The Ninja King
By Ryan Priest
Takasama undid his queue. His long hair fell down freely. Long everywhere except for the front and top of his head. Samurai style. Denoting that he was among the noblest of classes, descended from the very gods who created the islands. With long slow pulls of a comb he straightened and tempered the hair that spent most of the day up in a traditional bun.
His wife, Lady Tsuya was already on the mat and if he didn't hurry she'd fall asleep or at least have pretense to feign sleep and then he'd be left wanting.
The sound of late-night horse hooves and the scattering of voices they brought with them were nothing of concern. On an estate this size there were always comings or goings. However, the pitter patter of scurrying feet approaching his room did catch his attention.
"Lord Takasama?" Came the obsequious yet urgent voice of Toda, his servant, from just outside the paper shoji door to his private room.
"What is it?" He threw shoji door to the side and stood in the opening, letting his hair blow wild in the wind. He set his glare on Toda, shivering and on his knees. In reality, Takasama was more curious than anything but he was very specific in the ways he dealt with people. He was not simply a samurai. Takasama was lord over the estate and head of the clan. This made him supreme dictator over all the lands between the foot of the mountain and the long river to the west. This came with over forty other samurai and countless peasants under his lordship.
"Sir, Gamō-san has just arrived with word. He's been found!"
"Who has been found!? How am I supposed to know what thoughts are going through that head of yours?!"
"So sorry sir. The Ninja King. They have found the Ninja King and they're bringing him here now!" Toda blurted out half full of wonder and half terror. His mouth hung open and his eyes were wide thinking about the possibility of being under the same roof as a ninja.
Everyone knew what a ninja was. The stories about them always bordered on the fanciful and in some cases were downright supernatural. The legends said that ninja were mystical and secretive clans. Supposed experts in the arts of infiltration and assassination. They could walk through the night unseen. Their movement so swift they were said to be able to run across the top of lakes and moats.
"Prepare my sitting room for trial."
"Tonight?"
Takasama did not repeat himself and Toda immediately realized his error and began to skulk off.
"Toda, just to be on the safe side, make sure all my samurai are there in full armor.”
"Yes sir!"
Takasama stayed intense until Toda had passed from view and then he let it all drop and gave a soft chuckle. He looked back at his wife. "Beautiful Lady Tsuya, you win tonight."
When he gave Gamō the directive two weeks ago, he knew he'd get results. He just didn't expect them so soon. He might have to pull Gamō aside later for a little lesson on leadership. One had to sit on these sorts of things for awhile, let them continue to boil. For the last two weeks all the samurai families and even all the lesser peasants had been enthralled by the activity. There was a hunt on. A hunt for the Ninja King.
Whenever anyone important dies, anyone powerful, there is an immediate proclivity to assume foul play. That some political machinations had gone on behind the scenes and conspired to bring about the death. Takasama even noted this same proclivity in his own thoughts as a young man. He felt that part of it must be the sense of indomitability and immunity one attributes to his betters. People were forced to treat anyone above them as if they were infallible and if a man wasn't careful, he might begin to believe it.
To believe that the rules of human order and social nicety had any sway over the twists and turns of fate was a dangerous trap. Takasama was aware that any power anyone had over him and subsequently any power he enjoyed over others, was just theater. This entire thing was theater. A diversion from the horrors of the reality that from a lowly beggar, to the emperor himself, everyone was helpless against this cruel and unforgiving world.
Who knew how these things got started, usually by the least informed with the biggest mouths. In the past two years there had been three mysterious deaths that had begun to be attributed to ninja. Kaneko-San an older samurai who lived on the outskirts of town. Chida Okuname, a teen girl whose body had been found deep within the forest and lastly a samurai named Ogawa-san who had died hunting pheasants.
So finally, pushed to do so by growing unrest and to boost the sinking morale of his samurai who were, in effect, his personal army and police force, Lord Takasama had issued a decree. The hunt for the Ninja King was on!
The throne-room was a large, shoji enclosure with white tatami floors. Wide enough for a banquet and high enough for a full drum set for indoor Kabuki shows during the raining season. The sounds of a thousand raindrops like a quick and powerful rhythm section accompanying the music. The gray mists that kissed your face with droplets of water, the smell of the growing wet grasses...Takasama missed the rains. Now was the height of summer, the grasses and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow, withered under the hot dry sun. The heat from the long day persisted well into the night making sleep a near impossibility.
