Shōgun

Buntaro was alone now on the wharf and he stood watching the rise and the fall of the battle. More reinforcement Grays, a few cavalry among them, were coming up from the south to join the others and he knew that soon the breakwater would be engulfed by a sea of men. Carefully he examined the north and west and south. Then he turned his back to the battle and went to the far end of the jetty. The galley was safely seventy yards from its tip, at rest, waiting. All fishing boats had long since fled the area and they waited as far away as possible on both sides of the harbor, their riding lights like so many cats’ eyes in the darkness.

When he reached the end of the dock, Buntaro took off his helmet and his bow and quiver and his top body armor and put them beside his scabbards. The naked killing sword and the naked short sword he placed separately. Then, stripped to the waist, he picked up his equipment and cast it into the sea. The killing sword he studied reverently, then tossed it with all his force, far out into the deep. It vanished with hardly a splash.

He bowed formally to the galley, to Toranaga, who went at once to the quarterdeck where he could be seen. He bowed back.

Buntaro knelt and placed the short sword neatly on the stone in front of him, moonlight flashing briefly on the blade, and stayed motionless, almost as though in prayer, facing the galley.

“What the hell’s he waiting for?” Blackthorne muttered, the galley eerily quiet without the drumbeat. “Why doesn’t he jump and swim?”

“He’s preparing to commit seppuku.”

Mariko was standing nearby, propped by a young woman.

“Jesus, Mariko, are you all right?”

“All right,” she said, hardly listening to him, her face haggard but no less beautiful.

He saw the crude bandage on her left arm near the shoulder where the sleeve had been slashed away, her arm resting in a sling of material torn from a kimono. Blood stained the bandage and a dribble ran down her arm.

“I’m so glad—” Then it dawned on him what she had said. “Seppuku? He’s going to kill himself? Why? There’s plenty of time for him to get here! If he can’t swim, look—there’s an oar that’ll hold him easily. There, near the jetty, you see it? Can’t you see it?”

“Yes, but my husband can swim, Anjin-san,” she said. “All of Lord Toranaga’s officers must—must learn—he insists. But he has decided not to swim.”

“For Christ’s sake, why?”

A sudden frenzy broke out shoreward, a few muskets went off, and the wall was breached. Some of the ronin-samurai fell back and ferocious individual combat began again. This time the enemy spearhead was contained, and repelled.

“Tell him to swim, by God!”

“He won’t, Anjin-san. He’s preparing to die.”

“If he wants to die, for Christ’s sake, why doesn’t he go there?” Blackthorne’s finger stabbed toward the fight. “Why doesn’t he help his men? If he wants to die, why doesn’t he die fighting, like a man?”

Mariko did not take her eyes from the wharf, leaning against the young woman. “Because he might be captured, and if he swam he might also be captured, and then the enemy would put him on show before the common people, shame him, do terrible things. A samurai cannot be captured and remain samurai. That’s the worst dishonor—to be captured by an enemy—so my husband is doing what a man, a samurai, must do. A samurai dies with dignity. For what is life to a samurai? Nothing at all. All life is suffering, neh? It is his right and duty to die with honor, before witnesses.”

“What a stupid waste,” Blackthorne said, through his teeth.

“Be patient with us, Anjin-san.”

“Patient for what? For more lies? Why won’t you trust me? Haven’t I earned that? You lied, didn’t you? You pretended to faint and that was the signal. Wasn’t it? I asked you and you lied.”

“I was ordered . . . it was an order to protect you. Of course I trust you.”

“You lied,” he said, knowing that he was being unreasonable, but he was beyond caring, abhorring the insane disregard for life and starved for sleep and peace, starved for his own food and his own drink and his own ship and his own kind. “You’re all animals,” he said in English, knowing they were not, and moved away.

“What was he saying, Mariko-san?” the young woman asked, hard put to hide her distaste. She was half a head taller than Mariko, bigger-boned and square-faced with little, needle-shaped teeth. She was Usagi Fujiko, Mariko’s niece, and she was nineteen.

Mariko told her.

“What an awful man! What foul manners! Disgusting, neh? How can you bear to be near him?”

“Because he saved our Master’s honor. Without his bravery I’m sure Lord Toranaga would have been captured—we’d all have been captured.” Both women shuddered.