by Adam Baker
‘All right. When you leave here make straight for the keep. I need you to get inside. I need you to be our eyes and ears.’
They heard hurrying footsteps in the courtyard and the sound of doors flung open. The girl stood at the window and pushed the shutter ajar. She watched soldiers moving building to building as they checked the stables and the armoury.
‘They’re searching the castle again,’ said the girl. ‘They’ll be here any minute. You have to get back up onto the roof, both of you.’
The samurai and Ariyo hurriedly collected their possessions then headed to the window. Ariyo went first. He climbed onto the sill, reached up and hung from the gable. He hauled himself up onto the roof, held out a hand and helped the samurai scramble from the window. The girl heaved their packs out the window and strained to lift them up to the men on the roof.
She quickly closed the shutter, picked up the candles and blew them out except for one. She glanced round the room and made sure no tell-tale sign of their presence had been left behind, scuffing dust with her foot to disguise multiple prints clustered near the window before heading for the stairs.
* * *
The girl hurried through the shadows of the storehouse and snatched a wooden bucket from a pile near the door. Something to carry if someone asked why she was walking around during the middle of the night. She snuffed the candle, opened the storeroom door and stepped out into the yard.
She slowly crossed the flame-lit yard towards the tower. A cold mist rolling off the mountain carpeted the yard with gently broiling vapour. She fought the urge to turn around and glance up at the storehouse roof where Ariyo and the samurai would be crouched on the thatch ready to fire. She felt exposed. Soldiers manning the rampart arrow ports stared down at her.
Two sentries guarded the entrance of the tower. ‘What are you doing?’ asked one of the men. ‘You have no business here. Go back to the kitchens.’
The girl pointed at the nearby rampart steps. She tried to convey that extra men on guard duty meant overflowing latrine buckets. The sentries looked bored and impatient. They stepped forward with their naginatas lowered like they intended to drive her away at spear-point. They were about to speak, but were interrupted by a sudden grunt. A faint meat-smack of impact on the walkway somewhere above them. The sentries craned to look up at the battlements. One of the men pacing the wall had come to a halt and was reaching behind himself, stretching like he wanted to scratch between his shoulder blades. An arrow high in his back, just above the collar of his armour.
The girl glanced towards the domestic buildings. There was no sign of the samurai or Ariyo on the storehouse roof. She assumed they had taken cover the moment the arrow had been loosed.
The soldier toppled from the wall. He back-flipped and hit the courtyard flagstones face down. His head split open and his naginata hit the tiles beside him and clattered to a standstill. The sentries ran to the fallen man and examined the arrow protruding from his neck. The brass alarm bell on the battlements rang and troops stumbled from their barracks in response to the call-to-arms.
The girl took advantage of the distraction and ducked inside the tower doorway.
* * *
The moment the courtyard alarm bell rang a well-drilled emergency procedure began within the tower. Sentries on the fifth floor converged on the general’s private chambers. He scrambled to his feet and tried to shake off sleep as an adjutant wrapped him in a kimono. His wife ran behind a screen and quickly put on a robe. She woke her son and bustled him from an adjacent room. The guards formed a protective cordon around the family and herded them towards the stairwell.
* * *
The girl paced the bottom floor of the tower. She could hear frantic footsteps and shouts above her head. She looked up as ancient floorboards flexed and creaked. Soldiers were moving quickly down a second floor corridor. She matched their movements as she walked down the passageway and tried to picture the hurried activity on the floor above.
She found herself standing outside heavy pine double doors. Activity seemed to centre on the corresponding room on the floor above. She heard a muffled door slam. More shouts, bellowed orders. Footsteps heading down the stairs.
Time to leave before anyone questioned her presence within the tower. She headed out the door and crossed the courtyard towards the storehouse, ignored by soldiers clustered round the body of their dead comrade. She glanced at the sentry lying dead with an arrow protruding from his body and, while her attention was diverted, walked straight into Raku.
Commander Raku and the captain of the watch hurried across the yard towards the dead man. A maid ran into Raku and he looked down at her a moment. The girl was clearly terrified by his smiling, inhumanly perfect mask. He shoved her aside.
Raku and the captain pushed through the crowd and knelt beside the sprawled corpse. The captain wrenched the arrow from the dead man’s back. He examined the flesh-clotted tip and the crow feather fletching.
‘One of ours,’ he said.
The commander looked round at the surrounding troops.
‘Did anyone see what happened?’
They all shook their heads except for one of the tower sentries who hesitantly said: ‘I saw him fall.’
