Read Online Lord Oda's Revenge by Nick Lake - Free Book Online

she was leading him out of death itself, and that felt wrong.
    Still, she reminded herself – over and over, like a mantra – that she would kill him one day, when the time was right, and make him suffer as she had suffered. If he died here he would have what he wanted; his body would grow cold and still and would lie here among the rocks without rotting. For now, she needed him to believe he could make everything right, that he could capture Taro for Lord Oda, and return to the daimyo’s good graces. She needed him to be happy when she killed him.
    He was shivering, his skeletal body wracked by spasms as they descended the path. When they passed the hut he raised a twitching hand to point it out. ‘My men are in there,’ he said.
    â€˜No, they’re not,’ she replied.
    He glanced down at the blood on her clothes, and said nothing.
    As they continued downward, the air began to warm, and he shivered less. She had some dried meat in her cloak – she tried to get him to eat, but he would let nothing but water and herbs pass his lips, and the occasional acorn he found on the ground. At one point she saw him chewing on a stick.
    Strange man
, she thought. He seemed to think he was already becoming rock, that his body would never decay – she heard him mumble about stones in his entrails, about the contamination of the flesh. It was nonsense, of course. Yukiko meant to make sure that he putrefied and boiled with maggots, like a dog.
    But at least for now he was growing stronger, seeming to regard with pleasure what lay ahead, the prospect of trapping and killing Taro. That was good. She wanted him strong and she wanted him pleased. She wanted him coursing with blood, his heart pumping his life force, his whole body singing the joy of its existence when she killed him.
    She was a creature of passion, after all, not a pitiless instrument. She was not of the high, cold places; she was of the forest and the field, a fierce hunter, not a stealthy assassin – a hawk, not a blade.
    She would wait until Kira was on the verge of achieving all he hoped, until his heart was hammering in his chest, filling him with the pleasure of being in the world, and then she would cut it out with her sword and he would bleed out all his blood, all over the indifferent ground.

CHAPTER 7
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    O SHI WAS NOT a big man – he was shorter than Taro, with the sunken chest of one who had spent his time with books, not swords. But he must have had deep reserves of strength, because he had been travelling with Hayao for some days now, he told them, pulling the samurai in a small, two-wheeled cart. Taro was impressed. The priest was evidently dedicated, to drag his patient all the way to Mount Hiei.
    But Oshi wasn’t on his own any more, and so Hiro took the cart for the first part of the walk that day. It had stopped raining, but the stone of the path shone with moisture, and the moss on the trees was greener than green, as if the whole world had been washed clean.
    As they walked, Oshi told the friends about what had happened to Hayao. It seemed that the samurai had fallen in love, on a return visit to his mother’s home in the mountains of the north. The girl had been as beautiful as her name, which was Tsuyu, for she was named after the plum rain. And now this girl was the ghost that travelled with them, and that Taro had to avoid looking at, because of the way that it floated along beside Hayao, some of its body in and some of it out of the cart.
    â€˜But how did she die?’ said Hana.
    â€˜I’m getting to that,’ said the priest. ‘There’s no rush, is there? Mount Hiei is still a long way away.’
    â€˜Tell me about it,’ said Hiro, panting as he pulled the cart.
    Oshi smiled. ‘Very well, since you ask.’ He took a breath and stretched his back, as if thinking where to start. ‘This Tsuyu, she did not get on with her stepmother, when her father remarried. So her