The umbrella of the eruption cloud had drifted northwards somewhat and he was aware of a brightening in the sky to the west. He raised himself to sit with his back against the tree and he looked around him trying to gauge where he was in relation to the city. He had always known of the tunnel to the outside world but had never travelled its length.
The thunderous explosion rocked the very ground he sat upon and the world shook with greater violence than he had ever known. Once more he threw himself face down on the earth, whimpering like a child as the ground quaked and the volcano bellowed with renewed vehemence.
For an eternity the hellish din and vibration kept him prone and terrified, crying into the soft litter of rotting leaves. A light ash began to settle around him, he could hear it pattering gently on the trees above him despite the explosive detonations from the volcano. Gradually he realised the noise and the shaking was subsiding and he was still alive. He lifted his head and spat out the musty earth from his mouth. The grime of his face was streaked with tears, but he had escaped death. He breathed still and what’s more the ominous eruption column had collapsed to a shadow of its previous terrible height. The volcano was dying and with it the nefarious beasts from within would melt back into the pit from which they had ascended.
Kurohoshi sat upright once more and as the booming rumbles subsided his courage grew. He climbed to his feet, steadied himself on the tree as an aftershock threatened to send him falling to the ground once more and then he decided to find his men at his summer palace in Takewara. He cast a regretful glance in the direction of the tunnel and, concluding that Mizuki must be dead and buried along with his mother, he turned his back upon them both and any love that might have burned in his heart was snuffed from existence.
He resolved that Hana-Shi-Ku may now be destroyed along with many of its inhabitants. He would find out soon enough, but he had another city at his command, Kyo-To-Shi, and he determined to ride there with his Samurai and join the garrison he had left guarding it. It would become the new centre of his dominion. With a sneer he thought of Hayato who, if he had not surely perished trying to escape, had little hope of regaining power with no army to fight for him. By moving his retinue to Kyo-To-Shi, Kurohoshi knew he sealed the fate of its inhabitants under his rule and the final demise of the Oyama dynasty. Hayato was nothing and his sister was dead. The pirates, if indeed it had been them that had fired upon his castle, would leave now they could not reclaim their treasure. He laughed and taking the weak sun as a bearing he headed through the forest to the west. And at the same time Thom and Mizuki reached the entrance of the tunnel and their own realisation of freedom.
FORTY-EIGHT
Karasu and the occupants of the rowing boat did not die. Miraculously the pyroclastic flow ran out of energy before it reached them, hissing as though lamenting its failure as the last of its deadly cargo sank into the sea. A wave of ash and pumiceous debris fell into the vessel, showering the men inside with painfully hot detritus, which they brushed from their clothes and hair with frenzied haste. It burnt their skin and stung at their eyes and their throats as they breathed, causing them to hold their breath until their lungs threatened to burst and they had to gasp in huge gulps of air. But this second breath was cool and held no choking dust. Blinking, they lifted their heads and gazed back to where the avalanche had been, to where a city had stood with a busy harbour and bustling streets, to where a majestic conical mountain had loomed behind. All that remained? A grey wasteland.
The city had vanished. What buildings still stood were distant ruins burning in the numerous fires that started as searing rocks contacted with dry timbers. The volcano had lost its towering cone and a great gouge ran from its stunted summit down its eastern flank to the city. The forest that had covered it so lushly was a smashed tangle of burnt tree stumps and rocky rubble. The eruption was not over, but its ferocity had diminished such that the pall of ash and gas reached only half the height it had formerly and drifted northwards on a light southerly breeze. Occasional flashes of lightening still illuminated the cloud, but it was a mere shadow of its gloriously terrible self.
The Samurai slumped over their oars with exhausted relief. Karasu wiped the tears from his dirty face and called in vain hope to Mizuki. He waited, hearing nothing but a distant rumble and the steady splash of oars once more. Giving up all hope of his sister and Thom he hung his head in his hands and wept without restraint.
