The Dragon’s Mark

Annja whirled, expecting her final opponent to be closing the distance between them while her attention was elsewhere.

But that wasn’t the case. The other man hadn’t moved.

He stood watching her, hands held behind his back, like an instructor evaluating her performance.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Annja asked, and was surprised at the depth of anger she heard in her voice.

Her opponent said nothing.

“I’ll give you one last—”

She never finished the sentence.

One second her opponent was standing in front of her with both hands behind his back, and in the next he was leaping forward, a Japanese long sword suddenly appearing in his hands.

Annja just barely managed to deflect the strike as she brought her own sword up.

Where the hell had that sword come from?

It was almost as if he’d conjured the thing out of thin air….

…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn…

Ise Province, Japan
1603

Sengo Muramasa stormed about the room in a fit of rage. The furnishings around him bore silent witness to the strength of his anger; the black lacquer tea table had been smashed repeatedly against the floor until it shattered into pieces. The tatami mats had been ripped to shreds with his bare hands. The paintings on the walls had been torn down and stomped upon until the images they bore were unrecognizable. When one of his servants unwittingly entered the room, Muramasa had beat him to within an inch of his life and left him lying unconscious in one corner of the room.

The old swordsmith barely noticed the injured boy as his thoughts were on the edict that had arrived earlier that morning and the demands it had contained.

He still couldn’t believe it. That bastard Tokugawa Ieyasu had actually gone through with it!

He’d heard rumors about the shogun’s proposed stance for months, but had never actually believed he would put it into effect.

The words of the edict echoed around and around in his head.

He could not let this happen.

Deny his art? Banish his work? Never!

Already the germ of a plan was beginning to form in the back of his mind and he gave it free reign to grow and expand. He had no doubt the shogun’s men would be coming for him, to take his inventory and destroy his forge, to prevent him from creating any new blades. But with winter swiftly approaching, the mountain passes would soon be blocked and it would take months for them to thaw enough to be passable again.

Months he could put to good use.

He had just enough time to produce one final sword—the culmination of his career. He would create a sword to be feared and held in awe in equal measure, a blade to master all other blades, one that would strike terror in the hearts of those against whom it was drawn.

He would call it Juuchi Yosamu—Ten Thousand Cold Nights.

Ignoring the destruction behind him, Muramasa stalked out of the house and across the courtyard to his workshop. His heart was full of feelings of anger and vengeance and Muramasa intended to use them fully.

Entering the forge, he paused a moment to say a prayer at the small Shinto shrine in the corner. The forge was a sacred place and to deny the gods their due would only ensure that his blade would come out weak and brittle. He took the time to ask for blessings and to make the proper offering. When he was finished, he rose and got to work.

Muramasa had been preparing to produce a blade for a customer and so his smelting furnace had already been built. His apprentices had created a thick layer of ash and charcoal as a base and then had surrounded it with carefully made bricks of local clay, until they had a structure that was roughly three feet high with walls nearly one-foot thick. They were ready to begin the smelting process.

The master swordsmith shouted at his apprentices and they came running, eager to begin. Word of the master’s fall from favor had already passed through the household and they were as keen as he was to stand in defiance of the shogun’s order. After all, their livelihoods were at stake, as well—for who would commission a weapon from their hands when it was revealed that they learned the art at Muramasa’s knee? Their futures were at stake, too, and they took to their tasks with all of the energy and attention at their disposal.

For the next three days they stoked the fire, ensuring that it burned at a steady temperature of fifteen hundred degrees. Shovels of iron sand were fed into the mouth of the furnace every thirty minutes—nourishment for the hungry beast—the iron mixing with the carbon and charcoal already in the smelter to create a unique kind of steel. Muramasa watched over the proceedings with an eagle eye, carefully monitoring the molten slag that was vented through the holes at the bottom of the furnace, waiting for just the right consistency and color to appear.

