Shōgun (The Asian Saga Book 1)

It took Blackthorne a good ten minutes to regain enough strength to stand unaided.  In that time the ronin-samurai had dispatched the badly wounded and had cast all corpses into the sea.  The six Browns had perished, and all the Grays.  They had cleansed the ship and made her ready for instant departure, sent seamen to their oars and stationed others by the stanchions, waiting to slip the mooring ropes.  All flares had been doused.  A few samurai had been sent to scout north along the shore to intercept Buntaro.  The bulk of Toranaga’s men hurried southward to a stone breakwater about two hundred paces away, where they took up a strong defensive position against the hundred Grays from the frigate who, having seen the attack, were approaching fast.

When all aboard had been checked and double-checked, the leader cupped his hands around his lips and hallooed shoreward.  At once more ronin-disguised samurai under Yabu came out of the night, and fanned into protective shields, north and south.  Then Toranaga appeared and began to walk slowly toward the gangway alone.  He had discarded the woman’s kimono and the dark traveling cloak and removed the makeup.  Now he wore his armor, and over it a simple brown kimono, swords in his sash.  The gap behind him was closed by the last of his guards and the phalanx moved with measured tread toward the wharf.

Bastard, Blackthorne thought.  You’re a cruel, cold-gutted, heartless bastard but you’ve got majesty, no doubt about that.

Earlier, he had seen Mariko carried below, helped by a young woman, and he had presumed that she was wounded but not badly, because all badly wounded samurai are murdered at once if they won’t or can’t kill themselves, and she’s samurai.

His hands were very weak but he grasped the helm and pulled himself upright, helped by the seaman, and felt better, the slight breeze taking away the dregs of nausea.  Swaying on his feet, still dulled, he watched Toranaga.

There was a sudden flash from the donjon and the faint echoing of alarm bells.  Then, from the castle walls, fires began to reach for the stars.  Signal fires.

Christ Jesus, they must’ve got the news, they must’ve heard about Toranaga’s escape!

In the great silence he saw Toranaga looking back and upward.  Lights began to flicker all over the city.  Without haste Toranaga turned and came aboard.

From the north distant cries came down on the wind.  Buntaro!  It must be, with the rest of the column.  Blackthorne searched the far darkness but could see nothing.  Southward the gap between attacking Grays and defending Browns was closing rapidly.  He estimated numbers.  About equal at the moment.  But for how long?

‘Keirei!‘  All aboard knelt and bowed low as Toranaga came on deck.  Toranaga motioned to Yabu, who followed him.  Instantly Yabu took command, giving orders to cast off.  Fifty samurai from the phalanx ran up the gangway to take defensive positions, facing shoreward, arming their bows.

Blackthorne felt someone tugging at his sleeve.

‘Anjin-san!’

‘Hai?‘  He stared down into the captain’s face.  The man uttered a spate of words, pointing at the helm.  Blackthorne realized that the captain presumed he held the con and was asking permission to cast off.

‘Hai, Captain-san,’ he replied.  ‘Cast off!  Isogi!‘  Yes, very quick, he told himself, wondering how he remembered the word so easily.

The galley eased away from the jetty, helped by the wind, the oarsmen deft.  Then Blackthorne saw the Grays hit the breakwater away up the shore and the tumultuous assault began.  At that moment, out of the darkness from behind a nearby line of beached boats charged three men and a girl embroiled in a running fight with nine Grays.  Blackthorne recognized Buntaro and the girl Sono.

Buntaro led the hacking retreat to the jetty, his sword bloody, arrows sticking into the armor on his chest and back.  The girl was armed with a spear but she was stumbling, her wind gone.  One of the Browns stopped courageously to cover the retreat.  The Grays swamped him.  Buntaro raced up the steps, the girl beside him with the last Brown, then he turned and hit the Grays like a mad bull.  The first two went crashing off the ten-foot wharf; one broke his back on the stones below and the other fell howling, his right arm gone.  The Grays hesitated momentarily, giving the girl time to aim her spear, but all aboard knew it was only a gesture.  The last Brown rushed past his master and flung himself headlong at the enemy.  The Grays cut him down, then charged en masse.

Archers from the ship fired volley after volley, killing or maiming all but two of the attacking Grays.  A sword ricocheted off Buntaro’s helmet onto his shoulder armor.  Buntaro smashed the Gray under the chin with his mailed forearm, breaking his neck, and hurled himself at the last.

