Lord Oda's Revenge (33 page)

Taro wiped the salt water from his eyes, looking around him. He was on a small ship, with a covered sleeping area at the back. He spotted a couple of suntanned men who had to be sailors, but otherwise everyone on board was a samurai.

Behind the samurai stood a figure dressed in a dark robe that covered his face entirely. He was the only man on the ship not dressed in samurai garb, and he carried himself differently. Almost like a ninja. But that was absurd – why would these
samurai be consorting openly with a ninja? Such men served private purposes, carrying out assassinations under cover of night. They didn't travel with warriors.

The big samurai bore down on Taro, and he pulled himself backward, wanting to get away from this colossal man with his hard eyes.

The big samurai chuckled. ‘It's as if he's seen a ghost,' he said. Some of the other men laughed.

‘Maybe he's never seen a samurai before.'

‘He is a peasant, after all.'

Taro stood up, trembling. He didn't understand what was happening. One moment he had been in the sea, and now he was on this ship. Someone had stolen his ball.

But he was still a trained fighter, and he had his pride. He drew himself up and took a step towards the big samurai holding the ball.

‘That's mine,' he said.

The man laughed louder this time. ‘He has spirit!' he said. ‘I like that.' But he didn't make any move to hand over the ball.

‘Give it back,' said Taro.

The man sighed. ‘He has spirit, but he grows wearisome.' He gestured to someone behind Taro. ‘Seize him.'

Several things happened at once. Taro heard someone behind him reach out to grab him, and ducked. At that same moment, there was a
whhhhhip
sound, and one of the samurai spun, then crashed to the deck, blood trickling from his ear. An arrow shaft stuck out of his eye. Taro dived away and rushed to the other side of the deck, dodging one of the samurai as he tried to slash at him with his
katana
.

There was another
whhhhip
, and Taro saw some of the samurai crouch. Following the sound, he looked to the west. There
another ship sat heavily in the water, no lanterns lighting its rigging or deck.

‘Pirates!' said one of the samurai. ‘They're firing at us.' For a moment no one paid any attention to Taro as he backed towards the railing.

The leader grimaced angrily. ‘Stay standing!' he said to his men. ‘You're wearing armour, aren't you? They're only pirates with bows! Nothing for a samurai to fear.' At his feet, the dead man with the wooden shaft for an eye silently disagreed.

‘Just common pirates!' repeated the leader, and Taro felt the power of the man's authority, because even he felt somehow reassured. He sensed the other samurai becoming bolder too. One of them started to move towards him, only half ducking, even as another arrow whined overhead and buried itself in the deck.

But then Taro saw a flag unfurl, halfway down the other ship's mast, before being winched to the top. On it was a symbol Taro would recognize anywhere.

The
mon
of Lord Oda.

The leader gave a hiss of anger. ‘They will
not
have the ball,' he shouted. Clutching it in his hands, he raised it to the sky. Addressing the ball, he said, ‘Strike them down with lightning! Sink their ship.'

Taro held his breath.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, the leader shook the ball. ‘Destroy them! Raise up the sea to dash them to pieces!'

Again, nothing happened.

The other samurai were all down on their knees, as arrows continued to fly overhead, tearing the rigging and slamming into the mast. Taro felt one pass over his left shoulder and bent his knees to lower himself below the rail.

Only one samurai remained standing – the big one who was so obviously in charge. The hooded figure had gone down on one knee and was moving its head from side to side, as if listening to the arrows.

As arrows whirred around him, the big samurai stood screaming at the golden ball in his hands, ordering it to wreck the other ship, even asking it to stop the arrows in the air and send them back where they had come from.

But still, nothing happened.

Then there was a lull in the firing, as the other ship drew closer, and Taro saw the gleam of swords from its decks.
They're going to board
, he thought.

Smack!

A blow caught him on the temple, and his head snapped round, hitting the rail, as if the ship itself were turning against him and beating him for his insolence. Dazed, he looked up at the leader, who glared down at him furiously.

‘You tricked me!' he said. ‘It doesn't work. Tell me where the real ball is.'

Taro stared at him. ‘B-b-but that is the real ball,' he said, stammering not out of fear but out of the ringing in his skull. ‘I recovered it f-from the wreck.' But then he fell silent. He'd seen this man holding the ball in his hands, directing it to do his bidding. And it hadn't worked.

It's nothing
, he thought.
It's a golden toy
.
I wasted my time looking for that thing, and now I have nothing to take back to Mount Hiei
. . . He closed his eyes, a tear running down his cheek. He had failed. He was, suddenly, glad that this man was about to kill him.

‘You are beginning to irritate me, boy,' said the man. He turned to the samurai and roared, ‘Get up! We have a few
moments before the pirates arrive. Anyone can fly an Oda flag – do not let it scare the wits out of you! Let's see if the boy will talk with his guts pooled around his feet.' He reached into his kimono and withdrew a beautiful
katana
, chased with a grey wave along its edge.

The samurai seemed wary, keeping their heads low as they advanced, but they were advancing all the same. And they all carried swords. But the leader was closer, and it was he who struck first, aiming a stroke at Taro's belly that opened up his insides to the—

No.