When at last he was satisfied, he ordered his apprentices to tear down the walls of the furnace, revealing a large mass of molten steel in the center, known as the
kera.
Roughly six feet long by one foot wide and weighing nearly two tons, the
kera
was carefully moved by rolling it atop a series of logs to the other side of the workshop where it would be allowed to cool. Once it had, his apprentices would break up the massive block into fist-size fragments that he would personally scrutinize, searching for those that shone with a silvery brightness from the outer edge. The selected pieces would then be hammered flat by his workers, coated with a thin mixture of clay and charcoal to prevent oxidation, and then reheated to thirteen hundred degrees to melt them all together into a single block. After that he would begin the process of forming the blade, hammering the steel and folding it over, again and again and again, making the steel uniform throughout. Eventually he would combine the softer, more flexible core with an outer edge of harder steel, then heat the blade all over again to meld the two layers into one. Later would come the grinding and polishing.

For now, however, it was enough that he had begun.

I
T WAS FINISHED
.

Muramasa stared at the highly polished blade and could almost feel it watching him, in turn. For three months he had poured his soul into its creation, imbuing it with all the hatred, anger and desire for vengeance he felt toward the shogun, giving it a personality of its own, one that would devour any weapon that dared to stand against it. Like the dragon for which it had been named.

It was the culmination of his life’s work.

The door to his workshop burst open and a servant rushed in. Muramasa recognized him as one of those who had been tasked with keeping an eye on the pass in the mountains above. The boy’s face was ruddy from the cold and a long gash ran across his brow.

Pausing to catch his breath, the boy finally gasped out the message he’d rushed there to deliver.

“The shogun’s troops…”

That was all that was necessary.

The spring thaw had come early and Muramasa had been expecting word of their arrival for days. It wouldn’t take them long to negotiate the pass and descend down to the valley floor. He had one hour, two at the most.

But it would be enough.

Juuchi Yosamu was finished. All he needed was to see to its delivery.

After that, let them come.

The old swordsmith sprang into action.

“Quickly,” he shouted to the boy. “Find me Yukasawi!”

Still struggling to catch his breath, the boy turned and rushed out the door, intent on doing what his master commanded.

While he waited for his man, Muramasa crossed the room and selected a worn and battered saya from a barrel in the corner of the room. He lifted the blade, intent on securing it safely inside the scabbard.

As he did so the weapon seemed to twist in his hands of its own accord and he felt the sting of its bite as the razor edge sliced cleanly along the underside of his forearm. Blood dripped onto the floor and gleamed wetly against the edge of the blade. But rather than being angry at his carelessness, if that was indeed what caused the injury, Muramasa simply smiled.

The sword hungered for blood, just as it had been created to. Who better than to provide its first taste than the man who had fashioned it?

A noise at his back caused him to turn and he saw Yukasawi enter the workshop. Muramasa took a moment to study him.

The man was a ronin, one of those samurai from the lesser houses who had recently lost his station when his master had gone down in defeat at the hands of the shogun. This is a man who has almost as much reason to hate Tokugawa as I do, the swordsmith thought. It was for this reason that he had been selected. If anyone could get the weapon to safety, Yukasawi could.

It would be the soldier’s job to take the sword out of the mountains, past the shogun’s troops and into the hands of the samurai in Kyoto Muramasa had selected to receive it.

The man in question, Ishikawa Toshi, was ruthless and wanted nothing more than to ascend to the position of shogun. He was already amassing his army against Tokugawa and his allies, and Muramasa was confident that his gift would be put to good use in the future. All the swordsmith had to do was get it to him.

“Is it time?” Yukasawi asked, his face tight with concern for his benefactor.

Muramasa nodded. “The shogun’s troops have been sighted at the top of the pass. They will be here shortly.”

“Then there is still time. If we leave now, we can—”

“No.” The swordsmith cut him off. “There is no time left for running. Nor will I give that dog Tokugawa the satisfaction. By remaining behind I will delay them long enough to allow you to escape and deliver Juuchi Yosamu as we discussed.”

He thrust the now-sheathed weapon into the hands of his vassal. “On your honor and your life, do not fail me.”