This man died too.

The girl was on her knees now, trying to catch her breath.  Buntaro did not waste time making sure the Grays were dead.  He simply hacked off their heads with single, perfect blows, and then, when the jetty was completely secure, he turned seaward, waved at Toranaga exhausted but happy.  Toranaga called back, equally pleased.

The ship was twenty yards from the jetty, the gap still widening.

‘Captain-san,’ Blackthorne called out, gesturing urgently.  ‘Go back to the wharf!  Isogi!‘

Obediently the captain shouted the orders.  All oars ceased and began to back water.  At once Yabu came hurtling across to the quarterdeck and spoke heatedly to the captain.  The order was clear.  The ship was not to return.

‘There’s plenty of time, for Christ’s sake.  Look!’  Blackthorne pointed at the empty beaten earth and at the breakwater where the ronin were holding the Grays at bay.

But Yabu shook his head.

The gap was thirty yards now and Blackthorne’s mind was shouting, What’s the matter with you, that’s Buntaro, her husband.

‘You can’t let him die, he’s one of ours,’ he shouted at Yabu and at the ship.  ‘Him! Buntaro!’  He spun round on the captain.  ‘Back there!  Isogi!‘  But this time the seaman shook his head helplessly and held the escape course and the oarsmaster continued the beat on the great drum.

Blackthorne rushed for Toranaga, who had his back to him, studying the shore and wharf.  At once four bodyguard samurai stepped in the pilot’s way, swords on high.  He called out, ‘Toranaga-sama!  Dozo!  Order the ship back!  There!  Dozo—please!  Go back!’

‘Iyé Anjin-san.’  Toranaga pointed once at the castle signal flares and once at the breakwater, and turned his back again with finality.

‘Why, you shitless coward . . .’  Blackthorne began, but stopped.  Then he rushed for the gunwale and leaned over it.  ‘Swiiiiimm!’ he hollered, making the motions.  ‘Swim, for Christ’s sake!’

Buntaro understood.  He raised the girl to her feet and spoke to her and half-shoved her toward the wharf edge but she cried out and fell on her knees in front of him.  Obviously she could not swim.

Desperately Blackthorne searched the deck.  No time to launch a small boat.  Much too far to throw a rope.  Not enough strength to swim there and back.  No life jackets.  As a last resort he ran over to the nearest oarsmen, two to each great sweep, and stopped their pull.  All oars on the portside were momentarily thrown off tempo, oar crashing into oar.  The galley slewed awkwardly, the beat stopped, and Blackthorne showed the oarsmen what he wanted.

Two samurai went forward to restrain him but Toranaga ordered them away.

Together, Blackthorne and four seamen launched the oar like a dart over the side.  It sailed for some way then hit the water cleanly, and its momentum carried it to the wharf.

At that moment there was a victory shout from the breakwater.  Reinforcements of Grays were streaming down from the city and, though the ronin-samurai were holding off the present attackers, it was only a matter of time before the wall was breached.

‘Come on,’ Blackthorne shouted.  ‘Isogiiii!‘

Buntaro pulled the girl up, pointed at the oar and then out to the ship.  She bowed weakly.  He dismissed her and turned his full attention to battle, his vast legs set firm on the jetty.

The girl called out once to the ship.  A woman’s voice answered and she jumped.  Her head broke the surface.  She flailed for the oar and grabbed it.  It bore her weight easily and she kicked for the ship.  A small wave caught her and she rode it safely and came closer to the galley.  Then her fear caused her to loosen her grip and the oar slipped away from her.  She thrashed for an endless moment, then vanished below the surface.

She never came back.

Buntaro was alone now on the wharf and he stood watching the rise and the fall of the battle.  More reinforcement Grays, a few cavalry among them, were coming up from the south to join the others and he knew that soon the breakwater would be engulfed by a sea of men.  Carefully he examined the north and west and south.  Then he turned his back to the battle and went to the far end of the jetty.  The galley was safely seventy yards from its tip, at rest, waiting.  All fishing boats had long since fled the area and they waited as far away as possible on both sides of the harbor, their riding lights like so many cats’ eyes in the darkness.

When he reached the end of the dock, Buntaro took off his helmet and his bow and quiver and his top body armor and put them beside his scabbards.  The naked killing sword and the naked short sword he placed separately.  Then, stripped to the waist, he picked up his equipment and cast it into the sea.  The killing sword he studied reverently, then tossed it with all his force, far out into the deep.  It vanished with hardly a splash.

