The Fires of the Gods (A Sugawara Akitada Novel)

by I. J. Parker

  The youngster must be hiding behind the buildings. Akitada plunged into the narrow passageway. Halfway down, he was about to slow down and reconsider when a heavy, wet cloth dropped over his head. Akitada struggled against the evil-smelling thing, but strong arms pulled it tight and then bound his flailing arms to his body. He kicked out, but was jerked up roughly and thrown over someone’s back. Gasping for breath, he tried to shout for help, managing only muffled grunts. The need for air grew urgent, and he tried to throw himself off the man’s back. A short struggle later, he struck the ground painfully. He managed to catch a breath, then something struck his head, and blinding pain was the last thing he felt.

  Akitada regained consciousness in the dark and knew instantly what had happened. The smell of the suffocating cloth was still in his nostrils, his head hurt terribly, and his arms and legs were tied. At least he could breathe again. Total blackness surrounded him. His fuzzy head at first made him think he had been struck blind, but then he realized he was a prisoner in some dark, moist place with earthen walls.

  With the realization came panic. He was transported back on Sado Island, chained in the underground chamber of the mine. He retched, then vomited. His head throbbed worse than before, and he felt dizzy. He vomited again and regained enough control to move away from his vomit.

  This brought him up against another dirt wall. His wrists were tied behind his back. Even if his captors had left him the knife, he could not have used it. He pulled on his bonds, but only managed to tighten them. The rope was wet and intractable. Maneuvering about by pushing with his legs, he verified that he was in a pit less than a man’s length in either direction. He could sit and even kneel, but there was not enough headroom to stand up. His prison’s ceiling seemed to be made of rough wooden planks. Something heavy kept them in place, for he could not lift them by pushing upward with his shoulders.

  The effort made his headache worse, and he collapsed in a corner. For a while now, he had been vaguely aware of some movement near him. Now it happened again, the merest slither and scrape. A primal fear made his heart race. Leaning against the dirt wall, he fought down a second panic attack and listened.

  Nothing.

  Yet still there was the acute sense that he was not alone in a pit that was barely large enough for a man. Tora, who believed in ghostly spirits that played tricks on humans, would have thought that he was buried with some sort of demon, but Akitada did not believe in demons.

  He tried to put his fear from his mind and thought about the situation.

  The darkness meant little. Night could have fallen while he was unconscious. He seemed to have enough air, and it was reasonably fresh. Perhaps with the morning light he would see chinks in the boards above, but this pit might not be in the open. The floor underneath him seemed to be of stone, covered with a thin layer of dirt. It smelled vaguely of rotting vegetables. Most likely, this was one of those storage pits used to keep fruit and vegetables during the winter months. That and the moistness of the dirt walls made him think it was in someone’s backyard. But his captors would hardly have put him where he might attract notice by shouting for help. He decided to wait before trying that. If they had posted a guard, he might get killed.

  His captors had surely come from the Fragrant Peach. There had been more than one: big men, just like the three silent customers who had blocked his way in the wine shop. He had probably fallen into the hands of one of the gangs that ruled the western city. What did they plan to do with him? The possibilities that crossed his mind made his blood run cold.

  There was neither food nor water in his prison. Perhaps they meant to leave him here to die. He fought off the horror of such a slow death by piecing together the events before the attack.

  He thought about the youth who looked like the Kiyowara heir. Surely he was part of the gang, along with the young waitress and most – or all – of the customers of the Fragrant Peach. What plot had his visit threatened? How had he managed to get into such trouble by looking for the abbot’s missing protégé? Nobody would go to these lengths to keep a boy from being returned to a monastery.

  But they might do so to help a murderer escape.

  The youngster’s reaction when Akitada had mentioned the Kiyowara murder at the very least implicated him. Had Kiyowara’s murder been political? And could it be that the gangs were working for some powerful nobleman in the government? Who among the illustrious men competing for positions would use criminals to further his ambitions?

