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PROLOGUE

Becoming A Ninja

Take a giant mental step back into history. Imagine yourself to be a feudal-age Japanese warrior (bushi), serving a daimyo (clan lord) in the 16th century, a time when all of Japan was in the throes of domestic warfare. Influential clan lords vie with one another in constant attempts to secure positions of military supremacy.

As a fully trained, professional fighting man who specializes in methods of hand-to-hand combat, you have had occasion to take to the field of battle many times in the service of your lord. Each time you resolutely faced death with a state of mental calmness not only expected of a man of your honorable profession but required by the samurai warrior's sacred ethical code.

Numerous enemy warriors had found your razor-sharp sword always ready, your swordsmanship terrifyingly efficient. Never had you experienced uncertainty as to the outcome of such combat. Always your fighting spirit had seen you through these moments of blood and iron, and the fame of your martial exploits had already made you a well-known hero and legend in your time.

You are well known as a warrior who fears no man, and the reality of your being alive after more than a decade of fighting attests to the fact that you have never been defeated.

Tonight you are assigned guard duty at your lord's castle. Now, as you stand watch you are fully confident that you will be master of any emergency that might arise. It is your first duty to acquit yourself in such a way as to ensure the safety of your lord. You must also bring credit to him, for the warrior's code requires such loyalty and devotion to him. You are fully prepared to die if necessary to preserve his honor.

But somehow, tonight, your emotional mood is different. As you stand in the chilly blackness of the early spring night, atop the castle's outer rampart, you feel a certain brittle tenseness and a strange and indescribable uneasiness welling up within you.

This feeling is completely new to you. You are puzzled. Your eyes strain to see into the night—there is only blackness—for the thin slice of the crescent-shaped moon gives little comfort by way of light for your lonely patrol.

Your ears are tuned to catch the slightest sound of danger—but you hear none—only natural sounds in the spring night. A gentle breeze riffles the surface of the murky waters that fill the moat below you. Reflected on the water's broken surface pattern is the dim light of the moon.

As you peer over the edge of the rampart, the huge stone wall seems to disappear beneath your feet into blackness some sixty feet to the water below. You know that wall very well— it is said to be unclimbable—so surely no threat can come from below.

You continue to stare down at the moat, trying to pierce the gloom, for the feeling of tension and uneasiness seems to be produced by your awareness of something—or somebody—lurking down there.

Your warrior-trained nerves are as tight as a drawn bowstring, and you try desperately to catch the slightest suggestion of unusual movement or sound. There is nothing to be seen or heard, yet the feeling of very tense uneasiness continues, and begins to grow.

You walk along the rampart to a new position, hoping to lose the strange emotion that accompanies you in the lonely night. Then suddenly it tells you the most shameful thing a warrior can learn about himself. You are afraid! Your tenseness, your uneasiness, they are but manifestations of fear— pure and simple fear. For the first time in your life you are afraid!

Your mind flashes back to the many times in the past when you faced an enemy. Why were those times so different from now? Facing an enemy who can be seen, his next action anticipated, and your trained reflexes triggered into an appropriate response by his slightest suki (opening), is one thing. But here tonight there is no visible enemy, and that is an entirely different matter.

Now it is suddenly clear to you—the reason for your fear— your shameful fear. Tonight the fierce commandant of the guard, whom it is said will someday be replaced by you, a brave and loyal warrior, had warned all sentries about the increased activities of the dreaded masters of the art of invisibility—the ninja, as these spies and assassins were called—who were operating in the hire of your lord's most hated enemy.

All sentries had been cautioned to be especially watchful so that these infiltrators could not bring their unseen and unheard methods of death down upon anyone in the castle.

To the very best of your memory you cannot recall ever having seen a ninja—very few people ever had—but you know that they exist. Just last winter you participated in special training exercises designed to cope with these insidious killers, who had made their martial art of shinobi or ninjutsu, as it was more popularly called, the most dreaded skill a man could possess.

Ninjutsu encompassed a variety of specialized fighting and espionage skills that made the ninja one of the world's deadliest agents of death and destruction. Indeed, you recall hearing of the clever and terrifying exploits of famous ninja ever since you were a young boy.

How well you remember the look of terror on the faces of those persons relating the stories. They told of having seen ninja walk across the surface of water, of them remaining under water for a full day without surfacing, and of how they could walk and run with such stealth that they could approach people without being detected.

Ninja were also reported to have scaled walls that defied ordinary human endeavor. And they could run faster and farther, as well as leap higher, than any normal human being could. It was said that a ninja could even disappear before the very eyes of a pursuer, should he choose to do so. All of these things and many more, even more sensational, were said to be within the capabilities of a ninja.

The townsfolk always made the ninja out as supernatural beings. To a warrior, however, they were flesh and blood, and you never really believed all that you had heard about them— or if you did, you felt sure that your sword would show the ninja to be less supernatural than told.

Fear? What was fear but a foolish state of ignorance about something, and the blind acceptance of ignorance was a replacement for reason. But why had this feeling of fear suddenly enveloped you this night? Was it really your ignorance about the ninja that fed the fear?

Here in the darkness of the night, your tour of duty only beginning, you would have ample time to go over what you knew about the ninja and find some explanation to prove to yourself that they were no more than human beings.

Yes! That was the way to rid yourself of this shameful fear that now embarrassed you. Already your confidence is returning...