James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

“They will be removed.” Mashashige suddenly bowed very low in Ryan’s direction, a gesture mirrored almost instantaneously by his sec boss. “We must offer our sincere apologies to you, Ryan Cawdor, for not believing you. It was not honorable of us to behave in that manner. You are our guest.”

Ryan shrugged, stooping and wiping the blood off the steel. “Happens. If I was you, I’d be a sight more worried about how this man got into your place. And I’d be making a quick check to ensure there aren’t any more around.”

Hideyoshi nodded, looking at his master. “I will rouse the guards and scour out the walls.”

“Fine,” Ryan said. “And I’m going back to bed. Good night, all.” He turned on his heel and walked away to rejoin the others and tell them what had happened.

Chapter Twelve

Takei Yashimoto greeted them the next morning in high spirits.

“One dead ronin and one fluttering its wings in the cage of Lord Mashashige,” he crowed. “And all from the help of the knife-using gaijin .”

“You mean there’s a prisoner, as well?” said Ryan, who had been helping himself from a breakfast buffet set out in the dining hall. To his and the others’ relief, their hosts had laid on a Western-style mealor an approximation of what they regarded as being a Western-style meal.

The scrambled eggs were awash with vinegar, and the bacon had been pickled first. There were balls of rice and surprisingly good hash browns, along with some spiced sausage links and about four different types of fish.

Doc tried something that looked like smoked trout and spit it out on his plate, exclaiming in disgust, “I most strongly urge you, friends, not to essay any of the fish. It is a dire mix of fins, scales, bones and purest mercury. It grates with the fillings in my teeth most alarmingly.”

Yashimpto was standing near Ryan. “You pick at what you eat. You know the labor and the cost of growing and harvesting this food? The price is high, gaijin .”

“Not our problem,” Jak said, pushing past the samurai to get at some sort of fine-ground rice with soya milk and a rich plum sauce.

“Tell us about the prisoner,” J.B. said. “He do any chilling?”

Yashimoto shook his head, beaming at them, a stray spear of sunlight coming through the slats in the bamboo blinds and glowing across the scar on his face. “We found where the first man broke in. Perhaps there was help from within. A rope hung down into the water, and a small round boat was there made from skins, painted black. Toyotomi Hideyoshi went with three other samurai across the bridge and made a circle around and about the fortress. Through the trees. There they caught another such man. Now he waits to die.”

Krysty approached the buffet to take a second helping of the rich soup called miso, which had bean curd and dried seaweed floating in it. She and Mildred had both picked it for its high nutritional value.

“He going to be executed?” she asked.

The samurai looked past her, his eyes watching dust motes in the morning sunlight. For a moment it looked as if he were going to totally ignore the woman.

“No,” he finally said. “He will choose to take his own life. That way he saves his family honor from shame.”

“Hara-kiri,” Mildred said. “Going to chill himself with a sword?”

The warrior’s face showed a passing pang of disgust. “No, foolish grandmother. Hara-kiri is vulgar and common, to be used by peasants and people of low class, outlanders and stupid old women.”

“So what’s the right way to describe spilling your guts on the floor?” Mildred snapped.

“Seppuku. Done not with sword but with a knife, called wakizashi . Followed by beheading by a friend. This conclusion is called kaishaku . It is a very, very honorable ceremony.”

“Include us out,” Ryan said.

But the second-in-command of the fortress shook his head, grinning like an ape on jolt. “That is not allowed to be possible, Cawdor-san.”

“How’s that?”

Yashimoto pointed a finger at him, like an angry schoolmaster. “You are all guests of honor of Lord Mashashige. He would wish all men who are honorable guests to come and show witness at the dying.”