Chapter Eleven

 

 

The attack wasn't unexpected, but it was so swift and violent that for several racing heartbeats, Ryan wasn't certain precisely what had happened. For a split second he even thought that the hacking sword had actually cut through his arm, somewhere above the wrist, and that his hand lay on the floor, still gripping the butt of the fallen SIG-Sauer.

 

There had been a sharp, jarring blow, the pain running to his shoulder. It had been hard enough to knock him off-balance, sending him staggering to his left, away from the plunging, whirling attack.

 

The man had broken easily through the flimsy wall panel, following the lead of his long blade, emerging in a crouch just ahead of Ryan.

 

He was short and stocky, and dressed entirely in black. A round skullcap of metal protected his head, with cheek plates on either side. A loose scarf of black silk was wrapped around his face, revealing only the eyes, which were dark, glittering and totally blank. They stared fixedly at Ryan.

 

The man wore some kind of light body armor below a shirt of black satin, the metal gleaming in the glow of the oil lamps. He held the sword pointed downward and stood stock-still, watching the white man.

 

Ryan guessed that the assassin hadn't expected to find an Occidental in the fortress and was trying to work out how best to cope with the discovery. But there was the remote possibility that this man was a follower of Takei Yashimoto and had been sent by the vengeful samurai to murder his enemies.

 

For a few moments the two men stood frozen, a dozen feet apart. Ryan had been working the fingers of his right hand, removing the stiffness caused by the blow to the automatic, which now lay in the corner of the passage, way beyond his reach.

 

"My fight is not with you, gaijin ," the voice whispered. "Still time go back your room. Close eyes and memory. Not your fight."

 

"Man nearly takes my arm off turns it into my fight. Man who slaughters unarmed women and children turns it into my fight," Ryan stated, drawing the panga.

 

There was a whisper of breath in the silence that could have been a laugh. "You use your clumsy great knife against my katana . I will cut you in half, stupid gaijin ."

 

"Talk comes cheap. Not like stabbing a little boy. Not so bastard easy."

 

The man still held off from the attack, unable to restrain his boasting.

 

"My sword is the sharpest in the world. When it was made it was laid in a flowing river. A feather was put in river and floated over edge and was cut in half."

 

Ryan was content to let the warrior talk. The longer he kept him there, the better the chance of help arriving. The idea of tackling the swordsman with his eighteen inch panga wasn't one that Ryan relished.

 

"I can cut locust in half and half again, in middle of flight. Cut human hair in half and half and half more. Cut helmet in two pieces. Fight an army on own. Defeat greatest samurai ever born. Behead a dragon in air." He was shuffling forward an inch at a time, his eyes never leaving Ryan's face.

 

The great palace of Mashashige was still and silent. There was just the sound of the two men breathing.

 

From the way the man held the sword, it was obvious to Ryan that at some point he would have to heft it shoulder high to make the downward cut that the weight and shape of the blade dictated. And that would be the chance. He had little doubt that the samurai would be a skillful swordsman, able to use the much longer weapon against the shorter panga.

 

"If you have gods, gaijin , now is time to pray to them. Your poor blood dishonors my steel."

 

The men were a scant five feet apart.

 

Ryan's breathing was slow and steady, controlled, since he knew that the moment was close.

 

He concentrated on the tip of the slightly curved blade, watching for it to move.

 

Now.

 

The instant it started to lift, Ryan dived in, using the panga like a heavy cutlass, jabbing with the needle point at the samurai, who had begun a half step backward to give himself more room for the devastating downward slash. Committed to swinging the sword upward, there was no time to parry the unexpected attack from the one-eyed gaijin .

 

Ryan had deliberately aimed low, knowing that it would be more difficult to deflect his thrust. He aimed at the man's upper thigh, guessing that he wasn't likely to be wearing armor there, though his whole chest and stomach were protected.

