I should have known. The Hyena had done the same thing the first time we met. As the ditty goes: "He who fights and runs away lives, to fight another day."
But this time I wasn't going to let him get away. There was no telling what mischief he would wreak upon the world.
I pursued him, but my thigh injury made me slow, and he was already out of sight behind the bamboo. His tracks led toward the swamp; did he have a boat there? He had to be somewhere near. I would find him!
Something stung me between the shoulders, just below the neck. The pain was minor, and I ignored it. But a coldness spread from that sting, suffusing my body I turned—and saw the Hyena standing behind me.
He made his hyena-laugh. I realized he had treacherously struck me with one of his curare darts. Now I was helpless, and surely that was what had happened to Ilunga in the house. I fell on my face in the mud at the edge of the swamp.
Yet I tried to fight it. The dart had passed through the cloth of my shirt; some of its poison would have been wiped off, leaving me with a minimal dose. I struggled mightily, and managed to get to my hands and knees. I sucked in air.
The Hyena laughed again, the pseudo-flesh of his mask billowing out from his face. He hurled another dart—and I lacked the reflex to dodge. It lodged in the side of my jaw, the point firm in the bone. This time I had gotten the full dose.
He stepped toward me, and there was no doubt of his intention. He had tried twice to kill me fairly, and failed. Now he would kill me unfairly.
I felt a fire in my hara, the seat of my vitality in my belly. Slowly it expanded.
It was the ki!
The Hyena kicked my shoulder. I rolled over on my back in the muck, but that sphere within me was still expanding, revitalizing my body. The ki was overcoming the poison! The power of motion was returning to my body, my limbs. But too slowly. I was still weak, very weak.
The Hyena took my head in his hands and stared into my eyes. In that moment I recognized him—and was amazed. This was one of the most powerful political figures in America, the consort of Senators and Cabinet ministers and governors! If they only knew his real nature...
I recoiled in horror. Maybe they did! If so, our government was every bit as corrupt as Fidel said it was.
The Hyena smiled. He had wanted me to know him, before he killed me. Then he pushed slowly on my face, letting the mud come up over my ears, to my mouth.
His revelation of identity had given me time. My ki exploded, banishing the lingering power of the curare. The dart still hung from the flesh of my jaw. I moved my hand quickly, wrenched it out, and stabbed him with it, in the neck.
He rocked back as if fatally wounded. For him, it was as if the dead had come to life and struck him down. Supposedly I was completely immobile.
Then he shoved at my head again, violently. My face went under, but as the mud covered my eyes and mouth and nose, I jackknifed. My legs came up and caught him in the belly. I boosted him right over my head and into the swamp.
I struggled out myself, wiping the muck from my face. I tried to stand, but the ki, its task completed, was already fading. The nerve damage of the two curare darts reasserted itself, and I sat down heavily in the mud. I was facing the Hyena, unable to do more than hold my upper body erect and clear of the swamp. If he came back to finish me now—
I saw him. He was sinking without a struggle. I realized two things, for my mind was clear despite the rigor of my body. The Hyena was immobile, because of his own curare poison; I must have scored directly on his carotid artery, so that the trace residual coating on the dart reached his brain quickly. And he was in no ordinary swamp. That was quicksand!
I would have pulled him out, for I would not voluntarily allow anyone to perish that way. But my ki was gone, and I was helpless. As his head sank beneath the semi-liquid, I heard the footsteps of another man approaching from behind. The Hyena's last minion?
"I got her out!" Danny called. "She's alive! Where's the beastman?" Then he stopped, realizing the situation. Together we watched the slow bubbles burst at the surface of the swamp.
Book II:
Ninja's Revenge
Prologue:
Fall Of The Black Castle
In the sixteenth century Japan was divided among a number of autonomous domains governed by feudal barons, or daimyos. In 1573 Oda Nobunaga, daimyo of the province of Owari, became the de facto shogun, or hereditary commander-in-chief of the army, the seat of power in Japan. The emperor was at this time largely a figurehead. For almost a decade thereafter Nobunaga consolidated his authority, subjugating hostile barons and restoring order in about half the empire.