He was helped aboard the Orca by Taku who embraced him fondly as a brother and immediately discerned his anguish. Hayato hovered in the background, his gaze flitting from the devastated city to his dishevelled sibling. The young Lord saw an exhausted and grief stricken man before him in place of the hopeful boy that had left hours before. Karasu’s face was bruised and scorched, he had a nasty lump and cut upon his forehead that had bled profusely for a while, as all scalp wounds do, and then had congealed with ash and grime giving the ronin a look of one who had returned from battle. His clothes were torn and covered in grey dust and he seemed to sway on the brink of collapse rather than from the gentle pitch of the ship.
Hayato did not need to ask. He understood from his brother’s demeanour, his crumpled posture and the expression of abject misery that they had failed and that Mizuki and Thom Devlin were dead. He hobbled over to Karasu and wrapping both arms around his shivering frame, held him in a long filial embrace that offered comfort and shared his grief.
“We were almost there and the roof caved in,” Karasu uttered almost inaudibly. “I thought Thom was dead then, but he was not. I heard Mizuki telling me to come back to the ship, that she and Thom would find another way out, but now…. Now I feel nothing.” His voice began to falter and he drew in a long quivering breath.
“There is no chance they survived? You cannot sense her presence?” Hayato questioned with little hope. Miserably Karasu shook his head. Lord Oyama bowed his head and let the tears fall. For five minutes the brothers stood together as others watched their shared grief and then Hayato called Taku to take Karasu below and help him wash.
“You must rest Brother. You can do no more. We will return to Kyo-To-Shi,” he instructed.
“No we must go to the bay and wait for twenty four hours as the Kapitan ordered,” Karasu protested.
“But he is dead Brother.”
“It is what he wanted.”
Reluctantly Hayato nodded his agreement. He doubted he could persuade the pirates to leave straight away anyhow. Aledd and Densall were approaching them now.
“I think Kapitan dead,” Hayato called to them in his pigeon Westlandish. They stopped and exchanged glances with each other and then Aledd turned to Karasu.
“Is this true? Do you know for certain?” he demanded.
“He alive when we left castle, we separated by rock fall. But now? I not know Mr Aledd. I think not. I think both he and my sister have perished. How could they survive what we just witness? I not sense her presence any longer,” Karasu replied wearily watching the big man’s scorched face work with emotion and his eyes glaze.
“But you are not sure?” Aledd pressed desperately.
“I sorry. You were right in what you said about him. He was brave and selfless man. I was wrong. I hope his spirit forgives my uncharitable accusations.”
“He is gone then?” Aledd asked in disbelief.
“I afraid so. But we should go to bay and wait as he asked. It was his wish.”
“What is the point if he is dead?” Densall, cried bitterly.
“Because his spirit may wait for us there. We should not deny him last farewell,” Karasu uttered sadly and seeing the contemptuous expression on the First Mate’s face knew that Aledd did not believe in spirits and visitations by the dead. The big man looked as if he were about to argue but, like many sailors, he was a man prone to superstition and little different in that respect from the rest of the crew. He nodded and gave the order to sail to the bay where they had picked up Furuki and Lord Oyama.
FORTY-NINE
&n
bsp; The water felt refreshingly cool on his face and neck. It felt good to wash away the grime and sweat. Taking a breath of clean mountain air he ducked his head right into the stream revelling in the cold rush tightening his scalp and tugging at his hair. He lifted his head after nearly a minute and exhaled loudly. Her soft laughter met his ears and the warm joy of her presence sent ripples of pleasure through his body. He turned and smiled at her his wet hair hanging limp around his shoulders.
“What is so funny?” he asked as he indulged in gazing upon her lovely face while she raked long fingers through her hair, teasing out the knots with careful patience. It was hair as black as a raven and it fell in thick, straight tresses to her waist. He allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to stroke those locks and lose himself in their soft beauty every night. She did not answer him but turned her eyes coyly from his. He flicked water from the stream at her.
“Argh!” she cried in a mock scream and dazzled him with a smile that lit the heavens.
“By Solei you are beautiful,” he breathed, staring still.
She turned her head away once more and pulled at her hair.