 

He felt the impact run up his arm as the point drove deep through the muscles, grating on the femur. He twisted the hilt as he withdrew it, causing a massive wound in the warrior's thigh, though he just missed the big femoral artery, which would have made it into a killing blow.

 

The man cried out, choking off the yell, trying to back away from Ryan, stumbling clumsily, blood pouring down his leg onto the wooden floor.

 

He still held the sword at shoulder height, but it was suddenly a defensive weapon, as he tried to protect himself from the swift, remorseless advance of the one-eyed man.

 

Now the advantage lay with Ryan, up against a frightened cripple.

 

He moved from side to side, changing the panga from hand to hand, feinting with an empty fist, making the warrior try to parry the specious lunge.

 

Ryan taunted him in his distress and obvious stammering fear. "Not like chilling helpless women and children, is it, you murderin' bastard?"

 

The man was sweating, the perspiration soaking through the dark scarf around his nose and mouth, trying to make his way down the empty corridor, anywhere to try to get away from Ryan. Blood puddled the floor at his feet, and the one-eyed man was careful not to step into it and slip.

 

"Goin' to bleed to death, like a stuck pig, aren't you?"

 

"This is not with honor!" his enemy panted. "This is not to be done."

 

"Wrong, friend. It's going to be done, right to the bitter end."

 

Ryan saw his chance and feinted again, aiming toward the man's knees. As the samurai dropped the sword edge to counter the attack, Ryan switched the panga to his left hand and cut high instead.

 

The blow aimed at the angle between the neck and the left shoulder, where he could see an exposed strip of flesh below the helmet and above the armored breastplate.

 

He turned his wrist to use the last few inches of the blade rather than the needled point, feeling it bite home. The keen steel sliced through skin, flesh and muscle, opening a deep gash that spouted more blood.

 

This time he didn't step back from the attack. Now that he was in close, it was the moment to finish the job. He brought his knee up into the helpless man's groin, moving to one side as the long sword clattered to the floor, the warrior doubling over like a loving courtier. The round helmet fell off and spun to join the sword, exposing the back of the head, with a ribboned topknot of black hair.

 

The final blow from the panga drove downward, the hilt clutched in both hands, the point hitting the doomed man at the top of the spine, where neck became skull.

 

Ryan winced at the crunching sound of splintered bone. The samurai jerked backward, eyes turned up to the ceiling, the neural reaction pinching the blade between the crushed vertebrae, so that Ryan lost his grip on it.

 

Without missing a beat, he dodged the staggering, flailing figure, darting in and picking up the SIG-Sauer, steadying it on the dying warrior.

 

The panga was jerked from side to side, as though it were some sort of bizarre addition to the armor. The man was moaning, a long, single keening note, held far beyond what seemed humanly possible. But it was amazingly quiet. Considering he had two devastating wounds in thigh and neck, as well as having been kicked in the balls and the coup de grace to the cervical vertebrae, it was astounding that he wasn't screaming loud enough to bring down the paper-thin internal walls of the fortress.

 

Ryan watched him with an incurious gaze, knowing that death was only a matter of time.

 

The spinal cord was severed and crushed, and the messages from brain to limbs couldn't go on much longer.

 

There was a long sigh of breath, then the samurai was down on the blood-slick floor, his arms and legs kicking out like a brain-shot horse.

 

Ryan holstered the blaster and waited his moment to retrieve the eighteen-inch panga.

 

He glanced behind him, wondering whether J.B., Jak or any of the others might have followed him. He was pleased to see that their good combat sense had prevailed, and they were all staying together where they were, in the slightly more secure defensive position of their rooms.

 

The body was still, lying finally on its back, head jammed at an awkward angle by the protruding panga, the eyes staring blankly up at nothing.

 

Ryan stooped and rolled the corpse, pulling a face as he got gouts of thick blood on his hands. He tried to tug the panga free, but found it still gripped tight between the shards of bone, in the last mortal spasm. He set his foot between the dead man's shoulders and gripped the hilt with both hands, pulling it free with a loud sucking sound.

