Cave of the Shadow Ninja: Part IV Page 5

  The prisoners and their captors moved through the slot canyon on the southeast rim of the Broken Mountain and entered the wide-open crater at the center known as The Basin. The scar left by the Dragon Osmium was an almost perfect circle of gray sheer cliffs rising impossibly high above them.

  As the center for transport across the Backbone, the strategic advantage of the mountain’s paths made the Basin the most contested piece of land in the entire war. Both the Basin itself, and the strategic high points of the rim were so sought after, the positions could change hands multiple times in a single day.

  After generations, the countless arrows fired from above became so congested across the basin floor that travelers walked across the feathered notches as if on a raised platform above the gathering muck below.

  Along with the arrows, thousands of large spears several meters long and as wide as fence posts were fired over dozens of ballistae positioned along the rim. The shafts of the giant spears piercing the ground below were so plentiful, they rose like a strange forest of trees with arrows as their branches spaced no more than two or three feet apart.

  Navigation through the wooden posts made crossing the basin floor an arduous task even in times of peace. The gathering rainwater made the journey as uncomfortable as it was treacherous, as it formed the surroundings into an unholy swamp, thick with humidity and lingering mist with a never-ending choir of frogs and insects singing through the sweep.

  Akiko and her silent brothers followed the guardsmen across the carpet of arrows, working their way into the heart of the basin where the space between the towering poles became so narrow the party was forced to walk single-file.

  The air became thick and hot like a swampland inlet and the light cutting through the massive pillars faded with each step. Free from the scowling eyes of the guardsmen, Akiko sensed Ozo’s nerves growing steadily as they paced through the wooden maze.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  Ozo looked to Ichi before he spoke but his eldest brother cut him off with a quick order of, “No.”

  “By Skyfire,” Patrick swore from ahead of them, “you’d think you’d get used to these hand vices, but the pain just gets worse!”

  “Did everyone get that?” Sendai commented. “It seems Patrick is unhappy with his torture device.” The Wolfen snorted a laugh at his friend’s successful attempt to put him in his place as they turned the sharp corner between the poles.

  “I’m sorry, Akiko,” Ozo erupted, his lack of patience finally getting the better of him. “It doesn’t matter who trained you.”

  “Respect, Ozo!” Ichi snapped back.

  “This is respect,” Ozo argued, relieved to get the thought off his chest. “There’s nothing uncivil about an apology.”

  “There is when it’s to one who scorned your father,” Ichi demanded.

  “If you ask me,” Sendai offered, “it’s obvious which of the four of you knows what it’s like to be rejected.” Akiko caught her reflection in Sendai’s goggles as he turned his approving gaze toward her. “We have a few days of marching ahead of us, child,” he reassured her. “We’ll get out of this.”

  “You may be right,” Akiko said as she moved through the ancient pillars. “But no matter what side of the chains we’re on, my father dies in the morning.”

  “Then we’d better get out of here now,” Patrick offered, the echoes of his voice swallowed by the wooded poles around them.

  “Try as you might,” Ichi interrupted, “but I’ll do whatever is required to stop you.”

  “What, snitch?” Patrick asked. “Where’s the ‘honor’ in that?”

  “Where’s the honor if I don’t?” Ichi rebutted.

  “Quiet!” one of the soldiers called from ahead.

  The moment the group came to a sudden stop, the hauntingly familiar smell of manta drifted across Akiko’s sinuses. “Captain,” she called without hesitation, catching the attention of the other soldiers as well, “there are forces at work here I don’t think you understand.”

  “I understand, Ninja,” Ping responded, keeping his eyes on the surrounding piles. “I’ll deal with your witch when the time comes, but without his worms, Oni’s threat is over.”

  “No,” Akiko said as the scent of death filled the air around her, “it’s far from over.”

  At that moment the sounds of the croaking frogs and buzzing insects faded altogether into a terrifying silence. “What is it?” Ichi asked, breaking through the deafening quiet.

  “A flood,” Ozo warned, his eyes shifting to the arrows beneath their feet.

