James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

Doc cleared his throat. “I do not dispute there is a certain male-chauvinist attitude in these warriors, but I could not help noticing that those delicate little dolls had every appearance of happiness.”

“Because they don’t know any better, you silly old goat,” Mildred snapped.

“When it comes to” Doc stopped speaking abruptly when Ryan shot him an angry glance.

He’d spotted a small door opening in one corner of the courtyard, and a slender Japanese man appeared. He was barely five feet tall, as skinny as a lath and dressed in a plain black gown that brushed the ground over his sandaled feet. He had a sword tucked into his waistband, but its silver hilt was totally without any ornamentation. His face was narrow, with heavy brows over hooded eyes, and his long black hair was sleeked into a neat ponytail tied with a single strand of black silk.

He walked briskly toward them, and Ryan noticed how easily he moved, like a trained athlete.

“Must be a messenger,” J.B. said, “bringing us the invitation to dinner.”

The man stopped in front of them, inclining his head in what was no more than a token bow, surprising Ryan with his slightly offhand manner.

“You come to take us in to meet this Lord Mashashige?” Ryan asked.

The voice was quiet and cold as Sierra meltwater, each word given equal value. “No. I am Lord Mashashige.”

Chapter Eight

Jak picked halfheartedly at a round dish of something pale and pink that looked a little like large prawns. “What these?” he asked.

“Sea slugs,” replied Hideyoshi, who was the only samurai sitting with them, cross-legged around a long, shallow table in the great hall of the fortress ville. Silent servants in scarlet-and-white livery stood around the paper-thin walls.

“Sea slugs.” The teenager stared unhappily at them, finally poking at the largest specimen with one of the ivory chopsticks that they’d all been given. He gasped. “Holy Judas! It’s moving.”

The sly grin widened on the face of the warrior. “Of course it is alive. Did you think we would serve to you sea slugs that were already dead?”

Lord Mashashige was sitting at the end of the table, quietly eating from a bowl of plain boiled rice that contained some strands of boiled vegetables.

“There is other food, Jak,” he said. “The sushi is good and it is dead.”

“But not cooked, Jak,” Mildred warned. “It’s raw fish, maybe in a vinegar sauce.”

“No burgers, beans and fries?” the young man asked. “Real food?”

Hideyoshi slapped his hand on his thigh and roared with laughter. “We many times eat old, predark-times American food. But we knew that we would have strangers here for the first time in more years than an old man might remember. And our cooks have worked hard to make dishes that are truly of our country. If you would wish for Yankee food”

Ryan shook his head. “That’s all right. This rice, fish and stuffs fine.”

Lord Mashashige lifted a small porcelain cup filled with the blood-heat sake that they had been drinking. “We wish you happiness and health. All of you. Even the women.”

All of them lifted their cups and drank. Krysty dabbed at her mouth with a corner of the snow white linen napkin at her side, covering her whisper with it. “Tastes like scented piss to me, lover.”

“Wouldn’t know,” he responded quietly. “Never knowingly drunk scented piss.”

He had made several attempts to find out more about what had happened in Japan after the nukecaust of nearly a century earlier, as well as trying to get information about how and why they had been able to use the gateways. But each time he asked a question, Mashashige would deflect it as easily as a swordsman parrying a clumsy lunge.

“How many times have your people made jumps into Deathlands?”

The dark eyes drilled into his face. “How many leaves are there in a forest, Ryan Cawdor?” Like his second-in-command, Lord Mashashige had slight problems with his pronunciation, so Ryan’s name came out more like “Lion.”

While young women servants fluttered in carrying steaming-hot towels to wipe their hands and faces, Mashashige promised to answer all their questions a little later, after the meal.