Kiai! & Mistress of Death Page 19

  "No wild pack, then," I said. "Someone trained those dogs to kill men!"

  Makato muttered something, shaking his head, but Diago did not translate. "Let's get you cleaned up," Diago said to Pedro. "Blood could attract more animals."

  "Doesn't matter," Pedro responded. "It'll dry soon." But Diago spent a lot of time washing off the arms with snow until they were absolutely clean, despite his own coldness.

  We went on. We knew we were getting close to our destination, because the dogs must have been set on us by the ninjas, or whatever. Hiroshi had not said the castle was defended by ninjas, or explained why anyone should try to prevent us from visiting old Fu Antos there. But Hiroshi was a master of understatement. It was obvious now that there was malignant opposition to our mission, and we would have to be on guard at all times. Those dogs would have wiped out any ordinary party, with no chance for discussion or retreat.

  But what was the threat of death to me, when I was doomed anyway by the delayed death-blow? Diago hardly cared about life, after the betrayal of his half-adopted country, America. But Fu Antos might be able to help him, too. Pedro claimed he just wanted the adventure, having read about the ninjas a great deal. But more than that was driving him, I was sure. Makato, dissatisfied with his progress in mastering ki, thought Fu Antos might in one simple gesture present him with what he needed. I was cynical about that, too, but glad to have his powerful fist along. And Jim, well, perhaps the truth was that we all needed to get away from the world and interact with each other, coming at last to whatever accommodations we might; Fu Antos was merely the pretext.

  The mountain became steeper. We plodded on, following the tracks of the dogs. Certainly we were not going to give up after such an attack; it united us in a bond of anger. Why should such obstacles be put in our way? Was old Fu in fact being held prisoner by the ninjas?

  The trail led up a ledge hugging the side of the mountain. We went single file though there was room to go abreast. We came around a turn.

  The ninjas were there, rising up all about us in their snow-white tunics. I knew their traditional garb was black, but that would only make them obvious in the snow, so they had wisely adapted to their environment. Ninjas were never fools about combat, and there was now no doubt these were ninjas. Even their weapons were white, and they carried an appalling variety. Sword, axe, pike, bow, and more devious instruments whose nature I could not grasp at first glance. They had lain in ambush despite the cold, and no wonder we hadn't spied them sooner. They had been buried in snowdrift.

  Diago was in the lead. He looked up to see the bowman taking aim, while a little behind was another man with a contraption like a flamethrower made of bamboo. Diago recognized it as a watergun probably filled with poison or acid. Ninjas did not like to use firearms, but were ingenious in inventing devilish devices of their own.

  There were nine of the ghostly white figures, so they outnumbered our party almost two to one. They had assorted weapons, whereas we had, except for Diago's knife, only our hands. They could mow us down from a distance with bow and spear and jets of poison and thrown knives. Diago knew he had to act. He gave his devastating kiai yell. The rest of us, warned by his stance, covered our ears, muffling that awful shriek to some extent. It was not completely effective in this open air, with the enemy protected by wool and armor, but it was still an extraordinary shock to the unsuspecting ninjas. Diago concentrated on the worst immediate danger: the man with the watergun. That man twisted and fell to the ground in an involuntary reaction to the kiai. His watergun discharged a stream of liquid full on the face of the archer, who was just drawing on his bowstring. The archer screamed and clawed at his eyes, his arrow driving into the snow as the bow dropped.

  But there was one ninja who was not set back by the kiai. An older man, sharp of visage and with his head enclosed in some kind of protective turban. His weapon was a kusarigama, the chained sickle. On one end of the long fine chain was the L-shaped sickle, ready for its anchored throw. It was almost impossible to stop safely. On the other was a silver counterweight suitable for entangling the opponent's weapon. Diago's knife was in his hand, but before he could even lift this feeble defense the silver weight shot out and wrapped about it, pinning both knife and hand and holding Diago captive for the flying stroke of the sickle. Not even his voice could save him now.