The only seat, his seat, the seat of power rested at the far end of the room, against the room’s only solid wall, made of thick wood and not paper-shoji dividers. From here, with the shoji doors open, he could see right out through the courtyard to the far gates of the high walled enclosure.
Preparations had to be made before opening these gates to the coming procession of Gamō, his samurai detail, the captured Ninja King and the throng of bobbing peasants hoping for a glimpse. These were fishermen, millers, farmers and the other producers of resources that were to be consumed by the Samurai who produced absolutely nothing. The Samurai only brought two factors into the equation. Swords and unity.
The Samurai class had all the weapons and though they fought amongst themselves, they would present a unified wall against any peasant who tried to buck or evade their system of control. Not that any of it mattered. Takasama was free to meditate, to ponder life’s deeper meanings as he lazed beside koi ponds. The peasants had no such luxury. The hours of their day were filled with gruesome, filthy work that left them drained and meager. From the top looking down, Takasama had always felt that it was better for the peasants that they had no time to realize how bad they had it, it was better for him as well.
The house servants scurried along lighting the lamps, positioning the room, setting the coals and water to be ready if came the command for tea. Just as quickly they fanned out of the room, silently sliding their shoji doors behind them.
Next, twenty-five Samurai retainers from the estate and around the village came filing in. Their lacquered armor glimmered from the lamplight in the open courtyard under the moonless sky. Ten of them took their place in front of Takasama facing out, a personal bodyguard unit. The rest lined themselves in rows before Takasama, leading from inside the sitting room halfway out into the courtyard.
The men knew to align themselves in precise positions, looking as if this is how they spent every evening. It was not every day that the villagers and farmers got a look into the estate and Takasama wanted to make sure it filled them with awe and humility.
With everything ready, Toda opened the gates and had already scampered from view before Gamō or anyone on the outside could see him. Now it was time to let the drama begin.
Proud, haughty and with his ornate helmet already tucked beneath his arm, Gamō walked in making no stops on his way across the courtyard, into the sitting room and kneeling at the feet of Takasama. “Lord Takasama, I have brought the Ninja King for judgement before you.”
Never make a speech when a word would do. Never speak when a gesture would suffice. Do not even move if your will is clearly known. Takasama knew the rules of leadership and did not move. Gamō stood and motioned for his men to bring forward the cage they carried on their shoulders like a palanquin. He was glad Gamō had listened. He’d told him to use a cage, make a big show of it, make sure he paraded the cage through the villages to get everyone’s attention. This was a statement, Lord Takasama could get anyone.
The fifteen samurai facing Takasama put their right hands on the hilt of their swords to stabilize them and then, in complete synchronicity, each took two steps to the side opening a path for the cage and the men holding it. How did those men know how many steps to move to make room without even looking back? Takasama grinned, knowing he’d had the cage measured before Gamō had even left and the samurai had spent every morning drilling it. Just like ninjas or magic there was also no spontaneous order in the world. Everything that appeared to have been designed, had been. Every complex movement, big or small, made to look simple, had been drilled…exhaustively. Pre-planning and preparation were the key to the illusion of control.
Now it was time to get a look at whatever poor bastard Gamō had scraped up. They pulled a pin and the bottom of the cage fell out. A sack of hair and rags fell to the ground and just as quickly flipped itself over, forehead pressed to the ground in submittal. It had probably not taken three hard slaps to the mouth to get this meek creature to admit to being the Ninja King. He’d probably confess to being a four-year-old girl if someone gave him a stern enough look.
Ninja were known to be shapeshifters though. There was a legend of a Ninja who had made his face appear to be that of his target’s brother. This allowed him to get close enough that by the time the target realized the counterfeit, his throat had already been slashed.
Takasama looked this man over. A farmer whom he’d seen before amongst the other peasants. They were like rabbits, you could snatch one of their numbers up right in front of them and the others didn’t even have the sense to run away. Even if he hadn’t recognized him as a farmer Takasama knew he wasn’t the Ninja King, because there was no Ninja King because ninja did not really exist. Sure, there were assassinations, even deviously clever assassinations, but the culprit was always some other samurai.
