“There’s enough wood to build steam on but we need more to get us to the bay where the Rose is, but that’s about all. We will need a hell of a lot more if we are going to get to Hana-Shi-Ku. I hope your men have cut enough,” Thom ran briskly through his summation and grinned broadly at the end. “I think, Karasu, we are going to rescue your family and my gold after all.”
Karasu nodded and grinned back.
“What we do now? Get back to Rose?” he enquired.
“Hmm. I think we wait until night fall my friend. Mr Hiraiwa is pointing ashore. I think soldiers or some other authority has arrived. We do not want to arouse suspicion do we?” Thom answered and waved Hiraiwa up to the Bridge.
Karasu stared at the quay for a while his heart beating a little faster than he cared for.
“You think they seen us?” he asked.
“Doubt it unless your fisherman friend has told them we took his boat and came this way. And why would he do that? It incriminates him. No, it’s probably just part of their routine. Examine the day’s catch; steal most of it for themselves. You know. Whatever, conquering armies do to subjugate their enemy,” Thom replied cynically. He took a pipe from his sash and stuck it in his mouth lighting it from his tinder box and sucking the smoke appreciatively into his lungs.
“What that? It smells aromatic,” Karasu asked. Thom laughed.
“Tis weed my friend and good stuff too. You should try it yourself,” he took the pipe from his mouth and offered it to the ronin with a smirk while his head swam in a haze of dizzy intoxication.
“No, thank you,” Karasu replied noting the faraway glazed look in the Kapitan’s eyes. He pondered silently for a few minutes whilst Thom smoked his pipe.
“How old you Thom?” Karasu queried unexpectedly.
“What?”
“How old you? You not look old, but you understand lot about ship and you have cynicism of someone much greater in years than appearance indicates,” the ronin smiled. Devlin laughed loudly.
“I have spent my life aboard vessels such as this. She’s an old Imperial class two frigate, but she is not much different from any other more modern ship. If I did not know my way around her then I would not make much of a Kapitan would I. I hope, my friend, to command a vessel like this when I go home. I have earned it now I think. And as for cynical. If you had grown up under the shadow of the Vitric Empire, you too would be cynical before your years. I have seen too much injustice, too much wasted life to be anything but sardonic my friend. You, I am sure, would be the same,” he said bitterly and then as Hiraiwa climbed onto the Bridge beaming affably, he smiled and added, “I am twenty five on the tenth day of Feumois.”
“Feumois?”
“Forty days following the Summer Solstice. You know when this is do you not?”
“You have hard life Thom,” Karasu continued nodding that he understood the Kapitan meant the longest day of the year.
“Hard? Not really. It depends upon your definition of hard. Yes a life at sea can be tough. Fighting for your very existence, forever fugitives. But then the freedom is worth it. I would not trade my life for any safe living under the rule of a tyrant. I may be dead before I am forty, but at least I will have lived Karasu,” Devlin eulogised and grinned broadly. His mood had changed, the optimism had returned. He stood and excused himself saying he would while the hours seeing what repairs he could make to the ship.
Karasu watched him go and shook his head.
“What is it Shukke?” Hiraiwa questioned.
“Nothing Daiki. I find Kapitan Devlin an enigma that is all. Just when I think I understand him, he surprises me. He is the same age as Hayato. Yet I thought he was older.”
“Why?”
“I do not know. He acts like a man of the world. Like he has experienced much more than I expected from one so young.”
“He has. Not everyone has had your sheltered existence. Your own brother has not. I think you see Hayato in him. That is why he irks you so much,” Hiraiwa said sagely.
“You think he annoys me? You are mistaken. I simply do not understand him fully,” Karasu defended with an unconvincing expression of nonchalance. The Second Samurai simply smiled.
TWENTY-SIX
Furuki Jun and three of his men watched the panic around the castle following the earthquake. There were still several hours before dawn and the tremor had brought chaos and destruction to the city. People wandered the streets dazed, injured and afraid. Many muttered prayers to themselves, others merely appeared bewildered. A tumult of sound pulsated around the damaged houses, shops and businesses as the city lamented and shouted with equal parts of fear and rage.
Part of the castle’s eastern wall had collapsed and after an hour or so of total disarray the guards decided that it needed watching. Through the settling dust the General and his men had observed that people were running to and fro within the fortress, shouting for assistance and removing rubble and fallen debris. And all this in the middle of the night. No waiting until the morning. Jun wondered at what level of fear could drive servants into such an ant like frenzy in the dead of night.
He looked back at the city. A few fires had started and were burning brightly against the black sky casting the scene in dancing shades of orange and red.
“This must be what the pit of Hell looks like,” he thought out loud and signalled to his men that they move nearer to the castle. While chaos reigned this might be their best chance to get inside the walls and have a look around. At least it would give him chance to assess the proficiency of the guards.
Dressed in peasants’ clothing they pushed an old hand cart laden with wood that they had collected from some of the ruins passed on route. They trudged along the road that bounded the fortress, acting no differently than many of the desperate citizens bent on rescuing what they could from the ruins. They passed close to the guards by the breach in the wall.
