“And they both died,” the samurai said. “But one is remembered as a victor and the other as a man who rode arrogant and grinning to his death, sucking down his whole command with him. There is no defeat like victory, and victory can be no defeat at all. That is what we say.”
THE NIGHT PASSED pleasantly enough.
Krysty and Ryan huddled together under a large woolen blanket, warmed by the fires that were kept burning all through the hours of darkness.
They were awakened once, around midnight, by a minor quake that sent rocks clattering into the gorge ahead of them. But there were no aftershocks, and they were at little risk out there in the open.
In the fortress Ryan had come for the first time on the great preoccupations of the Japanese. A sort of vertical pinball game called pachinko involved dozens of tiny steel balls rolling around and around and bouncing into numbered and lettered slots. The combinations decided whether you won or lost. Most times it seemed that you lost.
It was such a craze that several of the samurai had brought along smaller, portable versions of the game, playing as the breakfast cooked, the morning air filling with the rattling and chinking of the pachinko balls.
Mashashige himself stopped by and sat with his foreign guests while they broke their fasts. The air was filled with the scent of fried bacon and fresh-baked bread, but the shogun simply had a bowl of hot water that contained some sliced chestnuts and shredded ginger.
He tapped J.B.’s Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 scattergun. “This fires the small knives. No, not knives. What is the word for the very small arrows?”
“Flechettes,” the Armorer said.
Mashashige shook his head. “No. That is not the word that I mean.”
“Darts?” J.B. offered.
Mashashige nodded, his face betraying no emotion. “That is it. Is this a good gun?”
“Does a special kind of job.”
“But it has little honor to it, and it is useless at a range of a hundred paces or more. Our bows can slay at a quarter mile, Mr. Dix.”
“Ryan’s Steyr rifle here can chill at the best part of a mile,” the Armorer countered. “And this blaster can wipe men away at short range. And the Uzi could stop a cavalry charge.”
“So could my archers.”
“Sure. Wouldn’t argue. But it would take fifty or so bowmen to have the same kind of effect that one man with an Uzi and three spare mags could have.”
“We must agree to be different,” the shogun said thoughtfully. “If the need arises when we reach the home of our enemy, will you use your guns on our side?”
The question was aimed at Ryan.
He hadn’t actually thought that one through. The warlord had such a large force that it hadn’t occurred to Ryan that a situation might arise where their firepower could be of much use to Mashashige.
“I guess thatwe’re your guests, so that puts us under an obligation to help you.”
The shogun nodded and gave the one-eyed man a low bow. Then he stalked off toward the horses.
“Our baron, right or wrong,” Krysty said quietly. “You sure about this, lover?”
“No. Mashashige might be a swift and evil bastard, and his enemies, these ronin, might be saints in human form. But we don’t know.”
“So you’ll chill them if Mashashige asks you?”
Ryan nodded. “You got a better idea, Krysty? Fireblast! It’s difficult enough to try and pick the difference between right and wrong back home in Deathlands. Never mind in this crazed land of slant-eyed crazies.”
Mildred tapped him sharply on the arm. “Just keep a lock on your tongue, Ryan. Asked you before.”
“Sure you did, and I’m sorry. But we have to watch every step in the way we deal with them here, never mind falling out among ourselves.”
The trail ahead wound higher up before it leveled off, then began to drop quickly toward the distant sea. The warnings about the state of the track had been justified. It cut across the face of the mountain, where erosion and quake damage were all too obvious to them all.