The Bamboo Bloodbath and Ninja's Revenge by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781401033514
Amazon: 1401033512
Publisher: Xlibris, Corp.
Published: 2001-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Prologue:

FALL OF THE BLACK CASTLE

In the sixteenth century Japan was divided among a number of autonomous domains governed by feudal barons, or daimyos. In 1573 Oda Nobunaga, daimyo of the province of Owari, became the de facto shogun, or hereditary commander-in-chief of the army, the seat of power in Japan. The emperor was at this time largely a figurehead. For almost a decade thereafter Nobunaga consolidated his authority, subjugating hostile barons and restoring order in about half the empire.

But Nobunaga was a brutal man, even in a brutal age. He slaughtered wantonly. He destroyed the Buddhist stronghold on Mount Huei, burning the temple and three thousand buildings and massacring thousands of monks, women, and children. This terminated all Buddhist pretensions to political power-but at what cost?

History records that Nobunaga was treacherously assassinated by one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, in 1582. This was a half-truth, hiding a highly sensitive episode. The real manner of 206

his demise was rigorously excised from all records, in a pogrom as savage as any implemented during his life.

Only one person survived to carry the truth; and for reasons of his own, that person did not speak.

*

The bright silk banners of the emperor fluttered in the wind: a great red dragon marching on the Black Castle. The samurai warriors wore armor dresses of glittering red, blue, and gold laminae; some had their heads bare, and others wore their hair tied in knots. Rank after rank they marched, an awesome display of power.

Fu Antos, lord of the ninjas, looked out from the sturdy walls of the Black Castle, seething with rage. Fifteen years before, Fu's grandfather had influenced the emperor to promote Nobunaga's career, and soon the daimyo had become the most powerful man in Japan. Fu's grandfather had continued with valuable aid and advice until his mysterious illness and death two years before.

Fu's father, also a gifted ninja leader, had spoken darkly of poison smeared on the apples of the old man's private orchard, but the source of that treachery was unknown. The ninja who had performed the deed had committed seppuku, ritual suicide, before he could be interrogated; surely some outside force had motivated him. Fu's father had pursued the quest for information with extraordinary diligence right to the emperor's palace itself-where he died, suddenly, in what was said to be a most unfortunate hunting accident.

Fu Antos, barely twenty years old when he assumed the lordship of the Black Castle, was in many ways the most gifted ninja of them all. He required no further warnings. Someone highly placed was systematically eliminating the ninja leadership, and he was very likely to be next. He dismissed all personnel of questionable loyalty and prepared his defenses of the castle with exceeding care.

And waited.

Now the enemy had manifested openly: the shogun himself!

207

Fu Antos had harbored suspicions, but the confirmation was a shock. Nobunaga tolerated no rival source of power in all of Japan

-especially, it seemed, that to which he was beholden.

Fu Antos was a young giant, drilled in the most sinister arts of warfare and adept at techniques unknown by normal men.

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