Moonshadow: Rise of the Ninja (Moonshadow, 1) - Hardcover

Higgins, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031605531X ISBN 13: 9780316055314

Verlag: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

In the moonlight, the explosive fast draw became a horizontal streak of silver, flashing momentarily from the cover of the shadow. The tip of Moonshadow's sword ambushed the lurking foe, who stood, still drawing his own weapon.

It's the dawn of an age of peace in medieval Japan, and a power hungry warlord is plotting to plunge the nation into a deadly civil war using a secret weapon from the West. Enter Moonshadow, the newest and youngest agent for the Grey Light Order, a covert brotherhood of shinobi (ninja spy warriors) who work for the shogun. For his first mission, Moonshadow is sent on a perilous journey to capture the plans for the secret weapon. Can Moonshadow defeat the evil warlord, rogue samurai, professional killers, and another ninja spy to save his country from violent chaos? Or will his first mission also be his last?

This thrilling ninja adventure by Simon Higgins, an expert Japanese swordsman, combines gripping action, humor, hold-your-breath suspense, and even a bit of magic for an exciting and fast-paced read!

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Simon Higgins is the author of the bestselling Thunderfish trilogy which was a Children's Book Council of Australia Notable Book and also the Jade Draper series. He is an expert in Japanese swordsmanship and lived in Japan for a number of years.

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Moonshadow

Rise of the NinjaBy Higgins, Simon

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Copyright © 2010 Higgins, Simon
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780316055314

1

Nemesis Unknown

For glory or destruction. His master’s saying tore through his mind again. Would a blade tear his flesh just as deeply before the night was over?

The sun would rise no matter what, but would Nanashi live to see it? He opened and closed his fists as the grim voice of fear began whispering. It will be destruction, not glory, it nagged him. Tonight, you die.

Taking a deep breath, he drove off the menacing thoughts and opened his eyes. How long had he been standing here in shadow, wrestling with this final wave of panic? Nanashi drew in the air as he studied the dark corridor ahead. By its cool scent, dawn was around two hours away. The moon had finally set. Darkness was his ally now. Nanashi crept to the end of the wood-paneled corridor and sank to one knee. He adjusted the sword on his back, turning his head left and right while he tried to steady his breathing. Stretching his neck, he listened. The chill night had silenced the last crickets outside. Now there was not a sound.

The great mansion was silent too, so he couldn’t afford to make a single noise as he moved deeper into it. A cold breeze snatched sweat from his forehead and the hollows around his eyes. With it, a smell of stale bean soup from the kitchen found his nose. His nostrils flared, heart pounded.

Hearing only its thrumming in his chest, Nanashi shuffled noiselessly up to the twin sliding screens at the end of the corridor.

The heart of the mansion was a series of chambers, their thick walls made up of stained oak planks. Huge gnarled cedar beams crossed each chamber’s ceiling, and the rooms were linked by narrow corridors and sliding screens inlaid with squares of oiled paper.

He hesitated, letting his heart slow, as he examined the runners of the screens before him. Beyond this barrier lay the last two rooms, and the objective he was desperate to reach. His stomach suddenly knotted. That objective would be guarded, perhaps by a team or just one, which would actually be worse. Any warrior posted alone would be their best.

Nanashi drew a small bamboo beaker from a hidden pocket in his black jacket. Easing the cork stopper from the tube, he hunched over one end of the floor slot that held the screens. Nanashi carefully poured water into its runner. As the liquid spread, he silently counted to five.

Tentatively he moved the nearest screen about a hand’s width. It glided with a mere whisper. The water had stopped the screen grating noisily against the runners, just as he’d hoped. It was time. He would not think about the consequences of failure. For clarity, for strength, he would try not to think at all. He set his jaw and tightened the dark head-wrap that hid his smooth face. If he had to fight his way out, the guards would remember only his eyes. If he let them live.