  Suddenly, a lake of dark water rose between the notches, licking at the warriors’ heels. Without time to think, something entered Akiko’s sinuses that signaled all her instincts at once. Swiftly she smashed her hands against the pole beside her, shattering the finger vices on impact. Too quick for Ping, Akiko pulled the onyx sword from his scabbard and swung it toward the darkness, carving something dark and heavy in two.

  Captain Ping and his soldiers fell back, startled at Akiko’s speed as two halves of a thick, black snake splashed into the black water at their feet.

  It was a cobra, changed by the manta into something much larger and much more dangerous. A row of spines curved over the edges of the serpent’s hood and a long black tongue hung from its mouth liked a forked leech.

  Ping looked to the creature then to Akiko, now free from her bindings with his sword in her hands.

  Escape would be effortless, she thought. She needed only to leap into the dark to disappear. Ping would order half his men to scatter and the other half to guard the others. Within moments, she would have each man who pursued her lost and swinging at shadows while she escaped, never to be seen again.

  As the Ninja and Captain Ping locked eyes across the path, she knew he knew what she was thinking, and there would be nothing he could do about it. Akiko looked to her friends and brothers, growing desperate as the manta licked at the soles of their shoes until she finally lowered Ping’s sword and offered it back to him.

  After a breath of relief, Ping took the blade and flicked a silent order to his men to cut through the wooden bindings holding Patrick, Sendai, and the Sons of Sato’s hands.

  “Ahhh!” Patrick complained, “it hurts worse when they come off!”

  Without hesitation, the soldiers, samurai, and outlaws leapt together, climbing the arrows logged into the spear shafts away from the claustrophobic floor. As they climbed, and Akiko sensed a smack of doubt in Ping’s mind, doubt that she was who he had imagined her to be.

  Above the scattered poles, the basin was quiet and open with thick fog concealing the landscape around them. The warriors struggled to keep balance on the rotting bases of the pillars as they stood, appraising their position.

  “I feel so much safer now,” Patrick said as he waved his hands in circles, attempting to keep his balance.

  “What happened to the bright side of things?” Sendai asked.

  “I left it in the desert with your sword,” Patrick complained.

  “We move east,” Ping ordered, giving Akiko a look that suggested he expected her continued cooperation. Obeying his order, the soldiers along with Akiko, her friends, and brothers leapt across the precarious tops of the spears toward the eastern pass.

  Beside the Ninja, Ozo bounced across the uncertain landscape like a well-trained acrobat until his feet touched a certain pole, and he suddenly halted.

  “What is it?” Akiko asked.

  “A flood,” he responded in horror, looking toward the eastern rim of the basin.

  “You said that,” Patrick offered, his less-trained feet trying desperately to keep his balance.

  “Turn around,” Akiko warned the others as she watched her brother turn white. “He means what he says.”

  Without time to think, a pulse of writhing snakes surged from the eastern crevice like an upturned bowl of worms soaked in black ink.

  Akiko watched as Ping struggled to keep his balance while the soldiers
ahead of him were swallowed instantly by the writhing horde.

  The rest of the warriors turned fast and bound across the tops of the poles together, running for their lives as the snakes roared toward them like a deadly wave in a blackened sea.

  Serpents burped from the cascading mass and lunged toward the warriors, catching one of Ping’s men by the ankle with a strike so hard, it flipped the man into the air. Patrick flinched, attempting to keep his legs below him as the soldier cracked into the pillars and screamed while the biting snakes enveloped him.

  “They’re swarming,” Akiko yelled, “like ants or bees!”

  “If that’s true,” Patrick called after her, “then who is the queen?”

  Behind them, another soldier fell as an attacking asp found his footfall and curled around his leg.

  Akiko stole a glance back to Ping as a twisting arm of tangled snakes struck at him from behind, and the captain carved the flailing arm into writhing bits with his onyx blade.

  “A sword,” the Ninja thought as she flexed her aching hands, “I’d feel a lot safer with a sword.”