“Hai!” the ronin shouted. Taking the weapon in hand, he bowed low, then rushed out of the workshop to where his horse was waiting.

The trip down the mountain would be hazardous, but Muramasa was confident his man could handle the task. His other creations might be rounded up and destroyed, but in the depths of his heart he knew that this one would survive.

As his blood continued to drip onto the floor beneath his feet, the swordsmith knew that the world would not soon forget the savage bite of a Muramasa blade.

His legacy would live on.

And Juuchi Yosamu would devour the hearts of his enemies.

A shout sounded from outside and Muramasa knew that that the shogun’s troops were near. It was time to meet death.

The old man reached out and picked up a sword. He gave it a few experimental swings, getting the feel for this particular blade, and then turned toward the door with a spring in his step that he hadn’t felt for years.

T
HE BATTLE HAD BEEN SHORT
but brutal. His men had fought well and the snow was stained crimson with their blood and the blood of their foes. Of the thirty-eight men who had remained behind to face the shogun’s troops, only Muramasa himself still lived. He had intended to die with a sword in his hands, but apparently the shogun had ordered otherwise. His men had surrounded the swordsmith and attempted to overwhelm him, a move that had cost ten of them their lives before the older man had been beaten into unconsciousness.

Now, with his hands bound behind his back, Muramasa stood before his enemies and waited for the end.

The captain of the shogun’s troops had been apologetic. This was no way to die for a man of Muramasa’s stature, he’d said, but he had his orders and if he did not carry them out as intended, his own life would be forfeit. Muramasa assured him that he understood.

“Do as you must,” he’d told the man, and had meant it.

It didn’t matter. The resistance, the pronouncement of the verdict against him, the execution to come—none of it mattered, really. It was all stage dressing, anyway—a deliberate attempt to get the shogun’s men to focus their attention on what was going on around them rather than searching the countryside for those who might have gotten away. Every hour he delayed them meant another hour that Yukasawi could use to get over the mountains and escape with his precious cargo.

Muramasa had given him as much time as he could.

Two soldiers approached. They each took an arm and led him forward to the clearing in the center of the compound, where what was left of his household staff were assembled as witnesses in front of the massed arrangement of the shogun’s troops.

As they drew closer, Muramasa shook off the guards and walked forward on his own. He was not afraid to meet death and he would not go forward to face it looking as if he did not have the courage to do so on his own.

The captain he’d spoken to earlier was waiting for him, naked steel in hand. Muramasa had requested that he be allowed to commit seppuku, but apparently even that last honor was to be denied him.

So be it, he thought. He would still have the last laugh.

Without waiting to be told Muramasa knelt in the snow at the captain’s feet.

“Do not worry,” the younger man said, whispering so that those assembled around him would not overhear. “I will make certain that the blade strikes deep. There will be no need for a second blow.”

Muramasa bowed his head, exposing his neck.

He ignored the long recital of his supposed crimes and the pronouncement of his sentence—death. He’d heard it all before.

As he waited for that final blow, something caught his eye in the distance.

He raised his head slightly, just enough so that he could lift his gaze toward the mountain slopes in the distance. On the side of the mountain, where the trail led to the pass that was used to exit the valley and travel to the world outside, a dark speck moved against the snow. It was barely visible at this distance, and had Muramasa not turned his head at precisely the right moment, he might never have seen it. But he had and deep in his heart he had no doubt at all as to what that speck represented.

Yukasawi had made it. He had managed to work his way past the blockade of the shogun’s troops and climb the mountain to the pass high above. From there it would be easy for the ronin to lose himself in the open country on the other side while he made the journey to Kyoto and delivered the blade.

And with that delivery, Muramasa’s revenge would begin.

Suddenly filled with satisfaction, Muramasa barely noticed as the captain of the guard brought his sword high above his head.

I curse you with ten thousand cold nights, the swordsmith thought. As the blade descended in a swift, razor-sharp blow designed to separate his head from his shoulders, a smile crossed the old man’s face.