He climbed from the stream and sat beside her and examined his arms. They were covered in scratches, some quite deep, as if he had wrestled a wild cat.
“They were real, the spirits in the cave I mean? I never believed in such things, but it was real?” his remark was more than a question it was the realisation of a terrible truth that made him shiver.
“Yes. They bad Kami. We call Akutenshi. They servants of dark Lord Akuma. They try stop you, but time not right for them. Your love stopped them,” Mizuki replied and laid a hand on his arm. “Do they hurt?”
“What, these scratches? No, just sting a bit that is all. My bloody leg hurts though. It feels like a knife is stuck through it when I walk,” he grimaced.
“You must clean it,” she said quietly.
Thom nodded and looked down at his blood stained trousers and the rip that ran from the top of his right leg to the knee. The ooze had dried somewhat and was congealing into a sticky mess that caught at the hairs on his leg and smarted if he moved too quickly. He thought it odd how the catching of hairs annoyed him almost as much as the dull throbbing ache from the wound. He prised apart the rip and sucked his breath in at what was his first real look at the jagged gouge in the flesh beneath. There was no wonder it hurt like hell, it was deep and irregular and it still oozed blood.
“Shit!” he exclaimed and pushing himself to his feet, cursing at the stab of pain that the effort caused him, he returned to the stream where he unfastened his belt and dropped his trousers before lowering himself into the cold water. Mizuki stared with fascination as the pale buttocks disappeared under the tails of his shirt. She flushed and hurriedly busied herself with her hair. Thom sat in the stream and tentatively rubbed the skin around the wound wincing every now and then when he caught the raw flesh with careless hands.
“I know plant that clean,” Mizuki whispered in his ear making him start and self-consciously pull his shirt between his legs. She smiled and kissed his cheek before lightly tripping off into the forest. He watched her go as his ears burned and when she was out of sight pulled his trousers over his feet and washed them out as best he could in the water. After five minutes scrubbing the besmirched garments over a rock and when the feeling had gone not only from the rip in his leg but also his bottom and everything else that was submerged in the stream, he struggled to his feet casting a quick look around to ensure Mizuki had not returned. He staggered from the water, the pain soon returning and, with his shirt clinging wetly to his body and backside, he leant heavily against a tree to put his trousers back on.
“Well, well, what have we here? A pirate perhaps and caught with his pants down, quite literally,” a voice uttered without a trace of an accent. The owner of the voice was a native Westlander without a doubt.
Thom spun his head only to have a blade thrust against his cheek. It cut the skin slightly sending a warm trickle of scarlet blood dripping onto his grubby shirt.
“Now now, gently does it lad. Wounded you may be, but I know your sort. Cunning as a fox, but not half so charming. Now what would you be doing up here I wonder? A long way from any ship and a good two grosmetriles from the sea? It does not quite add up. Are you alone pirate?” Stefan asked.
“What makes you think I’m a pirate?” Thom asked lamely trying to think of an escape and hoping that Mizuki had the sense to stay out of sight. He did not know who this man was. The Kapitan suspected that he may be an original sailor from the Orca. It would explain his presence here and his educated accent. Possibly he had been an officer.
Stefan laughed and pressed a finger onto the dolphin tattoo showing through the wet fabric of the shirt on Thom’s upper left arm.
“A mark of the clans ain’t it? You think your accent will dupe me into thinking you hail from Eirla? You think I’m a fool lad? Besides, no other Westlander has stepped foot on this island in twelve years except the pirate filth that limped into Hana-Shi-Ku harbour a few weeks ago. How come you are up here? Are you alone?”
“I went to school in Eirla,” Thom said deliberately avoiding the man’s questions.
“School! You jest surely? Now you really do think I am a fool. An educated pirate! I never heard the likes of,” Stefan scoffed.
“For five years, from the age of ten until fifteen. I’m not ignorant despite what you would wish to think. Are you going to hold me at knife point all day or may I put my trousers back on?”
