Lord Oda's Revenge by Nick Lake Page B

the top of one-eye’s head.
    She turned. There was one samurai left, and he was armed. He held his sword before him like a talisman that might protect him. She noticed that his arms were trembling. She slid her sword back into its scabbard.
    â€˜You,’ she said. ‘Take me to Kenji Kira.’ The man was young – he hadn’t spoken the whole time, and his beard had barely grown in. He had light brown eyes that reminded her of her sister’s.
    She was a hawk, not a blade, and she had hot blood inside her and was capable of pity.
    The man ran at her, screaming. She sighed, then sidestepped, tripped him as he went past. His head hit the wooden wall of the hut with a dull thud; she knelt to drop the tip of her sword – it took no more force than that – into his back and through his heart.
    The walk from the blood-filled hut took only moments, itseemed, and then she was in the highest of high places; she could see the peaks of the other mountains all around her. Kenji Kira was lying among broken rocks in a gully that led to the summit. A trickle of water ran down the rocks, perhaps to widen into a stream lower down. As Yukiko approached, he was licking this water from the stone. There was no moss here, even – it was too high. Only cold stone, the bones of the mountain.
    Gods
, she thought. She had heard that Kenji Kira had once been trapped on a battlefield, watching tiny creatures feed on his dead comrades, and ever after he had been obsessed with the idea of avoiding the state of decay, of making his body proof against putrefaction. It was even said that his loyalty to Lord Oda derived from a promise Oda had made – that if and when Kira died in his service, he would have him embalmed, or frozen in ice – the stories differed on that point.
    Now it seemed he was attempting this process for himself.
    He looked up. ‘Who. . . are. . . you?’
    â€˜My name is Yukiko. I come from Lord Oda.’ She held out the sword, showed him the
mon
.
    He nodded wearily. ‘Kill me then,’ he said. ‘Just. . . leave my body here. I should like to be cold. To be stone. I should like. . . not to rot.’
    She stared at him. ‘I’m not here to kill you,’ she said.
    Now it was his turn to stare. ‘No? But I failed. I did not find Taro. I do not know where to look.’
    â€˜You found his mother’s message. You went to the place she was.’
    â€˜Yes. And it was destroyed. Lord Tokugawa did it. For all I know he has Taro now. He has his son. He has his heir.’
    She smiled. It took an effort – every atom of her being was telling her to kill this man, to avenge her sister Heiko’s death athis hands. But that could wait. It would be sweeter if she waited. She was patient. It was something she’d learned.
    â€˜Taro was not at Mount Fuji,’ she said.
    He peered at her. She saw how thin he was, how the skin stretched tight over his bones. It was true, everything she’d heard about him – it was as if he was turning already to stone, to something hard and cold. She couldn’t understand how he could want this. How he could want to be something other than human. ‘You’re. . . sure?’ he asked.
    â€˜I’m sure. Taro is at the ninja mountain. Now – did it not occur to you that, having intercepted his mother’s message, you could simply substitute a different one? Send him a false message?’
    â€˜You mean. . . trap him?’
    She nodded.
    â€˜But. . .’ Kira stammered. ‘I would not be capable of getting a message to the ninja mountain. I don’t know where it is.’
    Yukiko forced herself to smile again. ‘No. But I do.’ She reached down and held him under one armpit, helped him to his feet. It seemed a travesty, to be assisting the man who had killed her sister – she had the impression that she would be bringing him down from this high cold place into life again, that