  Ahead, her three brothers kept close pace as they worked their way toward the slot canyons known as The Deadly Contest. The closer they came to the edge of the basin, poles on which the warriors bound across became fewer and farther between. With the sudden need of more momentum in each leap, Akiko concentrated on the foggy path ahead hoping that the laws of chaos would continue providing the lifesaving footholds through the blinding mist.

  Akiko sensed Patrick’s panicked breathing as he forced himself into a leaping sprint, stretching and struggling with each jump until the inevitable happened. . . .

  As the Wolfen grunted toward an approaching post, he slipped against the moistened wood, crashed into the spear, and fell into the darkness below.

  Akiko and Sendai stopped, unable to move as they stared into the emptiness. “Patrick!” Sendai called, but there was no answer.

  Without hesitation, the Metecian leapt after his friend, disappearing into the void.

  “Sendai!” Akiko called, her pulse racing. “Patrick!

  After a moment, the mist cleared and a lock of unmistakable red hair appeared. Patrick and Sendai stood together on the sloping pile of skulls and bones that had erupted from the western canyon, filling in the edge of the basin at their feet.

  “What are you standing around for?” Patrick asked as the Sons of Sato caught up. “There’s a wall of demon snakes over there, you know!”

  Akiko couldn’t help but smile as she and her brothers leapt down to greet the mercenaries.

  “Nobody else made it?” Sendai asked.

  “Yes,” Ozo answered, reading the ground beneath his feet, “there’s one left. . . .”

  Akiko turned as Ping appeared through the fog, bruised and limping with armor splattered in equal amounts of manta and blood. The captain stopped when he saw Akiko, gave her silent look of gratitude, and fell forward onto the pile of skulls.

  Akiko and the others moved in to help Ping but stopped fast at what they saw: Dozens of snakes had bitten into Ping’s back and hung there like parasites, writing and flipping their tails against one another as their fangs pumped manta into his flesh.

  With his last bit of strength, Ping looked to Akiko as black manta spilled from his lips. “You’re all we have, Ninja,” he gurgled. “Do what the witch said and finish what you started!”

  Without words, Akiko watched, helpless as the captain’s eyes turned white and the snakes dragged his pulsating body back into the writhing mass.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The tradition and honor of the samurai was steeped in simplicity. The rule was, “If one possessed little, than one had little to lose.” But now, as the chill settled over his shoulders and the hairs prickled over his arms, Sato admitted to himself that a cloak made of something more substantial than dead grass was far from too much to ask.

  The master flexed his aching back as he trudged through an endless field of thick reeds growing like coarse hair over the back of a great beast. Sato’s geta, the traditional elevated wooden sandals of the wanderers and rice farmers of Bushan, were designed to provide insulation from the soggy ground, but as the mud worked its stinging cold deep into his bones, the master seemed to have found a limit to their usefulness.

  Sato pulled the cape of woven straw over his shoulders and bent his conical hat into the breeze as a wrap of thunder called from the stone-gray clouds beyond the hills surrounding him. The winter, he thought, like my sorrow, refuses to withdraw.

  Over the past six months, as the slow ache of time began to show itself through the many barns and borrowed spots of ground serving as Sato’s bed, the importance of his mission had quickened the old man’s pace across the countryside. In the ten years since Akiko had disappeared, not a single day had passed that the master hadn’t thought about what his honor had cost him. Through those years, he had searched for Akiko in any way he could, but with his sons and their legacy his priority, the master couldn’t afford much more than a few questions thrown at the skin farmers and pimps in the red light districts by which he passed on his varied missions.

  The old samurai lived that way for as long as he had the strength until the very moment he felt his sons were capable of living and fighting on their own. Finally, his lifelong goal took its rightful place at the forefront of Sato’s life, and he had left his beloved home, promising his dear wife, Kimi that he would not return without Akiko in hand.

