"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 dishonorto 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, biggerboned 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.
"The gods protect us from that shame!" Fujiko glanced at Blackthorne, who leaned against the gunwale up the deck, staring at the shore. She studied him a moment. "He looks like a golden ape with blue eyes - a creature to frighten children with. Horrid, neh?" Fujiko shivered and dismissed him and looked again at Buntaro. After a moment she said, "I envy your husband, Mariko-san. "
"Yes," Mariko replied sadly. "But I wish he had a second to help him." By custom another samurai always assisted at a seppuku, standing slightly behind the kneeling man, to decapitate him with a single stroke before the agony became unbearable and uncontrollable and so shamed the man at the supreme moment of his life. Unseconded, few men could die without shame.
"Karma," Fujiko said.
"Yes. I pity him. That's the one thing he feared - not to have a second."
"We're luckier than men, neh?" Samurai women committed seppuku by thrusting their knives into their throats and therefore needed no assistance.
"Yes," Mariko said.
Screams and battle cries came wafting on the wind, distracting them. The breakwater was breached again. A small company of fifty Toranaga ronin-samurai raced out of the north in support, a few horsemen among them. Again the breach was ferociously contained, no quarter sought or given, the attackers thrown back and a few more moments of time gained.
Time for what, Blackthorne was asking bitterly. Toranaga's safe now. He's out to sea. He's betrayed you all.
The drum began again.
Oars bit into the water, the prow dipped and began to cut through the waves, and aft a wake appeared. Signal fires still burned from the castle walls above. The whole city was almost awake.
The main body of Grays hit the breakwater. Blackthorne's eyes went to Buntaro. "You poor bastard!" he said in English. "You poor, stupid bastard!"
He turned on his heel and walked down the companionway along the main deck toward the bow to watch for shoals ahead. No one except Fujiko and the captain noticed him leaving the quarterdeck.
The oarsmen pulled with fine discipline and the ship was gaining way. The sea was fair, the wind friendly. Blackthorne tasted the salt and welcomed it. Then he detected the ships crowding the harbor mouth half a league ahead. Fishing vessels yes, but they were crammed with samurai.
"We're trapped," he said out loud, knowing somehow they were enemy.
A tremor went through the ship. All who watched the battle on shore had shifted in unison.