Just as the blade was about to bite into his skin, the hooded man stepped out from behind the leader and raised a sword that was suddenly in his hand, blocking the strike with a ringing
clang
. Taro was briefly surprised at the speed of the man's action and the way he had produced that sword from nowhere, but he didn't have long to think about it, because in a continuation of his blocking movement the man in the dark hood brought his shoulder heavily forward and rammed into him, knocking Taro off balance.

He fell backwards against the rail, his heavier top half pivoted over it, and then he was falling into the sea, the side of the ship catching him a glancing blow on the thigh. He spluttered, momentarily furious that he was still alive, in a world that didn't contain his mother or Hana.

From above, he heard a voice call down to him.

‘Go,' it said. ‘None of them can swim.'

He would know that voice anywhere. It belonged to Shusaku.

 

S
HUSAKU SMILED
to himself, then lowered his sword to the deck. Very slowly, he knelt on the hard wood, inclining his head. He waited for the blow that would end his life.

But no blade severed his neck. Instead there was a shocking, sudden impact that shivered through the whole fabric of the ship, and up through the bones of his legs. A crashing, splintering sound filled the air. He was reminded of the earthquakes of his youth, when he had lived on the western coast of Japan, but this was no earthquake – they'd been rammed.

Shusaku heard men screaming in the way they do when they attack, to give themselves courage, and the ringing of metal on metal. Above him, Lord Tokugawa made a
tut
sound of annoyance. ‘Kill them all,' he said, and then there was the sound of men rushing towards where the pirates had boarded.

Shusaku held his breath, waiting again for the final blow – Lord Tokugawa could never bear betrayal, and Shusaku knew he would mete out punishment even as pirates swarmed his ship. It was a point of honour. No doubt even if his men were overcome by the
wako
, and the pirates surrounded him with their swords drawn, he would ask them to wait while he beheaded the man who had embarrassed him.

Instead he felt something hard and round being pressed into his hands.

‘You realize,' said Lord Tokugawa, in a dangerously calm voice, ‘that I have no choice but to kill you now? You stopped my blow, in front of my men.'

‘Yes,' said Shusaku. He could have said,
But the boy didn't know the ball wouldn't work – he wasn't lying to you. He didn't deserve to die
. But what would be the point?

‘You can take that piece of shiny junk with you,' said the daimyo, and Shusaku felt the weight and heft of the ball in his hands.

Only it wasn't the Buddha ball. It was a just a ball.

He lowered his head again but instead of a blow, what he felt was hands under his armpits, and then he was being hauled up and against the railing. In an angry whisper, Lord Tokugawa said, ‘I wasn't really going to kill him, you fool.'

Then he thrust his sword into Shusaku's stomach, withdrew it again in a swift, economical movement that opened the wound upward, and shoved Shusaku over the side.

 

L
IGHTS THAT COULD
have been stars or sea creatures or just the pounding of the blood in his temples danced on the water around him, as Taro pulled himself exhaustedly through the water towards the shore. A moment later he felt the scrape of the shallow bay floor against his legs, and then he was able to haul himself up. He stood in the shallows, gradually regaining consciousness, after the long and terrible trance of swimming for his life.

He turned. Far out, beyond the farthest embrace of the land, was a dark shape that could have been two ships locked together in battle. He stared down at the glimmering lights around him. He was among miniature glowing boats, and the people gathered on the beach stared at him as if he were an apparition.

The
o-shoryo-bune
– the boats of the honourable shades – drifted past him and out to the deep ocean.

Taro felt as if he were in a dream. Water dripped from him onto the glowing surface of the sea. The little boats, each one painted and hung with bunting, bobbed on the lapping waves, lit from within by whale-fat candles. As they floated out to sea, they took the souls of the dead with them, back to Enma's realm. Inland, Taro had seen it done by Yukiko and Heiko with
lanterns, on the surface of a stream. But the people of Shirahama were of the sea, and their dead, who had spent their lives on boats, sailed into death on them too.

So captivated was he by their beauty, that it was a moment before he realized what this meant.
Mother!
She would be leaving too, drifting ever farther from him as the tide took the boats out. Then, as he walked up out of the shallow water on gently shelving sand, his eyes swept to the north. He saw something that made him stop suddenly and stare in disbelief.

Dead men were walking out of the water beside him, seaweed dripping from their rusted armour, starfish in their hair and barnacles on their swords. They wore a
mon
that Taro didn't recognize, but by their numbers and the weapons in their hands, he knew what they were – they were the Heike, who had been destroyed in the bay, and to whose ghosts Hoichi had sung his song of their defeat. And their ghosts were coming up out of the water in the thousands, passing through Taro, some of them. They didn't see him – fish had eaten their eyes, and anyway they stared only ahead of them, fixed on the land, their features skeletal under their armour, skulls looking out blankly from helmets. Then, slowly, they began to fade downward, shrinking almost, as if melting into the sand.

No, not melting. Taro gasped as he saw a ghost gradually dim to a dark shadow, then grow claws and a shell, and go walking sideways –
clickety-click
– down the beach. On the giant crab's back was a skull. These were the crabs that were seen only in Shirahama, the ones people said were the spirits of the Heike. Taro felt something wet on his cheeks, and it took him a moment to realize that it was not seawater, it was tears.