My heavy boot struck the ninja’s lower back, in the middle of the spine between the kidneys. This blow broke his back, and he fell away, living but done for. But I kicked him again, and yet again, and I stomped on his face as he rolled over, grinding my icy heel into his eye socket and again and again into his mouth, breaking all his teeth, until his entire face was unrecognizable. Just a hamburger mess with a hole where the mouth had been. I didn’t stop until Makato’s strong hands hauled me off.

  If I had doubted before that I was a killer, no better than my companions, I could doubt no longer. But though we had won the battle, it was too late for Jim, as I had known when I heard that snap. He was dead, and as my rage abated I became numb again.

  Then my fading fury changed to horror. Pedro was leaning over one of the dead ninjas, carving open his body as he had that of the bear. He cut out the liver and held it up. He brought the hot morsel to his mouth and bit a bloody hunk out of it.

  He had reverted to cannibalistic ritualism. Makato and Diago looked on impassively, as though this were nothing out of the ordinary. They had probably seen it before.

  Could my own life possibly be worth it, to lose a friend like Jim? I would not be able to judge this until months or years or perhaps even decades had passed, assuming I lived that long. For the moment only peripheral thoughts registered around the raw central wound: if only I had talked to Jim, let him have Thera, who was really his type. What was the worth of any girl, compared to true friendship? Surely I had killed him.

  Now there was nothing to do but go on. Though the mission no longer seemed to matter.

  CHAPTER 12

  FU ANTOS

  We attended to our wounds, buried Jim, and moved on, pausing only to pick up the more useful weapons of the ninjas. Makato took the battleaxe, I took a fine long dirk, Pedro picked up the katana and Diago hefted the long pike. We noticed the cave from which both dogs and ninjas must have issued, but shunned it; it was probably thoroughly booby-trapped.

  We climbed farther, weakened by our injuries but unable to give up now. The footing was treacherous, the elevation cruel; one slip here could send a man sliding far down the mountain, perhaps to death or at least a roughing that would force him to turn back. Diago used his pike to brace himself and assist his climb: smart tactic.

  The notion of the cave became more tempting; could the traps be more hazardous than this challenge of nature? But I knew the answer: deadfalls and sharpened stakes were the least of the obstacles the cave passage would present. There might even be other ninjas waiting in ambush there. Out here, at least, the cold numbed my wounds somewhat.

  At last we crested the windy pass and had our first view of the castle. It nestled among snow-covered pines high on the far slope of the mountain. We were above it now, but there would be a difficult traverse to achieve it this day. We had little choice, however; a night out here, in our condition, could be disastrous.

  This was not the round-turreted stonework of the medieval European castles, but the stately square multistoried pagoda type of the Orient. From this height it appeared to be in ruins, with three tumbled-down towers and only one major edifice still standing. Most of the walls were fallen, but the main keep rose from the rubble and might still be habitable.

  “The Black Castle of legend,” Pedro breathed. “I have read of it, but thought it was destroyed centuries ago.”

  “Wasn’t it?” I asked, staring down at the ruin. “Who would live there now?”

  “Fu Antos,” Diago put in.

  “The Black Castle was the home of Sumita Takawa,” Pedro said, oblivious to our remarks. I had not realized he was this much of a ninja fan. “He was an evil lord of the sixteenth century who ruled with an iron hand. But he incurred the displeasure of the emperor, who laid siege to the castle. For six months he held out valiantly, until he was defeated by treachery.”

  “You tend to identify with the villains,” Diago remarked, smiling as he leaned on his pike.

  Pedro only nodded affirmatively, and continued: “Then Sumita Takawa was taken and skinned alive and doused with vinegar, living. His castle was sacked and left with its corpses unburied. No one would approach it thereafter, as it was believed damned, and in time even the authenticity of the tale came to be doubted. Yet here it is: the Black Castle!”

  But I doubted it. There had been sieges and betrayals and slaughters in Japan’s history, and certainly this castle had suffered pillage and ruin—but there was no proof that this was the Black Castle of the legend. Yet it hardly mattered, so I kept silent.

