Whispering Shadow Blade The Ninja Blood Curse

By Sephen Jack

This story begins with a Samurai known as the Hand of Satan. His name is Dragoon. A six-foot-six-inch tall three hundred pound goliath of a man standing over a head taller than all the Samurai in the land.
On his way to the house of Lu, answering a summons from Chang Lu, the son of Lord Chin Lu, who was recently murdered in his sleep. The Samurai’s horse is startled and rears up and tosses his master off, who lands on ungracefully on his ass.
A young girl takes him captive with the intent of killing him. She believes the big Samurai is in a way responsible for the slaughter of her father, Tokashi, a Samurai Guru, and her mother, Aona, a Ninja Maiden.
The deaths of the couple are witnessed by the girl, Jasmine Tokashi, their sixteen-year-old daughter, who takes it upon herself to avenge her parent's death by becoming the force behind the Ninja Blood Curse her mother whispered before being beheaded.
Aona named those who committed the deaths of her husband and herself and those responsible for their deaths. Daughter Jasmine saw the torture and heard her mother enact the Ninja Blood Curse. She takes it upon herself to become the “Curse Avenger.” Having been taught the Ninja ways and the use of the Samurai blades from birth, she is physically capable of taking on the task but uncertain if she is mentally capable of murder.
Nineteen men acting as Samurai soldiers under the command of General Matu Matsuto a Samurai Master Swordsman, storms the house of Sensei Tokashi and kills two servants and tortures Tokashi and Aona before hacking them both to pieces.
Chang Lu, the son of the dead Lord Chin Lu, request Sensei Tokashi to act as his guard commander during an upcoming festival.
However, Sensei Tokashi is ill and not expected to recover, and therefore unable to comply. Aona sends a note of regret explaining her husband's illness and the family doctor’s prognosis.
Chin Lu believes the illness is a fabrication and, therefore an insult directed toward him. He orders the General of the Lu dynasty’s army to exact the maximum punishment on the Samurai Guru.
General Matu Matsuto decides not to have the men Sensei Tokashi trained as his band of soldiers. He hires nineteen murders, thieves, and cutthroats to accompany him to the house of Tokashi with promise of becoming honorary Samurai and payment of five coins each.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sephen Jack
• Release date: Oct 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463328255

Sephen Jack

Sephen Jack - Artist, Author, Beach Bum:I am the son of a half-breed Cherokee from an Oklahoma, Indian Reservation. At the age of eleven I was orphaned. In the mid-60's was a long-haired Southern California teenager, and came of age in 1966 during the summer of love. I stood on the corner of Haight & Ashbury, San Francisco and communed with My Generation - The Hippy Generation - Peace, Love, the let's Party Generation.The Vietnam War expanded and I became a soldier in the U.S.Army until a Military Chaplin gave me and 16 other soldiers our Last Rites - I was the sole survivor - that cut my military career a tad short. I stood shoulder to shoulder with Brave Heroes and I walked alone through the midst of killers and thieves.I started my career as an Artist when I was in the 6th grade selling my pencil drawings to classmates and teachers for ice cream money - I've been an Artist ever since. I've put pen to paper, paint to canvas, chisel to stone. I've sculpted clay-steel-and sand and captured images on film.As a story teller I have penned many stories - true and fiction. I have ventured only recently to allow others to read my stories. If you have read my stories I hope you enjoyed them.My Life Experiences:I've traveled around the world a few times and consider myself an Adventurer. I've surfed the waves off the shores of many nations, swam the clear blue water of the Red Sea, and piloted a plane up high in the wild blue yonder soaring like an eagle over California's Mojave Desert. I skied the snowy slopes of many mountains.I crossed the Arabian Desert with a group of Nomads, by jeep - not camel. I explored many old gold mines left by the 1849 Gold Rush: "There's gold in them there hills." I've also spelunker many natural caves under Earth's surface. I scuba-dove many coral reefs around the world and dove the Caribbean Ocean floor in search of sunken treasure. I para-sailed over a school of Hammerhead Sharks near Cancun (unintentionally-who would do that on purpose). I explored the interior of the Mayan Pyramids in Chichen Itza, Mexico. And scaled to the top of 'Vihara Nam Hai Kwan Se Im Pu Sa Buddhist Temple,' in West Java.I enjoyed dancing to wild music on the rooftops of Singapore and toured the Go-Go Bars of Soi Cowboy, Bangkok. During a dig in the deserted city near Tulum, Mexico I unearthed a Mayan Relic, along with a small red scorpion that was pinching my finger and striking my thumbnail again and again with its poisonous tail. I walked across the crust of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaiian a few days before it erupted - the boiling steam rising from beneath the Earth's smoking crust melted the soles of my climbing shoes. I won a Regatta Sailing Competition off the coast of Paradise Island in the Bahamas and drank Bahama Mommas as Hurricane Bertha blew past.I have chased UFOs (but I've not caught one -- yet).I've thrown dice in Vegas, White Water Rafted in the Kern River. I drove Speedway Car No.55 around Bakersfield Speedway Race Track. I raced Dune Buggies over the sand dunes of Southern California. I've sold my art on the strand in Venice Beach, California, and created many mermaid sand sculpture on many sandy beaches around the world.As an Engineer, I worked on NASA's Space Shuttle at Edwards Air Base. I was a Project Engineer on the Portland, Oregon Nuclear Power Plant. The Quality Control Engineer on a Geothermal Power Plant on Gunung Salak (volcano), Java. and the Chief Engineer on Coal-Fired Power Plant supplying electrical power to the Batu Hijau Gold Mine Project in Sumbawa, Indonesia.I worked as a Bartender / Bouncer at the Kasbah Saloon, in Rock Springs, Wyoming at night and searched for "The Hole in the Wall Gang's" buried loot during the day.I am the Artist Beach Bum you saw walking in the surf wearing a Panama hat on his head, a flowered shirt on his back and surfer shorts on his butt.Presently I live on the island of Java, Indonesia at the edge of a rainforest on the west coastline of the Indian Ocean.

