lying there as they walked away. Through waves of torment he heard someone leaving on a horse but did not care.
The grass under Akitada’s face became sticky with the blood from his cut and clung to his skin, but his mind was on his knee.
Compared with that even the multiple bruises on the rest of his body, which had combined to form a solid robe of pain, paled.
He wondered if his knee was broken and tried to move his leg.
The effort was inconclusive. All feeling seemed to have left it.
He turned the ankle, and was successful this time, but feeling returned with a vengeance, running all the way from the knee down to his foot. He held his breath, waiting for the spasm to pass.
As the agony in the knee ebbed away slowly, he checked the damage to the rest of his body. His fingers moved, though the skin on his wrists felt raw. Never mind! That was nothing. His shoulders? Painful, but mobile. Ribs and back? He attempted a stretch and managed it without suffering the kinds of spasm a broken rib produces. The knee remained the problem. He could not stand or walk, and that made eventual flight impossible.
Having got that far, he considered Wada and his thugs. Were they planning to kill him? Since they had brutalized him in this manner, they would not let him live if they feared him. He was glad now that he had not told Wada his name. As long as the man believed he was an escaped convict, he had a chance.
He heard the horseman returning and twisted his head to look.
Wada dismounted. He was giving orders, speaking to the constables separately until each man nodded. Akitada tried to guess where he had been and what these orders were by reading expressions and gestures. The faces were mostly glum. Wada looked determined, but his men were not happy with whatever they were to do. Akitada took courage from this.
After a while, four of the constables left on foot, leading the mule. Wada was busy talking to the two men who were left.
Their faces got longer and longer, and they cast angry looks in Akitada’s direction. Finally they walked off also, and Wada came toward him alone.
The short police officer paused beside him and looked down with an unreadable expression. Panic seized Akitada. He croaked, “Let me go. I won’t report you. If anybody asks, you can claim you had provocation because I tried to escape.” Wada chuckled. It was a very unpleasant sound. “No,” he said. “You are to disappear. Mind you, if it had been my choice, you’d have disappeared permanently here today, but . . .” He used his foot to roll Akitada on his back. “Sit up!” Akitada struggled into a sitting position, and his knee promptly went into another spasm. He doubled over with the pain and gasped.
Wada bent down and roughly straightened the injured leg.
When Akitada turned a scream into a groan, Wada laughed.
“You pampered nobles are all alike, Sugawara,” he said, probing the knee with pleasure in the torment he caused his prisoner.
“You turn into whimpering babes at the first little pain. This is nothing but a bruise, but I’m in a hurry, so you can ride.” Pain and humiliation registered first. Akitada clenched his jaws to keep from groaning as Wada poked, turned, and twisted.
He would not give the bastard the satisfaction of mocking him again.
But then, sweat-drenched and dazed, he opened his eyes wide and stared up at Wada. “What . . . did you call me?” Wada rose and looked down at his prisoner with smug triumph. “Sugawara? Yes, I know you’re not the Yoshimine Taketsuna you pretended to be when you got off the ship. Oh, no.
You’re Sugawara Akitada, an official from Echigo, come to catch us fools at our misdeeds. Look who’s the fool now!” He bent until his face was close to Akitada’s. “This is Sadoshima, my lord, not the capital. You made a bad mistake when you became a convict and put yourself into our hands.”
So. The charade was over.
“Since you know who I am and why I am here,” Akitada snapped coldly, “you also know that continuing this will cost you your life.”
Wada threw back his head and laughed. “You still don’t get it,” he cried, pointing an exulting finger at Akitada. “It’s not my life, but yours that’s lost. Quick or slow, you’ll die. Have no doubt about that. We’ll take you to a place you won’t leave alive and where it won’t matter how loudly you proclaim your name, your rank, and your former position, for nobody will come to your rescue.” Still laughing and shaking his head, he walked away.
Surprisingly, Akitada’s only reaction was relief that he no longer needed to pretend. While he had not precisely disliked the convict Taketsuna, Taketsuna had been a man who had humbled himself with a cheerfulness which had cost Akitada such effort that he had become both foolish and careless about other matters. No wonder a creature like Wada sneered.
He considered his next step. Of course, there was no longer any doubt that Wada was part of the conspiracy. Akitada had not missed Wada’s use of the word “we” when he had talked about his prisoner’s future. Whoever had arrived and given Wada his orders had, for some reason, decided that a slow death was preferable to a quick demise. That was interesting in itself, but more immediately it meant he had gained precious time.
Had Wada continued the beating, he could not have saved himself. Now, however unpleasant the immediate future, he might get another chance to escape.
Apparently he would be moved soon, and far enough to make riding necessary. He looked at his swollen knee. The pain was fading a little. Wada’s manipulation had not necessarily reassured him that nothing was broken, though. He must try to move it as little as possible. At the moment, when even the smallest jolt caused shooting pains all the way up his thigh and down his leg, he was not tempted. He wriggled his wrists again.
Was the chain looser than before?
They were coming back, Wada and two constables, each leading a saddled horse. Wada got in his saddle and watched as the two men untied Akitada’s chain from the tree and then led a horse over. Three horses and four men? Was one of the constables expected to run alongside?
On the whole, while they looked sullen, their treatment of him on this occasion showed a marked improvement. They lifted him into the saddle, a process which was only moderately painful because they allowed him to clutch his knee until he could prop his foot into the stirrup. Their consideration made him wonder what he was being saved for. Once he was in the saddle, they briefly freed his wrists to rechain them in front so he could hold the reins.
To all of this Akitada submitted passively and without comment. He felt as weak as a newborn. All his strength was focused on protecting the injured knee. He realized that, even supported by the stirrup, his leg would respond to every step of the horse, and that the journey, possibly a long one, might make him reconsider the option of a quick death.
But before they could start, there was another shout from the road. Wada stiffened. “Keep an eye on him,” he snapped, and cantered off.
Two thoughts occurred to Akitada: Someone, foe or friend, was on the road. And the two constables were not as watchful as they should be, because they took the opportunity of Wada’s absence to get into a bitter argument about who was riding the third horse. He would not get another chance like this.
Kicking the horse as hard as he could with his good leg, he took off after Wada. His knee spasmed, behind him the constables shouted, before him branches whipped at his face, but he burst into the open at a full gallop. Wada was on the road, talking to another rider. He turned, his mouth sagging open in surprise. Then he flung about his horse to intercept him.
But Akitada’s eyes had already moved to the other man.
Kumo. He made a desperate attempt to wheel away, but his injured leg refused to cooperate. The horse, confused by mixed signals, stopped and danced, and Wada kept coming. In an instant they faced each other. Wada, his sword raised, looked murderous. At the last moment, Akitada raised his chained hands to catch the descending blade in the loop of chain between them. The force of the strike jerked him forward and sideways. Miraculously, he caught the reins and clung on as his horse reared and shot forward. Then another horse closed in, they collided, and both animals reared wildly.
This time, he was flung off backward, and landed hard. For a single breath, he looked up at the blue sky, tried to hold back the darkness that blotted out the day, tried to deny the pain, the fear of dying, and then he fell into