  We descended toward it. The structure was in a place of early shadows and darkness, despite the brightness of the surrounding snow. The forest encroached closely: pine trees and—gingko? I remembered that the gingko, or maidenhair tree, was one of nature’s oddities: a survival from the time of the dinosaurs. But I recognized it only by its fan-shaped leaves, and these were gone in winter. So perhaps these were not gingkos, and I was merely reacting to the growing aura of the castle. Old, reminiscent of things extinct.

  We crossed a frozen stream, breaking through the ice to fetch up chill drinking water. “Sometimes the ninjas poison streams,” Pedro warned.

  “This feeds into their own water supply,” Diago pointed out. “And the snow here hasn’t been disturbed in the past few days.” So we drank, reassured.

  The distance to the castle was greater than it had appeared, and I was becoming more tired despite the downward trek. It is actually harder to march downhill than on the level; I had heard that somewhere, but now I believed it. It has to do with the body fighting gravity. The closer we got, the more formidable the castle’s ramparts loomed. The stones were black with dead moss, paint, age and perhaps even smoke smudges from the final burning. Hell, incarnate.

  Many things were illusory about this castle. For one thing, more of it was in repair than had appeared from a distance; obviously men could live here, if they chose to. The moat was in order too, representing a formidable barrier even in winter. The structure was not actually on the slant of the mountain, but in a pocket, a high valley. Our little stream fed the moat, and the moat drained into a marsh, and there was insufficient ice near the castle to sustain a man. We could not afford to fall in and get soaked; the chill would greatly hamper our fighting ability, already impaired, and a wet night could kill us. Where could we safely change?

  There was just one dry path through that marsh. Diago located it by poking through snow and ice until he found land, then prodded ahead with the pike step by step. He was getting better use from that erstwhile weapon than I had anticipated. It was dusk now, but we could not rush it.

  Progress was faster, now that we were on the right path. Actually it was better to depend on our sense of touch, rather than sight; there could be more deadfalls. A patch of water opened out on one side, with dead reeds sticking up like broken spears. Evidently it was warmer in the immediate vicinity of the castle; maybe the heat of the daytime sun was reflected off the fragmentary walls, warming the moat and keeping the ice clear. Smart arrangement. Now that it was evening, a thin sheen of ice was reforming, but it would never support our weight.

  Suddenly there was motion. A figure rose from the water, to my amazement, and flung a series of knives—shuriken—so rapidly I could hardly see his arms operating. Pedro was a rank amateur compared to this tenth ninja.

  We were vulnerable. We had been caught off guard, and could only cower away from those shooting blades. I threw up my forearm automatically to protect my face and neck, and a sharp pain in that arm told me I had acted barely in time. Diago could not move his heavy pike fast enough, and Pedro was entirely outclassed; I saw him falling already.

  We could not charge the attacker because he was ten feet away, in water. It seemed ludicrous, but we four specialists in martial art were helpless before this lone ninja warrior. He had made his ambush well, and now was submerged to his chest in the freezing water.

  Then there was a kind of thud, as of metal striking bone. I saw the ninja sinking. Makato’s axe was buried in his forehead.

  The light was fading, but we were able to reconstruct what had happened. The ninja had broken the ice beside the path and swept the edges to make it seem natural and cover his tracks. Then he had submerged himself, using a bamboo tube for breathing— a favorite ninja trick, Pedro assured us—and waited. It was an incredible feat, for he must have been there, unmoving, for several hours while the marsh slowly froze over. I could not have survived such a vigil, yet the ninja had emerged to fire six shuriken at us before the axe struck. Two had hit Pedro, opening his cheek and sticking to his chest, not serious in themselves, but weakening him further. One had hit me in the forearm, the padding of my jacket protecting me from the worst. One had hit Diago in the back of the shoulder, giving him one more reason to be slow with the pike. Two had missed Makato, who was already in motion with the axe. One of these lay in the path we had made, one of its points blunted; it must have struck the blade of the axe itself. Astonishing accuracy, considering the diversity of targets, his speed of delivery, the poor light, his disadvantageous position for throwing, and the chill of his limbs. What might that warrior have done had he been on land, and warm?