Ogawa-San, the last of the supposed ninja king’s victims had been thrown from his horse and had broken his neck. Three other samurai had been with him and seen it. But by that time ninja fever had already swept in and no other answer than mystical ninja horse magic would suffice.
Chida-Akumi the young girl had been murdered in the same area as two peasant girls had been found a year prior. The peasant deaths had been attributed to an itinerant woodsman and Takasama had summarily ordered the man to be flailed alive for it. But that had all been to quell the unrest, the woodsman had been made to confess of course but Takasama hadn’t really believed him. Then Chida-Akumi’s young body had turned up, her flesh exposed, cold and white by the receding of a morning’s fog and Takasama was sure it was the same killer. Most likely a samurai man, possibly one of the men standing in front of him now. He knew he’d never know for sure but no one else had these thoughts. The Akumi girl had been garroted by some ninja at the behest of some hidden ninja king who had clearly begun to wage a war of shadows against the clan.
“Keep drilling your swords and spears! Double security, complacency must not be allowed to take root!” He’d commanded. Advancement meant seizing opportunity when it presented itself. He’d kept his soldiers sharp, because in a month or two, at the first chill of autumn, he planned to lead an assault on the clan to his southern border and take their lands and their remaining samurai for his own. Lands meant rice and samurai meant muscle. Little by little, step by step, he would increase his supply of both until one day he would take the seat of power for the entire province.
Finally, there was the first of the Ninja King’s victims, the one that got the rumors started in the first place, old Kaneko-San. Well, Kaneko-San had actually been assassinated. Takasama knew that because he’d sent the assassin himself. Kaneko-San was a cantankerous loyalist to the previous clan that Takasama had displaced and he never stopped running his mouth. The polite and honorable thing would have been to challenge him to a duel or order him to commit seppuku with honor. Had he done either of those things it’d have looked bad politically. A good number of his samurai came from the old estate too. So Kaneko had to die without honor. Gamō had been ordered to shove a spear through his head while he slept alone in bed.
So, in actuality there were no unaccounted for deaths, therefore there never had been any ninja, much less a Ninja King. When he’d explained all of this, Gamō had asked why it needed to be a king. Wouldn’t a single ninja suffice? Takasama had only grinned and said, “Kill the king and the others will scatter.”
“But Sir, there won’t actually be any ninja to scatter.”
“Oh there will be once we need them again.” Takasama had said but left it to Gamō to figure out for himself. After Autumn and Winter there would be Spring and he’d been eyeing the territory on the other side of the river too.
Now here was the coming together of one plan and the seeds of the next. “Has he confessed?”
“Yes sir. He confessed to being the Ninja King.” Gamō answered. The throng of peasants gasped. The sniveling little man didn’t even look up. Takasama had found that most peasants went into an apoplectic fit if told to look a samurai in the eyes. From birth they’re taught it’s a sign of disrespect that could get them killed.
“How many men does he have working for him?”
“Ten.” Gamō answered as they’d practiced. Everyone, even the duller samurai, were eating this up. A samurai was no more clever, no quicker on the uptake than anyone else. The only thing separating the men with their swords and armor from the peasants in their rags and callouses was an accident of birth.
He looked down at the black head with long stringy hair, saw, the rise and fall of the man’s shoulders as he breathed, the same as any man or animal made to feel pain in a harsh and warlike world. He had pity for this man, probably with a family, maybe even children. He’d never had a chance, the assumed infallibility of the noble classes was so great that the man’s neighbors and possibly his own wife might themselves take for granted that the man had been a ninja and, rather than question the brutal and inequitable system, they’d most likely question themselves and wonder how they could have missed living with a ninja for so long.
If this were only a drama of masks and white faces or some poem with verses etched in stone at a shrine. This man would there give some defense of himself, his meagerness. He’d implore the hearts and minds of the samurai, insist upon his humanity, his worth. Even if the peasant possessed the personal will to lift his head or project his voice, he would still never have the words. At best he could grunt out unlearned strings of simplistic words unadorned by any nuance or grace, like some child.
It did not matter, the two men, the lord and the lowly, were both bound to the actions their station demanded. Takasama would question about accomplices. The man would protest his innocence. Then Takasama would have the man tortured. Next the man would scream out whatever names came into his mind. He probably wouldn’t have sense enough to make names up. Finally, the man would be sentenced to some horrendous and inordinately long execution. Takasama hadn’t decided if he’d choose boiling alive in oil, whose benefit and detriment were both in the unpleasant odor produced. The sweet, porcine smell of cooking man could turn the stomach but it’d sweep through the night air and hit every peasant nostril for miles as an unavoidable reminder of what happened to anyone who transgressed the will of the samurai.