But Nobunaga was a brutal man, even in a brutal age. He slaughtered wantonly. He destroyed the Buddhist stronghold on Mount Huei, burning the temple and three thousand buildings and massacring thousands of monks, women, and children. This terminated all Buddhist pretensions to political power—but at what cost?
History records that Nobunaga was treacherously assassinated by one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, in 1582. This was a half-truth, hiding a highly sensitive episode. The real manner of his demise was rigorously excised from all records, in a pogrom as savage as any implemented during his life.
Only one person survived to carry the truth; and for reasons of his own, that person did not speak.
The bright silk banners of the emperor fluttered in the wind: a great red dragon marching on the Black Castle. The samurai warriors wore armor dresses of glittering red, blue, and gold laminae; some had their heads bare, and others wore their hair tied in knots. Rank after rank they marched, an awesome display of power. Fu Antos, lord of the ninjas, looked out from the sturdy walls of the Black Castle, seething with rage. Fifteen years before, Fu's grandfather had influenced the emperor to promote Nobunaga's career, and soon the daimyo had become the most powerful man in Japan. Fu's grandfather had continued with valuable aid and advice until his mysterious illness and death two years before.
Fu's father, also a gifted ninja leader, had spoken darkly of poison smeared on the apples of the old man's private orchard, but the source of that treachery was unknown. The ninja who had performed the deed had committed seppuku, ritual suicide, before he could be interrogated; surely some outside force had motivated him. Fu's father had pursued the quest for information with extraordinary diligence right to the emperor's palace itself—where he died, suddenly, in what was said to be a most unfortunate hunting accident.
Fu Antos, barely twenty years old when he assumed the lordship of the Black Castle, was in many ways the most gifted ninja of them all. He required no further warnings. Someone highly placed was systematically eliminating the ninja leadership, and he was very likely to be next. He dismissed all personnel of questionable loyalty and prepared his defenses of the castle with exceeding care. And waited.
Now the enemy had manifested openly: the shogun himself!
Fu Antos had harbored suspicions, but the confirmation was a shock. Nobunaga tolerated no rival source of power in all of Japan—especially, it seemed, that to which he was beholden.
Fu Antos was a young giant, drilled in the most sinister arts of warfare and adept at techniques unknown by normal men. Since the age of five he had trained rigorously, and still spent many hours a day perfecting his discipline. His ninjas were as devastating in man-to-man combat as any soldiers ever seen; in fact, the average soldier had an almost supernatural fear of the ninjas, with good reason.
Nobunaga was, it seemed, a skeptic. He had had years of ninja advice, and assumed he knew it all. He thought to eradicate the last of the line by this direct assault.
He would have a harsh education.
The siege was horrendous. The numerical strength of the ninjas was small, while the shogun's army was the mightiest ever massed in that period of Japan's history. But the Black Castle was a virtually impregnable fortress, and the ninjas were the most skilled siege and anti-siege artists known.
Nobunaga was the first in Japan to appreciate the
value of firearms. He had a corps of musket men, using the new Portuguese imported weapons. But the muskets were cumbersome things, heavy, each requiring a long forked stick like a tripod to support the barrel, because it was impossible to hold it up by the arms alone. The warrior had to be strapped to the weapon to prevent the recoil from sending him tumbling. Embossed in gold and silver filigree, the musket was more a work of art than a field weapon. It took a long time to set it up.
The ninjas, on the other hand, had special rapid-firing crossbows, capable of penetrating the armor of the musketeers even from the distance they were separated. They blanketed the sky with poisoned arrows; the slightest scratch was fatal. The ninja archers were protected by special leather shields erected on frames, neru kawa, so that the musketballs did very little damage. And they could shoot their missiles high into the air, like mortar shells, negating the shields of the enemy.
There would come a day when firearms were more effective than bows and crossbows. But not in this century.
