Shōgun

The Brown samurai stopped, and listened, and died. Yabu cleaned his sword and pulled the crumpled body into a dark corner, then rushed for a hardly noticed, heavily barred, small iron door set into one of the walls that Ishido’s intermediary had told him about. He fought back the rusted bolts. The last one clanged free. The door swung open. A draught of cool air from outside, then a spear stabbed for his throat and stopped just in time. Yabu didn’t move, almost paralyzed. Ninja stared back at him from the inky darkness beyond the door, weapons poised.

Yabu held up a shaky hand and made a sign as he had been told to do. “I’m Kasigi Yabu,” he said.

The black-garbed, hooded, almost invisible leader nodded but kept the spear ready for the lunge. He motioned to Yabu. Yabu obediently backed off a pace. Then, very warily, the leader walked into the center of the corridor. He was tall and heavyset, with wide flat eyes behind his mask. He saw the dead Brown and with a flick of his wrist he sent his spear flashing into the corpse, then retrieved it with the light chain attached to the end. Silently he re-coiled the chain, waiting, listening intently for any danger.

At length satisfied, he motioned at the darkness. Instantly twenty men poured out and rushed for the flight of steps, the long-forgotten back way to the floors above. These men carried assault tools. They were armed with chain knives, swords, and shuriken. And in the center of their black hoods was a red spot.

The leader did not watch them go, but kept his eyes on Yabu and began a slow finger count with his left hand. “One . . . two . . . three . . .” Yabu felt many men watching him from the passage beyond the door. He could see no one.

Now the red-spot attackers were going up the stairs two at a time, and at the top of this flight they stopped. A door barred their path. They waited a moment then cautiously tried to open it. It was stuck. A man with an assault tool, a short steel bar, hooked at one end and chiseled at the other, came forward and jimmied it open. Beyond was another mildewed passage and they hurried along it silently. At the next corner they stopped. The first man peered around, then beckoned the others into another corridor. At the far end a sliver of light shone through a spyhole in the heavy wooden paneling that covered this secret door. He put an eye to it. He could see the breadth of the audience chamber, two Browns and two Grays wearily on sentry duty, guarding the door to the complex of quarters. He looked around, nodded to the others. One of the men was still counting with his fingers, timed to the leader’s count two floors below. All their eyes went to the count.

Below in the cellar, the leader’s fingers still continued in tempo, ticking off the moments, his eyes never wavering from Yabu. Yabu was watching and waiting, the smell of his own fear-sweat dank in his nostrils. The fingers stopped and the leader’s fist closed up sharply. He pointed down the corridor. Yabu nodded and turned and went back the way he had come, walking slowly. Behind him the inexorable count began again. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

Yabu knew the terrible risk he was taking but he had had no alternative and he cursed Mariko once more for forcing him onto Ishido’s side. Part of his bargain was that he had to open this secret door.

“What’s behind the door?” he had asked supiciously.

“Friends. This is the sign and the password is to say your name.”

“Then they kill me, neh?”

“No. You’re too valuable, Yabu-san. You’ve got to make sure the infiltration is covered. . . .”

He had agreed but he had never bargained for ninja, the hated and feared semilegendary mercenaries who owed allegiance only to their secret, closely knit family units, who handed down their secrets only to blood kin—how to swim vast distances under water and scale almost smooth walls, how to make themselves invisible and stand for a day and a night without moving, and how to kill with their hands or feet or any and all weapons including poison, fire, and explosives. To ninja, violent death for pay was their only purpose in life.

Yabu managed to keep his pace measured as he walked away from the ninja leader along the corridor, his chest still hurting from the shock that the attack force was ninja and not ronin. Ishido must be mad, he told himself, all his senses teetering, expecting a spear or arrow or garrote any moment. Now he was almost at the corner. Then he turned it and, safe once more, he took to his heels and bounded up the stairs, three at a time. At the top, he raced down the arched corridor, then turned the corner heading toward the servants’ quarters.