He bowed formally to the galley, to Toranaga, who went at once to the quarterdeck where he could be seen.  He bowed back.

Buntaro knelt and placed the short sword neatly on the stone in front of him, moonlight flashing briefly on the blade, and stayed motionless, almost as though in prayer, facing the galley.

‘What the hell’s he waiting for?’  Blackthorne muttered, the galley eerily quiet without the drumbeat.  ‘Why doesn’t he jump and swim?’

‘He’s preparing to commit seppuku.’

Mariko was standing nearby, propped by a young woman.

‘Jesus, Mariko, are you all right?’

‘All right,’ she said, hardly listening to him, her face haggard but no less beautiful.

He saw the crude bandage on her left arm near the shoulder where the sleeve had been slashed away, her arm resting in a sling of material torn from a kimono.  Blood stained the bandage and a dribble ran down her arm.

‘I’m so glad—’  Then it dawned on him what she had said.  ‘Seppuku?  He’s going to kill himself?  Why?  There’s plenty of time for him to get here!  If he can’t swim, look—there’s an oar that’ll hold him easily.  There, near the jetty, you see it?  Can’t you see it?’

‘Yes, but my husband can swim, Anjin-san,’ she said.  ‘All of Lord Toranaga’s officers must—must learn—he insists.  But he has decided not to swim.’

‘For Christ’s sake, why?’

A sudden frenzy broke out shoreward, a few muskets went off, and the wall was breached.  Some of the ronin-samurai fell back and ferocious individual combat began again.  This time the enemy spearhead was contained, and repelled.

‘Tell him to swim, by God!’

‘He won’t, Anjin-san.  He’s preparing to die.’

‘If he wants to die, for Christ’s sake, why doesn’t he go there?’ Blackthorne’s finger stabbed toward the fight.  ‘Why doesn’t he help his men?  If he wants to die, why doesn’t he die fighting, like a man?‘

Mariko did not take her eyes from the wharf, leaning against the young woman.  ‘Because he might be captured, and if he swam he might also be captured, and then the enemy would put him on show before the common people, shame him, do terrible things.  A samurai cannot be captured and remain samurai.  That’s the worst dishonor—to be captured by an enemy—so my husband is doing what a man, a samurai, must do.  A samurai dies with dignity.  For what is life to a samurai?  Nothing at all.  All life is suffering, neh?  It is his right and duty to die with honor, before witnesses.’

‘What a stupid waste,’ Blackthorne said, through his teeth.

‘Be patient with us, Anjin-san.’

‘Patient for what?  For more lies?  Why won’t you trust me?  Haven’t I earned that?  You lied, didn’t you?  You pretended to faint and that was the signal.  Wasn’t it?  I asked you and you lied.’

‘I was ordered . . . it was an order to protect you.  Of course I trust you.’

‘You lied,’ he said, knowing that he was being unreasonable, but he was beyond caring, abhorring the insane disregard for life and starved for sleep and peace, starved for his own food and his own drink and his own ship and his own kind.  ‘You’re all animals,’ he said in English, knowing they were not, and moved away.

‘What was he saying, Mariko-san?’ the young woman asked, hard put to hide her distaste.  She was half a head taller than Mariko, bigger-boned and square-faced with little, needle-shaped teeth.  She was Usagi Fujiko, Mariko’s niece, and she was nineteen.

Mariko told her.

‘What an awful man!  What foul manners!  Disgusting, neh?  How can you bear to be near him?’

‘Because he saved our Master’s honor.  Without his bravery I’m sure Lord Toranaga would have been captured—we’d all have been captured.’  Both women shuddered.

‘The gods protect us from that shame!’  Fujiko glanced at Blackthorne, who leaned against the gunwale up the deck, staring at the shore.  She studied him a moment.  ‘He looks like a golden ape with blue eyes—a creature to frighten children with.  Horrid, neh?‘  Fujiko shivered and dismissed him and looked again at Buntaro.  After a moment she said, ‘I envy your husband, Mariko-san.’

‘Yes,’ Mariko replied sadly.  ‘But I wish he had a second to help him.’  By custom another samurai always assisted at a seppuku, standing slightly behind the kneeling man, to decapitate him with a single stroke before the agony became unbearable and uncontrollable and so shamed the man at the supreme moment of his life.  Unseconded, few men could die without shame.

‘Karma,‘ Fujiko said.