Flailing was messy and loud, unless they ordered the man gagged. Honey and ants was pleasant in theory but never seemed to work in actual practice. Yes, the man would be in agony but it never killed him. Sooner or later you had to send someone around to crush his skull with a board.
Perhaps rats. Lock a man in a cage with some rats and submerge it. This always did the job. Panicked, the rats ate through whatever was in their path. The problem with the rats was that someone would have to call the ratter, the foul peasant with his cache of filthy rats.
Takasama hated all of this. However, a level of gruesomeness came with the position. To get where he wanted, to become daimyo of the entire province and after that, maybe then…Well, quite a bit more gruesomeness and human suffering could be expected. Still, that was the only choice, forward and upward. If you weren’t at the top then there’d always be someone who could make you grovel or decide to sacrifice your life to their esteem. Better someone else, anyone else, than himself.
While lost in these deep thoughts, Takasama looked past the accused, back over the heads of his Samurai and the peasants cowering behind them in the courtyard, all the way to the other side of the estate to the large gates leading out into the moonless night. The gates began to close. No order had been given. Next, the wide shoji doors separating his sitting room from the courtyard slammed shut from out of nowhere.
Whistles, groans and the rattling of sets of armor as the samurai wearing them fell to the ground. Outside of the shoji doors was the unmistakably sound of an ambush. Shut inside were Takasama, Gamō, still standing over the prisoner, and the ten bodyguards who immediately sprang into action forming a semi-circle around their lord. Each man had trained his entire life to die in the service of a master, this looked like it could very well be that time.
Outside there was now only silence. The few screams and moans had been quickly and sharply stifled. Takasama stared intensely at the shoji doors, his hand on the hilt of his own sword which rested forever ready at his hip. The whistling sound had been the tips of arrows as they cut through the air, no doubt shot directly down from the high walls. The abruptly silenced voices were a ground attack, men inside the walls finishing the job.
“Open it!” Takasama commanded, with every second they lost, the enemy gained advantage. No doubt countless enemy samurai had already breeched the gate and were amassing behind the shoji doors in the courtyard. There was no keep, no crawlspace anywhere inside the walls that would keep out a determined attack. If Takasama’s clan had any hope of surviving the night their stand had to be here and now.
Two of the bodyguards broke from formation and then each grabbed one of the shoji doors. Takasama nodded and they threw open the doors jumping back with their swords up and ready.
Only bodies. The samurai, all dead, the peasants gone but no enemy, neither waiting to fight or even wounded and left behind.
Takasama’s hand fell from his sword. Truth be told, he’d never once drawn it in battle and had never been a good fighter. His success relied on preplanning, manipulation and using men like Gamō as his enforcers. Gamō on the other hand, there was a fighter. He spent his days training, lived entirely by the warrior code and his sword had never given the slightest bit of hesitation when executing an order.
It didn’t matter if this attack had come from the West, sent by Ikejiri or from Kawamura in the South, for them to succeed in taking his head they’d first have to get through Gamō. If Gamō fell then all hope was lost anyway and there was no point in trying to fight back. At that point then there was only surrender and futile pleas for mercy.
“Where are they?! Come out and fight like warriors!” His men began to taunt with shaking voices, unable to hide their tremble caused from the visage of so many of their numbers’ slaughtered carcasses staring up at them.
This wasn’t right. None of this was right. Takasama searched everywhere with his eyes, he was missing something. Some angle was being played, a prescribed maneuver by one of his enemies and if he didn’t figure it out and come up with a quick counter strategy, he was dead. He eyes skipped over and then darted back to the accused man. He was still on his hands and knees only now he was looking up, straight up towards Takasama. Their eyes met. The man gave the hint of a smile.
“Gamō! Kill the prisoner! Takasama roared so fast that he spit. Before that spittle even hit the ground he saw Gamō’s sword rise and begin to swing down but then hands simultaneously broke through the paper walls at different places, each going for one of the lit lamps. The room went black.
