which Shusaku had shown them for the first time. He was hurt by Yukiko’s defection, too – though not as much as Hiro was. Taro had never been close to the girl. In fact, she had always seemed wary of him, jealous of how quickly he had been made a real ninja. It hadn’t surprised him all that much when she turned on them, if he was honest. He had always detected a steel core in her, sharp edges, as if she were a sword made flesh. And he had always known that she was envious of him, for being turned into a vampire so young, so quickly.

When Taro’s father was killed, Shusaku had rescued him after Taro had been wounded by one of the many attackers. But the only way he could save Taro’s life was to bite him, to change him into a vampire, and at that moment Taro had become something Yukiko had craved for years – something that ordinarily was achieved only after many years of training at the ninja mountain. He had become a kyuuketsuki – a blood-sucking spirit-man.

Strong. Fast. Powerful.

Then, when Yukiko’s beloved sister had been killed defending Taro, she had found all the excuse she needed to turn against him and his friends – it had been Yukiko who had alerted Lord Oda to their presence in his tower, nearly killing them all.

‘Taro,’ said Hana, interrupting his thoughts. ‘Would you like to leave it for another time?’

He shook his head and took up his sword, settling into the ku stance of emptiness. As she tried for a strike, he parried and counter-attacked, his mind half on the flashing movement of the swords and half on the future. What was he to do now? Last year Shusaku had revealed something even more shocking than the secret of the ninjas: He had also told Taro that the man killed in the beach hut in Shirahama had not been his real father. Taro’s true father was Lord Tokugawa, one of the most powerful daimyo in the country, and the man who many thought would one day be shogun. As if that wasn’t enough, a fortune-teller – Yukiko’s foster mother – had told Taro that he himself would be shogun one day.

But these were abstracts. There were two things that were concrete, two things that pulled Taro in opposite directions, like twin poles, and it was these two things that he pictured as he flicked Hana’s sword aside and touched her neck with his blade.

She cursed in a very unladylike manner and bit her lip as she steadied her sword into her opening stance.

One of the things – one of the poles of Taro’s existence – was the Buddha ball. Before he died, Lord Oda had spoken of it, as had the fortune-teller, when she spoke to Taro of his destiny. It was a ball, made for the last Buddha, that gave its bearer dominion over the world and everything in it, because it was the world in miniature. Taro had thought it a tall tale, but he now had reason to believe that it was in Shirahama, hidden by his mother at the bottom of the bay.

The second thing was his mother. She was meant, as soon as she was safe, to send the pigeon Shusaku had given her; that pigeon was ever present in Taro’s thoughts. Taro could no longer exactly remember what his father had looked like – the man he had always thought of as his father, anyway – but his mother’s face was fresh and clear in his mind, and was constantly appearing before him when he closed his eyes to sleep.

It was a moment before Taro realized that his sword was no longer moving. Hana stood before him, arms folded, her katana leaning against her leg. ‘You’re thinking of the ball?’

‘Hmm? Oh, yes.’ Taro shrugged apologetically. Even frowning, like this, Hana was beautiful, and he felt a pang of guilt that instead of enjoying this time with her, safe from all enemies in the mountain, he was worrying about the ball and his mother, and how he could secure them both. Lord Oda was dead, but his second-in-command, Kenji Kira, was still abroad in the country, looking for Taro. He, or someone else, could find the ball and use it to cause untold damage. But what if Taro went looking for it, went to Shirahama, and his mother meanwhile was hurt, or killed? Or worse, what if she sent word of her location, and he wasn’t there to learn of it? What if the information fell into someone else’s hands, someone less than scrupulous? Someone like that weasel Kawabata, who had already betrayed Taro once. . .

Of course, his mother might already have been killed, and when Taro thought of that possibility a thick snake would squirm in his belly and he would find himself unable to sleep, the images of his mother and the ball rotating in his head, like the Sanskrit symbols on a prayer wheel.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Hana, ‘if you want to go and look for it. You have only to say.’

