Shogun (The Asian Saga Chronology) (43 page)

Then samurai were crowding the doorway, some with lanterns, and Naga, wearing only a loincloth, his hair tousled, leapt between him and Blackthorne, sword on high.

"Surrender!"

The assassin feinted once, shouted, "
Namu Amida Butsu—
"  In the Name of the Buddha Amida—turned the knife on himself and with both hands thrust it up under the base of his chin.  Blood spurted and he slumped to his knees.  Naga slashed once, his sword a whirling arc, and the head rolled free.

In the silence Naga picked the head up and ripped off the mask.  The face was ordinary, the eyes still fluttering.  He held the head, hair dressed like a samurai, by its topknot.

"Does anyone know him?"

No one answered.  Naga spat in the face, threw the head angrily to one of his men, tore open the black clothes and lifted the man's right arm, and found what he was looking for.  The small tattoo—the Chinese character for Amida, the special Buddha—was etched in the armpit.

"Who is officer of the watch?"

"I am, Lord."  The man was white with shock.

Naga leaped at him and the others scattered.  The officer made no attempt to avoid the ferocious sword blow which took off his head and part of his shoulder and one arm.

"Hayabusa-san, order all samurai from this watch into the courtyard," Naga said to an officer.  "Double guards for the new watch.  Get the body out of here.  The rest of you are—"  He stopped as Kiri came to the doorway, the dagger still in her hand.  She looked at the corpse, then at Blackthorne.

"The Anjin-san's not hurt?" she asked.

Naga glanced at the man who towered over him, breathing with difficulty.  He could see no wounds or blood.  Just a sleep-tousled man who had almost been killed.  White-faced but no outward fear.  "Are you hurt, Pilot?"

"I don't understand."

Naga went over and pulled the sleeping kimono away to see if the pilot had been wounded.

"Ah, understand now.  No.  No hurt," he heard the giant say and he saw him shake his head.

"Good," he said.  "He seems unhurt, Kiritsubo-san."

He saw the Anjin-san point at the body and say something.  "I don't understand you," Naga replied.  "Anjin-san, you stay here," and to one of the men he said, "Bring him some food and drink if he wants it."

"The assassin, he was Amida-tattooed,
neh?
" Kiri asked.

"Yes, Lady Kiritsubo."

"Devils—devils."

"Yes."

Naga bowed to her then looked at one of the appalled samurai.  "You follow me.  Bring the head!"  He strode off, wondering how he was going to tell his father.  Oh, Buddha, thank you for guarding my father.

"He was a
ronin,
" Toranaga said curtly.  "You'll never trace him, Hiro-matsu-san."

"Yes.  But Ishido's responsible.  He had no honor to do this,
neh?
  None.  To use these dung-offal assassins.  Please, I beg you, let me call up our legions now.  I'll stop this once and for all time."

"No."  Toranaga looked back at Naga.  "You're sure the Anjin-san's not hurt?"

"No, Sire."

"Hiro-matsu-san.  You will demote all guards of this watch for failing in their duty.  They are forbidden to commit seppuku.  They're ordered to live with their shame in front of all my men as soldiers of the lowest class.  Have the dead guards dragged by their feet through the castle and city to the execution ground.  The dogs can feed off them."

Now he looked at his son, Naga.  Earlier that evening, urgent word had arrived from Johji Monastery in Nagoya about Ishido's threat against Naga.  Toranaga had at once ordered his son confined to close quarters and surrounded by guards, and the other members of the family in Osaka—Kiri and the Lady Sazuko—equally guarded.  The message from the abbot had added that he had considered it wise to release Ishido's mother at once and send her back to the city with her maids.  "I dare not risk the life of one of your illustrious sons foolishly.  Worse, her health is not good.  She has a chill.  It's best she should die in her own house and not here."

"Nags-san, you are equally responsible the assassin got in," Toranaga said, his voice cold and bitter.  "Every samurai is responsible, whether on watch or off watch, asleep or awake.  You are fined half your yearly revenue."

"Yes, Lord," the youth said, surprised that he was allowed to keep anything, including his head.  "Please demote me also," he said.  "I cannot live with the shame.  I deserve nothing but contempt for my own failure, Lord."

