Chapter Sixteen

 

 

The camp was abandoned.

 

That was obvious as soon as the head of the column moved within a quarter mile of the jutting headland. A thin pillar of white smoke rose from the ashes of what had once been a big cooking fire at the center of a trampled patch of cropped turf, marked with the faded shapes where tents had stood and where a number of horses had been tethered.

 

Mashashige held up his hand to stop the advance as they closed to within a hundred yards, calling for Hideyoshi and Yashimoto to join him. He looked around and also beckoned for Ryan and the others to ride forward to the head of the war party.

 

It was an exposed section of land, with bedrock showing through the gray turf in many places, crisscrossed with the narrow tracks of wild sheep or goats.

 

There was nowhere for ambushers to hide in wait.

 

"This is known as a place of magic," the shogun said once the little group had gathered around him. "Very old and rich with spirits of ancestors."

 

White-topped waves were breaking high over the weed-slick rocks, kicking up a constant spray that turned into magical rainbows and then vanished.

 

"What kind of magic would that be?" Doc asked.

 

"There was once a fortress here, commanded by a great warlord called Takeda Shingen. He had appointed a young samurai as deputy shogun in his place, and this youth became fascinated with magic. He communicated with spirits of the past and ghosts from the darkness, white-faced princesses that wished to drink blood from the throat of the samurai."

 

Ryan flapped his hand to drive away a cloud of tiny iridescent flies that were clustering around his face. "Where was this fortress?" he asked. .

 

"There." Mashashige pointed. "See broken walls where once was a mighty palace."

 

It was difficult to see much of a pattern among the tumbled boulders, though Ryan conceded that there was some possible evidence of regularity in the lines of rock.

 

"But he angered the great ones. He had proclaimed he would become immoral. No, that is wrong word."

 

"Immortal," Doc prompted.

 

"Thank you, Doctor. Immortal. And that nothing in the heavens or on the earth would bring low the walls of his great house. That night there came dragons with golden scales, raging with flame-filled mouths from the north. And there was fire and great destruction. By dawn not a man or woman lived, and not one stone stood upon another."

 

"And now it looks like all your enemies have left this place," Ryan said.

 

"So it would appear. But can that truly be true?"

 

"The smoke tells that they were here up too soon," Yashimoto said.

 

Mashashige kicked his heels into the flanks of his stallion. "We will go to look."

 

 

 

THE SHOGUN TOOK ONLY seven of his leading samurai, including both Yashimoto and Hideyoshi, along with the half-dozen curious foreigners.

 

There was a short spear thrust into the ground near the fire, close to a large shape hidden under a green tarpaulin, a shape that looked uncommonly like a body, with a pool of congealing blood seeping from it. The spear had a length of white linen tied to it, dabbed with Japanese symbols.

 

The shogun dismounted and unfolded the banner, reading it out loud. "It says 'See how we welcome Lord Mashashige, the dead pretender to an empty throne.' Then it finishes by warning me to ready myself for shinda tswnori . That is difficult to translate for gaijin . It means 'looking forward to your death.'"

 

"Should I look under the covering, Lord?" asked Yashimoto, also dismounting.

 

Mashashige nodded. "I think that I know what it is that we shall see."

 

The bloody cloth was heaved away, revealing the carcass of a large pig. It had been crucified with daggers, its throat slit and belly ripped open in a mockery of the seppuku ritual of suicide. As an additional insult, its genitals had been hacked off and inserted into the tusked mouth.

 

On its flank was another line of symbols.

 

" 'As I am, so shall you be,' " Mashashige read. "The ronin are in a merry mood."

 

"The fire was lit at some time during last night, Lord," Hideyoshi said. "We didn't cross their tracks. They must have gone near the sea."

 

"Or taken to boats," the shogun offered.

 

He turned to Ryan. "You have a thought on what they have done?"

 

"I think they knew exactly when you were coming. This was timed too well." Ryan considered the question. "And that means that you have an informer in your ville. A spy. Probably traveling with us now. He found some way of warning them of when you'd get here so they could leave at the right moment. Been done for maximum effect. Well planned."

 

The three senior samurai looked at one another in silence, which was finally broken by Yashimoto. "How do we know that the spy is not one of you? You arrived here by chance, as you say. But you may be working with the gekokujo ."

 

"What are they?" J.B. asked.

 

Mashashige answered him. "Those who would wish to overthrow the chosen leaders from beneath."

 

He spoke quickly to the other samurai, who nodded and bowed and scurried toward the sea, picking their way carefully over the spray-slick rocks.

 

"They will tell us if boats were used," the shogun said. "I believe that your thinking was correct in its details. There is a spy here with us. We must guard our backs from every shadow."

 

Ryan felt a tiny tremor run through the ground beneath his feet, and he looked quickly around, seeing a flock of black-headed gulls rise screaming into the air from the sea, a couple of miles off from the shore. His pony suddenly became even more restless, skittering sideways and tugging at the bridle that Ryan held in his hand.

 

"Quake," Yashimoto said, stamping his foot on the earth. "It would not dare to rebel against those who follow the great Lord Mashashige."

 

There was another movement, much stronger this time, that set pebbles rolling and made every single horse whinny in fear. Some distance away, higher up the slope, the bulk of the small army was shouting in alarm.

 

As Ryan looked around he saw a sight that would have been funny and remarkable, had it not also been an uneasy harbinger of danger.

 

Hundreds of rabbits had erupted from a massive warren that undermined the whole hillside, scampering in all directions. A second glance showed Ryan that they were all running away from the water, where the epicenter of the growing disturbance seemed to be located.

 

"Gaia! Will you look at"

 

Krysty was pointing out to sea, where the calm pewter surface was ruffled, as though a localized whirlwind had sprung up, churning the ocean to a frothing maelstrom.

