Shogun - Clavell James. Страница 271

She did not move the knife.

Yabu was still a coiled spring, concentrated on the mark. "Lady," he said, "do you wait or are you continuing? I wish to be perfect for you."

Mariko forced herself back from the brink. "I - we wait . . . we . . . I . . ." Her hand lowered the knife. It was shaking now. As slowly, Yabu released himself. His sword hissed back into the scabbard and he wiped his hands on his sides.

Ishido stood at the gateway. "It's not sunset yet, Lady. The sun's still on the horizon. Are you so keen to die?"

"No, Lord General. Just to obey my Lord . . . ." She held her hands together to stop their shaking.

A rumble of anger went through the Browns at Ishido's arrogant rudeness and Yabu readied to leap at him, but stopped as Ishido said loudly, "The Lady Ochiba begged the Regents on behalf of the Heir to make an exception in your case. We agreed to her request. Here are permits for you to leave at dawn tomorrow." He shoved them into the hands of Sumiyori, who was nearby.

"Sire?" Mariko said, without understanding, her voice threadbare.

"You are free to leave. At dawn."

"And - and Kiritsubo-san and the Lady Sazuko?"

"Isn't that also part of your 'duty?' Their permits are there also. " Mariko tried to concentrate. "And . . . and her son?"

"Him too, Lady," Ishido's scornful laugh echoed. "And all your men."

Yabu stammered, "Everyone has safe conducts?"

"Yes, Kasigi Yabu-san, " Ishido said. "You're senior officer, neh? Please go at once to my secretary. He is completing all your passes, though why honored guests would wish to leave I don't know. It's hardly worth it for seventeen days. Neh?"

"And me, Lord General?" old Lady Etsu asked weakly, daring to test the totality of Mariko's victory, her heart racing and painful. "May - may I please leave also?"

"Of course, Lady Maeda. Why should we keep anyone against her will? Are we jailers? Of course not! If the Heir's welcome is so offensive that you wish to leave, then leave, though how you intend to travel four hundred ri home and another four hundred ri here in seventeen days I don't understand."

"Please ex - excuse me, the - the Heir's welcome isn't offen-"

Ishido interrupted icily. "If you wish to leave, apply for a permit in the normal way. It'll take a day or so but we'll see you safely on your way." He addressed the others: "Any ladies may apply, any samurai. I've said before, it's stupid to leave for seventeen days, it's insulting to flout the Heir's welcome, the Lady Ochiba's welcome, and the Regents' welcome . . . " -his ruthless gaze wept back to Mariko- "or to pressure them with threats of seppuku, which for a lady should be done in private and not as an arrogant public spectacle. Neh? I don't seek the death of women, only enemies of the Heir, but if women are openly his enemy, then I'll soon spit on their corpses too."

Ishido turned on his heel, shouted an order at the Grays, and walked off. At once captains echoed the order and all the Grays began to form up and move off from the gateway, except for a token few who stayed in honor of the Browns.

"Lady," Yabu said huskily, wiping his damp hands again, a bitter vomit taste in his mouth from the lack of fulfillment, "Lady, it's over now. You've . . . you've won. You've won."

"Yes - yes," she said. Her strengthless hands sought the knots of the white cord. Chimmoko went forward and undid the knots and took away the white blanket, then stepped away from the crimson square. Everyone watched Mariko, waiting to see if she could walk away.

Mariko was trying to grope to her feet. She failed. She tried a second time. Again she failed. Impulsively Kiri moved to help her but Yabu shook his head and said, "No, it's her privilege," so Kiri sat back, hardly breathing.

Blackthorne, beside the gates, was still turmoiled by his boundless joy at her reprieve and he remembered how his own will had been stretched that night of his near-seppuku, when he had had to get up as a man and walk home as a man unsupported, and became samurai. And he watched her, despising the need for this courage, yet understanding it, even honoring it.

He saw her hands go to the crimson again, and again she pushed and this time Mariko forced herself upright. She wavered and almost fell, then her feet moved and slowly she tottered across the crimson and reeled helplessly toward the main door. Blackthorne decided that she had done enough, had endured enough, had proved enough, so he came forward and caught her in his arms and lifted her up just as her mind left her.

For a moment he stood there in the arena alone, proud that he was alone and that he had decided. She lay like a broken doll in his arms. Then he carried her inside and no one moved or barred his path.

The attack on the Browns' stronghold began in the darkest reaches of the night, two or three hours before dawn. The first wave of ten ninja - the infamous Stealthy Ones - came over the roofs of the battlements opposite, now unguarded by Grays. They threw cloth-covered grappling hooks on ropes over to the other roof and swung across the chasm like so many spiders. They wore tight-fitting clothes of black and black tabi and black masks. Their hands and faces were also blackened. These men were lightly armed with chain knives and shuriken - small, star-shaped, needle-sharp, poison-tipped throwing barbs and discs that were the size of a man's palm. On their backs were slung haversacks and short thin poles.

Ninja were mercenaries. They were artists in stealth, specialists in the disreputable - in espionage, infiltration, and sudden death.

The ten men landed noiselessly. They re-coiled the grapples, and four of them hooked the grapples again onto a projection and immediately swung downward to a veranda twenty feet below. Once they had reached it, as noiselessly, their comrades unhooked the grapples, dropped them down, and moved across the tiles to infiltrate another area.

A tile cracked under one man's foot and they all froze. In the forecourt, three stories and sixty feet below, Sumiyori stopped on his rounds and looked up. His eyes squinted into the darkness. He waited without moving, his mouth open a fraction to improve his hearing, his eyes sweeping slowly. The roof with the ninja was in shadow, the moon faint, the stars heavy in the thick humid air. The men stayed absolutely still, even their breathing controlled and imperceptible, seemingly as inanimate as the tiles upon which they stood.

Sumiyori made another circuit with his eyes and with his ears, and then another, and, still not sure, he walked out into the forecourt to see more clearly. Now the four ninja on the veranda were also within his field of vision but they were as motionless as the others and he did not notice them either.

"Hey," he called to the guards on the gateway, the doors tight barred now, "you see anything - hear anything?"

"No, Captain," the alert sentries said. "The roof tiles are always chattering, shifting a bit - it's the damp or the heat, perhaps."

Sumiyori said to one of them, "Go up there and have a look. Better still, tell the top-floor guards to make a search just in case."

The soldier hurried off. Sumiyori stared up again, then half shrugged and, reassured, continued his patrol. The other samurai went back to their posts, watching outward.

On the rooftop and on the veranda the ninja waited in their frozen positions. Not even their eyes moved. They were schooled to remain immobile for hours if need be just one part of their perpetual training.

Then the leader motioned to them and at once they again moved to the attack. Their grapples and ropes took them quietly to another veranda where they could slide through the narrow windows in the granite walls. Below this top floor, all other windows - defense positions for bowmen - were so narrow that they could not be entered from outside. At another signal the two groups entered simultaneously.