  I feared we had killed a better man than any one of us. Only superior ki could explain the ninja’s performance, both during the long cold wait and in the sudden action. Just a little lower on that one shuriken, and he would have hit Makato’s eye instead of his axe, and won the battle.

  Again I wondered whether it would not have been better for all concerned if I had simply stayed at home and suffered whatever fate was destined. Better, even if Jim had not died. Still, we had not come to kill ninjas. We merely wanted to see old Fu Antos; the killing had been in self defense. Why weren’t these hardy warriors content to let us pass, or at least to meet with us, ascertaining our mission? Why did they set killer dogs upon us, then attack with the same canine fury? None of them need have died.

  All of which suggested that our mission was not as innocent as we supposed. I could not believe Hiroshi would have sent us into such a merciless situation. Not knowingly. He had said he visited Fu Antos here upon occasion, perhaps once a year. Could it be that the ninjas turned a different face to Hiroshi, so that he considered them innocuous?

  Yet he had warned us, with his characteristic understatement, hinting at danger. He must have felt the mission was worth the risk.

  What could possibly be worth the lives of perhaps ten men, so far? We were exterminating the last of a vanished type, the true ninja. And dying ourselves.

  The moat, after all, was largely filled with debris. We picked our way across it, stepping from stone to stone, avoiding those that were precariously balanced—another ninja trap?—and stood at last under the ragged but forbidding wall of the castle. This difficult crossing set us up for attack, and we made it singly and nervously, but none came. Now it was dark, but we did not dare use a light. Some faint glow developed from the rising moon, reflected by the snow, however, and our eyes became adjusted to that level.

  There was no sound as we passed the rock-strewn outer wall and made our way through desolate open courts. We saw great piles of rubble, and holes leading downward, suggesting an existent system of cellars and other passages. I thought I spied a skeleton at one point, but avoided that as scrupulously as the rest. Anything could be booby-trapped.

  We passed an empty kennel: this must have been where the dogs had been housed, for there was the smell of recent occupancy about it. And at last we came through the ominous stillness to the massive central keep, where Fu Antos should be.

  Had the ninjas turned against their O-Sensei, imprisoning him and finally murdering him? He had come originally to the castle, Hiroshi said, to reform this wild remnant of an extinct martial tradition. He had ninja training himself, and in his youth had been a mighty warrior, but had grown beyond that. Yet, he could not have had much success here, as these ninjas were manifestly unreformed. If they were determined to cover up their crime—

  Makato pried open the keep gate. Pedro drew his new katana. Diago prodded inside with the pike. And I cautiously poked my head inside.

  Nothing happened. If other ninjas defended this place, where were they? Diago was listening, but there was a night wind whistling past the broken stones, making it hard to hear anything meaningful.

  There was faint light inside, and the chill was less severe. I smelled burning incense and some Oriental spice. But the inner walls were bare; it was a stark severe residence here. The glow was from a flaming torch set in a hole in the wall, deep in the keep.

  I proceeded into the keep, amazed at the sheer mass of its walls. There were very small windows, and the actual door aperture was tiny, so that we had to stoop to pass through, alert for further traps. Makato followed me, and Diago, tapping the floor stones.

  “Check above,” Pedro warned. “Sometimes—”

  Something hairy dropped on me. I flailed wildly. A reddish demon was clutching me, chattering, biting. Others were landing on Makato and Diago and Pedro, clinging too tightly for the metal weapons to be effective.

  My demon was small—perhaps twenty five pounds—but powerful. Its teeth fastened on my forearm painfully. I shook it loose with a great effort and tried to wrestle it around, in hitting range, but its muscles were like furry steel springs. Finally I got the thing around its hairy throat and strangled it.

  It was a monkey. The gloom and surprise had provided it with a special terror. I threw the body aside and grabbed for the one on Pedro. I did not draw my long knife, as I was not accustomed to its use and didn’t want to risk stabbing a friend. Bare hands sufficed.

