against the swords. Even so he charged, the others in close support. The moment his head was above ground one of the swords swung at him, missing him by a fraction of an inch. A violent kick from an unseen samurai drove him underground again.
He turned and jumped back, avoiding the writhing mass of fighting men who tried to subdue the samurai in the stinking ooze. Vinck kicked the man in the back of the neck and he went limp. Vinck pounded him again and again until Blackthorne pulled him off.
“Don’t kill him—we can use him as a hostage!” he shouted and wrenched desperately at the ladder, trying to pull it down into the cellar. But it was too long. Above, Omi’s other samurai waited impassively at the trapdoor’s entrance.
“For God’s sake, Pilot, stop it!” Spillbergen wheezed. “They’ll kill us all—you’ll kill us all! Stop him, someone!”
Omi was shouting more orders and strong hands aloft prevented Blackthorne from jamming the entrance with the ladder.
“Look out!” he shouted.
Three more samurai, carrying knives and wearing only loincloths, leapt nimbly into the cellar. The first two crashed deliberately onto Blackthorne, carrying him helpless to the floor, oblivious of their own danger, then attacked ferociously.
Blackthorne was crushed beneath the strength of the men. He could not use the knife and felt his will to fight subsiding and he wished he had Mura the headman’s skill at unarmed combat. He knew, helplessly, that he could not survive much longer but he made a final effort and jerked one arm free. A cruel blow from a rock-hard hand rattled his head and another exploded colors in his brain but still he fought back.
Vinck was gouging at one of the samurai when the third dropped on him from the sky door, and Maetsukker screamed as a dagger slashed his arm. Van Nekk was blindly striking out and Pieterzoon was saying, “For Christ’s sake, hit them not me,” but the merchant did not hear for he was consumed with terror.
Blackthorne caught one of the samurai by the throat, his grip slipping from the sweat and slime, and he was almost on his feet like a mad bull, trying to shake them off when there was a last blow and he fell into blankness. The three samurai hacked their way up and the crew, now leaderless, retreated from the circling slash of their three daggers, the samurai dominating the cellar now with their whirling daggers, not trying to kill or to maim, but only to force the panting, frightened men to the walls, away from the ladder where Blackthorne and the first samurai lay inert.
Omi came down arrogantly into the pit and grabbed the nearest man, who was Pieterzoon. He jerked him toward the ladder.
Pieterzoon screamed and tried to struggle out of Omi’s grasp, but a knife sliced his wrist and another opened his arm. Relentlessly the shrieking seaman was backed against the ladder.
“Christ help me, it’s not me that’s to go, it’s not me it’s not me—” Pieterzoon had both feet on the rung and he was retreating up and away from the agony of the knives and then, “Help me, for God’s sake,” he screamed a last time, turned and fled raving into the air.
Omi followed without hurrying.
A samurai retreated. Then another. The third picked up the knife that Blackthorne had used. He turned his back contemptuously, stepped over the prostrate body of his unconscious comrade, and climbed away.
The ladder was jerked aloft. Air and sky and light vanished. Bolts crashed into place. Now there was only gloom, and in it heaving chests and rending heartbeats and running sweat and the stench. The flies returned.
For a moment no one moved. Jan Roper had a small cut on his cheek, Maetsukker was bleeding badly, the others were mostly in shock. Except Salamon. He groped his way over to Blackthorne, pulled him off the unconscious samurai. He mouthed gutturally and pointed at the water. Croocq fetched some in a gourd, helped him to prop Blackthorne, still lifeless, against the wall. Together they began to clean the muck off his face.
“When those bastards—when they dropped on him I thought I heard his neck or shoulder go,” the boy said, his chest heaving. “He looks like a corpse, Lord Jesus!”
Sonk forced himself to his feet and picked his way over to them. Carefully he moved Blackthorne’s head from side to side, felt his shoulders. “Seems all right. Have to wait till he comes round to tell.”
“Oh, Jesus God,” Vinck began whimpering. “Poor Pieterzoon—I’m damned—I’m damned?.?.?.”
“You were going. The Pilot stopped you. You were going like you promised, I saw you, by God.” Sonk shook Vinck but he paid no attention. “I saw you, Vinck.” He turned to Spillbergen, waving the flies away. “Wasn’t that right?”
“Yes, he was going. Vinck, stop moaning! It was the Pilot’s fault. Give me some water.”
Jan Roper dipped some water with the gourd and drank and daubed the cut on his cheek. “Vinck should have gone. He was the lamb of God. He was ordained. And now his soul’s forfeit. Oh, Lord God have mercy on him, he’ll burn for all eternity.”
“Give me some water,” the Captain-General whimpered.
Van Nekk took the gourd from Jan Roper and passed it to Spillbergen. “It wasn’t Vinck’s fault,” van Nekk said tiredly. “He couldn’t get up, don’t you remember? He asked someone to help him up. I was so frightened I couldn’t move either, and I didn’t have to go.”
“It wasn’t Vinck’s fault,” Spillbergen said. “No. It was him.” They all looked at Blackthorne. “He’s mad.”
“All the English are mad,” Sonk said. “Have you ever known one that wasn’t? Scratch one of ’em and you find a maniac—and a pirate.”
“Bastards, all of them!” Ginsel said.
“No, not all of them,” van Nekk said. “The pilot was only doing what he felt was right. He’s protected us and brought us ten thousand leagues.”
“Protected us, piss! We were five hundred when we started and five ships. Now there’s nine of us!”
“Wasn’t his fault the fleet split up. Wasn’t his fault that the storms blew us all—”
“Weren’t for him we’d have stayed in the New World, by God. It was him who said we could get to the Japans. And for Jesus Christ’s sweet sake, look where we are now.”
“We agreed to try for the Japans. We all agreed,” van Nekk said wearily. “We all voted.”
“Yes. But it was him that persuaded us.”
“Look out!” Ginsel pointed at the samurai, who was stirring and moaning. Sonk quickly slid over to him, crashed his fist into his jaw. The man went out again.
“Christ’s death! What’d the bastards leave him here for? They could’ve carried him out with them, easy. Nothing we could’ve done.”
“You think they thought he was dead?”
“Don’t know! They must’ve seen him. By the Lord Jesus, I could use a cold beer,” Sonk said.
“Don’t hit him again, Sonk, don’t kill him. He’s a hostage.” Croocq looked at Vinck, who sat huddled against a wall, locked into his whimpering self-hatred. “God help us all. What’ll they do to Pieterzoon? What’ll they do to us?”
“It’s the Pilot’s fault,” Jan Roper said. “Only him.”
Van Nekk peered compassionately at Blackthorne. “It doesn’t matter now. Does it? Whose fault it is or was.”
Maetsukker reeled to his feet, the blood still flowing down his forearm. “I’m hurt, help me someone.”
Salamon made a tourniquet from a piece of shirt and staunched the blood. The slice in Maetsukker’s biceps was deep but no vein or artery had been cut. The flies began to worry the wound.
“God-cursed flies! And God curse the Pilot to hell,” Maetsukker said. “It was agreed. But, oh no! He had to save Vinck! Now Pieterzoon’s blood’s on his hands and we’ll all suffer because of him.”
“Shut your face! He said none of his crew—”
There were footsteps above. The trapdoor opened. Villagers began pouring barrels of fish offal and seawater into the cellar. When the floor was six inches awash, they stopped.
The screams began when the moon was high.
Yabu was kneeling in the inner garden of Omi’s house. Motionless. He watched the moonlight in the blossom tree, the branches jet against the lighter sky, the clustered blooms now barely tinted. A petal spiraled and he thought,