Taro nodded. He knew she would. She would go anywhere with him – she had shown him that already. She’d seen him kill her father, and she’d still walked by his side out of the castle and come to the ninja mountain. Foolish of her, really. Couldn’t she see that he was nothing but a peasant, no matter what blood flowed in his veins? Couldn’t she see that everyone who was close to him died or disappeared – his foster-father, Shusaku, his mother? But of course he couldn’t bring himself to send her away – she was so beautiful, so kind, so intelligent, and so skilled with a sword. She was like no girl he’d ever met.

There was something else, too. He thought Hana liked him – he was sure he could see it, in the cast of her eyes sometimes, and in the way she teased him. But he wasn’t sure. Her father was a monster – perhaps she would have left his castle with anyone who came along and saved her; perhaps Taro had only been in the right place at the right time. If he tried to send her away, he sensed, he would learn whether she felt for him as he did for her, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to learn that yet.

‘I shouldn’t be fighting,’ he said, looking down at the sword in his hand as if he wasn’t quite sure how it had got there. ‘I’m too distracted.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Hana, smiling. ‘I wouldn’t take advantage and hurt you.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant. If I don’t concentrate, I could kill you.’ He lowered his sword, stepping back.

Her smile disappeared. ‘Oh.’

‘Later, we’ll eat together. Well, you can eat – I’ll. . .’ He would have some blood, from one of the pigs kept in the caves.

‘Yes, that would be good.’ She gave him a hurt look, then turned and walked away. Taro wondered if everyone he loved would do that eventually – either die or leave him, or become changed, like Hiro. Perhaps it was what he deserved.

As if to underline his own thoughts, Kawabata Senior chose that moment to step out of a hidden panel in the rock, which was made of stone fixed to a wooden door. Even from close up, it looked identical to the rock wall, and Taro had still not got used to the way that people would sometimes emerge from this secret passageway, using it as a shortcut to the main hall.

Kawabata stopped when he saw Taro. Scowling, he turned on his heel and vanished again into the darkness. Taro sighed. Kawabata had tried to get Taro killed, along with his companions – sending a ninja to Lord Oda to warn him that they were coming to his castle. Luckily, his son, Little Kawabata, had managed to prevent the messenger from reaching his destination.

When Taro had returned to the mountain, unharmed, he had been welcomed as a hero by the people here. All except for Kawabata, who had trembled when he saw Taro entering the cave system, Little Kawabata by his side. The son had denounced the father, and Kawabata, on seeing the contempt in the faces of his fellow ninjas, had asked for permission to commit seppuku.

Taro had refused. He had seen enough death at that time, and he didn’t wish to watch Kawabata cutting open his own stomach in front of him. Besides, if there were people who gathered rice and people who gathered fish, then Taro was a person who gathered death. He had seen so many people around him die – he could not see another. But of course he had done the worst possible thing, as always. Kawabata might have forgiven him for living – especially as his great enemy Shusaku was dead as he had intended – but he could not forgive the slight on his honour that Taro had inadvertently given. Even one who had committed a great sin could cleanse himself through seppuku, yet it was in the power of the sinned-against to grant this redemption to the sinner, and Taro had not done so.

He had denied Kawabata his purity, and Kawabata would not forget it. Taro knew that he would have to kill the man one day, or change his mind about the seppuku – otherwise Kawabata would be sure to try once again to destroy him. But he kept putting it off. Since his father, too many people had died on his account.

He threw his sword aside, and Hiro looked up, startled, as it skidded across the sandy floor. Taro made a vague gesture to his friend, a wave of his hand that said something like, Forget it.

He was entering the tunnel that led to the sleeping quarters when one of the younger women – Taro thought her name was something like Aoki – came running out of it and nearly barrelled into him. Breathless, she held out an object towards him with both hands, nodding furiously at him to take it.

The object cocked its head and said, Coo.

Taro stared at the pigeon. He was dimly aware of Hiro, coming up beside him and putting his hand on his shoulder. He was pleased his friend was with him.

He reached out and took the bird, gently holding its wings so that it could not fly away. Its eyes darted from side to side, and it made a stream of gurgling sounds that could have been complaint or pleasure.

