The clash of metal, howls, and then the white figure disappeared, and the men in black were furiously hacking at something lying on the ground that crunched as they hit it.
Masa clearly heard a girl’s voice shout out:
‘Kongojyo!’
One of the killers came very close. He tore up a bunch of grass and started cleaning off his sword. Masa heard loud, sporadic breathing.
The pale light of the moon seeped through a thin cloud for a moment and Masa saw a hood with holes instead of eyes, a cartridge belt over a shoulder, a black jacket.
Don Tsurumaki’s men, that was who they were! They’d followed the shinobi’s example and covered their faces so that they wouldn’t show white in the darkness!
How had they managed to get past the ‘singing boards’? Surely they couldn’t have come through the underground passage? Who could have showed it to them?
Masa crawled on all fours into the undergrowth, jumped to his feet and ran.
The Black Jackets didn’t waste any time. He heard a muffled command behind him, and fallen pine needles started crunching under rapid footsteps.
He had to get to the houses quickly, to raise the alarm! The Don’s men wouldn’t bother to find out who was a shinobi and who wasn’t, they’d finish off everybody regardless.
When he had only twenty paces left to go to the first hut, Masa was unlucky – in the darkness he ran into a branch, tore his cheek and – worst of all – he couldn’t stop himself crying out.
The men behind him heard and realised they had been discovered.
‘TSUME-E-E!’ roared a commanding bass voice.
The response was a roar from many voices.
‘An attack! An attack!’ Masa roared as well, but shut his mouth almost immediately, realising that he was only exposing himself to unnecessary danger.
The attackers were roaring and tramping so loudly that the inhabitants of Kakusimura couldn’t help but hear them.
Now, if he wanted to live, he had to think very quickly. So Masa didn’t run towards the houses, he hid behind a tree.
Less than half a minute later a crowd of Black Jackets went rushing past, spreading out and forming into a half-moon in order to take in the whole width of the island.
Torches blazed into life, thrust into the ground along a line at intervals of five paces. The chain of fire cut across the entire forest, from one edge to the other.
‘Fire!’
Rapid, crackling salvoes of carbine fire. Masa could hear the bullets thudding into the wooden walls and the squeal of splinters flying out.
Ah, what a disaster! How could he save his master from this hell? The Black Jackets would riddle the first three houses with bullets now, and then they would set about Tamba’s home.
Masa dashed about between the pines in despair and saw that he couldn’t possibly slip through the brightly lit zone and the cordon.
A crunch of branches. A man running with a limp from the direction of the crevice. Black jacket, black hood – he must have fallen behind the others. Masa attacked him from the side, knocked him down with a single blow and then, to make sure, squeezed the fallen man’s neck with his knee and waited for it to crunch. He didn’t have to worry about the noise – all the shooting that was going on was deafening.
He pulled the trousers and jacket off the corpse and put them on. He covered his face with the hood – it was very helpful that the Don’s men had decided to wear such a useful item.
While he was still fiddling about, the shooting stopped. The wooden walls that had been riddled with bullets were covered in black dots, like the poppy-seed bun that Masa had given Netsuko as a treat. It was almost as bright as day, there were so many torches all around.
One by one the gunmen entered the houses, holding their carbines at the ready. Then they came back out – in twos, dragging dead bodies that they laid out on the ground. The commander leaned down, looking into the dead faces.
Masa counted nine big bodies and four little ones. There were two adults missing.
‘Tamba’s not here,’ the commander said loudly. ‘And the gaijin’s not here either. They’re in the house on the edge of the precipice.’
And he walked away, but not far, only a few steps.
Suddenly one of the bodies came to life. The man (Masa recognised affable, talkative Rakuda) arched up like a cat and jumped on to the commander’s back. A knife blade glinted, but the leader of the Black Jackets proved to be very adroit – he jerked his head to dodge the blow, threw himself backwards and started rolling about on the grass. Men dashed to help him from all sides, and a shapeless black octopus with arms and legs sticking out in all directions started writhing on the ground.
Taking advantage of the commotion, another body started moving, this time a little one. It was eight-year-old Yaichi. He rose halfway to his feet, staggered and then shook himself. Two Black Jackets tried to grab the boy, but he wriggled between their outstretched arms and scrambled up a tree in an instant.
‘Catch him! Catch him!’ his pursuers shouted. There was a rumble of shots.
Yaichi flew across to the next tree, and then the one after that. The branch he was holding broke off, smashed by a bullet, but he grabbed another one.
Meanwhile they had finished off Rakuda. Two Black Jackets were left lying on the ground. The others dragged the dead shinobi away and helped their commander to get up. He pushed their willing hands away angrily and pulled the hood off his head. A revolver glinted as he aimed the barrel at the boy skipping though the trees. The barrel described a short arc, spat out a gobbet of flame – and Yaichi came tumbling down like a stone.
Masa froze open-mouthed, astonished by the gunman’s accuracy and the gleam of his smoothly shaved head. He had seen this man before, only a few days earlier! The itinerant monk who had spent the night at the village hotel with Kamata’s ‘construction brigade’, that was who it was!
And everything was finally clear.
Don Tsurumaki was a prudent man. He hadn’t relied on the faithful but dull-witted Kamata. He had attached a spy to the brigade, a man who had watched everything and sniffed everything out without making himself known. He had seen the massacre on the mountain, noted where the entrance to the underground passage was, and the hoist… Neat work, no two ways about it!
The Monk (that was what Masa called the Black Jackets’ commander now) was obviously afraid that another dead ninja would come back to life. He pulled a short sword out of its scabbard and set to work. The blade rose thirteen times and fell thirteen times and a pyramid of severed heads rose up by the wall of the house. The Monk handled the sword deftly, he clearly had a lot of experience.
Before moving on to the concluding stage of the storm, the commander ordered his unit to form up in a line.
‘Our losses are small,’ said the Monk, walking along the line with a springy step. ‘The naked girl killed two, the dead man who came to life killed two more, one was hurt when he fell off the hoist. But the greatest danger lies ahead. We shall proceed strictly according to the plan drawn up by Mr Shirota. It’s a good plan, you’ve seen it. Mr Shirota assumes that the house of the werewolves’ leader is full of traps. And therefore – extreme caution. Not a single step without orders, is that clear?’ Suddenly he stopped, peering into the darkness. ‘Who’s that there? You, Ryuhei?’
Realising he had been spotted, Masa slowly stepped forward. What should he do? Walk over or take to his heels?
‘So you got up after all? Didn’t break any bones? Good man. Get back in line.’
Most of the Black Jackets had followed their commander’s example and taken off the hoods, but a few, Buddha be praised, had left their faces covered, and so no one suspected Masa; only the man next to him in the line squinted at him and nudged him in the side with his elbow – but he thought that must be a kind of greeting.