Blood Ninja Read Free

Claimed the villagers found throwing stars embedded in their bodies.”
    Taro hurried to catch up with his friend. “Ninja?” he asked, incredulous.
    The secretive group of black-clad assassins were, unlike the kyuuketsuki , thought to be real. They had been blamed for several assassinations, and it was said that Lord Tokugawa—Lord Oda’s strongest ally—used them often for clandestine missions. But the thought that these well-trained and deadly killers might take the trouble to erase from the world a fisherman’s family was absurd.
    “That’s what they said,” Hiro replied. “Like I told you, travelers are forever coming up with ridiculous stories. We’re far into the countryside here—rumors have a lot of space in which to grow and change before they reach our ears.”
    Taro grunted assent. But something about this conjunction of claims struck him as peculiar—the idea that, in a single day, there should be talk of both evil spirits and ninja near their quiet little village. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I have a bad feeling about all of this.”
    “Like mother, like son,” said Hiro.
    “What do you mean?”
    “When the merchant told that story, your mother went pale. Ran off back to the village. She would have forgotten the rice, if I hadn’t chased after her.”
    Taro frowned. It wasn’t like his mother to overlook something like that, especially where food was concerned. She took great care of the flow of goods into and out of the house, always making sure not to pay over the odds for anything.
    “You know what I think?” said Hiro. “I think the ronin want to stir up unrest. You spread a few stories about peasants getting killed by imaginary monsters, and pretty soon no one feels safe. They want to make things difficult for Lord Oda.”
    “You’re probably right,” said Taro. “A lot of them served his enemies.” The ronin were known to despise Lord Oda, and to blame him for the loss of the their honor, when Oda’s troops destroyed the armies belonging to Lord Yoshimoto. That war had affected everyone—even Taro and Hiro. It was fleeing the violence inflicted by Lord Yoshimoto’s samurai that had brought Hiro’s parents to the village of Shirahama, like so many other peasants of the interior who’d been forced outward to the coast, and a new life of fishing that they had had to learn quickly, or perish.
    But Hiro’s parents had not learned quickly enough, and that was why they were dead.
    Taro felt a little better now. Of course the ronin were seeking to destabilize Lord Oda. He was the strongest daimyo the Kanto had ever known, and strong samurai always made bitter enemies. His heroism, his extraordinary ability with the blade, and his genius for the tactics of battle had made him a god to his people, and a demon to those he had defeated. It was said that when he was first named a kensei —a “sword saint”—in recognition of his mastery of the katana , he barely went a day without being challenged by some samurai desperate to make his name ring out over the land. All of them had died.
    And when Lord Oda had lost the use of his right arm in battle, he had simply switched his sword to the other hand, and become once again a kensei .
    Yes, he was the kind of man who could provoke the weak to make up silly rumors.
    Taro shouldered his bow, clapped Hiro on the back, and set off toward the village. He didn’t know that later on that night he would get all the adventure he wished for, or that real adventure was not like the feats he had heard of in stories.
    Real adventure involved pain, loss, and blood. Sometimes all at once.

 

    CHAPTER 2
     
    They passed Hiro’s hut first.
    When Taro’s father had brought him back to the village after the death of Hiro’s parents, Taro had been so badly injured that he had almost died of blood loss. Seeing what Taro had risked to save the chubby little boy, his parents had taken Hiro in, lavishing all the care on him that they wished they