Book preview

Whispering Shadow Blade

The 1Ninja Blood Curse

by: Sephen Jack

25 October 2019

Whispering Shadow Blade - The 1Ninja Blood Curse

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2019

Sephen Jack

All rights reserved

I do not know why anyone would want to

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Any resemblance to persons, places, or things,

living, dead, undead, operating or having

operated, is purely coincidental.

Whispering Shadow Blade

The 1Ninja Blood Curse

. . . . . . .

Stop where you are.

Dragoon pulled back on his horse’s rugged harness and brought his black beast to a halt. His right hand gripped the handle of his Short-Blade. He waited.

The voice came from behind a large black pine tree ahead and to his right. He must have wondered off course and walked into a forest thick of knotted black pine trees. Each had a massive trunk with gnarled branches reaching toward the cloud painted sky.

Samurai Dragoon fingered the loop of leather holding his Short Blade in its scabbard and focused on the tree. He did not fear what was happening; He is Samurai - Samurai fear nothing, not even death. However, a bit of vigilance was prudent. Over the past two weeks, whispers of Samurai Warriors disappearing without a trace spread through the towns and villages. If the village gossip was correct, seven Samurai Warriors have gone missing.

And now he faced an unknown entity. Coincidence? Maybe, probably not. He opted to proceed with caution rather than whipping out a weapon and perform some rash act of violence. Wait and see what happens was the plan.

You command that I stop, and so I have stopped. He twisted in his saddle, scanning the forest for a clue as to how many assailants he would face, and from where the attacking force would come. He slid forward in his saddle and slipped his feet from the stirrups, freeing himself of constraints.

What more do you command of me? Hard muscles trained for war flexed, relaxed, and flexed again, battle-scarred tissue rolled beneath his black silk kimono. The day was warm, and so the elaborate garment trimmed in gold lace, lay open, exposing bare skin, hard muscles, and a loincloth of soft white cotton that covered his manhood.

The wooded location was the perfect trap. The Samurai knew this, for he had set similar traps in similar settings; the mouth of the trap was a small clearing surrounded by a plethora of trees. The Samurai expected the trap to be sprung soon: A signal will be sounded, armed men will step from behind tree trunks and drop from overhead branches to converge and overpower the unsuspecting victim, him. He waited.

There was enough thick foliage beyond the trees to conceal an army of the enemy, a hoard of bandits or worse: a sneaky band of deadly Ninja assassins.

As of late, Ninjas have become bold in their sneaky ways of dealing out death. A single assassin no longer hides in shadows waiting for the opportunity to slit a throat or add a drop of poison. They have banded together to swarm their victims, leaving them to die of a thousand cuts more or less. No one is safe.

. . . . . . .

Lords and Merchants tremble in their beds at the sound of an unseen footstep. Those who can afford protection have called upon the Samurai to stand guard over their beds at night.

And here, the guard: a lone Samurai becomes the victim. Dragoon cannot believe he rode straight into the mouth of an ambush with both eyes wide open. Well, maybe his eyes weren’t as wide open as they should have been. The past few nights, carousing has been a little more active than he anticipated.

By order of Lord Chin Lu, four Samurai were protecting Chin Lu’s second cousin, Rin Lu, a wealthy spice merchant, and his family. Rin Lu departed for the Northern Province a few days ago. He took three Samurai with him for protection while he dealt with other spice merchants. He left Samurai Dragoon to protect his family while he was away. The little man was expected to be gone for a few weeks.

Dragoon, the Samurai guardian, would have stayed in bed with the merchant’s wife and her twin sister for another day or two had he not been summoned to do urgent business for the Lu Family.

The Lu family was his employer by order of Emperor Chan. His loyalty to Lord Chin Lu, the head of the Lu Family, was absolute, second only to his devotion to Emperor Chan. He answered only to the Emperor and Chin Lu.

Dragoon’s day job description was that of a roaming civil servant acting as a peacekeeper, an impartial judge on those occasions when lies and facts oppose each other. And when called upon, he was an executioner known as The Hand of Satan.

The messenger also brought twelve-day old news. Lord Chin Lu was dead (R.I.P.). His death was sudden, Ninjas were the prime suspects.

Samurai Dragoon would miss Chin Lu, the man was a friend, and brother Samurai.

With his governer’s death, Dragoon could ignore the messenger’s order. The communique was not the last message from a dead man. It was from Chang Lu, number one son of his dead boss, Lord Chin Lu (R.I.P.).

Gossip says Emperor Chan has ordered an investigation into Lord Chin Lu’s death, and he placed a month-long hold on the appointment of Lord Chin Lu’s successor. A member of the Emperor’s Family has assumed the Lord’s daily duties until the investigation has been completed.

Dragoon reflected that number one son, Chang Lu, had the most to gain. With his father out of the way, he would rule a vast region of the Emperor’s immense Empire.

True, Chang Lu was first in line to reign over the Lu Family’s holdings, but, until Emperor Chan signs the official order confirming Chang Lu’s appointment, Samurai Dragoon was a Ronin – a Samurai without a governor.

However, one does not keep a soon to be Lord waiting if he knows what is good for him.

Samurai Dragoon was a big man, a goliath among the Samurai on both sides. He was a mixed-blood barbarian.

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