‘Yes.  I pity him.  That’s the one thing he feared—not to have a second.’

‘We’re luckier than men, neh?‘  Samurai women committed seppuku by thrusting their knives into their throats and therefore needed no assistance.

‘Yes,’ Mariko said.

Screams and battle cries came wafting on the wind, distracting them.  The breakwater was breached again.  A small company of fifty Toranaga ronin-samurai raced out of the north in support, a few horsemen among them.  Again the breach was ferociously contained, no quarter sought or given, the attackers thrown back and a few more moments of time gained.

Time for what, Blackthorne was asking bitterly.  Toranaga’s safe now.  He’s out to sea.  He’s betrayed you all.

The drum began again.

Oars bit into the water, the prow dipped and began to cut through the waves, and aft a wake appeared.  Signal fires still burned from the castle walls above.  The whole city was almost awake.

The main body of Grays hit the breakwater.  Blackthorne’s eyes went to Buntaro.  ‘You poor bastard!’ he said in English.  ‘You poor, stupid bastard!’

He turned on his heel and walked down the companionway along the main deck toward the bow to watch for shoals ahead.  No one except Fujiko and the captain noticed him leaving the quarterdeck.

The oarsmen pulled with fine discipline and the ship was gaining way.  The sea was fair, the wind friendly.  Blackthorne tasted the salt and welcomed it.  Then he detected the ships crowding the harbor mouth half a league ahead.  Fishing vessels yes, but they were crammed with samurai.

‘We’re trapped,’ he said out loud, knowing somehow they were enemy.

A tremor went through the ship.  All who watched the battle on shore had shifted in unison.

Blackthorne looked back.  Grays were calmly mopping up the breakwater, while others were heading unhurried toward the jetty for Buntaro, but four horsemen—Browns—were galloping across the beaten earth from out of the north, a fifth horse, a spare horse, tethered to the leader.  This man clattered up the wide stone steps of the wharf with the spare horse and raced its length while the other three slammed toward the encroaching Grays.  Buntaro had also looked around but he remained kneeling and, when the man reined in behind him, he waved him away and picked up the knife in both hands, blade toward himself.  Immediately Toranaga cupped his hands and shouted, ‘Buntaro-san!  Go with them now—try to escape!’

The cry swept across the waves and was repeated and then Buntaro heard it clearly.  He hesitated, shocked, the knife poised.  Again the call, insistent and imperious.

With effort Buntaro drew himself back from death and icily contemplated life and the escape that was ordered.  The risk was bad.  Better to die here, he told himself.  Doesn’t Toranaga know that?  Here is an honorable death.  There, almost certain capture.  Where do you run?  Three hundred ri, all the way to Yedo?  You’re certain to be captured!

He felt the strength in his arm, saw the firm, unshaking, needle-pointed dagger hovering near his naked abdomen, and he craved for the releasing agony of death at long last.  At long last a death to expiate all the shame: the shame of his father’s kneeling to Toranaga’s standard when they should have kept faith with Yaemon, the Taikō’s heir, as they had sworn to do; the shame of killing so many men who honorably served the Taikō’s cause against the usurper, Toranaga; the shame of the woman, Mariko, and of his only son, both forever tainted, the son because of the mother and she because of her father, the monstrous assassin, Akechi Jinsai.  And the shame of knowing that because of them, his own name was befouled forever.

How many thousand agonies have I not endured because of her?

His soul cried out for oblivion.  Now so near and easy and honorable.  The next life will be better; how could it be worse?

Even so, he put down the knife and obeyed, and cast himself back into the abyss of life.  His liege lord had ordered the ultimate suffering and had decided to cancel his attempt at peace.  What else is there for a samurai but obedience?

He jumped up, hurled himself into the saddle, jammed his heels into the horse’s sides, and, together with the other man, he fled.  Other ronin-cavalry galloped out of the night to guard their retreat and cut down the leading Grays.  Then they too vanished, a few Gray horsemen in pursuit.

Laughter erupted over the ship.

Toranaga was pounding the gunwale with his fist in glee, Yabu and the samurai were roaring.  Even Mariko was laughing.

‘One man got away, but what about all the dead?’ Blackthorne cried out enraged.  ‘Look ashore—there must be three, four hundred bodies there.  Look at them, for Christ’s sake!‘

But his shout did not come through the laughter.

Then a cry of alarm from the bow lookout.  And the laughter died.