  Pedro was familiar with the kusarigama, however; he had several in his Nicaraguan collection of weapons. He whipped out one of his starshaped shuriken throwing knives—actually a ninja weapon. He skated it at the sickleman's face just as the ninja was ready to skewer Diago. But Pedro's shot went wide, merely grazing the white turban. The man whirled around, taking aim instead at Pedro.

  Pedro swore in Spanish, ready with another metal star. He squatted to emulate the position he had practiced in the wheelchair, and fired again as the ninja's arm flashed back for the throw. This one caught the man in the upper biceps, tearing into the muscle and making the sickle fly wild.

  "That's the way!" Jim cried. "Good thing I practiced you up for this!" Pedro's lip curled, half in anger, half in mirth. But now the ninjas had recovered from the momentary shock of the kiai, and were charging upon us in a mass. The fallen watergunner had rolled down the slope until almost upon Diago, and now was drawing a knife. Diago blocked the thrust and kicked him on the jaw, breaking it and knocking him out more lastingly. But the first of the charge was upon him: a ninja armed with tiger's claws. Even as Diago dispatched the knifewielder, the metal talons raked him from forehead to jaw: four parallel gouges down the side of his face. Diago did not even exclaim with pain; he gripped that arm and threw the ninja with a kouchi-gari, minor inner reaping throw. He shoved the man backward while pulling down on his sleeve and reaping his heel. Even so, the ninja managed to rake him again, this time on the abdomen. Diago put a jujiga-tame cross armlock on him and broke the arm at the elbow.

  Still the ninja fought, raking him with the other claw on arm and chest. Diago had to kick him repeatedly in the head until at last he was unconscious. There was no quarter given or asked here. Makato, meanwhile, was right at home. A ninja came at him with a battle-axe, lifting it high for a devastating downward chop. Makato stepped in and blocked the descending arm with one hand. With the other he smashed a powerful punch to the sternum bone of the chest. The man wore a mail shirt under his white tunic, but this was almost useless against the karateka's iron fist. The ninja fell unconscious, lucky to be alive.

  The swordsman was there almost at the same time, trying to score with a rapier-thrust though it was a katana he wielded. This was because he didn't want to decapitate his own man with a wild swing. Makato saw him and dodged swiftly to the side, letting the sword pass so close that it severed the threads of his heavy cotton jacket, then grabbing for the hand. But the ninja, no clumsy amateur, was already whipping the weapon away, and Makato caught the blade instead. It cut into his hand, but his calluses resisted enough for him to grip it anyway and use it to pull the ninja forward. With his other hand he delivered a terrible open-handed slap to the swordarm elbow.

  The ninja's arms were protected, but it made no effective difference for this blow. The arm broke. Makato had shown good judgment in not going for the neck, for that was protected by a barbed chainmail throat-guard. But the joints remained vulnerable, for too-heavy armor would have hampered the ninja's movement. Without letting go the sword, Makato kicked the side of the ninja's knee with the side of his foot. This too was vulnerable; the ligaments and inner cartilage tore, and the man fell screaming. There is nothing more painful than a broken kneecap.

  Already the warrior with the pike was going for the karateka's unprotected back. This ninja was in full plate armor in the ancient Japanese style, with lots of gold and silver filagree, all lacquered. He was completely covered, and moved comparatively slowly. But he would be a demon to stop; blows would not hurt him and the only part of him that showed was the eye behind the tiny eyeslit.

  Pedro had saved Diago from the kusarigama
; now he did the same for Makato with the pikeman. He produced a special shuriken, like a very small, very thin knife. He squatted to gain his once normal posture, then hurled the miniature blade at the armored face. This time the range was short and his aim unerring; the metal penetrated the eyeslit and lodged deep in the eye, felling the ninja.

  Another warrior came at Makato with a knife. The thrust was low, to gut him from beneath, and the stroke was fast and sure. Not one of these devotees of the ancient discipline was weak or slow. But Makato was ready for this, having faced experienced knife fighters many times before. He stepped in and deflected the knifearm outwards, at the same time lifting his knee to give the man a solid blow on the testes. The ninja collapsed in agony; the only thing that saved him from death was his mail crotch protection, a kind of armored underwear. In a moment he was mercifully unconscious.

