Shōgun

Blackthorne had fused the kegs in case the cannon began and there was no plan, or if the plan proved false, and also against encroaching hostiles. Even such a little keg, the fuse alight, floated against the side of the frigate would sink her as surely as a seventy-gun broadside. It doesn’t matter how small the keg, he thought, providing it guts her.

“Isogi for your lives!” he called out and took the helm, thanking God for Rodrigues and the brightness of the moon.

Here at the mouth the harbor narrowed to four hundred yards. Deep water was almost shore to shore, the rock headlands rising sharp from the sea.

The space between the ambushing fishing boats was a hundred yards.

The Santa Theresa had the bit between her teeth now, the wind abaft the beam to starboard, strong wake aft, and she was gaining on them fast. Blackthorne held the center of the channel and signed to Yabu to be ready. All their ronin-samurai had been ordered to squat below the gunwales, unseen, until Blackthorne gave the signal, when it was every man—with musket or sword—to port or to starboard, wherever they were needed, Yabu commanding the fight. The Japanese captain knew that his oarsmen were to follow the drum and the drum master knew that he had to obey the Anjin-san. And the Anjin-san alone was to guide the ship.

The frigate was fifty yards astern, in mid-channel, heading directly for them, and making it obvious that she required the mid-channel path.

Aboard the frigate, Ferriera breathed softly to Rodrigues, “Ram him.” His eyes were on Mariko, who stood ten paces off, near the railings, with Toranaga.

“We daren’t—not with Toranaga there and the girl.”

“Senhora!” Ferriera called out. “Senhora—better to get below, you and your master. It’d be safer for him on the gundeck.”

Mariko translated to Toranaga, who thought a moment, then walked down the companionway onto the gundeck.

“God damn my eyes,” the chief gunner said to no one in particular. “I’d like to fire a broadside and sink something. It’s a God-cursed year since we sunk even a poxed pirate.”

“Aye. The monkeys deserve a bath.”

On the quarterdeck Ferriera repeated, “Ram the galley, Rodrigues!”

“Why kill your enemy when others’re doing it for you?”

“Madonna! You’re as bad as the priest! Thou hast no blood in thee!”

“Yes, I have none of the killing blood,” Rodrigues replied, also in Spanish. “But thou? Thou hast it. Eh? And Spanish blood perhaps?”

“Are you going to ram him or not?” Ferriera asked in Portuguese, the nearness of the kill possessing him.

“If she stays where she is, yes.”

“Then, Madonna, let her stay where she is.”

“What had you in mind for the Ingeles? Why were you so angry he wasn’t aboard us?”

“I do not like you or trust you now, Rodrigues. Twice you’ve sided, or seemed to side, with the heretic against me, or us. If there was another acceptable pilot in all Asia, I would beach you, Rodrigues, and I would sail off with my Black Ship.”

“Then you will drown. There’s a smell of death over you and only I can protect you.”

Ferriera crossed himself superstitiously. “Madonna, thou and thy filthy tongue! What right hast thou to say that?”

“My mother was a gypsy and she the seventh child of a seventh child, as I am.”

“Liar!”

Rodrigues smiled. “Ah, my Lord Captain-General, perhaps I am.” He cupped his hands and shouted, “Action stations!” and then to the helmsman, “Steady as she goes, and if that belly-gutter whore doesn’t move, sink her!”

Blackthorne held the wheel firmly, arms aching, legs aching. The oarsmaster was pounding the drum, the oarsmen making a final effort.

Now the frigate was twenty yards astern, now fifteen, now ten. Then Blackthorne swung hard to port. The frigate almost brushed them, heeled over toward them, and then she was alongside. Blackthorne swung hard astarboard to come parallel to the frigate, ten yards from her. Then, together—side by side—they were ready to run the gauntlet between the hostiles.

“Puuuull, pull, you bastards!” Blackthorne shouted, wanting to stay exactly alongside, because only here were they guarded by the frigate’s bulk and by her sails. Some musket shots, then a salvo of burning arrows slashed at them, doing no real damage, but several by mistake struck the frigate’s lower sails and fire broke out.

All the commanding samurai in the boats stopped their archers in horror. No one had ever attacked a Southern Barbarian ship before. Don’t they alone bring the silks which make every summer’s humid heat bearable, and every winter’s cold bearable, and every spring and fall a joy? Aren’t the Southern Barbarians protected by Imperial decrees? Wouldn’t burning one of their ships infuriate them so much that they would, rightly, never come back again?