Nanashi sighed. But of course he could not slay them. On this mission, the orders were rigid. Retrieve the documents. Take no life. No doubt Mantis had a hand in framing these rules. Him and his views! He’d get them all killed one day with that stuff. Nanashi pictured Mantis’s gaunt face, his deep, ever-changing eyes: one moment hard with fierce resolve, the next glowing with pride bordering on tenderness. And, in almost every glance, a hint of sorrow. The boy momentarily hung his head. Mantis’s beliefs made everything twice as hard! Nanashi wrestled his mind toward stillness and drew in the chilled pre-dawn air. Though veiled by cloth, his nostrils flared sharply.

Inside a nearby room, perhaps just two walls away, someone was sweating hard. The scent was of either an older man with a bad cold or a young, very fit man filled with tension. Both smelled the same to dogs, wolves, and foxes. And to Nanashi.

Training had not given him the heightened sense. It was what Groundspider called a “residue.”

Nanashi had been trained in an ancient skill named the eye of the beast. At times, when he focused his mind on a nearby animal or bird, he could see through the creature’s eyes, use its superior hearing, its powerful sense of smell. When that particular “sight-joining” was over, most of the beast-abilities quickly faded. Sometimes they lingered on in Nanashi after sight-joinings, serving him as the heightened sense of smell did now, but he knew that all such “residues” could vanish, without warning, at any time. If he relied too much on one during this mission then it abruptly faded—he stopped himself before that idea made his stomach twist into a new knot.

He gently opened both sliding doors. With the night-sight his special diet had given him, Nanashi scanned the unfurnished room ahead.

It was rectangular. A high, beamed ceiling. Plain side walls of dark-stained wood. Tatami floor… all reed matting. A single paper-covered sliding screen door broke the far wall. Still no sign of guards, but the scent of sweat was stronger now. It came from beyond that single door.

Nanashi carefully lifted one foot and made as if to enter the room. A detail just a few paces away caught his eye. He froze, stifling a gasp. Nanashi studied the floor of the room ahead. Strange little shadows. His heartbeat grew loud again. That was close. Watch it, he ordered himself, there’s no margin for error here. You almost walked into a trap!

The floor was covered with neat, even rows of iron tetsubishi: sharp triple-spiked foot jacks, caltrops whose tips were probably flecked with poison. They were painted a straw color to make them blend in with the tatami. Nanashi slid the soft backpack from under the sword on his back and eased a bolt of rough black cloth from it.

Lining up the long axis of the roll carefully with the distant screen door, he leaned into the room and flicked his wrists. The bolt quickly unwound in a straight line down the center of the tatami. Thinning as it turned, the spool crossed the floor with a faint hiss. Nanashi watched it, breath held. It ran out roughly three long strides short of the door. A complex potion smell, with hints of both persimmons and seaweed, escaped from the cloth. Though pungent, Nanashi was glad of its presence. Any spike penetrating the cloth shield would be coated with the dried potion, an antidote for tetsubishi poison. Most shadow clans soaked their tetsubishi in a formula that paralyzed, in order to capture a victim alive. It was no act of mercy. Only the living could be interrogated and forced to give up their secrets. Forced, it was said, with potions that unhinged the mind, and methods more dreadful still, which every spy deeply feared. Torture, by blade or fire.

Nanashi had made it this far, at least. This was the final door, if old Badger’s archives were accurate and unspoiled. One could never be sure. The librarian’s pet monkey had been known to deface his maps and charts in a variety of unseemly ways, and Badger, though he could speak and read in most known languages, was often unwilling to interpret his own charts for others. “You work it out, boy,” he’d told Nanashi a hundred times, “or your lazy brain will dry out like kelp flung on the rocks!”

Nanashi shook his head. Thanks, Badger! Well, last room or not, he couldn’t leap quite that far,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 031605531X
• ISBN 13: 9780316055314
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Terminal Video; n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com; ; Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,; Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,; Italien