“How you know he was ronin?” Ryan yelled.
J.B. grinned mirthlessly through the mask of dirt. “Didn’t. Wasn’t going to wait and find out.”
There was another muffled boom, and more of the tower was demolished, what Ryan guessed had to have been some of the store of grens going up.
“Have to get inside,” J.B. repeated. “Now!”
THE RONIN HAD ALSO managed to hit the fortress’s main power source, forcing them onto emergency lighting, which consisted of dim lamps placed at irregular intervals.
Inside, everything was chaos.
Men were running around, and Ryan could hear women screaming, not short, sharp cries, but a long, high, keening sound that grated on the nerves.
Krysty was waiting inside the doors to the main part of the ville with Jak, Doc and Mildred. She hugged him as he appeared. “All right, lover?”
“Shaken a little.”
“Saw you go down like a ton of bricks off the tailgate of a wag,” Krysty said, her voice raised above the hubbub of noise that surrounded them.
“Ryan was ever an exponent of the big-bang theory of life,” Doc said, his white teeth grinning in the gloom.
“Best try and find the shogun.” Ryan looked around. “Where he is’ll be the defense.”
“Better be good.” Jak had his blaster drawn, the metal gleaming in the light of the lamps. “Ronin well in. Done good damage. Take stopping.”
Ryan led the way back into the heart of the huge wooden fortress, followed by the others. Nobody tried to stop them or threaten them. Half the sec men were running in short, scampering steps toward the main gates. The rest seemed to be simply running, like ants when the walls of their nest have been broken down by a giant enemy.
“Hideyoshi!” Ryan spotted the balding head of the samurai in the distance, near a cross corridor. “Hey!”
The warrior stopped, his face worried, the scar still making him appear as if he were sharing a private joke with himself. “Cawdor-san? I heard you had fallen in the attack.”
“Bit ruffled. Your armory’s gone.”
“The yagura is exploded?”
“Yeah. Ronin are in. About thirty or so. And we reckon that some of your new sec men are traitors to Mashashige. Got real trouble.”
The samurai nodded furiously. He was wearing armor above the waist, but he was helmetless, and he gripped his drawn sword in his right hand.
“Lord Mashashige is at the heart of the fortress. There we will make our stand.”
“Could try and hit them before then,” J.B. suggested. “Take some out.”
“If you can.”
At that moment Mashashige himself appeared, walking slowly toward them, his face as untroubled as the surface of a summer millpond. He wore, as usual, the loose black kimono, and his sword was still tucked into the wider sash.
“This is what you Americans call ‘the crackle,’ I believe,” he said.
“The crunch,” Ryan stated. “Sure looks like it. What plans you got?”
“To gather my men and attack the ronin. Drive them from my walls and slay them all.”
It was said as calmly as if the shogun were giving a recipe for pecan pie to a ladies’ auxiliary.
“Why not invent a cure for cancer and create world peace while you’re at it?” Mildred snorted. “Get real.”
He turned toward her. “This is a problem?”
Ryan answered, ticking off points on his fingers. “One, they got in. Two, they blew your armory. Three, from the smoke they started a fire. Wooden building like this could go in an hour. Four, we’re certain some of your new sec men are already on the wrong side. And five, they all got blasters. Odds might favor you. Might just favor you. But not by much. You don’t hit them now and hit them hard, then you can get out your wakizashi and start cutting open your belly. You and the rest of your warriors.”
It was an unusually long speech for Ryan, and the shogun considered it for several seconds.
“You will help?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you know of my plan to bring my people into your Deathlands?”
“Sure. You haven’t done much to try and hide it from us, have you? After this fight, I’m not saying we’ll go along with your ideas.”