Gohei’s pockmarked face glared at his killer with furious bulging eyes. Tossing the trophy into the corridor, right at Masa’s feet, the commander wiped a trickle of blood off his elbow and glanced cautiously into the cavity.
‘Aha, there’s something here!’ he announced eagerly.
He gestured impatiently to call over one of the soldiers who had just removed his hood.
‘Shinjo, come here! Take a look at what’s in there. Climb up!’
He folded his hands into a stirrup. Shinjo stepped on them with one foot and the upper half of his torso disappeared from view.
They heard a muffled howclass="underline" ‘A-a-a-a!’
The Monk quickly jumped aside and Shinjo came tumbling down like a sack. A steel star with sharpened edges was lodged in the bridge of his nose.
‘Excellent!’ said the commander. ‘They’re in the attic! You, you and you, come here! Guard the entrance. Don’t stick your noses in the hole any more, or else they’ll throw another shuriken. The important thing is not to let any shinobi get out this way. The rest of you, follow me! There has to be a way into the basement somewhere here as well.’
Masa knew how to get into the basement. The next room, the second on the right, had a cunning floor – you ended up in the basement before you could even sneeze. Now the man with the shaved head would finally get what he deserved.
But the Monk didn’t blunder here either. He didn’t barge straight in, like Masa, but squatted down again and examined the wooden boards for a long time. He prodded them with his pole, suddenly realised something and gave a grunt of satisfaction. Then he pressed down hard with his fist – and the floor swayed.
‘And there’s the basement!’ The commander chuckled. ‘Three of you stand at the door, and keep your eyes on this!’
The Black Jackets swarmed thickly round the last door. They slid it open and gazed expectantly at their cunning commander.
‘Ri-ight,’ he drawled, running a keen gaze across the bare walls. ‘What do we have here? Aha. I don’t like the look of that projection over there in the corner. What’s it needed for? It’s suspicious. Come on, then.’ Without looking, the Monk reached his hand backwards and grabbed Masa by the sleeve. ‘Go and sound it out.’
Oh, he really didn’t want to go and sound out that suspicious projection! But how could he disobey? And the Monk was egging him on too!
‘What are you hanging about for? Get a move on! Who are you? Ryuhei? Take that hood off, you don’t need it here, it just stops you looking at things properly.’
I’m done for anyway, thought Masa, and pulled off the hood – he was standing with his back to the Black Jackets and their commander.
He prayed silently: Tamba-sensei, if you’re looking through some cunning little crack right now, don’t think I’m a traitor. I came to save my master. Just in case, he winked at the suspicious wall, as if to say: It’s me, I’m one of you.
‘That’s not Ryuhei,’ he heard someone say behind him. ‘Ryuhei doesn’t have a haircut like that, does he?’
‘Hey, who are you? Right, turn round!’ the Monk ordered.
Masa took two rapid steps forward. He couldn’t take a third – the tatami closest to the suspicious projection was false: just straw, with nothing underneath it. With a howl of despair, Masa tumbled through the floor.
A strip of metal glinted right in front of him, but no blow followed.
‘Masa!’ a familiar voice whispered. Then some Russian words: ‘Ya chut ne ubil tebya!’
The master! Alive! Pale, with his forehead contracted into a frown. A dagger in one hand and a little revolver in the other.
Midori-san was beside him – in black battle costume, only without a mask.
‘We can’t stay here any longer. Let’s leave!’ the mistress said, then adding something in the gaijin language, and all three of them dashed away from the rectangular hole with gentle yellow light pouring down through it.
In the very corner of the basement there was a black shape that looked like some kind of chute, and Masa made out two jute ropes in it – that must have been the projection that had seemed suspicious to the Monk.
The master took hold of one of the ropes and went flying upwards as if by magic.
‘Now you!’ Midori-san told him.
Masa grabbed the rough jute and it pulled him up towards the ceiling. It was absolutely dark and a little cramped, but the ascent was over in just half a minute.
First Masa saw a wooden floor, then the rope pulled him through a hatch up to his waist and after that he scrambled out by himself.
He looked round and realised he had ended up in the attic. He saw the sloping pitches of the roof on both sides of him, with pale light seeping in through the wooden grilles of the windows.
After blinking so that he could see better in the semi-darkness, Masa made out three figures: one tall (that was the master), one short (Tamba) and one middle-sized (the red-faced ninja Tanshin, who was like the sensei’s senior deputy). Midori soared up out of the hatch and the wooden lid slammed shut.
Apparently all the surviving inhabitants of the village of Kakusimura were gathered here.
The first thing to do was look to see what was happening outside. Masa moved over to the window with glimmers of scarlet light dancing in it and pressed his face to it.
A fiery border of torches ran round the house in a half-circle, from cliff-edge to cliff-edge. Loitering between the tongues of flame were dark silhouettes with guns held at the ready. There was no point in sticking their noses out that way, that was clear.
Masa ran across to the other window, but that way was really bad – there was just the black yawning abyss.
So where did that leave them? A precipice on one side and guns on the other. The sky up above and down below… In the far corner of the attic there was a yellow square of light in the floor – the hatch discovered by the Monk in the third room on the left. There were Black Jackets in there with naked daggers. So they couldn’t go down there either.
But what about all the way down, into the basement?
Masa ran over to the lifting device and opened the hatch slightly – the one he had clambered out of only a couple of minutes earlier.
Down below he could hear the tramping of feet and a buzz of voices – the enemy was already getting up to his tricks in the basement.
That meant they would soon reach the attic too.
It was all over. It was impossible to save the master.
Well then, it was a vassal’s duty to die with him. But first to render his master a final service: help him leave this life with dignity. In a hopeless situation, when a man was surrounded on all sides by enemies, the only thing left was to deprive the enemies of the pleasure of seeing your death agony. Let them have nothing but the indifferent corpse, and your dead face gazing at them with superior contempt.
What method could he suggest to his master? If he was Japanese, it would be quite clear. He had a dagger, and there was more than enough time for a decent seppuku. Tanshin had a short, straight sword hanging at his side, so the master would not be left writhing in agony. As soon as he touched his stomach with the dagger, faithful Masa would cut his head off.
But gaijins didn’t commit seppuku. They liked to die from gunpowder.
So that would be it.
Wasting no time, Masa went over to the jonin, who was whispering about something with his daughter, while at the same time doing something quite incomprehensible: inserting sticks of bamboo one into the other.
After apologising politely for interrupting the family conversation, Masa said:
‘Sensei, it is time for my master to leave this life. I wish to help him. I have been told that for some reason the Christian religion forbids suicide. Please translate for my master that I would consider it an honour to shoot him in the heart or the side of the head, whichever he desires.’