‘Where was he standing? From which direction did the arrow come?’
‘He had his back to the courtyard. The arrow must have come from over there.’ The soldier pointed to a section of battlement walkway near the storehouse.
‘How about you,’ said Raku, turning to the sentry’s companion. ‘What do you see?’
The sentry pointed to the same section of battlement. ‘The arrow came from over there,’ he confirmed.
Raku turned to the captain.
‘I want all the soldiers stationed on that section of wall brought here.’
The captain nodded, got to his feet and hurried away. Raku addressed the surrounding men. He gestured to the corpse. ‘What can you tell me about this man?’ he asked.
‘His name was Han.’
‘What kind of man was he?’
‘Well liked.’
‘Was he the subject of any jealousies? Petty rivalries? Arguments in the barracks?’
‘He was an exemplary soldier. Admired. Respected.’
‘Nobody is that perfect. Everyone has enemies.’
‘Not Han.’
The captain of the watch returned with six men who had been guarding the east wall. They lined at attention. Raku walked the line and stared at each man in turn. They tried to hide their fear as they were inspected by cold eyes looking out from behind a mask.
‘Which one of you fired the arrow?’ he demanded.
The soldiers remained silent. He contemplated the resolute men for a moment then turned to the captain.
‘Execute them all.’
The girl shut herself in the storehouse and relit a candle. She hurried down the centre aisle past stacked boxes, bales and barrels pausing briefly to check she wasn’t followed. She climbed the stairs to the disused upper room and opened the window shutters. Ariyo lowered the packs then the girl helped the men back inside.
The samurai stood with his eye pressed to a chink between the shutters and watched the commotion in the courtyard outside. He turned to the girl and opened his mouth like he intended to speak then doubled in pain. He crawled on all-fours to his pack and withdrew a pouch. The girl took the pouch from his fumbling fingers and unlaced the drawstring. She took a poppy ampoule from the box within. She cracked open the neck of the glass cylinder and put it in the samurai’s hand. He nodded gratitude and drank the resin. He lay with his eyes closed and waited for the pain to subside.
‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ said the girl.
‘It’s hell. But it will be over soon.’ He opened his eyes and sat up. ‘So how did it play out?’ he asked when his breathing had steadied. ‘What were they saying down in the yard?’
‘They assume the dead man was killed by a rival. Some kind of squabble between the troops. An argument over
a village girl, something like that. They have six sentries kneeling in the courtyard. If one of them doesn’t confess to the crime soon they will execute them all.’
‘Six?’ asked Ariyo.
‘Yes.’
‘It seems we’ve got a lot of men killed.’
‘If their commanding officer chooses to have them beheaded it will be his order, his responsibility,’ said the samurai. ‘He will answer for it in the after-world, not us.’
He addressed the girl:
‘So you managed to get into the tower. You heard the courtyard troops raise the alarm. What happened then?’
‘I didn’t see much. I heard lots of movement, lots of people heading down the stairs from the floor above.’
‘Where did they go?’
The girl pulled the charcoal stick and rolled paper from her sleeve. The plan of the castle compound. She flipped the paper and sketched the interior of the lower tower. The corridor, stairwell, doorways.
‘From what I could hear, a group of soldiers were in a hurry to reach this room on the second floor.’ She tapped the map. ‘It has heavy double doors. Easy to defend.’
‘Do you have any idea what’s inside that room?’
‘No.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Ariyo, thinking it over. ‘You’re captain of the watch. The castle is under attack. What do you do? Put the general and his family somewhere safe until you ascertain what’s going on. Thick stone walls. Good protection.’
The samurai nodded, a look of triumph on his gaunt face.
‘Then we have him. We have our man. Time to give Masaie the signal.’
Ariyo pulled an arrow from his pack. He tore a strip of white cotton from the hem of his tunic and tied it round the head of the arrow.
‘Sundown tomorrow?’ asked the girl.
‘Sundown,’ confirmed the samurai.
‘So this time tomorrow we could be dead,’ said Ariyo.
‘You could say that any day of your life,’ said the samurai. He returned to the shutters and looked out at the courtyard.
‘Look,’ he said, beckoning the girl.
She took his place at the window and peered through a crack in the shutters. She could see the six condemned men. Five kneeling, one on his feet.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Ariyo.
‘One of the soldiers has offered himself up,’ said the girl. ‘He’s claiming responsibility for the dead man. He’s trying to save his comrades.’
‘A wonderful act of heroism,’ said the samurai. ‘A pure, selfless moment. And no one but us will ever know.’
