Shogun

They crossed another deserted street and headed down an alleyway. He knew the alarm would soon reach Ishido and then the hunt would be on in earnest. There’s time enough, he told himself.

Yes, it was a good plan. But I didn’t anticipate the ambush. That’s cost me three days of safety. Kiri was sure she could keep the deception a secret for at least three days. But the secret’s out now and I won’t be able to slip aboard and out to sea. Who was the ambush for? Me or the pilot? Of course the pilot. But didn’t the arrows bracket both litters? Yes, but the archers were quite far away and it would be hard to see, and it would be wiser and safer to kill both, just in case.

Who ordered the attack, Kiyama or Onoshi? or the Portuguese? or the Christian Fathers?

Toranaga turned around to check the pilot. He saw that he was not flagging, nor was the woman who walked beside him, though both were tired. On the skyline he could see the vast squat bulk of the castle and the phallus of the donjon. Tonight was the second time I’ve almost died there, he thought. Is that castle really going to be my nemesis? The Taiko told me often enough: ‘While Osaka Castle lives my line will never die and you, Toranaga Minowara, your epitaph will be written on its walls. Osaka will cause your death, my faithful vassal!’ And always the hissing, baiting laugh that set his soul on edge.

Does the Taiko live within Yaemon? Whether he does or not, Yaemon is his legal heir.

With an effort Toranaga tore his eyes away from the castle and turned another corner and fled into a maze of alleys. At length he stopped outside a battered gate. A fish was etched into its timbers. He knocked in code. The door opened at once. Instantly the ill-kempt samurai bowed. “Sire?”

“Bring your men and follow me,” Toranaga said and set off again.

“Gladly.” This samurai did not wear the Brown uniform kimono, only motley rags of a ronin, but he was one of the special elite secret troops that Toranaga had smuggled into Osaka against such an emergency. Fifteen men, similarly clothed, and equally well armed, followed him and quickly fell into place as advance and rear guard, while another ran off to spread the alarm to other secret cadres. Soon Toranaga had fifty troops with him. Another hundred covered his flanks. Another thousand would be ready at dawn should he need them. He relaxed and slackened his pace, sensing that the pilot and the woman were tiring too fast. He needed them strong.

Toranaga stood in the shadows of the warehouse and studied the galley and the wharf and the foreshore. Yabu and a samurai were beside him. The others had been left in a tight knot a hundred paces back down the alley.

A detachment of a hundred Grays waited near the gangway of the galley a few hundred paces away, across a wide expanse of beaten earth that precluded any surprise attack. The galley itself was alongside, moored to stanchions fixed into the stone wharf that extended a hundred yards out into the sea. The oars were shipped neatly, and he could see indistinctly many seamen and warriors on deck.

“Are they ours or theirs?” he asked quietly.

“It’s too far to be sure,” Yabu replied.

The tide was high. Beyond the galley, night fishing boats were coming in and going out, lanterns serving as their riding and fishing lights. North, along the shore, were rows of beached fishing craft of many sizes, tended by a few fishermen. Five hundred paces south, alongside another stone wharf, was the Portuguese frigate, the Santa Theresa. Under the light of flares, clusters of porters were busily loading barrels and bales. Another large group of Grays lolled nearby. This was usual because all Portuguese and all foreign ships in port were, by law, under perpetual surveillance. It was only at Nagasaki that Portuguese shipping moved in and out freely.

If security could be tightened there, the safer we’d all sleep at night, Toranaga told himself. Yes, but could we lock them up and still have trade with China in ever increasing amounts? That’s one trap the Southern Barbarians have us in from which there’s no escape, not while the Christian daimyos dominate Kyushu and the priests are needed. The best we can do is what the Taiko did. Give the barbarians a little, pretend to take it away, try to bluff, knowing that without the China trade, life would be impossible.

“With your permission, Lord, I will attack at once,” the samurai whispered.

“I advise against it,” Yabu said. “We don’t know if our men are aboard. And there could be a thousand men hidden all around here. Those men”—he pointed at the Grays near the Portuguese ship—“those’ll raise the alarm. We could never take the ship and get it out to sea before they’d bottled us up. We need ten times the men we’ve got now.”

“General Lord Ishido will know soon,” the samurai said. “Then all Osaka’ll be swarming with more hostiles than there are flies on a new battlefield. I’ve a hundred and fifty men with those on our flanks. That’ll be enough.”

“Not for safety. Not if our sailors aren’t ready on the oars. Better to create a diversion, one that’d draw off the Grays—and any that are in hiding. Those, too.” Yabu pointed again at the men near the frigate.

“What kind of diversion?” Toranaga said.

“Fire the street.”

“That’s impossible!” the samurai protested, aghast. Arson was a crime punishable by the public burning of all the family of the guilty person, of every generation of the family. The penalty was the most severe by law because fire was the greatest hazard to any village or town or city in the Empire. Wood and paper were their only building materials, except for tiles on some roofs. Every home, every warehouse, every hovel, and every palace was a tinderbox. “We can’t fire the street!”

“What’s more important,” Yabu asked him, “the destruction of a few streets, or the death of our Master?”

“The fire’d spread, Yabu-san. We can’t burn Osaka. There are a million people here—more.”

“Is that your answer to my question?”

Ashen, the samurai turned to Toranaga. “Sire, I’ll do anything you ask. Is that what you want me to do?”

Toranaga merely looked at Yabu.

The daimyo jerked his thumb contemptuously at the city. “Two years ago half of it burned down and look at it now. Five years ago was the Great Fire. How many hundred thousand were lost then? What does it matter? They’re only shopkeepers, merchants, craftsmen, and eta. It’s not as though Osaka’s a village filled with peasants.”

Toranaga had long since gauged the wind. It was slight and would not fan the blaze. Perhaps. But a blaze could easily become a holocaust that would eat up all the city. Except the castle. Ah, if it would only consume the castle I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.

He turned on his heel and went back to the others. “Mariko-san, take the pilot and our six samurai and go to the galley. Pretend to be almost in panic. Tell the Grays that there’s been an ambush—by bandits or ronin, you’re not sure which. Tell them where it happened, that you were sent ahead urgently by the captain of our escorting Grays to get the Grays here to help, that the battle’s still raging, that you think Kiritsubo’s been killed or wounded—to please hurry. If you’re convincing, this will draw most of them off.”

“I understand perfectly, Sire.”

“Then, no matter what the Grays do, go on board with the pilot. If our sailors are there and the ship’s safe and secure, come back to the gangway and pretend to faint. That’s our signal. Do it exactly at the head of the gangway.” Toranaga let his eyes rest on Blackthorne. “Tell him what you’re going to do, but not that you’re going to faint.” He turned away to give orders to the rest of his men and special private instructions to the six samurai.

When Toranaga had finished, Yabu drew him aside. “Why send the barbarian? Wouldn’t it be safer to leave him here? Safer for you?”

“Safer for him, Yabu-san, but not for me. He’s a useful decoy.”

“Firing the street would be even safer.”

“Yes.” Toranaga thought that it was better to have Yabu on his side than on Ishido’s. I’m glad I did not make him jump off the tower yesterday.

“Sire?”

“Yes, Mariko-san?”

“I’m sorry, but the Anjin-san asks what happens if the ship’s held by the enemy?”

“Tell him there’s no need to go with you if he’s not strong enough.”