The Way Of The Sword

For my mother

Japan, August 1612

‘The Deathstalker is the most poisonous scorpion known to man,’ explained the ninja, taking a large black specimen from a wooden box and placing it into his student’s trembling hand. ‘Armed, silent and deadly, it’s the ultimate assassin.’

The student tried in vain to control her shaking as the eight-legged creature crawled over her skin, its stinger glistening in the half-light.

She knelt before the ninja in a small candlelit room crammed full of ceramic jars, wooden boxes and little cages. Inside these containers were an array of poisonous potions, powders, plants and creatures. The ninja had already shown her blood-red berries, bulbous blowfish, brightly coloured frogs, long-legged spiders and coils of black-hooded snakes – each specimen lethal to humans.

‘One sting from a Deathstalker and the victim suffers unbearable pain,’ the ninja went on, observing the fear flare in his student’s eyes. ‘Convulsions are followed by paralysis, loss of consciousness and finally death.’

At this, the student became still as stone, her eyes fixed on the scorpion crawling up her arm and towards her neck. Paying no attention to the imminent danger his student was in, the ninja continued with his instruction.

‘As part of your
ninjutsu
training, you must learn
dokujutsu
, the Art of Poison. When you’re sent on missions, you’ll discover that stabbing your victim with a knife is messy and there’s a high chance of failure. But poisoning is silent, hard to detect and, when administered properly, guaranteed to work.’

The scorpion had now reached her neck, having crept into the inviting dark of her long black hair. She turned her head away, trying to distance herself from the creature’s approach, her breathing shallow and rapid with panic. The ninja ignored her plight.

‘I will teach you how to extract the poison from different plants and animals, and which ones you should apply to your weapons, mix in food and lace your victim’s drink with,’ the ninja said, running his fingers over a cage and making the snake inside strike at the bars. ‘You must also build a tolerance to these poisons, since there’s nothing to be gained from dying by your own hand.’

He turned to see his student raising her arm to brush away the scorpion nestled in the crook of her neck. He gently shook his head.

‘Many toxins have an antidote. I will show you how to mix these. Others can be overcome by taking small amounts of the poison over time until your body has built a natural defence against it. There are others, though, for which no antidote exists.’

He pointed to a tiny blue-ringed octopus, no bigger than a baby’s fist, in a trough of water. ‘Beautiful as it is, this animal’s venom is so powerful it will kill a man in minutes. I recommend using this one in drinks like
saké
and
sencha
, since it is tasteless.’

The student could no longer bear the scorpion on her. She swiped at the creature, dislodging it from her hair, and screamed as it sank its barb deep into her hand. The flesh round the wound immediately began to swell.

‘Help me…’ she moaned as searing pain exploded up her arm.

The ninja gazed unsympathetically at his convulsing student. ‘You’ll live,’ he replied, picking up the scorpion by its tail and dropping it back into its box. ‘He’s old and large. It’s the small female ones you have to watch out for.’

The student collapsed unconscious to the floor.

‘You’re cheating!’ said the little girl.

‘No, I’m not!’ protested Jack, who knelt opposite his little sister in the back garden of their parents’ cottage.

‘Yes, you are! You’re supposed to clap before picking up the bones.’

Jack stopped protesting; his look of mock innocence didn’t fool Jess one bit. As much as he loved his sister, a slight girl of seven with light-blue eyes and mousey-blonde hair, he knew she was a stickler for the rules. Most days Jess was as harmless as a buttercup, but when they played Knucklebones, she became as strict and severe as their mother was about the household chores.

Jack picked up the five sheep’s knucklebones from the ground and started again. They were the size of small pebbles, their edges rubbed smooth from all the play he and Jess had subjected them to during the summer. Despite the oppressive heat, the white bones felt oddly cold in his hands.

‘Bet you can’t beat my twosies!’ dared Jess.

Taking up the challenge, Jack cast four bones on to the ground. He then threw the fifth bone high into the air, clapped and seized a knuckle out of the grass before catching the falling bone. He repeated the process with practised ease until he had all five back in his hand.

‘Onesies,’ said Jack.

Unimpressed, Jess plucked a daisy out of the grass in pretend boredom.

Jack recast the bones, completing the second round in a couple of easy swipes.

‘Twosies!’ he announced, before tossing the knuckles back on to the grass. Then, throwing one up in the air and clapping, he grabbed three before capturing the falling bone.

‘Threesies!’
exclaimed Jess, unable to contain her astonishment.

Grinning, Jack recast the knucklebones a final time.

In the distance, the sound of thunder rolled heavily across the darkening sky. The air was becoming thick and muggy with an encroaching summer storm, but Jack ignored the change in weather. Instead he concentrated on the challenge of picking up all four bones at once.

Jack tossed the single knuckle high into the air and clapped just as there was an almighty
crack!
A shaft of jagged white lightning scorched the sky, striking a distant hilltop and setting a tree ablaze. It burned blood red against the blackening sky. But Jack was too focused on the game to be distracted. He snatched up the four knucklebones before catching the fifth only a hand’s breadth from the earth.

‘I did it! I did it! Four in one go!’ enthused Jack.

He looked up triumphantly and saw that Jess had disappeared.

So too had the sun. Thunderous clouds as black as pitch now raced across a boiling sky.

Jack stared in bewilderment at the sudden ferocity of the weather. Then he became vaguely aware of something crawling inside his clasped hand. The knucklebones felt like they were
moving
.