Tied around the pigeon’s leg was a very small scroll. Taro gripped the bird with one hand while he loosened the string holding the message with the other. He unfurled the parchment.

His lips moved as he deciphered the hiragana, and he was filled with joy that his mother had found someone to write on her behalf, and that he could read it.

My dear Taro, said the note. I am at the Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei. I am safe, but I would give anything to see you again. With affection, your mother.

CHAPTER 2

TARO LEANED AGAINST the wooden wall of the hut that led into the mountain, its floor concealing a tunnel to the mountain of the ninjas. A spring sun blazed in the sky above him, bathing the countryside in a light that was almost granular, so fine and shimmering was its appearance.

This was a peaceful spot. It was for that reason that he had chosen it as his brother’s last resting place, and he was conscious as he sat in the sunlight that his younger brother’s ashes were part of the earth beneath his feet. It was another constant reminder of Lord Oda’s cruelty – for it had been Lord Oda who had imprisoned the youngest Tokugawa boy, along with Lord Tokugawa’s wife, and starved them to death. But before dying, Lady Tokugawa had begged Taro to take her son’s body with him, and he had been unable to refuse.

He closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth. The blood in his eyelids dyed the darkness of his consciousness red, and he thought that fitting. Blood was part of his being now, something he required in order to survive. The sun was only showing him the truth.

He sighed, the warmth and the coming of spring ruined by his thoughts. He wished he could simply enjoy being a vampire – but how could he enjoy a condition that required him to hurt others? He could survive on pig’s blood, yes, but it didn’t give him the strength and power he needed to go to his mother, to protect her from men like Kenji Kira. He felt, without knowing quite why, that he would be called on again to fight, even to kill.

And to do that, he would need human blood. He would need the strength of two men coursing through his veins – his own, and that of his victim’s.

He heard something so faint a human wouldn’t notice it – a sound like breath, which was made by the stirring of the air as someone far away moved quickly through it. He shielded his eyes with his hand, seeing the dark figure flitting up through the field. It was the vampire he was waiting for. The only other vampire who could move in daylight, because it was Taro who had turned him, giving him his own blood to drink.

The figure, growing larger by the moment, was the only person he could see, though from here he could see for many ri. The hut was high – higher than the clouds sometimes – and it was half a day of walking downhill before you came to the nearest village. Anyway, the people who lived down there never strayed near the mountain, if they could help it. They knew that unpleasant fates awaited those who did. Taro was glad no one from outside had come upon him since he had returned here – he was not as pragmatic or hard-hearted as the other ninjas, and killing a peasant just for being in the wrong place seemed cruel. On the other hand, he understood the need for secrecy, and realized that if the people of the area knew what was really hidden in the mountain, they would not rest till the vampires were destroyed.

It would be an unpleasant dilemma, and he was pleased not to have faced it.

I wish I could be more like him, more fearless and thoughtless,thought Taro, as Little Kawabata came more clearly into view, slowing as he spotted Taro by the hut. Taro would be leaving as soon as he could, with Hana and Hiro – tonight, if possible. He wanted Little Kawabata to know. Once the two boys had been enemies, but a grudging respect had formed between them – even if, as now, Taro was frequently irritated by Little Kawabata’s blithe acceptance of his status as a dark spirit, his unwillingness to scrutinize more closely his actions. Little Kawabata was impulsive, instinctive. This trait was an irritation, but it could also be useful – as when Little Kawabata had taken it upon himself to warn Taro of his father’s treachery, and so had saved all their lives.

‘You’ve been hunting,’ Taro said, as Little Kawabata stood before him. The boy’s face was flushed, his movements strong and lithe.

‘Yes.’

‘Which prey?’

‘Which do you think? Vampires are meant to feed on human blood. You might be satisfied with pigs, but I am not.’

Taro sighed. ‘You risk the whole mountain, if we’re discovered.’

Little Kawabata raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think that’s likely.’