The shogun's men tried to use a battering ram to break down the doors. The ninjas used catapults to lob homemade powder bombs on them, nullifying the effort explosively.
Nobunaga directed the construction of a mighty siege engine, a tower as tall as the wall, shielded from fire arrows and bombs. It was on stout wheels, and capable of carrying enough soldiers to hold a beachhead on the ramparts. But the ninjas made a night foray and planted a cache of gunpowder within it, blowing it to pieces.
The soldiers tried to tunnel under the wall, but the castle was built atop a mountain, the foundations sunk into bedrock in all but a few secret places, impervious to any tunneling that could be accomplished within a year.
The shogun had many troops. He tried a human-sea tactic, heedless of the great numbers lost so long as some few got through to scale the walls and open the way. But only a few paths were available up the mountain, and above those were perched huge boulders, readily tipped to roll crushingly down. The vibrations of their irresistible descent set off small avalanches that further decimated the attackers. There were also pits, cunningly concealed, with poisoned stakes mounted in the bottom; only a supremely cautious approach could negate these traps, and caution was impossible under the gaze of the ninja archers.
But for those who did win through to the base of the walls, scrambling over the corpses of their companions, a special treat had been prepared: tremendous wooden vats filled with human excreta, dead animals, scraps of spoiled food, garbage, manure, and other organic refuse. It had been stewed in urine for several weeks, until it simmered with its own heat of decomposition and bubbled bilious gases from its fulsome mass. This was poured on the heads of the soldiers, and the streams of foul-smelling slurry mixture coated everything with nauseous slime-walls, ground, and men.
The soldiers fled in disgust and panic, as experience had shown them that the slightest wound, the most minor cut or scrape or break in the skin, became infected. Soon it festered, blood poisoning developed, and the sequence terminated in the most painfully bloated death. The retreating men were hardly welcomed by their cleaner comrades.
A cavalry charge was met by two giant bears suddenly uncaged. The bears rose high on their hind feet, swiping at soldiers and panicking the horses, who reared and threw their riders. The bears were finally killed by archers from a distance, but the carnage had been terrible.
The ninjas also loosed fierce dogs upon the enemy camp at night, to rove among the sleeping men tearing out throats. Deadly vipers slithered into the tents, striking at will, almost impossible to locate and kill. Hundreds of ferrets scurried through, lighted firebrands tied to their tails, igniting hundreds of structures and wreaking havoc throughout the camp.
Nevertheless, the samurais persevered, for they were the ultimate dedicated soldiers. They threw ladders against the walls and scaled them. They were met at the top by the naginata, a kind of sword attached to the end of a pole, five to nine feet long. Vicious slashing arcs cleaned the troops off the ladders before they could get close enough to fight back with their swords.
And so the siege settled down to weeks and months. The Black Castle could not be taken by storm; its walls were too strong and its defenders too valiant and clever. But it could not hold out forever. The castle water supply was secure, as it came from deep wells within the walled enclosure. In fact, it was the shogun's troops who suffered from thirst, for the few springs down the mountain had been poisoned, and water had to be hauled from a distance. Fu Antos had seen to a large food supply of grains and tubers, enough to sustain his personnel for a full year. There were gardens within the walls, to grow fresh vegetables and greatly extend the stores.
But there was one weapon against which the Black Castle was not quite proof, and to this Nobunaga at last resorted. Treachery. Months before, in anticipation of this need, Nobunaga had sent a spy to contact the beautiful concubine of Fu Antos, Mitsuko. It was delicately suggested to her that the shogun himself had conceived a certain passion for her beauty and wit, and should she ever be in need she would find a most royal welcome at his splendid palace. She would have luxury far beyond any possible expectation of the rigorous ninja life. But the time was not yet, for the shogun did not wish to precipitate dissent in a loyal ally such as Fu Antos.
