Shogun

with pride.

She darted forward but her blow was contained. The Gray backed and stayed on the defensive though he could have killed her without effort. He retreated slowly down the avenue, she following, but he made her work for every foot. Hesitantly the column started after her. Again she tried to bring the Gray to battle, cutting, thrusting, always attacking fiercely, but the samurai slid away, avoiding her blows, holding her off, not attacking, allowing her to exhaust herself. But he did this gravely, with dignity, giving her every courtesy, giving her the honor that was her due. She attacked again but he parried the onslaught that would have overcome a lesser swordsman, and backed another pace. The perspiration streamed from her. A Brown started forward to help but his officer quietly ordered him to stop, knowing that no one could interefere. Samurai on both sides waited for the signal, craving the release to kill.

In the crowd, a child was hiding his eyes in his mother’s skirts. Gently she pried him away and knelt. “Please watch, my son,” she murmured. “You are samurai.”

Mariko knew she could not last much longer. She was panting now from her exertions and could feel the brooding malevolence surrounding her. Then ahead and all around, Grays began to ease away from the walls and the noose around the column quickly tightened. A few Grays walked out to try to surround her and she stopped advancing, knowing that she could, too easily, be trapped and disarmed and captured, which would destroy everything at once. Now Browns moved up to assist her and the rest took positions around the litters. The mood in the avenue was ominous now, every man committed, the sweet smell of blood in their nostrils. The column was strung out from the gateway and Mariko saw how easy it would be for the Grays to cut them all off if they wished and leave them stranded in the roadway.

“Wait!” she called out. Everyone stopped. She half-bowed to her assailant, then, head high, turned her back on him and walked back to Kiri. “So .?.?. so sorry, but it is not possible to fight through these men, at the moment,” she said, her chest heaving. “We .?.?. we must go back for a moment.” Sweat was streaking her face as she went down the line of men. When she came to Kiyama, she stopped and bowed. “Those men have prevented me from doing my duty, from obeying my liege Lord. I cannot live with shame, Sire. I will commit seppuku at sunset. I formally beg you to be my second.”

“No. You will not do this.”

Her eyes flashed and her voice rang out fearlessly. “Unless we are allowed to obey our liege Lord, as is our right, I will commit seppuku at sunset!”

She bowed and walked toward the gateway. Kiyama bowed to her and his men did likewise. Then all in the avenue and on the battlements and at the windows, all bowed to her in homage. She went through the archway, across the forecourt into the garden. Her footsteps took her to the secluded, rustic little cha house. She went inside and, once alone, she wept silently for all the men who had died.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

“Beautiful, neh?” Yabu pointed below at the dead.

“Please?” Blackthorne asked.

“It was a poem. You understand ‘poem’?”

“I understand word, yes.”

“It was a poem, Anjin-san. Don’t you see that?”

If Blackthorne had had the words he would have said, No, Yabu-san. But I did see clearly for the first time what was really in her mind, the moment she gave the first order and Yoshinaka killed the first man. Poem? It was a hideous, courageous, senseless, extraordinary ritual, where death’s as formalized and inevitable as at a Spanish Inquisition, and all the deaths merely a prelude to Mariko’s. Everyone’s committed now, Yabu-san—you, me, the castle, Kiri, Ochiba, Ishido, everyone—all because she decided to do what she decided was necessary. And when did she decide? Long ago, neh? Or, more correctly, Toranaga made the decision for her. “So sorry, Yabu-san, not words enough,” he said.

Yabu hardly heard him. There was quiet on the battlements and in the avenue, everyone as motionless as statues. Then the avenue began to come alive, voices hushed, movements subdued, the sun beating down, as each came out of his trance.

Yabu sighed, filled with melancholia. “It was a poem, Anjin-san,” he said again, and left the battlements.

When Mariko had picked up the sword and gone forward alone, Blackthorne had wanted to leap down into the arena and rush at her assailant to protect her, to blow the Gray’s head off before she was slain. But, with everyone, he had done nothing. Not because he was afraid. He was no longer afraid to die. Her courage had shown him the uselessness of that fear and he had come to terms with himself long ago, on that night in the village with the knife.

I meant to drive the knife into my heart that night.

Since then my fear of death’s been obliterated, just as she said it would be. ‘Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life.’ I don’t remember Omi stopping the thrust, only feeling reborn when I awoke the next dawn.

His eyes watched the dead, there in the avenue. I could have killed that Gray for her, he thought, and perhaps another and perhaps several, but there would always have been another and my death would not have tipped the scale a fraction. I’m not afraid to die, he told himself. I’m only appalled there’s nothing I can do to protect her.

Grays were picking up bodies now, Browns and Grays treated with equal dignity. Other Grays were streaming away, Kiyama and his men among them, women and children and maids all leaving, dust in the avenue rising under their feet. He smelled the acrid, slightly fetid death-smell mixed with the salt breeze, his mind eclipsed by her, the courage of her, the indefinable warmth that her fearless courage had given him. He looked up at the sun and measured it. Six hours to sunset.

He headed for the steps that led below.

“Anjin-san? Where go, please?”

He turned back, his own Grays forgotten. The captain was staring at him. “Ah, so sorry. Go there!” He pointed to the forecourt.

The captain of Grays thought a moment, then reluctantly agreed. “All right. Please you follow me.”

In the forecourt Blackthorne felt the Browns’ hostility towards his Grays. Yabu was standing beside the gates watching the men come back. Kiri and the Lady Sazuko were fanning themselves, a wet nurse feeding the infant. They were sitting on hastily laid out coverlets and cushions that had been placed in the shade on a veranda. Porters were huddled to one side, squatting in a tight, frightened group around the baggage and pack horses. He headed for the garden but the guards shook their heads. “So sorry, this is out of bounds for the moment, Anjin-san.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, turning away. The avenue was clearing now, though five-hundred-odd Grays still stayed, settling themselves, squatting or sitting cross-legged in a wide semicircle, facing the gates. The last of the Browns stalked back under the arch.

Yabu called out, “Close the gates and bar them.”

“Please excuse me, Yabu-san,” the officer said, “but the Lady Toda said they were to be left open. We are to guard them against all men but the gates are to be left open.”

“You’re sure?”

The officer bridled. He was a neat, bent-faced man in his thirties with a jutting chin, mustached and bearded. “Please excuse me—of course I am sure.”

“Thank you. I meant no offense, neh? Are you the senior officer here?”

“The Lady Toda honored me with her confidence, yes. Of course, you are senior to me.”

“I am in command but you are in charge.”

“Thank you, Yabu-san, but the Lady Toda commands here. You are senior officer. I would be honored to be second to you. If you will permit it.”

Yabu said balefully, “It’s permitted, Captain. I know very well who commands us here. Your name, please?”