Stefan grunted and indicated with a flick of the blade that Devlin may dress himself. Hurriedly Thom pulled on his wet trousers wincing at the pain in his leg as he did so and frantically trying to think of an escape.
“Nasty gash that. Could do with stitching,” Stefan commented gleefully as he took in the young pirate before him. He had to admit he was surprised. The lad did not act like a brigand. He was calm and careful. He knew who had the upper hand and was not about to provoke. The admission of an education was interesting but in hind sight he spoke like one who was schooled. Despite the soft lilting accent he did not speak with the rough dialect one normally associated with his kind.
Thom fastened the buttons in his flies and pulled the string from his shirt, using it to fasten his hair from his face. He allowed himself to take a glance behind him at the man with the knife. He saw a man in his late thirties with dusty, fair hair fastened into a long plait and a twenty four hour beard. The stranger wore the garb of a native, a light cotton haori coat fastened with a broad sash and hakama pants that ended just below his knees.
“Do you have a name pirate?” Stefan asked bringing the knife nearer to Thom’s face once more.
“Thom Devlin.”
Stefan started at the name. He had not expected this but then he supposed he should have done. A mere deck hand would not be schooled. However, he had expected someone older to command a ship.
“The Thom Devlin that First Samurai Furuki spoke of? You came for Lord Oyama?” Stefan demanded unable to hide the incredulous tone in his voce. Thom nodded; he too was surprised that someone knew of him and why he was here. He narrowed his eyes a little.
“You know Furuki?” he asked wanting to keep the man talking as much as possible as he had now caught a glimpse of Mizuki through the undergrowth to his left. He hoped she would not come closer, but he could tell she was afraid for him, her thoughts pushed into his brain and he determinedly shut her out. This was a dangerous situation and he could not be distracted.
“He came to us. To Akika Kouhei actually and asked for help. He threatened Kouhei with you and persuaded the fool to work for him. We hid Lord Oyama until Furuki came for him. He said you were bringing my old ship. I thought he was talking rubbish. The old tub would never sail and I never believed that a pirate would help. I suppose you came for your gold. I see you did not get it. Still it puzzles me why you are here,” Stefan mused.
“Is Kouhei with you?” Thom asked still avoiding the
questions.
“He is dead. Kurohoshi’s interrogator took him away not long after Furuki and the Lord had left us. He will not have been allowed to live. It is not the Interrogator’s way. No one leaves his lair except in a box,” Stefan snapped bitterly.
“I am sorry. I liked the little man even though he did betray me. I think he had no choice. I can forgive that,” Thom said sincerely and he bit his bottom lip. He had noticed Mizuki move from the corner of his eye and he could no longer see her. Stefan laughed sardonically and shoved the knife very close to the pirate’s eye. Thom recoiled but his retreat was barred by the tree he had been leaning against.
“Afraid? Kouhei was very afraid. He was not a brave man in the sense you would understand. He did not ask to be dragged into this, but he was and now he is gone. The Gods only know what has happened to his family. And you stand there and tell me you are sorry. How dare you!” Stefan cried angrily.
A snap of a twig and the rustle of undergrowth from behind him made Stefan start and he whipped his head around in sudden panic. Thom did not hesitate he brought his elbow up knocking the hand holding the knife away and struck a powerful blow with his right fist to Stefan’s jaw. The ex-officer spun reeling backwards and fell heavily onto his left side. He dropped the knife and scrabbled desperately to try and grasp it back but a sandaled foot stood upon the blade. Thom bent down and picked up the weapon before stepping backwards. Mizuki rushed to his side and clutched at his arm, her face full of concern.
“Get up!” Thom ordered. Stefan did so, wiping the blood from his lip where his teeth and bitten into it. He rubbed his jaw which throbbed painfully from the blow and swayed a little unsteadily on his feet. His eyes darted from Devlin to the girl as his mind shifted from fear for his life at the hands of a cutthroat to intrigue regarding the identity of the girl and the pirate’s involvement with her. He was even more surprised when the buccaneer tossed the knife onto the floor at his feet.
Raven's Quest Page 27