‘You don’t think it’s likely? You’ve been feeding on human blood.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Little Kawabata, flopping down against the wall, raising his face to the sun and closing his eyes, stretching his arms languorously. ‘People don’t expect kyuuketsuki in the daylight – that’s why I went out when the sun was shining.’

‘They don’t expect to be attacked at any time of day. It’ll put them on their guard.’

‘I thought of that. I knocked the man out first. Came at him from behind with a thick branch. Then I bit his ankle, drew the blood from there. He’ll think it was a snake.’

‘Well,’ said Taro, ‘as long as you don’t do it again.’ He had to admit, though, the thing with the snakebite was clever. ‘Especially not after tonight.’ He held up the note. ‘I’m going to find my mother.’

Little Kawabata didn’t read, so Taro explained the message. The other vampire frowned. ‘You don’t think it strange that the pigeon took so long?’

Taro did think it strange – though he was so pleased to finally hear from his mother that he had tried not to think about it. ‘Perhaps. You think it’s a trap?’

‘I think it’s suspicious. When did you leave Shirahama? In the autumn? It’s spring now. The cherry blossom has nearly reached us already, even this far north. No pigeon takes two seasons to fly from Mount Hiei.’

‘I know,’ said Taro, frowning.

‘Someone could have caught her, made her tell them about the pigeon. Or someone could have intercepted her pigeon, and worked out what it meant, if it had your name on it. It would be easy, then, to send a fake message – lure you to a place where they could kill you. Lord Oda is dead, but Kenji Kira is still seeking you. A prophetess told you that you’d be shogun – that’s a good reason for any number of lords to take your life.’

‘I know,’ said Taro. ‘I’ve thought of all these things. I’m not stupid.’

‘I didn’t say you were,’ said Little Kawabata, with a smile. ‘I’m only saying. . . that you should be cautious.’

Taro snorted with laughter. ‘You’re telling me to be cautious?’ He could see a smear of blood on the other boy’s chin, where he had fed on a peasant, risking the very secrecy of the ninja mountain.

‘Yes, well. I might rush into things, but it doesn’t mean you have to.’

‘But if it was you, wouldn’t you go? Wouldn’t you want to see your mother again, even if it turned out to be a trap?’

Little Kawabata paused, then nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘I thought so. Anyway, Hiro and Hana will come with me – we’ll all three of us have swords. If it starts to look dangerous, we’ll turn back. But the way to Mount Hiei is simple – there’s a road that runs direct to the mountain, for pilgrims. And many inns along the way where no one will look askance at a group of travellers.’

‘And I’m supposed to just stay here, am I?’ said Little Kawabata.

‘I thought you were worried it was a trap.’

‘I am. It sounds exciting.’

Taro rolled his eyes. ‘We need someone to look after the mountain. Do you think you can handle your father in my absence? He must not know where I’m going – just in case.’

‘Of course,’ said Little Kawabata, slightly grumpily. ‘Everything will be fine, don’t worry.’

‘And you’ll stick to pig’s blood from now on?’

‘Yes,’ said Little Kawabata, with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Whatever you say, Lord Taro. The mountain will be perfectly safe while you’re gone, you’ll see. It will be as if you had never been away.’

‘Good,’ said Taro. He cleared his throat. ‘I was right, you know. To save your life.’

Little Kawabata averted his gaze. ‘If you’re going to get emotional,’ he said, ‘I might be sick. Just go and find your mother. I’ll watch over things here.’

CHAPTER 3

HANA THOUGHT IT would take the best part of a week to reach Mount Hiei. She had walked some of the pilgrim trail herself, with her father. At one time, she said, Lord Oda had spent a lot of time on Mount Hiei, with the monks, trying to win them over to his cause, which was the unification of Japan. The monks had been unfailingly polite, yet had ultimately resisted his offers. They were a warrior order, well armed, and they did not need to kneel to any of the daimyo. They were themselves one of the great powers in the country.

Taro hoped this was still the case. If the monks of the mountain retained their independence, then they couldn’t be part of a trap involving his mother. They couldn’t be working with Kenji Kira to destroy him. Of course, it was possible that the monks wanted his death. Perhaps they had heard of the prophecy – that he would be shogun – and they wished to end his life before he could threaten their power.

