Ryan was already moving quickly to the side, trying to put one of the pines between him and the charging man, finding it impossible to imagine that even the shogun could defeat an armor and mounted attacker.
The sword hissed so fast that Ryan barely caught the flicker of sunlight off the polished blade. But Mashashige hadn’t tried to aim at the samurai, picking instead on his horse.
The heavy sword cut clean through the pony’s right foreleg, just above the fetlock. It was like a big war wag losing all the wheels on one side at once.
The pony went down like a ton of bricks, whinnying in shock as its leg went from under it. There wasn’t time for pain. The amputation was too neat and instant for that.
The rider was tipped over the animal’s head, his sword flying from his hand, burying itself deep in the trunk of a withered alder, thirty paces across the narrow clearing.
He went down rolling in a clatter of armor, ending up motionless near the screaming pony.
“Neat,” Ryan said.
“Not honorable,” Mashashige replied. “But honor is a movable feast, as you say. Needs must drive when devil at gate. Please shoot horse and put it from misery.”
“Don’t think that samurai’s dead,” Ryan said. The helmet had come off the man’s head, and he was lying on his side, groaning softly, mouth working with pain.
“His name is Mashashita,” the shogun stated. “Once I would have called him a friend. But he chose to run with the wolves and lick the ass of my renegading brother.”
“You going to chill him?”
Mashashige shook his head. He looked past Ryan, down among the trees, where Hideyoshi was leading a group of the sec men, Yashimoto a little farther behind. “No. We shall take him prisoner back to our fortress.”
Both men looked around as they heard movement up the slope, seeing Jak leading Doc over the steep, slippery part of the trail, followed by Mildred and Krysty.
Jak called out, “Take cover. J.B.’s about to fire big gun!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Everyone waited in the silence.
Ryan had a moment to place a bullet through the skull of the dying horse, putting it out of its shocked agony. And Hideyoshi grabbed at the stunned figure of the ronin, Mashashita, snapping out orders for him to be bound.
The other two ponies had galloped off, and both the men that Ryan had shot were now lying still.
“How’s he done the cannon?”
Krysty answered Ryan’s question, showing her filthy hands. “Shoved mud down it.”
At that moment they all heard the voice of the Armorer, shouting as loudly as he could, “Stand away! Five and four and three and two and one and”
The “zero” vanished in the roar of the explosion.
It was a strange sound, partly muffled and partly shriekingly loud. There was the screech of tortured metal, and fragments of steel sliced through the tree-tops above the waiting group.
“Goodbye to their big blaster,” Ryan said quietly as the echoes bounced back and forth across the valley, a cloud of pale gray smoke drifting down from the top of the ridge a hundred yards or so away.
“I would see what happened,” said Mashashige.
J.B. STOOD PROUDLY by an enormous crater, at least fifteen feet wide, containing a few recognizable pieces of torn metal. The shattered end of the long barrel was there, and part of the breech block, driven into the trunk of a big redwood. Stinking smoke billowed from the muddy pit.
“All the ammo went at the same time,” the Armorer said. “Good job I had plenty of cord to fire it. Any closer and I could have gone up with it.”
The explosion had torn branches from many of the pines that stood around the gun emplacement, and leaves and needles were scattered everywhere.
Doc stepped cautiously to the edge of the crater and stared into it, then turned to Mildred at his side. “I have a question for you.”
“What?”
“It is somewhat Zen. A question of a metaphysical sort, Dr. Wyeth.”
“Don’t try and blind me with your big words. Just ask me the question, Doc.”