“You there!” one soldier called out, his armour and uniform signifying that he held a sergeant’s rank.
Jun looked up pretending to be startled. He placed his hands upon his chest in question.
“Yes you!” the sergeant affirmed and strode over to the men. “What are you doing with that cart? Are you looting?”
“No Sir. Absolutely not Sir. We have been collecting wood Sir, to mend our homes,” Jun replied keeping his head deferentially low and nervously wringing his hands.
“Uh! Liberated it from some other poor man’s house no doubt,” the sergeant grunted and walked around the cart and the men, all of whom stood with heads bowed. “We need men to clear the courtyard inside. Lord Kurohoshi demands that the castle is repaired in time for his wedding. There is no time to lose. Work must start now. The wedding is soon. You men are commandeered to remove rubble. Inside now!”
“But Sir. Our homes and families. We cannot leave them without shelter,” Jun protested.
“You can if you want to see them at all. Stealing is an executionable offence my friend and it looks to me as if you have been looting. If you work well, you can return to your families by nightfall. Inside. Leave the wood here and take the cart with you,” the sergeant ordered.
Jun bowed and with a surreptitious smile at his men began unloading the cart before manhandling the latter through the breach in the wall. They were set to work with other, so called volunteers, moving rubble from damaged out-houses and stores. The General surveyed the courtyard carefully.
A couple of buildings, a small armoury and a grain store had collapsed completely. At least thirty men were crawling over this debris trying to rescue what had not been damaged, piling masonry into one heap and destroyed weapons into another. Women were sweeping up the rice that had spilt from sacks and shovelling it through sieves into buckets, new sacks and whatever other containers could be found. A group of soldiers were leading frightened horses from a stable block the outer walls of which had a series of frighteningly large cracks. The animals shied and whinnied in the torch light and skittered edgily; the soldiers mo
ving them had their hands full and were oblivious to whatever else was happening. Other buildings showed varying degrees of damage and were being assessed in turn by a man who must have been a surveyor or builder of some kind. He was followed by a man with a ledger who scribbled notes and following each examination a group of volunteers was assigned to work. The number assigned proportionate to the work required.
Jun had to accede that despite initial appearances of total chaos the activity within the castle was anything but. It was well organised and well resourced. Sadly, the majority of the resource was effectively slave labour. Men like himself who had been dragged in off the streets under threat of some trumped up charge of looting or similar. All the workers were completely focussed upon their allotted tasks taking no notice of each other.
Jun looked up at the keep. No sign of Kurohoshi overseeing the work. No doubt the Lord slept soundly knowing no one dare go against his will. The doors were fastened shut, the guards posted either side of them and no light shone from within, excepting one high on the North Tower. There also seemed to be little sign of damage. The builders of the fortress had done a good job in ensuring it could withstand an earthquake. Some masonry had fallen from the upper ramparts, a few cracks showed jaggedly in the rendering, but it all appeared superficial. The only real cause for concern, a gaping hole in the ground at the southern corner of the keep where the courtyard turned and led towards the guards’ barracks behind. Someone had marked the hole with a red flag upon a lance rammed into the ground, probably as a warning so that no one fell in, but no one was working to fill the hole or cover it. Jun thought it strange. He carried on working and when the opportunity arose asked questions of his fellow workers. Never too many and never of the same man twice. For a long time he learned nothing. Most of the men were in the same position as he and too afraid to ask questions or to speak for long aware of the stout rods the soldiers were rather too liberal with the use of. Eventually he found an old servant, slightly worse from drink and happy enough to talk. Jun helped the man lift some wood from a semi-demolished store onto a cart.
“Why is no one working on the keep?” he asked.
“Nothing wrong with it is there?” the old man replied grumpily. “I was enjoying a nice drink I was and then this happened and now look. I’m slaving my balls off so that his Lordship does not have to postpone his wedding. Bloody liberty if you ask me.”
“Shh, you will get beaten for saying as much,” Jun enacted the part of a wary citizen.
“Do I care?”
“But the keep is damaged. Look over there. There’s a great hole in the ground.”
To Jun’s dismay the servant stopped working and craned his scrawny neck to see the hole, but no one noticed. The old man cackled.
“Not worth bothering with yet. It is the roof of the dungeons caved in. No one down there worth bothering about. Who cares whether prisoners die or not. Not Kurohoshi. No, they’ll deal with that when the rest of this mess is cleared and not before. No one down there is going anywhere are they?” he snickered.
The General stopped work and gazed at the servant. A number of thoughts flashed through his head, some he did not care to contemplate, others, filled with new hope. He finished his task and gradually moved back towards his men. As they piled rumble onto the hand cart he told of what he had learned.
“The cells are directly beneath that gaping hole. This could mean we can get directly to Lord Oyama. We could secure his release now while the castle is in disarray and no one would notice until it was too late.”
“He could also be dead Furuki-san,” one of the men reminded.
“There is only one way to find out. We must get down there and take a look. I think we can do it. Everyone is too busy to notice much. Riki come with me. The rest of you move over to that fallen granary, it is the nearest building and you will not look out of place there.”