Well, it was a risk he was going to have to take.

They travelled by day, for the most part. It was known to only some that Taro could withstand daylight, and so most people looking for a young vampire would not expect to find him walking the road in the middle of the day. On the third day, they passed close to Shirahama – Taro could even see the bay, gleaming to the west in the late afternoon sunlight, a silver dish against the mossy green of the land. He wondered, still, what secrets that bay held in the embrace of its rocky promontories. His mother had dived on the day his foster-father – the man he had always believed was his father, until Shusaku revealed his true identity – was killed.

What had she been doing? That she had been diving was not so unusual: She was an ama, one of the women divers who made a living harvesting abalone and oysters from the seabed. But she had difficulty with her ears; the pressure hurt her, and more and more in those months Taro had seen her pale and bleeding. She had promised him she would not dive so often, or so deep, as she once had. And besides, she had been diving that day near the wreck, a place that every man and woman in Shirahama knew was cursed, and potentially lethal. And was it a coincidence that she had gone there on the very day that they were attacked? Taro had wondered about it ever since. Earlier on that terrible day, he and Hiro had heard a rumor of kyuuketsuki farther down the coast. Could Taro’s mother have heard the same rumour, and believed that the bloodsuckers were coming for her? Taro already suspected that the Buddha ball had been passed to the amas for safekeeping – what if that had been the reason for the dive? It had occurred to Taro too that the Buddha ball might have been passed down to his mother – and that she might have hidden it in the waters by the wreck, in the place from which it had originally come. It was a dizzying thought – that down there, beyond the misty haze of the sea-fog, through the leaves of the cedar trees, the ball might be shining under the water of the bay. . .

He shook his head. If it was there, then it wasn’t going to move – he had all the time in the world to find it, once he had found his mother. For now, he had to concentrate on the most important thing – getting to Mount Hiei, seeing her again.

Hiro inclined his head towards Shirahama. ‘We could go and visit,’ he said. ‘It’s so close.’ Neither of the boys had returned to their home village since being forced to leave, six months before.

Taro shook his head. ‘Too dangerous. This is the Kanto – we’re better off on the pilgrims’ road.’ The Kanto belonged to Lord Oda, but all the daimyo respected the right of pilgrims to approach Mount Hiei in safety. It was only by sticking to the road, with its cobbled path, shade-giving trees, and frequent inns, that they would be able to reach the sacred mountain safely.

As they spoke, Taro felt a raindrop splash on his neck. Dark clouds were massing above. He led Hana and Hiro back to the road, and as they walked, the rain fell heavier and heavier. Soon the three of them were soaked to the skin, rain drumming a constant rhythm on their heads, seeping into their clothes and running down their ankles into their clogs. They plodded on miserably.

In this way, they walked for half a day, the light dimming steadily. When Taro saw the light of an inn ahead, he knew they would have to stop, even though it wasn’t yet night.

‘Oh, good,’ said Hana. ‘Maybe they’ll have a fire. I feel like I’ll turn into a fish.’

As they neared, Taro could see that the inn was a crude place – just an assemblage of wooden planks. There were no windows. From outside, he could see a smoky interior, thickset men sitting on the ground and drinking from simple cups.

‘It’s a tavern,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure it’s a place for a lady.’

Hana smiled. ‘Well, if I was a lady, I wouldn’t go in.’ She opened the door and sloshed inside, dripping on the floor. Hiro shrugged and followed her.

Taro blinked when he entered, his eyes smarting. Most of the men were smoking pipes – a habit they’d acquired from the Portuguese and Dutch. There was also a hibachi in the middle of the room, and because the inn had no chimney, the smoke from the charcoal brazier simply hung in the air, a grey cloud that hovered at head height. Hana led the way to a table near the fire. Several men looked up at them curiously, but their gazes didn’t linger for long. No doubt they took the three companions for ordinary travellers, bedraggled by the rain.

Then, as they passed one of the other tables, Hana gasped and stopped.

