James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

THE SHOGUN CONSULTED with his leading warriors, involving the outlanders in the tactical discussion.

“It is soon dawn. Do we go on or stay until dark again? I know from Dr. Wyeth” he nodded to Mildred. “that speed will save lives. But to travel out in open daylight might also lose lives. If ronin come after us.”

“They will,” Ryan said.

“How you do know that?” Yashimoto asked suspiciously. “You know their plans?”

Ryan ignored the question. “There’s been dust blowing from the trail to the north of us. Over the steep pass where our wags can’t go. I’d bet a peanut to a candy bar that it’s the enemy. Means they’re likely to get ahead of us in an hour or so, whatever you do.”

“You say we should go or stay?” Mashashige asked. “I do not understand.”

“We go on in daylight, they’ll likely coldcock us. More chance for us in darkness. Cuts the odds advantage that they got over us. Sneaks their edge.”

But all of the samurai were for going on in daylight. Both Yashimoto and Hideyoshi pushing hard, the senior warriors falling back on the old standby of honor.

“We lose face to ronin if we hide our heads like obasan scared of mouse in kitchen.”

Krysty nudged Mildred. “Wish they’d use grandfathers instead of grandmothers as term of abuse.”

“Still better to be a little humble and a lot alive than a very proud corpse,” Ryan offered.

“To live without honor is the same as not living at all,” Yashimoto snarled.

“You listen to your dog?” Ryan asked.

The shogun shook a finger at him, like an old-fashioned schoolteacher reproving an over familiar pupil. “Insulting someone can be like a sharp sword that twists in the hand and cuts the owner,” he said.

“So you’ll go in daylight?” Ryan asked.

Mashashige nodded slowly. “We will be home the quicker and, I think, none the less safe.”

“Sure hope you’re right,” Ryan said.

THE WAGS CRAWLED along through the dawning, stopping only once at first light for Mildred to go through them and check quickly on the living and the not-living.

The latter were put into one wag, for safe burial with honors when they returned to the palace.

Six of the sickest had died during the latter part of the night.

It was around nine-thirty in the morning by Ryan’s wrist chron. They had moved down to a lower level during the hours of darkness, passing the factories with their blazing hearths, ovens and smelters.

Shadowy figures scurried through the pools of golden-and-silver light, among the raw fires and wreaths of bitter, choking smoke, looking, as Doc commented, “like something glimpsed in one of Dor’s illustrations of immortal Dante’s Hades.”

Now they were passing through a vestigial forest, alongside one of the sulfurous streams that ran, arid and lifeless, across the blighted landscape.

When the shooting began.

GREAT CLODS OF DIRT erupted from the slope behind the lead wag, and long splinters of white wood were stripped from the conifers. The sound of the blaster followed hot on the heels of the shells, a steady rumbling, like distant thunder across a mountain range.

Everyone on horseback swung from the saddle and dropped to the ground.

“What the fuck is it?” Ryan yelled. “Sounds like bastard artillery.”

The invisible gunners weren’t that good with their powerful weapon, failing to range it in, even with a prolonged burst of firing.

“Something big and strong,” the Armorer shouted. “Sounds like one of them revolver cannons, an Oerlikon-Contraves 35000.”

There was a pause in the shooting.

Mashashige was up on his feet, sword drawn, eyes searching the woodland on the far side of the shallow valley, trying to locate the enemy.

“Get himself blown apart doing that,” Jak said, lying facedown a few paces to the left of Ryan.

The ponies had been freaked by the noise and the sudden disappearance of their riders, and had galloped off into the woods on the left of the trail.

The gun opened up again, this time with a much shorter burst, two or three shells striking the second of the wags, literally blowing it apart in a giant explosion of canvas, wood and torn flesh.