  At this point Akitada’s thoughts became hopelessly tangled and he dozed off.

  When he woke again, his situation had worsened. He now sat in about a foot of water and something furry perched on his right shoulder. He gave a violent jerk, and the creature plopped into the stinking water. It splashed around frantically, then caught hold of his pant leg and climbed on to his knee. Disgusted, he shook it off again, but then regretted his cruelty.

  It was only some small helpless creature trying to save itself from drowning. They were both caught down here. He decided his companion was probably a rat that had been foraging in the old vegetable cellar when he was tossed down and the exit covered with boards and heavy weights. He could keep his head above water, but the rat was not so lucky. This time, when the rat regained its perch on his knee, he let him be.

  He had no idea how long it had taken for the water to rise this far, but it added a new fear. He need not worry about dying from thirst; he was more likely to drown in this hole.

  Self-pity seized him. He would never see his baby girl again, would not see her grow, would never return to Tamako and the others. They would not know what had become of him. Perhaps they would eventually assume that he had committed suicide because he was disgraced.

  How would they manage?

  A new misery broke into his maudlin thoughts. He had to relieve himself. That forced him to his knees, and from there into a standing crouch, which brought his back against the boards above. Though it was repellent to add to the filth in which he and the rat existed, he had no choice. No matter how thirsty he got, nothing could make him drink this water. The rat splashed about trying to climb his legs.

  While he was up, he tried again to push upward against the boards. Again he failed. Panic rose, and he doubled his efforts, struggling desperately, slipping in the mud and falling several times, hoping that he had not squashed the rat. He gained nothing by this except that the flow of water increased from a trickle to a steady small stream filled with dirt and mud. It became likely that one or more of the walls of his prison would cave inward under the water pressure and bury him. Drowning was one thing; being suffocated in mud quite another.

  He gave up trying to shift the weight above and sat down to work on his bonds. The rat eagerly climbed into his lap and leaped to his shoulder. He was becoming attached to his companion. The creature’s will to survive against all odds inspired him. Through the thin, wet fabric of his shirt he could feel the rat’s every breath, perhaps even the rapid beating of his heart.

  The rat might, of course, be a female, but he liked to think of it as a male. How desperately he fought for his life! Perhaps, not having human intelligence, he felt an even greater panic. And yet, what did a rat have to lose? A constant struggle for food – his only joy outside the brief pleasure of mating – and always the threat of predators and killers, dogs, cats, and humans alike.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ he told the rat, ‘but you’re filled with the spirit of survival. Tora would have thought you a demon in the dark and feared you. Yes, you are a little demon, the way you fight and cling to life.’ He chuckled. ‘Now that we are intimately acquainted, you’ll need a name. I’ll call you Demon, shall I?’

  The rat turned on his shoulder, perhaps to hear better, and tickled his ear with his whiskers. Akitada laughed.

  He wondered if he was going mad.

  He took a lesson from the rat and focused on escaping death. It was not clear how he could free himself, but if he was to die, he wanted to die
fighting for his life.

  Like the rat.

  With his hands tied behind his back, he could do little except to work his bonds loose by pulling and stretching, or to cut the ropes by rubbing them against something sharp. He had already tried and failed to loosen them, and it seemed unlikely that the rat could be trained to gnaw the ropes apart. The thought made him laugh again. There was not enough time in any case. He shook his head, causing the rat to squeak in protest.

  Perhaps the knock on his head had addled his brains, or the fear of a very unpleasant death had made him silly.

  Tora had once managed to escape death by cutting his bonds with a pottery shard. Akitada started to search the floor of his prison.

  His fingers just reached the muddy floor under the water he sat in. Straining, he felt about in the mud, moving around until he had covered every section of the floor. It seemed to take a long time, exhausted him, and turned up nothing but a few pebbles and small stones too smooth to do any good. Amazingly, the rat had clung on patiently, as if he knew the human was trying to save them.