‘Hayao?’ she said.

There were three people at the table: a woman and two men. One of the men was in the garb of a Taoist priest, the other a samurai, to look at him. The woman stood between them, her hand on the samurai’s shoulder. It was the samurai who had drawn Hana’s attention. He was a gaunt man, though Taro could tell he had once been handsome. He looked up at Hana, a confused expression on his face. His eyes blinked slowly, once, twice. With a pained, deliberate motion, he brushed the woman’s hand so that it fell away from his shoulder.

‘H-Hana?’ he said softly.

Hana stepped closer. ‘Gods, Hayao, are you unwell?’

Taro thought he must be. The man was painfully thin, his skin sallow and sick-looking. The woman, too, seemed unwell. She was desperately pale, like an origami person, a person made out of white paper. The samurai didn’t answer Hana – the woman at his side was caressing his cheek, and he closed his eyes as if in bliss. Something about the situation struck Taro as very odd. He wondered if the man was drunk.

The priest stood. His manner was grave, oddly formal. ‘My lady,’ he said. ‘You know this man?’

Hana gave a bemused smile. ‘Of course! This is Hayao. He is one of – I mean, he is one of Lord Oda’s retainers. He taught me. . .’ She lowered her voice so that the men on the other tables would not hear. ‘He taught me to ride and to fight. What happened to him?’ The samurai’s eyes were still closed, and he was murmuring something through his thin, grey lips. The pallid woman at his side stroked and stroked his skin.

‘He is. . . suffering,’ said the priest. ‘I’m taking him to Mount Hiei.’

Hana clasped her hands together. ‘That is where we are going,’ she said.

The priest nodded. ‘I thought this could not be a chance encounter,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should go somewhere more private, and I can tell you about our friend here. Hayao is known to you – it’s not impossible that you could help. I myself have known him only since. . . his illness.’

‘If I can help, I will,’ said Hana.

The priest edged past the thin samurai, coming round the table to stand in front of Hana. Taro stumbled backwards, a strangled cry on his lips. He held out his hand for something, anything, to steady him – and found himself holding on to Hiro’s shoulder.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ said Hiro. ‘You look like you just saw a ghost.’

‘You don’t see her?’ said Taro.

‘See who?’ said Hana. Both she and Hiro were looking at him oddly. The priest didn’t seem to know what was wrong either.

Taro was staring at the woman standing beside the samurai, Hayao. She had not stopped her stroking, and it seemed to Taro that she was also whispering something, something only Hayao could hear. She had not once looked at Taro – or his companions or the priest, for that matter. It was as if she had eyes only for the samurai. She was in love, it was plain to see. But that wasn’t what had shocked Taro.

It was the fact that the priest had just walked right through her, as if she wasn’t even there – and even now he stood such that part of his body overlapped with hers, revealing her to be no person at all but an insubstantial thing, made of smoke or mist.

A ghost.

CHAPTER 4

SHUSAKU GRIPPED THE rail, feeling his way up the ramp onto the ship. When he stood on the deck, he felt the incessant rocking of the sea, moving the wooden boat gently from side to side, as if to remind its occupants of its power. Shusaku had never felt comfortable on the water. But at least he was able to swim. The same was not true of the sailors – it was better to die quickly, they reasoned, if the boat went down, than to waste time and energy on a false hope of survival.

Shusaku couldn’t understand men so resigned to the mortal danger of their profession. True, his own profession was lethal enough – but he was different. He armed himself. What these men did – sailing without knowing how to swim – it was like going into a battle without a sword. He felt Jun’s hand, gentle, on his back, pushing him forward. Curse the boy. Shusaku did not like ships.

‘There’s a step in front,’ said Jun. ‘Two paces.’

Shusaku nodded, grateful. It would be humiliating if he tripped. It was bad enough that the sailors and samurai could no doubt detect his fear, his nervousness of the sea. Shusaku had insisted that Jun come with him – the boy was his eyes, and he needed him. To his surprise, Lord Tokugawa had accepted.

‘There!’ said a rough voice, as a hand held Shusaku’s arm,