James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

Mashashige took a couple of slow steps forward, his bare feet crunching on the layered gravel, the point of the sword held down and out, in front of him. Almost like a metal detector, it swung back and forth over the ground.

His opponent began to move.

Both men shuffling toward each other, through the group of silent watchers, moving in a gentle counterclockwise circle, eyes locked to each other. Ryan noticed that the shogun was breathing slowly and steadily, while the ronin was snatching at every breath, as if he were frightened that someone was going to steal it away from him.

“I fear that we are about to witness bloody murder being done,” Doc said quietly.

“How long do these duels usually take?” Ryan asked Hideyoshi, who was standing next to the companions, holding his breath, eyes narrowed with excitement.

“A little time until the swords are raised. Then life is worth no more than a feather. It will not take more than the blinking of an eye.”

The men had approached each other, moving the length of the courtyard, leaving a trail in the fine gravel as though a pair of large snails had passed by.

Mildred coughed, struggling to bring up phlegm trapped in her throat, but not succeeding.

Now the shogun was less than a dozen feet from the convicted prisoner.

“Soon,” Hideyoshi muttered. “Very soon now it will be all done and over.”

The ronin swallowed so hard that every one of the watchers heard him.

As though they had been given a secret signal, both the shogun and the ronin suddenly half lifted the blades to the level of their waists.

“Now,” Jak said.

There was a dazzling flicker of movement as both men stepped in closer, like two puppets controlled by the same length of silken cord.

Ryan thought he heard a breath of steel against honed steel, then there was a strange, harsh, clunking sound, reminding him oddly of a butcher’s cleaver coming down from a height to slice through a haunch of buffalo meat.

For a moment he couldn’t make out what had happened. The two samurai still stood toe-to-toe, face-to-face, chest-to-chest, neither of them moving.

Then

“Jesus Christ!” Mildred breathed.

“Dark night,” J.B. said.

“God save the mark,” Doc mumbled as he turned his face away.

Mashashige’s speed with his sword was unbelievable. He had lifted the blade and brought it down with a devastating force before the ronin could begin to parry the cut.

It struck Mashashita at the side of the throat, on the left side, hacking through the collarbone and the top ribs, emerging well below the right arm, cutting the body into two.

Though Mashashita’s feet were firmly planted in the gravel, the head and part of the chest and the entire right arm, fingers still grasping the sword, were falling to the floor. Blood gouted in a solid sheet of crimson from the amputated trunk, flooding into the courtyard.

The shogun stepped away, watching as the knees of his dead enemy folded and the body lay in its two disparate parts in the sodden gravel.

He turned toward Ryan, blood dripping down the length of the long sword. “I said that I would cut my enemy down, did I not, Cawdor-san?”

Ryan nodded in the silence. “Sure did. Yeah, you sure did.”

KRYSTY LAY ON HER BACK, one arm across Ryan’s chest, her breathing slowing back to normal after their long, gentle lovemaking.

“Never known so much death, lover.”

Ryan reached and held her hand in his. “Life’s worth no more than a feather. That’s what they say. And they live up to that, as well.”

“Think we should leave the ville and get back and jump out of here?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I still don’t know what Mashashige’s plan is for the gateway and for Deathlands. Need to stay and try and find that out.”

“How long?”

“Another couple of days or so. I know there’s something they’re not telling us. Something that’s staying hidden. I reckon we should try and find it out.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I am enlisting more men. That is the right word? Or should it be ‘conscripting’?”