‘I agree,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s take a look at our enemy first. Kunio, where are they?’

Kunio pointed behind him. ‘Down by the bridge.’

Sprinting to the village’s eastern boundary, the young samurai ducked behind a defensive wall of hay bales beside the last house. Peering down the main track to the bridge, they spotted two figures on horses approaching the mill. Dressed in mismatched armour and loaded with weapons, they were the embodiment of lawless bandits.

‘Definitely scouts,’ said Miyuki, seeing them inspect the crossing point and scan the horizon.

‘It’s lucky we haven’t dismantled the bridge yet,’ said Hayato. ‘That would have been a dead giveaway.’

‘What about my moat?’ asked Saburo.

‘From their position, it should look like a drainage ditch,’ Miyuki explained. ‘Unless they’re ninja, they won’t realize its true purpose.’

‘Do you recognize either of them?’ Jack asked Kunio.

The boy nodded fearfully. ‘The man on the right is Nakamura Scarface.’

‘A fitting name for such a handsome warrior!’ remarked Saburo, swallowing uneasily at the sight of him.

The bandit in question boasted a large battleworn axe, thick leather armour and a crescent-moon helmet. His weather-beaten face was consumed with a ragged beard, sliced clean through on the left cheek by a thick red scar.

‘The other bandit is Sayomi the Nightwoman.’

A mane of long black hair cascaded down the back of her blood-red armour. Strapped to her horse was a vicious double-edged naginata and she carried a bow and arrow as well as a katana. Her face was ghostly white, her eyes dark and shadowy, and her thin scarlet lips looked as poisonous as holly berries.

Jack shuddered at the sight of her. Only now did he appreciate why the villagers felt such abject terror at their coming. Any resistance to them would be met with a savage fight to the death. As the young samurai appraised their foe, an old woman tottered out of the mill, waving a stick at the two bandits.

‘That’s Natsuko!’ exclaimed Kunio. ‘Junichi’s mother.’

Hayato stood up to fire an arrow, but Miyuki pulled him back down. ‘You’ll be seen.’

‘They might kill her,’ Hayato snarled, wrenching himself from her grip.

‘Hold fire, unless you have to,’ hissed Jack. ‘If the scouts don’t return alive, Akuma will be alerted to us. And we’d lose our greatest advantage.’

‘You’re the leader,’ stated Hayato reluctantly, keeping his arrow primed in readiness.

The bandits were laughing at the woman’s feeble attempts to shoo them away. Then she managed to catch Nakamura across the shin with her stick and he howled in pain. Sayomi laughed even harder at this display of weakness. Shock giving way to humiliation and rage, Nakamura kicked the old woman to the ground, then spat on her.

‘See you on the black moon!’ Nakamura yelled at the still-defiant Natsuko, who was shaking her fist at him.