  At the same time, I faced the ninja armed with spiked brass knuckles. His punch came at my face. I threw up my shoulder, but he twisted his fist as it landed, to mangle my upper arm. My heavy jacket protected me somewhat, but the sharp spikes were excruciating. Maddened, I turned and executed a throw forbidden in judo competition: yama-arashi, the mountain tempest. My leg swept both his legs from underneath him, while I lifted him high with a harai-goshi hip throw, then jumped into the air myself, turning and falling on top of him with my entire weight. He managed to strike me while he was in the air, however, wounding my trapesius muscle; I could hardly believe the tenacity of these fighting men. Then the fall, and he was knocked unconscious, perhaps severely injured. That was why this throw was normally forbidden: the terrible fall, like the thrust of an avalanche down the slope of a mountain. Even as this man slid down and out of sight, making his own small avalanche.

  The kusarigama man, wounded in the biceps by Pedro, was not out of the fray. The ninjas were hardened to suffering and trained to fight to the finish. They were professional killers, while we were amateurs. This one now went for Jim.

  Jim still did not realize what he was up against. He was much larger than the ninja, weighing two hundred pounds to the other's hundred and twentyfive; and Jim was in the pink of condition, facing a wounded older man. So he didn't really try, at first. Had I not been occupied myself, I would have screamed a warning at him.

  The two grappled. Jim threw the ninja with a harai-goshi, the same throw I was using simultaneously. But he did not convert it into the savage mountain tempest. He used it straight, just as I had done so foolishly against Makato in our first tournament match. Of course the ninja clung to him and brought them both to the ground. But the ninja maneuvered so that Jim was on his stomach, with the other on his back. Then the warrior seized Jim's head with one hand on each side and, ignoring the bleeding pain of his own arm, twisted rapidly and with extreme force.

  This, and all the other action about me, I comprehended in full only later, when I had opportunity to organize and assess the diverse and simultaneous impressions of the melee. I actually turned from my execution of the yama-arashi mountain tempest throw just in time to see that ferocious wrenching of Jim's head. His bull neck, his longstanding pride, was no protection against the savagery of this attack. I charged the ninja, kicking at his back.

  But as I reached him there was an awful snap! and Jim's neck was broken. His head lolled awfully to one side. At the same time all his natural functions let go, and he soiled himself. My heavy boot struck the ninja's lower back, in the middle of the spine between the kidneys. This blow broke his back, and he fell away, living but done for. But I kicked him again, and yet again, and I stomped on his face as he rolled over, grinding my icy heel into his eye socket and again and again into his mouth, breaking all his teeth, until his entire face was unrecognizable. Just a hamburger mess with a hole where the mouth had been. I didn't stop until Makato's strong hands hauled me off.

  If I had doubted before that I was a killer, no better than my companions, I could doubt no longer. But though we had won the battle, it was too late for Jim, as I had known when I heard that snap. He was dead, and as my rage abated I became numb again. Then my fading fury changed to horror. Pedro was leaning over one of the dead ninjas, carving open his body as he had that of the bear. He cut out the liver and held it up. He brought the hot morsel to his mouth and bit a bloody hunk out of it.

  He had reverted to cannibalistic ritualism. Makato and Diago looked on impassively, as though this were nothing out of the ordinary. They had probably seen it before.

  Could my own life possibly be worth it, to lose a friend like Jim? I would not be able to judge this until months or years or perhaps even decades had passed, assuming I lived that long. For the moment only peripheral thoughts registered around the raw central wound: if only I had talked to Jim, let him have Thera, who was really his type. What was the worth of any girl, compared to true friendship? Surely I had killed him.

  Now there was nothing to do but go on. Though the mission no longer seemed to matter.

  CHAPTER 12

  FU ANTOS

  We attended to our wounds, buried Jim, and moved on, pausing only to pick up the more useful weapons of the ninjas. Makato took the battle-axe, I took a fine long dirk, Pedro picked up the katana and Diago hefted the long pike. We noticed the cave from which both dogs and ninjas must have issued, but shunned it; it was probably thoroughly booby-trapped.