In all the intervening time, this suggestion had worked its indelicate magic on the girl's loving mind, abetted by tokens of extraordinary value and luster. The last was a gold signet ring containing an artfully broken portion of jade. "If ever you wish to contact Nobunaga privately, send this ring," the agent whispered. "The other half of the jewel is set into the ring on the finger of the shogun himself; there is no other perfect match. Even as these jewels must be united to be perfect, so must their owners be, in the proper time."
Now, faced with the increasing hardships of the siege, and rebuffed by the hard-driving, ascetic ways of her ninja lord, Mitsuko made her decision. She sent the ring out of the Black Castle by a secret route that only Fu Antos' inner circle knew. Soon the betrayal was complete; she opened the door to an escape tunnel deep in the bowels of the foundation, letting a picked squad of the shogun's men inside. They were able to defend this passage long enough for the first thousand samurai warriors to enter the castle.
Mitsuko herself was escorted in the other direction. She had a long-awaited appointment with the shogun.
Still the ninjas fought. Outnumbered twenty to one inside the castle, and a thousand to one outside it, they defended themselves with unmitigated ferocity. One ninja was trapped in the castle courtyard, surrounded by samurai. He had a kusarigama, the chained sickle. He lashed out with the weighted chain and struck one warrior in the neck, destroying his windpipe. He caught the second with the blade, swung like a bola in a vicious circle around his head. The iron weight on the end of the chain caved in the chest of a third. A spearman thrust at him; the ninja caught hold of the weapon, pulled the man forward, and put the point of his sickle through that man's eye. A musketeer, given time during this battle to set up, fired point-blank, killing him at last. But as he fell, the ninja hurled the kusarigama at him. The chain whipped around the soldier's neck, and the sickle swung in a narrowing arc until it stabbed the body, and the man died.
Another ninja, cornered on a parapet, sprayed a cloud of poisoned needles from his mouth, bringing down half a dozen attackers before being shoved off the wall to fall to his death on the rocks far below.
One ninja held out for some time by wafting clouds of powder through a special blowtube. It settled over the heads of the soldiers, and the stuff got into their eyes and burned fiercely, blinding them, making them easy marks.
Another tried to escape by launching himself from the castle wall on a glider contraption, with huge silk wings and a rudder on his feet. For a moment he was airborne, to the amazement and fury of the samurai, whose swords could not reach him. But again a musketeer prevailed; he braced his weapon to point upward, and tagged the ninja with the ball. He went out of control in the strong air cu
rrent and crashed down the mountain slope, his blood flying out with the tattered silk.
Yet another ninja manned a cannon that squirted poison water. Others threw eggs filled with chemicals; those that did not kill their targets outright filled the air with an unbearable stench. Fu Antos himself operated a special large-barreled mortar made of wood and reinforced with paper, which blooped crude grenades from the highest tower, to explode among the men below. But the samurai charged up the narrow stair and finally overwhelmed him after sustaining tremendous losses.
But no enemy sword touched Fu Antos. When he saw that all was lost, he turned his sword against himself and slit his own belly. It was the start of the act of seppuku, or ritual suicide. The samurai leaped forward, for their orders were to take Fu Antos alive for torture. They ripped the sword from his hands and from his belly, but too late. His heartbeat had stopped, his body was growing cold. He had escaped the remainder of the shogun's sport.
Others were not so fortunate. Of perhaps a hundred ninjas in the castle at the start of the siege, five were taken alive, and a score of their women and children. All the male captives were grievously wounded, so the bulk of the retribution had to be exacted on their families, who had fought valiantly alongside their men.
Of the five, two were suspended, tightly bound, on wooden frames set above sharpened bamboo stakes. Positioned as if seated, their legs stretched widely apart, they were lowered anus-first onto the points. The ropes holding them were wet down, so that they softened and elongated slowly, making the impalement lingeringly inevitable. Two others were boiled in oil, and the last was skinned alive, slowly. Too slowly: he died of his prior wounds before the job was completed.
Not one of these men screamed, giving their torturers no satisfaction. Some frustrated samurai warriors tested the techniques out on one of the torture specialists, just to make sure they worked properly. They did; the screams were resounding.