He and Riki moved away taking great pains not to be seen; stopping every now and then to busy themselves over some imaginary task when they thought someone was watching. They arrived at the hole and slunk into the shadow of the keep that loomed above. They saw the others take the now empty cart to the granary and begin shifting rubble in a manner that appeared industrious yet actually did little. They unravelled a length of rope they had acquired on route and Riki tied it to a post.
“Keep watch here Riki. I will return shortly,” Jun instructed tying the rope around his waist. His subordinate nodded once and as the General disappeared into the mouth of the hole he melted back into the shadows once more.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hayato had not moved. The gates of his cell hung open, a shaft of pale orange torchlight filtered down from the hole above the dungeon lifting the complete inky blackness of the prison into a dim world of dark shadows and vaguely pinkish motes of fine powder floating in the gloom. Most of the dust had finally settled and the piles of debris loomed as amorphous heaps of rubble, earth and twisted metal. Freedom beckoned if only he could propel his body from its reluctant inertia.
As his eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light Hayato had realised that a miracle had occurred and it both astounded and frightened him. Not only had the prison been rent apart exposing a way out, albeit via a dangerous scramble, but the earthquake had spared only one cell. His. All around him the other cages and their occupants lay broken, twisted and half buried in the fallen masonry. The cell that had held the foreign Kapitan was indistinguishable from the debris around it and Hayato felt an odd twinge of relief that the man was long gone from this place. The other five cages were flattened where a slab had fallen from the once vaulted ceiling above. The prison’s remaining two inmates were crushed beneath it and hopefully dead.
What frightened Hayato was the apparent miracle that had spared his life. There seemed no architectural explanation for his cell to be left barely touched when everything around him had been destroyed. His brain sought a rational and scientific definition but could come up with only a divine one. Reluctantly he began to acknowledge that he had been chosen to live whilst those around him died and it was this understanding that his fate was in the hands of something otherworldly that prevented him from moving. For hours he had sat alone in the dark thinking. Trying to reconcile what he was reluctant to believe. His eyes continually roved the dungeon, watching for movement, for any sign that he was not the sole survivor. He saw none. Down here he was alone in his good fortune and up above, within arm’s reach from atop a pile of rubble, lay his escape. He eyed it noting the vague flashes of torchlight as people moved about outside, but still he did not move. He had listened to the calamitous shouting and crying gradually change into some kind of order. The panic of the earthquake’s victims slowly and perceptually transmuted into organised commands and collaborative encouragement.
Had he left it too late? Had enough order ensued in the castle above that someone would now notice his escape? He pondered on this endlessly. He wondered how long he could stand on his splinted leg; how far it would carry him. He thought he would be lucky if it stood up to the climb from the dungeon and felt angry at whatever Kami had saved him from a crushing, suffocating death, shown him a way out, only to have forgotten his disablement. Was the mischievous spirit mocking him? He had thought not, but now he was not so sure.
He thought of the pirate Kapitan and whether he had actually found Karasu as Mizuki believed. Whether there really was a plan that would rescue both himself and his sister. Was she still alive? If he took this chance of freedom what of her? He dithered once more staring at the open gate to his cell.
“To Hell with it!” he cried out loud and forced himself to stand, wincing at the pain that stabbed through his broken leg as he did so. It brought sweat to his brow, a wave of nausea and a temporary return of his doubts and fears. He stirred himself once more and with great effort and will he lurched across to the pile of rubble and began to drag himself up to the flickering world outside.
Suddenly a dark shadow blotted out the meagre light and Ha
yato froze. Someone was peering into the hole. Terrified it might be one of Kurohoshi’s guards he pushed himself flat to the debris ignoring the protestations of his leg and he held his breath as though the act of respiration might give him away. He hoped that his dust covered, dirty clothes would blend seamlessly with the rubble around him. Somewhere in the recesses of his brain he thought it strange that the guard had not lowered a torch or lamp to see what lay beneath.
Pressed to the pile of masonry Hayato heard whispered voices above and then to his dismay he became aware of small chunks of stone and mortar clattering down the pile towards him. Whoever had peered into the hole had climbed down and in doing so had disturbed some of the rubble. Hayato clamped his hand to his mouth as clouds of fine dust engulfed him and seeped into his lungs. He felt an overwhelming urge to cough and fought desperately to suppress it, his chest burning with irritation. It became too much. His lungs ached and his throat stung and spasmed. Despite his efforts a cough spluttered defiantly from his protesting chest.
The person moving atop the mountain of stony rubbish stopped dead still, listening. Hayato cursed himself silently and closed his streaming eyes tight shut.
“Is anyone alive? Lord Oyama-san, are you there?” a voice called lowly.
Hayato recognised the voice or thought he did and for a moment his heart missed a beat. No, it could be a trap. He was not sure and yet it sounded like….
“Oyama Hayato are you there? Is anyone alive? I dare not use a lamp in case its light is seen from outside. If you are alive my Lord speak now so that I may find you. It is Furuki Jun, Sir,” the voice said clearly.
Raven's Quest Page 17