  We climbed farther, weakened by our injuries but unable to give up now. The footing was treacherous, the elevation cruel; one slip here could send a man sliding far down the mountain, perhaps to death or at least a roughing that would force him to turn back. Diago used his pike to brace himself and assist his climb: smart tactic.

  The notion of the cave became more tempting; could the traps be more hazardous than this challenge of nature? But I knew the answer: deadfalls and sharpened stakes were the least of the obstacles the cave passage would present. There might even be other ninjas waiting in ambush there. Out here, at least, the cold numbed my wounds somewhat.

  At last we crested the windy pass and had our first view of the castle. It nestled among snowcovered pines high on the far slope of the mountain. We were above it now, but there would be a difficult traverse to achieve it this day. We had little choice, however; a night out here, in our condition, could be disastrous.

  This was not the round-turreted stonework of the medieval European castles, but the stately square multistoried pagoda type of the Orient. From this height it appeared to be in ruins, with three tumbled-down towers and only one major edifice still standing. Most of the walls were fallen, but the main keep rose from the rubble and might still be habitable.

  "The Black Castle of legend," Pedro breathed. "I have read of it, but thought it was destroyed centuries ago."

  "Wasn't it?" I asked, staring down at the ruin. "Who would live there now?"

  "Fu Antos," Diago put in.

  "The Black Castle was the home of Sumita Takawa," Pedro said, oblivious to our remarks. I had not realized he was this much of a ninja fan. "He was an evil lord of the sixteenth century who ruled with an iron hand. But he incurred the displeasure of the emperor, who laid siege to the castle. For six months he held out valiantly, until he was defeated by treachery."

  "You tend to identify with the villains," Diago remarked, smiling as he leaned on his pike.

  Pedro only nodded affirmatively, and continued: "Then Sumita Takawa was taken and skinned alive and doused with vinegar, living. His castle was sacked and left with its corpses unburied. No one would approach it thereafter, as it was believed damned, and in time even the authenticity of the tale came to be doubted. Yet here it is: the Black Castle!"

  But I doubted it. There had been sieges and betrayals and slaughters in Japan's history, and certainly this castle had suffered pillage and ruinbut there was no proof that this was the Black Castle of the legend. Yet it hardly mattered, so I kept silent. We descended toward it. The structure was in a place of early shadows and darkness, despite the brightness of the surrounding snow. The forest encroached
closely: pine trees and—gingko? I remembered that the gingko, or maidenhair tree, was one of nature's oddities: a survival from the time of the dinosaurs. But I recognized it only by its fan-shaped leaves, and these were gone in winter. So perhaps these were not gingkos, and I was merely reacting to the growing aura of the castle. Old, reminiscent of things extinct. We crossed a frozen stream, breaking through the ice to fetch up chill drinking water. "Sometimes the ninjas poison streams," Pedro warned.

  "This feeds into their own water supply," Diago pointed out. "And the snow here hasn't been disturbed in the past few days." So we drank, reassured.

  The distance to the castle was greater than it had appeared, and I was becoming more tired despite the downward trek. It is actually harder to march downhill than on the level; I had heard that somewhere, but now I believed it. It has to do with the body fighting gravity. The closer we got, the more formidable the castle's ramparts loomed. The stones were black with dead moss, paint, age and perhaps even smoke smudges from the final burning. Hell, incarnate.

  Many things were illusory about this castle. For one thing, more of it was in repair than had appeared from a distance; obviously men could live here, if they chose to. The moat was in order too, representing a formidable barrier even in winter. The structure was not actually on the slant of the mountain, but in a pocket, a high valley. Our little stream fed the moat, and the moat drained into a marsh, and there was insufficient ice near the castle to sustain a man. We could not afford to fall in and get soaked; the chill would greatly hamper our fighting ability, already impaired, and a wet night could kill us. Where could we safely change?

  There was just one dry path through that marsh. Diago located it by poking through snow and ice until he found land, then prodded ahead with the pike step by step. He was getting better use from that erstwhile weapon than I had anticipated. It was dusk now, but we could not rush it.