As Kaze ran, he tried to anticipate an end game, and none of the possibilities looked good. With the number of men pursuing him, he couldn’t fight them. Even if he killed several of them, there were more to replace them. He could open one of the occasional attic windows, like the one in his room, but then he was likely to be trapped between the pursuers on the roof and the pursuers on the ground: not a pleasant alternative. Lacking a better plan, he continued to cross the rooftops, leaping the gaps between roofs, pulling ahead of the pursuers behind him, but not outdistancing the ones on the ground.
He came to the end of a string of three roofs and recognized where he was. Ahead of him, across the gap of a major street, were warehouses lined up along one of the many canals that cut through Edo. Kaze stood and looked at the gap ahead of him. The distance was long, and he was winded. He put his sword in its scabbard, looked over his shoulder at the men chasing him, and risked running backward, so he would have a running start at the leap. He stopped, and just as the first of his pursuers had almost caught him, he started running forward again, this time at full speed, toward the wide chasm between the roof he was on and a roof on the other side of the wide street.
He reached the end of the roof and launched himself into space, flinging himself into the nighttime void, stretching forward to bridge the gap between the two roofs. He flew through the air, sustained only by his determination to elude his pursuers. He landed on the edge of the other roof hard, the impact knocking the wind out of him as he skidded across the tiles.
Behind him, he heard one of his pursuers yell, “I’ll get him! Make sure the men on the ground surround the warehouses.”
Kaze looked over his shoulder and saw one of the pursuers running toward the gap. The man launched himself into space as Kaze had done, intending to clear the street and reach the safety of the warehouse roof. But Kaze was barefoot and wearing a kimono. This man had sandals on, and he had the extra weight of a helmet and armored jacket. He fell short of the roof, one hand barely reaching the roof’s edge and grabbing desperately at a tile. The tile was yanked out of its mud base and the man, still clutching the tile, fell to the ground with a thud. Out of instinct, Kaze peeked over the edge of the warehouse and looked down at the body crumpled on the street below. It lay very still.
The pursuers on the ground reached the scene and two of them, in the red glow of the fuses on the matchlock muskets, stopped and took aim. Kaze withdrew his head from the roof’s edge as the muskets fired. This time the shots were close enough for Kaze to hear the lead balls whizzing by.
Still gasping for air, Kaze crossed the roof to get near the canal side. He reached there, looked down, and realized that there was a street even wider than the one he had jumped between the warehouse and the dark waters of the canal. With the wind knocked out of him, Kaze couldn’t make another long jump at that moment, and he lay back on the roof, staying out of sight and trying to regain his breath.
Below, he heard the noise of men as they surrounded the warehouse. In a few seconds, he heard the clatter of a horse arriving on the scene. Obviously, the officer in charge.
“Where is he?”
“He’s up there on the roof, sir!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, we have men on the roof on the opposite side so he can’t go back, and all four sides of the warehouse are surrounded.”
“Can we get men on that roof?”
“Apparently not, sir. Kojima tried jumping it from the other side and fell. He’s hurt pretty bad-”
“Yakamashii! Shut up! I don’t want a health report when all you men couldn’t trap one lone ronin. Just get a party of men into that warehouse and see if there’s any way to the roof. Bust the door down if you have to. You and you! Go to the nearest fire station and get their ladders. Bring them here and we’ll send men up to the roof from two different sides. And you! Get me my gun. I’ll guard the canal side of the building. Go around the entire building and make sure the other musketeers are spread out and ready, in case he shows himself. Is that clear?”
Several voices shouted, “Hai! Yes!” Then Kaze heard the sound of running feet.
Kaze was impressed. Whoever was in charge of the operation was a good officer. In a few minutes, the officer’s efficient planning would soon flush him out from the warehouse roof, one way or another. Kaze decided he would be flushed out in the best way possible for him, and not in the ways the officer had planned.
With the musketeers set and ready, there was a good chance he would be hit when he tried to jump to the canal. He shrugged one arm out of his kimono sleeve and crawled to the edge of the roof. He took the scabbard out of his sash and stuck the tip into the loose sleeve. He started lifting the sleeve slowly. In the dark of the night, the black mass of the sleeve would look like someone peering over the edge of the roof. Kaze had barely gotten the sleeve raised when there was the crack of a gun. He was surprised to feel the tug on his scabbard as the cloth of his sleeve was shoved back. At the report of the first gun, two other muskets at other sides of the building were fired, out of sheer nervousness and tension, because it was impossible for the musketeers to see anything.
Kaze now had a few seconds before the muskets could be reloaded. He jumped to his feet and took a quick look down. A man in an officer’s helmet was furiously reloading his musket. Holding his sword in one hand and the scabbard in the other, he summoned all his strength, took two quick steps, and jumped into space.
The officer was sure he hit the figure on the roof, so he was surprised when his quarry jumped up before the echoes of the musket died down. He was even more surprised as the man jumped off the roof. Sword and scabbard in each hand, with one sleeve of his kimono flapping behind him, the man looked like a tengu, a quarrelsome creature that was half man and half bird, and able to fly.
While reloading his musket, he followed the arc of the man’s jump as he sailed over his head toward the canal. The man made it to the canal water with no distance to spare, entering the black water with a tremendous splash that threw water high past the edge of the canal. The water caught the pale moonlight, transmuting it from black to silver as it sparkled in the air.
The officer finished loading his gun and ran to the edge of the canal. He couldn’t see the man, but he fired into the center of the splash, hoping to hit him. In seconds, other musketeers had run up to the canal’s edge, and a ragged volley of shots pierced the blackness.
Some of the men ran down the canal to a bridge, crossed over, and lined the opposite bank. All the men were observing the dark water, waiting to see a head pop up. The officer reloaded his musket and waited along with the rest, hopeful to get another shot at the ronin. Even against the darkness of the water, he was confident he would hit the man’s head as soon as it broke the surface.
But it didn’t break the surface.
After many long minutes, the officer wondered if his shots or one of the other shots had killed the man after he entered the water. He ordered torches brought, and he told his men to secure boats and long poles, so they could probe the murky waters of the canal to see if they could find the ronin’s body.
CHAPTER 11
A piece of bamboo,
small finger holes, a soft breath,
and divine music.
This is a disaster,” Hanzo said.
“Well, it was your idea to take the money the ronin gave us and get a business,” Goro said accusingly.
“Baka! Fool! It was your desire to spend the money on a spree. Now we have a business!” Hanzo replied.
“A failing business! Why didn’t you check this? How can you buy a business without knowing about it? No wonder the former owner sold it to us! He saw a fool coming.”