Boris Akunin - The Diamond Chariot

But they were already running towards him out of the house.

‘Quickly! Quickly!’ Masa whispered, squeezing his fists tight.

The ninja reached the middle of the clearing in a few bounds, but he didn’t run into the forest – he stopped.

He doesn’t want to lead his pursuers to us, Masa guessed.

Tanshin pulled a torch out of the ground, then another, and rushed at his enemies. The Black Jackets first recoiled from the two furiously swirling tongues of flame, but then immediately closed back round the shinobi .

Someone’s clothing burst into flames and someone else ran off howling, trying to beat the flames off their burning hair. The fire swirled about above the crowd, stinging, scattering sparks.

They had to get away from there as quickly as possible, but Masa was still watching the beautiful way Tanshin was dying. A fiery death framed in glittering sword blades – could anything possibly be more beautiful?

The master pulled Midori-san into the thicket and pointed in the direction of the crevice – he must be pointing towards the hoist.

Masa had to explain to the bird-man’s daughter that they couldn’t get away through the underground passage. The Monk must have left sentries at the bottom of the crevice: they wouldn’t let anyone get down – they’d shoot them.

‘Better to sit it out here, in the forest,’ Masa concluded.

But Midori-san didn’t agree with him.

‘No. The Black Jackets have let my father get away, and now they have to find your master at any cost. They won’t dare report to the Don without his head. When they finish searching the house, they’ll start combing the forest again.’

‘What can we do?’

The mistress was going to answer, but then the master butted into this important conversation at just the wrong moment.

He pulled Masa aside and said in his broken Japanese:

‘Lead away, Midori-san. You. Trust. I here.’

Oh no! Masa didn’t even listen. He objected gruffly:

‘How can I lead her away? I’m not Tamba, I can’t fly through the sky.’

He flapped his arms like wings to demonstrate but the master, of course, didn’t understand. How could Masa possibly explain anything to him when he had no language?

The Black Jackets flocked round Tanshin’s body, arguing about something in loud voices. Many of them had been killed, including the commander, but there were even more left. Thirty men? Forty?

Masa had always been good at mental arithmetic, and he started counting.

The master had seven bullets in his little revolver. Masa could kill three. Or four – if he was lucky. Midori-san was a ninja – she’d probably polish off ten.

How many did that make?

Midori-san prevented him from finishing his calculation.

‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘My father will come back for you.’

‘Are you really going away, mistress?’

She didn’t answer and turned to the master.

He also asked something in a tense, halting voice.

She didn’t answer him either. At least, not in words.

She stroked his cheek, then his neck. A fine time she’d chosen for lovey-doving! A woman was always a woman after all, even if she was a ninja.

Midori-san’s hand slipped round to the back of the master’s head, the white fingers suddenly closed firmly together – and his round gaijin eyes turned even rounder in amazement. The master sat down on the ground, slumping back against a tree trunk.

She had killed him. The accursed witch had killed him.

With a fierce growl, Masa aimed the fatal kubiori blow at the traitor: it should have ripped her scurvy throat out, but a strong hand seized his wrist.

‘He’s alive,’ the shinobi woman said quickly. ‘He simply can’t move.’

‘But why?’ hissed Masa, wincing in pain. What a grip!

‘He wouldn’t have let me do what must be done.’

‘And what is that?’

She let go of him, realising that he would hear her out.

‘Go into the house. Go down into the basement. There’s a barrel of gunpowder there in a secret place. The charge is calculated to make the house collapse inwards, crushing everyone in it.’

Masa thought for a moment.

‘But how will you get into the house?’

‘His strength will return in an hour,’ Midori-san said instead of answering. ‘Stay with him.’

Then she leaned down to the master and whispered something in his ear in gaijin language.

And that was all – she went out into the clearing and walked towards the house with a light stride.

They didn’t notice her straight away, but when they spotted the figure in the black, close-fitting ninja costume, they were startled.

Midori-san raised her empty hands and shouted.

‘Mr Tsurumaki knows me! I am Tamba’s daughter! I will show you his secret hiding place!’

The Black Jackets swarmed round her and started searching her. Then the entire crowd moved towards the porch and went into the house. Not a single soul was left outside.

The distance was only about thirty paces, Masa suddenly realised. If there was an explosion, wreckage would come showering down. He had to drag the master farther away.

He put his arms round the motionless body and dragged it across the ground.

But he hadn’t carried him very far, only a few steps, when the earth shook and his ears were deafened.

Masa turned round.

Momochi Tamba’s house collapsed neatly, as if it had gone down on its knees. First the walls caved in, then the roof swayed and came crashing down and broke in half, sending dust flying in all directions. It was suddenly completely light all around and a blast of hot air hit him in the face.

The servant leaned over to protect the body of his master and saw tears flowing out of the wide-open eyes.

The woman had deceived him. The master did not come round in an hour, or even in two.

Masa went to look at the heap of rubble several times. He dug up an arm in a black sleeve, a leg in a black trouser leg, and also a close-cropped head without a lower jaw. He didn’t find a single person alive.

He came back several times and shook the master to make him wake up. The master wasn’t actually unconscious, but he just lay there without moving, looking at the sky. At first the tears kept running down his face, then they stopped.

And not long before dawn Tamba appeared – he simply came through the forest from the direction of the crevice, as if everything was perfectly normal.

He said he had been on the other side and killed the sentries. There were only six of them.

‘But why didn’t you fly here through the sky, sensei?’ Masa asked.

‘I’m not a bird, to go flying through the sky. I flew down off the cliff on wings made of cloth, a man can learn to do that,’ the cunning old man explained, but, of course, Masa didn’t believe him.

‘What happened here?’ asked the sensei, looking at the master lying on the ground and the ruins of the house. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

Masa told him what had happened and where his daughter was.

The jonin knitted his grey eyebrows together but, of course, he didn’t cry – he was a ninja.

He said nothing for a long time, then he said:

‘I’ll get her out myself.’

Masa also said nothing for a while – for as long as was required by consideration for a father’s feelings – and then he expressed concern about his master’s strange condition. He enquired cautiously whether Midori-san could possibly have tried too hard and whether the master would now be paralysed for ever.

‘He can move,’ Tamba replied after taking another look at the man on the ground. ‘He just doesn’t want to. Let him stay like that for a while. Don’t touch him. I’ll go and rake through the rubble. And you cut some firewood and build a funeral pyre. A big one.’