  She’d be nineteen now, he thought as the tall reeds closed in around him, old enough to take her own path, to find her way home if she had the desire. The many friends and strangers with whom Sato had shared a fire on this journey suggested, of course, that if the girl’s trail had gone cold, she was most likely dead. Akiko’s trail was cold, no doubt, but it was too cold, and the master had tracked enough men to know that dead men don’t cover their tracks. The only conclusion was that his daughter had actively worked to stave off her discovery, a decision in league with such a willful soul.

  The first place Sato looked was Bokairo, the Bushanese home to hundreds of kung-fu schools. As he had predicted, Akiko was there, begging every teacher in the city to take her on as a student. But each of the dozens of sensei who told Sato they had turned her down said that she never returned to ask a second, third, or fortieth time. Knowing Akiko, this just didn’t make sense. The city was where her trail ran cold.

  Sato knew she was too headstrong for any luring promises the red lantern districts or conmen had to offer, and foul play almost always left evidence behind.

  “No,” he reassured himself as he pushed through the impeding grass, “hers was a careful disappearance. Akiko’s heart beats still.”

  The only logical conclusion Sato could draw was that his daughter had found what she was looking for. While searching through the War Pits of Siglos, the old man visited a local eatery where he overheard Katchaka, a well-known and boastful war baron, spitting a loathsome combination of tall tales and bits of food from his lips.

  The hairy Siglosian, dressed in straps of leather and unkempt fur, considered himself the foremost authority on “wet stones,” a euphemism for slaves bought in bulk for the use of training and “sharpening” a gladiator’s skills. As the war baron burped out his stories, he announced, loudly enough for the entire tent to hear, that the market had run dry, and he had been forced to use the buhn to fill his quota.

  “Tell me,” Sato asked, interrupting the large man’s greasy bloviations, “where does one buy buhn?”

  “The usual places,” the Siglosian sputtered. “If you’re in the market, I happen to know a man on the Dragon’s Tail who trains the girls as a band of thieves.” It was a lead, yes, but it wasn’t until the dishonorable man’s gaze shifted to the fire that Sato knew it was worth a look.

  The idea of a thieves’ guild on the Backbone was improbable enough, but after all of Katchaka’s boasting and lies, it was this question that drew his eye to the fire, exposing the lie m
eant for Sato’s ears alone. The master had been careful to ensure all of those who sold secrets had learned of his journey and this was the first sign that the effort was paying off.

  It was an easily avoidable ruse, but as Sato had taught his sons, “Sometimes the only way to find what you’re looking for is to allow yourself to fall into a trap.”

  As the master continued through the muck, following the bait placed before him, something flew from the tall grass. His reflexes snapped, capturing a juicy insect in his fingers. Every samurai forms the habit of living off that which the land provided and the nutrient-rich locusts living among the high grasses often proved the best source of food.

  As he would with any gift received, Sato shot a quick look to the sky to thank his ancestors before routinely raising the morsel toward his lips.

  The samurai paused, however, when he saw what was poised to enter his mouth: It was a grasshopper but like none he’d ever seen. The creature was the size of his thumb, polished black like an opal with eyes as purple as amethysts. Its pulsing mandibles grew heavy and large from its jaw and dripped a strange inky liquid onto his fingers. Disgusted, Sato threw the upsetting specimen over his shoulder, but the moment it left the old man’s hand, the insect caught the air with its clicking wings, landed back on his forearm, and sunk its teeth into his soft flesh.

  Sato flung the creature from his arm, but it came for him a second time. He had enough to worry about without angry insects to contend with so the master’s red sword whipped from its scabbard and sliced the creature up the middle.

  As a piece of the black insect landed on either side of the samurai, the pain from its bite suddenly roared to life, searing like a drip of molten steel against his flesh. Unprepared for the sudden agony, Sato dropped his sword and hunched over, grabbing at his wrist.

  He closed his eyes, attempting to corral the burning sensation. There, he thought as his chi began to numb the sights and sounds around him, take hold of the wind like a falcon and let it pull you away. As the familiar stillness began lifting him into a sense of weightlessness, something pushed through, holding him fast, and preventing the peace from taking its turn.