"If I wanted to demote you I would have done so.  You are ordered to Yedo at once.  You will leave with twenty men tonight and report to your brother.  You will get there in record time!  Go!"  Naga bowed and went away, white-faced.  To Hiro-matsu he said equally roughly, "Quadruple my guards.  Cancel my hunting today, and tomorrow.  The day after the meeting of Regents I leave Osaka.  You'll make all the preparations, and until that time, I will stay here.  I will see no one uninvited.  No one."

He waved his hand in angry dismissal.  "All of you can go.  Hiro-matsu, you stay."

The room emptied.  Hiro-matsu was glad that his humiliation was to be private, for, of all of them, as Commander of the Bodyguard, he was the most responsible.  "I have no excuse, Lord.  None."

Toranaga was lost in thought.  No anger was visible now.  "If you wanted to hire the services of the secret Amida Tong, how would you find them?  How would you approach them?"

"I don't know, Lord."

"Who would know?"

"Kasigi Yabu."

Toranaga looked out of the embrasure.  Threads of dawn were mixed with the eastern dark.  "Bring him here at dawn."

"You think he's responsible?"

Toranaga did not answer, but returned to his musings.

At length the old soldier could not bear the silence.  "Please Lord, let me get out of your sight.  I'm so ashamed with our failure—"

"It's almost impossible to prevent such an attempt," Toranaga said.

"Yes.  But we should have caught him outside, nowhere near you."

"I agree.  But I don't hold you responsible."

"I hold myself responsible.  There's something I must say, Lord, for I am responsible for your safety until you're back in Yedo.  There will be more attempts on you, and all our spies report increased troop movement.  Ishido is mobilizing."

"Yes," Toranaga said casually.  "After Yabu, I want to see Tsukku-san, then Mariko-san.  Double the guards on the Anjin-san."

"Despatches came tonight that Lord Onoshi has a hundred thousand men improving his fortifications in Kyushu," Hiro-matsu said, beset by his anxiety for Toranaga's safety.

"I will ask him about it, when we meet."

Hiro-matsu's temper broke.  "I don't understand you at all.  I must tell you that you risk everything stupidly.  Yes, stupidly.  I don't care if you take my head for telling you, but it's the truth.  If Kiyama and Onoshi vote with Ishido you will be impeached!  You're a dead man—you've risked everything by coming here and you've lost!  Escape while you can.  At least you'll have your head on your shoulders!"

"I'm in no danger yet."

"Doesn't this attack tonight mean anything to you?  If you hadn't changed your room again you'd be dead now."

"Yes, I might, but probably not," Toranaga said.  "There were multiple guards outside
my
doors tonight and also last night.  And you were on guard tonight as well.  No assassin could get near me.  Even this one who was so well prepared.  He knew the way, even the password,
neh?
  Kiri-san said she heard him use it.  So I think he knew which room I was in.  I wasn't his prey.  It was the Anjin-san."

"The barbarian?"

"Yes."

Toranaga had anticipated that there would be further danger to the barbarian after the extraordinary revelations of this morning.  Clearly the Anjin-san was too dangerous to some to leave alive.  But Toranaga had never presumed that an attack would be mounted within his private quarters or so fast.  Who's betraying me?  He discounted a leakage of information from Kiri, or Mariko.  But castles and gardens always have secret places to eavesdrop, he thought.  I'm in the center of the enemy stronghold, and where I have one spy, Ishido—and others—will have twenty.  Perhaps it was just a spy.

"Double the guards on the Anjin-san.  He's worth ten thousand men to me."

After Lady Yodoko had left this morning, he had returned to the garden Tea House and had noticed at once the Anjin-san's inner frailty, the over-bright eyes and grinding fatigue.  So he had controlled his own excitement and almost overpowering need to probe deeper, and had dismissed him, saying that they would continue tomorrow.  The Anjin-san had been given into Kiri's care with instructions to get him a doctor, to harbor his strength, to give him barbarian food if he wished it, and even to let him have the sleeping room that Toranaga himself used most nights.  "Give him anything you feel necessary, Kiri-san," he had told her privately.  "I need him very fit, very quickly, in mind and body."

Then the Anjin-san had asked that he release the monk from prison today, for the man was old and sick.  He had replied that he would consider it and sent the barbarian away with thanks, not telling him that he had already ordered samurai to go to the prison at once and fetch this monk, who was perhaps equally valuable, both to him and to Ishido.