  The monkeys were vicious and tenacious. They had been trained to attack relentlessly, like the dogs and the ninjas themselves. We were more massive than they, and trained in hand-to-hand combat, but they were superior natural fighters. I had seen cheap adventure movies in which men defeated apes in unarmed combat; the truth was that a man could not even out-fight a chimpanzee. But these were smaller, and the sixfold to eightfold weight advantage of the men sufficed. Makato soon killed three, breaking their skulls with hammerfist blows, and I took care of two more, and the rest suddenly fled. We had more wounds, but still nothing serious.

  “What are monkeys doing here?” I demanded breathlessly.

  “They’re tropical creatures!”

  “Macaques,” Diago said. “Cold-adapted. They live here and in Tibet, too, I think, as well as in the tropics. Good guardians.”

  I shut up, embarrassed at having shown my ignorance. The monkeys had done us one favor, at least: they surely would have sprung any further traps within their reach. If we looked about, we might discover monkeys crushed under stones, pierced by sprung barbs.

  We continued on down the gaunt stone hall, moving from torch to torch. I took down the first and used it for more specific illumination. In an emergency, it would also do for a weapon.

  Silently, Diago pointed. There was a closed chamber ahead; he meant that his sharp ear told him it was occupied. More monkeys over the sill—or armed ninjas?

  Diago piked it open, while Pedro stood by with shuriken in each hand. Makato and I stayed back, ready to cover our ears, for if an attack were sprung here Diago would surely blast out with his devastating kiai. Even so, I had the premonition that men would die in this chamber.

  But there was no action. By the light of my torch we saw a very old man sitting on a dirty mat. Beside him stood a young boy, bareheaded and barefooted. Fu Antos and his body servant?

  We filed in and stood before them. And found ourselves somewhat at a loss. The primary mission was mine, of course, as my fear of Diago’s delayed deathblow had brought me to Japan and served as the focus. I should be the spokesman, but could not speak Japanese. Did the old man know English?

  One way to find out. The ancient sat absolutely still, not even seeming to breathe. He looked to be about ninety-five years old and in poor health. His flesh was dessicated, his skin stretched parchment-taut over prominent bones. His body exuded a sickly sweet odor, as of corruption. Could this really be the fabulous trainer of ninjas, 0-Sensei to Hiroshi? No sign of physical prowess remained.

  “I’m afraid he doesn’t understand me,” I said to Diago, after a couple of halting attempts.

  Diago spoke in Japanese. The sunken eyes did not even glance up, and I realized with a small shock of horror that the old man was blind, and probably deaf. He wasn’t even aware of our presence.

  But the boy should not be similarly mute. He seemed to be about seven years old, yet he stood with glazed eyes, making no more response than his master.

  Hiroshi had said he would send word of our mission ahead, perhaps by pigeon. Obviously he had, for the ninjas had been well prepared for our coming. So Fu Antos had to know of us. Was this a fake, a decoy set up to confuse us?

  I turned to Diago, about to voice my suspicion. But at that moment the old man’s hands came up. They gestured in a strange, wobbly pattern. It seemed to be some kind of sign language. I hoped one of us could read it.

  Makato spoke and Diago translated. “Fu Antos says we must kill him.”

  “What?” I demanded, suspecting that old Fu was senile after all. “After all the trouble we have taken to save him from the ninjas? Tell him he has nothing to fear from us.”

  But before Diago could retranslate, the ancient mystic addressed himself directly to me. One withered finger made a half circle about his ear, while the thumb of the other hand jerked down. “Crazy? Not me!” those hands said in plain colloquial American. He understood me well enough; not my words, but my thoughts.

  Then one finger pointed to Diago, and returned to slice across the O-Sensei’s scrawny neck. Diago had been selected for the murder.

  “This is ridiculous!” I said, speaking for us all. “We came only to talk to you, Fu Antos! To—well, you see, I was struck by this delayed—”