Shredding paper, breaking twigs, the walls were tearing apart on all sides. Steel began to hit steel, screams both of agony and terror rang out. These sounds just as quickly began to drop off, replaced by grunts and gurgles announcing death.
Fires began to spark bringing light back into the world. Takasama found himself huddled against the wall. He looked out and saw that four lamps had been relit and were now held in place by men at each corner of the destroyed room. All ten of his bodyguards were in a writhing pile, left to die of their wounds slowly and dishonorably.
A row of men and women stood before the pile. Their faces all covered by black hoods. In their hands were short swords with black painted blades, sharpened metal claws, hooks and chains, all dripping with blood.
These were ninja but ninja were not real. Did they spring from his mind or maybe the fevered nightmares of scared villagers?
Takasama recognized their clothes, they were the villagers who’d come in following the carriage. Then there was Gamō…
Now, Gamō was bowed on one knee, before the accused peasant. The peasant was standing, shoulders back, with a smile on his face. Takasama stood up but kept his back against the wooden wall, the only one in the room that had stayed intact.
“Gamō, What is this?!”
“Well,” The peasant man spoke, not Gamō. “You wanted the ‘Ninja King’.”
Takasama watched and said nothing. Better to keep his mouth shut until he had some read on the situation. So what did he know? They’d clearly bought off Gamō, buying off the loyalty of a supposedly honorable samurai was nothing new, he’d done it himself a hundred times over but Gamō was different. Separate times Gamō had come to Takasama to expose plots against his master. Having just kept his mouth shut would have made the man a fortune.
The attackers, clearly skilled and trained with weapons and their leader standing there gloating. Only samurai could fight and speak in such ways. Yet, he had recognized most of these peasants. He could place their faces going back for years in the village. What samurai would live as a fishmonger for years just to lie in wait for an assassination?
“You don’t understand do you Takasama?”
“I’ll admit, you have me at a loss. Whoever has sent you, know I can double whatever they pay.”
“Oh Takasama, nobody paid us.” The peasant laughed as if they were old friends. He walked over to Takasama who instinctively pressed against the wall and grabbed his sword’s hilt. “We ninja are always getting blamed for murders we haven’t commited. One could even say a hint of mystique is good for business. But you got a bit greedy didn’t you?”
“What do you mean? I didn’t start the rumors!”
“No, but you’re the one who introduced talk of the Ninja King. We knew you’d scrape up some poor peasant and force him to confess, make yourself seem big and powerful. Yet something like that would lower our value. If a random man or woman is put to death for being a ninja, oh well. But if you’re going to claim to be executing the king of all ninjas, that’s really bad for business. Every once in a while, a little show of force is good, to remind people what happens if you speak too loudly or too frivolously about the ninja.”
“This all happened recently…there’s no way you could have known all those years ago when you began working as farmers and millers that one day Lord Takasama would come along and make a boast about some ninja king! What’s really going on. Who are you and who is your retainer?”
“You don’t get it. We’ve always been here. For centuries this is where we’ve been based out of. We live here. We have worked as farmers for years, as hunters, as samurai.” The man motioned to Gamō who had now joined the row of ninja. “We stay out of the politics of the samurai, we pass unnoticed from lord to lord. Until one of your heads gets a little too big and then, well you see.”
Takasama had no problem begging. His tears were at the same time a contrivance and also real. He plead his case eloquently, who could blame a man with ambition born into a warriors class? He promised his service, his servitude, whatever they may want. Finally he found himself offering up his own mutilation or disfigurement if they’d just leave him breathing. Even with missing limbs or a fleshless face he was still samurai, there’d be other samurai who’d take pity on one of their own. However, for the first time in a very long time, Takasama saw from the man a look he’d himself given to hundreds of condemned men. A cheerful and apathetic grin of inevitability.
News of Takasama’s assassination at the hands of the Ninja King spread through the clan and out through the province and on and on until it reached to the far northern shores like the whisper of a half-forgotten fairytale. The village went on being a village, to the peasants it didn’t matter which samurai lorded over them, whether it was Takasama or his replacement Gamō. The peasant’s concerns usually rested upon the things that they could control, the quality of their nets, the tidiness of their homes and keeping their kids away from the folks who lived at the far East of the village next to the mountains. They’d always been a bit weird in their ways, going back as far as anyone could remember and people had a tendency of not returning when they ventured too deep into their hills.
The End