Toranaga had known about this priest for a long time, that he was Spanish and hostile to the Portuguese.  But the man had been ordered there by the Taikō so he was the Taikō's prisoner, and he, Toranaga, had no jurisdiction over anyone in Osaka.  He had sent the Anjin-san deliberately into that prison not only to pretend to Ishido that the stranger was worthless, but also in the hope that the impressive pilot would be able to draw out the monk's knowledge.

The first clumsy attempt on the Anjin-san's life in the cell had been foiled, and at once a protective screen had been put around him.  Toranaga had rewarded his vassal spy, Minikui, a kaga-man, by extracting him safely and giving him four kagas of his own and the hereditary right to use the stretch of the Tokaidō Road—the great trunk road that joined Yedo and Osaka—between the Second and Third Stages, which were in his domains near Yedo, and had sent him secretly out of Osaka the first day.  During the following days his other spies had sent reports that the two men were friends now, the monk talking and the Anjin-san asking questions and listening.  The fact that Ishido probably had spies in the cell too did not bother him.  The Anjin-san was protected and safe.  Then Ishido had unexpectedly tried to spirit him. out, into alien influence.

Toranaga remembered the amusement he and Hiro-matsu had had in planning the immediate "ambush"—the "
ronin
bandits" being one of the small, isolated groups of his own elite samurai who were secreted in and around Osaka—and in arranging the delicate timing of Yabu who, unsuspecting, had effected the "rescue."  They had chuckled together, knowing that once more they had used Yabu as a puppet to rub Ishido's nose in his own dung.

Everything had succeeded beautifully.  Until today.

Today the samurai he had sent to fetch the monk had returned empty-handed.  "The priest is dead," the man had reported.  "When his name was called, he didn't come out, Lord Toranaga.  I went in to fetch him, but he was dead.  The criminals around him said when the jailers called his name, he just collapsed.  He was dead when I turned him over.  Please excuse me, you sent me for him and I've failed to do what you ordered.  I didn't know if you wanted his head, or his head on his body seeing he was a barbarian, so I brought the body with the head still on.  Some of the criminals around him said they were his converts.  They wanted to keep the corpse and they tried to keep it so I killed a few and brought the corpse.  It's stinking and verminous but it's in the courtyard, Sire."

Why did the monk die? Toranaga asked himself again.  Then he saw Hiro-matsu looking at him questioningly.  "Yes?"

"I just asked who would want the pilot dead?"

"Christians."

Kasigi Yabu followed Hiro-matsu along the corridor, feeling grand in the dawn.  There was a nice salt tang to the breeze, and it reminded him of Mishima, his home city.  He was glad that at long last he was to see Toranaga and the waiting was over.  He had bathed and dressed with care.  Last letters had been written to his wife and to his mother and his final will sealed in case the interview went against him.  Today he was wearing the Murasama blade within its battle-honored scabbard.

They turned another corner, then unexpectedly Hiro-matsu opened an ironbound reinforced door and led the way up the stone steps into the inner central keep of this part of the fortifications.  There were many guards on duty and Yabu sensed danger.

The stairs curled upward and ended at an easily defendable redoubt.  Guards opened the iron door.  He went out onto the battlements.  Has Hiro-matsu been told to throw me off, or will I be ordered to jump? he asked himself unafraid.

To his surprise Toranaga was there and, incredibly, Toranaga got up to greet him with a jovial deference he had no right to expect.  After all, Toranaga was Lord of the Eight Provinces, whereas he was only Lord of Izu.  Cushions had been placed carefully.  A teapot was cradled in a sheath of silk.  A richly dressed, square-faced girl of little beauty was bowing low.  Her name was Sazuko and she was the seventh of Toranaga's official consorts, the youngest, and very pregnant.

"How nice to see you, Kasigi Yabu-san.  I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting."

Now Yabu was certain that Toranaga had decided to remove his head, one way or another, for, by universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning or has planned your destruction.  He took out both his swords and placed them carefully on the stone flags, allowed himself to be led away from them and seated in the place of honor.

"I thought it would be interesting to watch the dawning, Yabu-san.  I think the view here is exquisite—even better than from the Heir's donjon. 
Neh?
"

"Yes, it is beautiful," Yabu said without reservation, never having been so high in the castle before, sure now that Toranaga's remark about "the Heir" implied that his secret negotiations with Ishido were known.  "I'm honored to be allowed to share it with you."