  And all the time, the water was rising.

  Having failed to find a useful tool on the floor, he knew he must turn to the walls next. He dreaded the effort of raising and lowering himself slowly along the muddy walls.

  Leaning back to gather strength, he thought he heard a faint sound, as if someone had shouted in the distance. Akitada struggled up, slipped, and sat down hard in the cold water, the rat scrambling to hold on to his shoulder. He raised his voice, bellowing for help until his throat grew sore and he had to stop.

  Nobody came. Nobody heard him.

  Yet the small and distant sound gave him new hope. If he could free his hands, he could scratch and scrabble at the seam under the wooden cover. Since fresh air reached him, there must be chinks. He would work more dirt loose.

  But first came the slow and painful exploration of the dirt walls, covering each time only an area wide enough for his bound hands to search. Standing, he could not quite reach to the top with his hands. The slow work sitting, then kneeling, and finally standing in a bent-over position, strained his muscles and exhausted him. He slipped many times back into the water. After every third effort, he allowed himself a brief rest. Throughout, the rat adjusted its precarious hold again and again, complaining in high chirps.

  ‘Be quiet, Demon,’ he said once. ‘I’m trying to save your miserable life along with mine.’ After that, he imagined, the rat’s complaints diminished.

  At some point during his efforts, his mind seemed to clear miraculously, and he saw how the murder must have happened and what its real motive had been. He was so startled that he stopped working for a few long moments, overwhelmed by the human suffering that had led to the crime.

  But there was no time. The water was rising faster. It already reached the middle of his chest when he was sitting. Soon he would no longer be able to rest.

  He found what he was looking for in the third wall. A sharp piece of flinty stone protruded slightly from the dirt. He thanked the gods that it was embedded at a point where he could work on his knees.

  ‘Now, Demon, we have a chance. Sit tight.’

  The rat chittered softly and wrapped its tail around Akitada’s neck.

  Using his fingernails, Akitada exposed a little more of the sharp edge, then raised his arms enough to press the rope against it and started rubbing. The rat bobbed up and down and adjusted his tail a few times, but he seemed to take this activity for an amusing diversion.

  To his relief, Akitada felt the first strand of roping part quickly and worked even harder. Another strand parted, and the bonds around his wrists loosened slightly. By now his shoulders were sore, but he did not care. He leaned into his work, scraping the rope against the flint as fast and hard as he could.

  His increased effort caused the flint to come loose and fall into the muddy water. Akitada felt like weeping. He sagged back into a sitting position and felt about without much hope of finding the flinty bit of stone. He did not, but this effort caused the rope to loosen further, and now he strained to break the remaining strands. They gave, and he brought his arms to the front, cradling his sore hands and wrists against his stomach while the throbbing pain in his shoulders and arm muscles slowly eased.

  The cold and fetid water nearly reached his armpits now. He had no time to lose. Staggering back up, he explored with both hands the seams along the wooden cover. The rat squawked once or twice in protest, but managed to hold on. He found where most of the water came in, a steady flow. Something was slowly draining into his pit. Akitada wondered if it was still raining. The long-desired rain was doing its best to kill him.

  On the opposite side, he managed to insert his whole hand between the wooden cover and the ground above. Here he scratched at the dirt, scraping it inside where it splashed into the water. At some point, the rat lost its precarious perch and plunged into the water, which reached Akitada’s upper thighs by now. Akitada stopped scraping and instead felt around for the animal. He found the rat when he sank his teeth into his leg in a desperate effort to save himself. Detaching the creature, he dropped him inside his shirt, a wet, irritable presence that moved about to find a comfortable place as Akitada returned to his work.

  His neck and back began to hurt from standing in this awkward position, but soon he could reach outside the pit to his elbow and find the edge of the wooden cover. A large loose splinter caught in his skin, and he broke it off to use for a digging tool.

  More fresh air came in, and he could hear some sounds, the rain splashing, a bird’s cry, a dog barking in the distance. He worked away feverishly.