Tentatively, he opened his hand.

He gasped. Scurrying across his palm were four tiny black scorpions.

They surrounded the remaining white knuckle, their deadly tails striking at the bone, each of their venomous barbs dripping lethal poison.

One of the scorpions turned and scuttled up his forearm. In a wild panic, Jack shook it off, dropping all the scorpions into the grass, and ran headlong for the house.

‘Mother! Mother!’ he screamed, then immediately thought of Jess. Where was she?

Large drops of rain began to fall and the garden was cast into shadow. He could just make out the five knuckle-bones lying discarded in the grass, but there was no sign of the scorpions or of Jess.

‘Jess? Mother?’
he cried at the top of his lungs.

No one answered.

Then he heard the soft singing of his mother coming from the kitchen:

bq.

bq.

‘A man of words and not of deeds

bq.

bq.

Is like a garden full of weeds

bq.

bq.

And when the weeds begin to grow

bq.

bq.

It’s like a garden full of snow…’

Jack darted along the narrow corridor towards the kitchen.

The cottage was all shadows, as murky and dank as a catacomb. A glimmer of light seeped through a small crack in the kitchen door. From within, his mother’s voice faded and rose like the sighing of the wind:

bq.

bq.

‘And when the snow begins to fall

bq.

bq.

It’s like a bird upon the wall

bq.

bq.

And when the bird away does fly

bq.

bq.

It’s like a hawk up in the sky…’

Jack put his eye to the crack and could see his mother sitting in her apron with her back to the door, peeling potatoes with a large curved knife. A single candle lit the room, making the knife’s shadow upon the wall appear as monstrous as a samurai sword.

bq.

bq.

‘And when the sky begins to roar

bq.

bq.

It’s like a lion at the door…’

Jack pushed at the kitchen door. It grated over the stone-clad flooring, but still his mother did not look round.

‘Mother?’ he asked. ‘Did you hear me…?’

bq.

bq.

‘And when the door begins to crack

bq.

bq.

It’s like a stick across your back…’

‘Mother! Why won’t you answer me?’

The rain was now falling so hard outside it sounded like fish frying in a pan. Jack stepped across the threshold and approached his mother. She kept her back towards him, her fingers working feverishly with the knife, stripping the skin off potato after potato.

bq.

bq.

‘And when your back begins to smart

bq.

bq.

It’s like a penknife in your heart…’

Jack tugged on her apron. ‘Mother? Are you all right?’

From the other room, Jack heard a stifled scream, and in that moment his mother turned on him, her voice suddenly harsh and grating:

bq.

bq.

‘And when your heart begins to bleed

bq.

bq.

You’re dead, and dead, and dead indeed.’

Jack found himself staring directly into the sunken eye sockets of an old hag, her oily grey hair crawling with lice. The figure, whom he had believed to be his mother, now raised the knife to Jack’s throat, a sliver of potato hanging from the blade like freshly peeled skin.

‘You’re dead indeed,
gaijin
!’ rasped the shrivelled witch, her rotten breath making Jack gag.

She gave a callous laugh as Jack ran screaming for the door.

Jack could hear Jess’s anguished cries deep within the cottage. He burst into the front room.

The large armchair, where his father always sat, faced the fire in the grate. The flickering flames silhouetted a shrouded figure seated in it.

‘Father?’ enquired Jack tentatively.

‘No,
gaijin
. Your father’s dead.’

A gnarly finger protruded from a black-gloved hand and pointed to the prone body of Jack’s father, who lay broken and bleeding on the wooden floorboards in the far corner of the room. Jack recoiled at the gruesome fate of his father, and the floor began to heave like the deck of a ship.

With a single leap, the shrouded figure flew from the chair to the latticed casement window. The intruder clutched Jess in his arms.

Jack’s heart stopped.

He recognized the single jade-green eye glowering at him through the slit in the hood. The figure, dressed head-to-toe in the black
shinobi shozoku
of a ninja, was Dokugan Ryu.

Dragon Eye. The ninja who had killed his father and hunted Jack ruthlessly and was now kidnapping his little sister.

‘No!’ screamed Jack as he flung himself across the room to save her.

But other ninja, like black widow spiders, materialized from the walls to stop him. Jack fought them off with all his might, but every faceless ninja he defeated was immediately replaced by the next.

‘Another time,
gaijin
!’ hissed Dragon Eye as he turned and disappeared into the raging storm. ‘The
rutter
is not forgotten.’

The pale light of dawn filtered through the tiny window and rain continued to drip sluggishly from the lintel to the sill.

A single eye stared through the gloom at Jack.

But it was not Dokugan Ryu’s.

It belonged to the Daruma Doll that Sensei Yamada, his Zen teacher, had given him during his first week of samurai training at the
Niten Ichi Ryū
, the ‘One School of Two Heavens’ in Kyoto.

More than a year had passed since Jack’s fateful arrival in Japan when a ninja attack upon the trading ship his father piloted had left him stranded and fighting for his life. The sole survivor, Jack had been rescued by the legendary warrior Masamoto Takeshi, the founder of this particular samurai school.

Injured, unable to speak the language and without friends or family to look after him, Jack had had little choice but to do as he was told. Besides, Masamoto was not the sort of man to have his authority questioned – a fact proven when he adopted Jack, a foreigner, as his son.