 

"It is an underwater quake," Mashashige said. "I think this might not be very pleasant. Sometimes there are tsunamis great waves. We should retire." He raised his voice in an eerie shriek to order his war chiefs to return from their recce down on the rocky shore.

 

But the air was filled with noise.

 

It sounded to Ryan as if there were a dozen war wags at full throttle, roaring away just beneath his feet.

 

Now the very bedrock itself seemed to be turning to shifting liquid, sliding and moving, with long cracks running away under their feet.

 

"Holy shit!" Mildred shouted. "Oh, holy, holy shit!"

 

The sea was transformed.

 

Now it foamed and raged, with bubbles bursting from the deeps, kicking up a throbbing turbulence. Waves had sprung up from nowhere, raging in toward the promontory far below them, where the samurai were now fleeing for their lives.

 

"Let the horse go, Doc!" Ryan shouted, seeing that the old man was in serious danger of being dragged under the panicked pony's hooves.

 

Now the ground was rolling like the waves on the sea, with a bedlam of dust and stones. Ryan glimpsed the corpse of the butchered pig tumbling into the ashes of the fire, sending up a spray of fine gray dust.

 

"Higher ground!" Mashashige yelled, "or we are all to be doomed!"

 

"Dark night!" J.B. was still staring out at the ocean, looking past the straggling doomed figures of the leading samurai. In their turn they were gazing behind them at the fearful convulsions of the water, where the waves were raging higher and higher from the center of the quake.

 

Only the first ripples were breaking over the rocks, but a mile farther out the first of the tsunamis was already gathering appalling momentum.

 

Ryan's guess put the foam-topped tidal wave at between fifty and a hundred feet, racing shoreward, followed by several other, slightly smaller breakers.

 

All around him there was a barely controlled chaos.

 

Through the deafening cacophony he could hear orders being called out in high-pitched Japanese and glimpse the crimson-and-white soldiers running back up the hill, going for the higher ground, dropping their pikes and rifles behind them.

 

The few remaining samurai had abandoned their freaked-out horses and were running with the rabble, slowed by the heavy armor. Ryan noticed that none of the samurai had thrown away any of his weapons.

 

Hideyoshi, Yashimoto and Mashashige were all following their men, trying to strike a balance between dignity and fear, striding up the slope with an ungainly haste.

 

Far below them all, the other samurai had all but given up their futile efforts to escape, stopping on the slick rocks and looking hopelessly at the mighty wave that rushed upon them. Ryan wasn't absolutely sure, but he thought he had seen a slash of crimson as at least one of them was hastily committing suicide with his dagger.

 

"Poor bastards," Jak said.

 

"Should we not be making our own escape from this place?" Doc asked, a slight tremble in his voice. "Only that tsunami seems damnably high and"

 

"Won't reach us," Ryan said calmly. "We're a good two hundred and fifty feet above sea level here. No way we're in any danger from it."

 

He almost crossed his fingers as be spoke. The tidal wave seemed to be growing larger with every few yards as it tore in toward the land. He guessed now that its roaring white crest was well over one hundred feet high and the weight of water was incalculable.

 

The movement of the land had eased down, though he still felt off-balance.

 

"Could always move a tad higher, lover?" Krysty suggested, having to shout at the top of her voice to be heard above the shrieking of the quake and the oncoming tsunami.

 

"Wouldn't do any harm," he conceded.

 

The noise had faded to a distant rumble, but the thunder of the oncoming wave was growing ever louder.

 

Doc was running for higher ground, elbows pumping, feet splayed out, the tails of his frock coat flaring out behind him. His mane of silver hair trailed like a bridal veil.

 

Jak was at his heels, followed close behind by J.B. and Mildred.

 

Ryan and Krysty had started walking after them, when their nerve went and they both started to spring toward the crest of the ridge. Behind them, it seemed they were being chased by a panther in a hurricane, the roaring ever closer and more frightening, as if it was aimed solely at the runners.

 

Ryan risked a glance behind him again, pausing in midstride, seeing that they were truly high enough to be safe, though not by as much as he'd been calmly claiming.

 

Even as he stopped, the tsunami reached the shore.

 

There was a moment when it seemed to hang, a mile high, frozen in time and space, like a mighty cliff of dark green jade, topped with snowwith the samurai, trapped forever beneath it.

 

If they screamed at the last moment, it was swamped by the tumult of the tsunami.

 

The earth shook as the wave landed, burying the promontory, surging high up over the cropped turf, almost reaching the site of the ronin camp, water roiling over the dusty land, covering everything.

 

The foaming combers reached within a hundred paces of where Ryan, closest of the group, stood to watch.

 

Then it sucked back, exposing the muddied bottom of the ocean, where hundreds of blind creatures flopped and writhed in the dense mud.

 

There were other, smaller tsunamis, following on the heels of that first monster wave. But none of them was more than forty or fifty feet high, still profoundly impressive, but like pygmies chasing a giant.

 

Krysty took Ryan's arm, staring out at the scene of Nature in its awesome pomp.

 

"That was something else, lover," she said.

 

"Yeah."

 

"Poor devils never had a chance."

 

"If we'd been farther down, nearer the sea, it would have taken us all out."

 

Krysty nodded. "Mashashige's lost most of his top fighting men."

 

"Plenty of Indians and no chiefs."

 

She smiled. "Nice to see you trying to run like mad and keep your cool all at the same time."

 

"I knew in my brain that the wave wouldn't reach us. But my heart wasn't so sure."

 

"The retreat's stopped up the hill. Mashashige and the other samurai are coming back."

 

The shogun stopped in front of the outlanders, still a little out of breath. "The ronin have gone. So we will follow them."

 

Ryan nodded. "Why not?"