  And then he heard muffled voices.

  He shouted, ‘Here. Please help. Over here!’

  At first there was only silence like last time, but then a male voice shouted, ‘Who’s that? Where are you?’

  The voice was vaguely familiar, but Akitada did not think about that. ‘Here! I’m in a pit. I think there’s dirt on top of a wooden cover. Can you follow my voice? Hurry, please. The water’s rising.’

  It was indeed. His pushing against the cover must have let in more water, for he was now immersed to above his waist. With his body bent over, there was little room left between his face and the top of the rising water. And he could not feel the rat any longer.

  ‘Sir? Is that you? Please call out again!’

  Genba! Yes, of course. Genba had come back.

  ‘I’m here. I can hear you clearly, Genba. A few more steps.’

  Suddenly the cover above him slid back, then tilted inward, bringing wet soil with it and pushing Akitada down into the water. He fought wildly, but the weight on his back was too heavy.

  Then hands reached for him and pulled him out, and Genba cursed and thanked the gods all in the same breath.

  Akitada choked, coughed, spat out muddy water, received a couple of painful thumps on his back and a good shaking, and finally drew a decent breath. Genba cut the rope around his ankles while wishing every torment of hell on the perpetrators.

  Akitada stood swaying in the dark, or rather in the dusk, for it was getting light, and the steady rain washed the mud off his face.

  The rat!

  ‘Genba,’ he croaked. ‘Go look in the pit… There’s a rat… Fish him out if he’s alive.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go!’

  Genba walked over to the pit, lifted the cover, and reached in. ‘What do you know?’ he said, straightening up. He sounded amazed and held the rat up by its tail. ‘It really is a rat. Ouch.’

  The rat had twisted up to bite him. He dropped it and sucked his finger. Akitada gasped anxiously, but the rat found its feet and scurried away.

  They were in some derelict yard behind a warehouse. Rainwater gushed from the warehouse roof into a ditch. From a breach in the ditch, a small and steady stream had made its way to the pit.

  Nearby huddled silent, staring men with lanterns – four constables, their red jackets nearly black in this rain.
He wanted to ask how they came to be there, but his strength finally left him utterly and he collapsed.

  KOBE

  Genba asked anxiously, ‘Sir? Sir, are you all right?’ Sitting up with Genba’s assistance, Akitada took a ragged breath. His throat still hurt from the near drowning and the gritty filth he had swallowed along with the water. His body also hurt, particularly his bad knee, but he shook his head, as much in wonder that he was still alive as to deny any injuries. ‘Tired,’ he croaked, then raised an arm to point at the constables. ‘What… brought them?’

  ‘When you didn’t come home by dark last night, Tora got very upset and tried to get up to go look for you…’

  ‘Tora – how is he?’

  ‘Better. The fever is coming down, but Seimei wouldn’t let him get up.’ Genba grinned. ‘No need. I was there by then. And by the way, congratulations on your new daughter. She’s a beautiful child. A princess.’

  Relief and a tentative joy washed over Akitada. He was alive, and so was his family. Nothing else mattered. He tried a smile. ‘Yes, yes. Thank you. And thank you for saving my life.’

  Genba gave a rumbling chuckle. ‘I did little enough, sir. It was all Superintendent Kobe’s doing. And he and I just followed Tora’s directions.’

  ‘Kobe? You went to Kobe?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Tora did say you wouldn’t like it, but I could see I would need help.’

  Akitada digested that. The amazing thing was that Kobe had agreed to help. But perhaps he had been more interested in catching the gang. Sitting in the drizzle on the wet ground, Akitada considered the situation while idly picking mud from under his finger nails. Genba shuffled and cleared his throat.

  Akitada looked up. ‘Oh. You did right. I owe my life to all of you.’ For the first time, he looked at his surroundings. It was still only half light, but he recognized the outline of the abandoned warehouse.