 

He stood looking at the blood-smeared blade, wondering if there was enough unsullied cloth on the corpse for him to be able to wipe it clean, when he heard the unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked, close behind him.

 

"The only possible ending to this filthy murder is death, Ryan Cawdor."

 

The voice belonged to Mashashige, but when Ryan turned slowly, he saw that the New Nambu 9 mm blaster was steady in the hand of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

 

The baron of the ville was still wearing the loose black cotton robe, the sword tucked casually into the sash. He was barefoot, and stood quite still and looked at Ryan, at the crimsoned steel in his hand and the butchered corpse at his feet.

 

Hideyoshi also wore a cotton robe, of crimson and white, with an embroidered heron across the shoulders. And like his master, he carried his sword in a sash. The corner of his mouth was curled into a cynical sneer.

 

"Our brother, Yashimoto, was in order in his proper anger against you, Ryan Cawdor," said the sec boss and third-in-command of the ville.

 

"Want to look a little farther back along the corridor?" Ryan asked.

 

"What would we see?" Mashashige asked softly. "More of our people thrown into death by you?"

 

Ryan shook his head. "You'll find at least four corpses down there. A man and two women and a little boy. All killed with a sword."

 

"Or with your clumsy dagger," Mashashige said. "How will we know?"

 

"By looking." The old familiar anger was bubbling just below the surface, partly fueled by the surplus adrenaline that raced through Ryan's veins after the mortal combat. "You can tell the difference between a narrow sword entrance wound and the kind of wound that this leaves." He flourished the panga in the shogun's face.

 

"To threaten Lord Mashashige is to entertain a quick bullet in the head, gaijin ," Hideyoshi warned. "It would please me to do this."

 

"Stupe bastards!" Ryan poked the body with his foot. "Just who the fuck do you think this is? Why don't you take a look at him? Not too hard, is it?"

 

Mashashige gestured to his number three. "Do as he says."

 

"Back away from me," Hideyoshi ordered, threatening Ryan with the Nambu pistol.

 

"He isn't dressed like any of your men," Ryan snarled. "Even I can see that."

 

"It is true, Lord," Hideyoshi said, stooping and keeping an eye on Ryan. He reached down and heaved the body over, grimacing as he got blood on his fingers. The corpse rolled limply onto its back, showing the dead face and dark, empty eyes.

 

"Ah," Mashashige said. Ryan had been watching him, and he spotted the glimmer of recognition and surprise on the warlord's face as he saw the assassin for the first time.

 

"Ronin," he said, sighing.

 

"Who's Ronin?" Ryan asked.

 

" 'Ronin' is the name for a lordless samurai. A warrior, often a part of a gang, who owe no loyalty to any shogun. They are renegades. Is that the correct word?"

 

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Renegades, Wolfsheads, they're sometimes called in Deathlands."

 

"I think I recognize him, Lord," Hideyoshi said. "Is he not Morei Takarana? He was once in your lordship's service and left some years back, after trouble with one of the young serving boys from the kitchens."

 

Mashashige nodded slowly. "I think you are not wrong. This is unfortunate."

 

Ryan snorted in anger. "That the best you can say! I told you there's at least four corpses just along the corridor, and this man was responsible for them all. Could be more hidden around. Four's all I saw."

 

"They will be removed." Mashashige suddenly bowed very low in Ryan's direction, a gesture mirrored almost instantaneously by his sec boss. "We must offer our sincere apologies to you, Ryan Cawdor, for not believing you. It was not honorable of us to behave in that manner. You are our guest."

 

Ryan shrugged, stooping and wiping the blood off the steel. "Happens. If I was you, I'd be a sight more worried about how this man got into your place. And I'd be making a quick check to ensure there aren't any more around."

 

Hideyoshi nodded, looking at his master. "I will rouse the guards and scour out the walls."

 

"Fine," Ryan said. "And I'm going back to bed. Good night, all." He turned on his heel and walked away to rejoin the others and tell them what had happened.