Masaie sat on rocky a ledge beneath the castle as dawn broke. He passed in and out of consciousness. The calf of his leg had turned blue and gangrenous. It smelt bad. He cut a leather thong from the neck of his backpack and used it as a tourniquet. He tied it round his septic leg to stop the spread of infection.
Mist cascaded down the mountain – a torrent of freezing vapour. It was a blessing. It eased his fever. It numbed him. It slowed the rot of his leg.
Sometimes he slept and dreamed he was young again. Fit and well, and moving around with strength and purpose. He was standing on a beach enjoying the sand between his toes or in a boat helping his father haul in nets full of thrashing fish or walking a country road somewhere, sun on his face. Each time he woke he screwed his eyes shut and tried to dream again.
Sometimes he woke and experienced the weird conviction he was dead. He was a corpse sprawled lifeless, heart at a standstill, spirit still shackled to his bones. He lay staring up at the sky waiting for crows to peck out his eyes.
He ran out of water, shook the last drops from an empty flask and tossed it side. He was utterly disoriented and had lost track of time. Maybe he’d slept for days. Maybe the samurai and his team were long dead. He was marooned on a mountainside waiting for the order to attack, an order that would never come. Or maybe he was a ghost. Maybe, having failed his companions, he was doomed to haunt the mountainside forever, waiting for the moment to attack.
He heard the plink and skitter of wood hitting stone. Something struck a boulder a few feet away. He crawled to the tree projecting from the mountainside taking care to keep out of view of the castle. An arrow lay among rocks. He picked it up. A scrap of white cotton tied behind the arrowhead.
We’ll send you a signal. Wait until nightfall then launch the attack. We’re relying on you. Don’t let us down.
Masaie crawled back to the ledge. He opened his pack, pulled out the explosive-tipped projectiles and examined them in cold morning light. One of the projectiles slipped through numb fingers but he caught it just before it hit the rocks and blew him to pieces. He laughed at himself and repacked the projectile.
He tested the bow-string for tension then shifted position to get comfortable. All he had to do was hang on until nightfall then his work would be done. His father sat beside him.
‘Thought you’d gone,’ said Masaie.
‘I’m watching. Always watching.’
‘I can’t feel my leg,’ said Masaie. ‘My whole leg. Numbness creeping higher. It’s at my hip. The other leg is starting to fade. Not sure I can make it until sundown.’
His father held his hand.
‘You can make it. I’ll stay with you. I’ll help you pass the time.’
Raku paced the ramparts. It was late afternoon. He was tired. He tried to rub his eyes, but his stumps bumped his mask. He couldn’t shake the feeling that an attack was imminent. The assassin was nearby. Whatever he intended to do, he would do it soon.
Raku stood at an arrow port and watched low sun cast stark boulder shadows. Sunset washed the landscape blood red. The captain of the watch stood at his side.
‘Sunrise tomorrow I want a team of men to scour the mountainside,’ said Raku. ‘Not just the area surrounding the castle. Go wide in all directions. A full arrow-flight. Make a thorough, methodical search. Look for any signs of human activity. Footprints, anything. If you find so much as an apple core, you bring it to me. If you find a human turd, I want to know how big and how old, understand? Overlook nothing.’
‘No one has been seen in these parts for weeks,’ said the captain. ‘We interrogated the villagers. We asked the farmers if they had glimpsed anyone as they worked the fields. Anyone on the road, anyone in the woods. They’ve seen nothing. The last strange face was some feral child. No one before then and no one since. It’s inconceivable men could have pass through the valley undetected. People round here have keen eyes.’
‘A child?’
‘A girl. A dumb, slow-witted thing. No one of consequence.’
‘A girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She’s here, I think. In the castle. She empties piss buckets in exchange for food. A wretched creature. Her mother, her midwife, did her a great disservice by allowing her to live.’
The captain’s voice trailed away as Raku slowly turned from the arrow port and stared him down. Cold fury behind an impassive mask.
‘How long as she been here?’
‘A couple of days, I think.’
‘A stranger. Here in the castle all this time and you didn’t think to mention it?’
‘She’s just a girl.’
‘Find her,’ bellowed Raku. ‘Bring her to me. Now.’
Soldiers came for the girl late afternoon. She was in the kitchen, kneeling at a table wiping tears with her sleeve as she chopped onions. She enjoyed the heat from the fire as she slow-boiled a cauldron of rice water and the company of the cat that was sprawled on the floor, basking in the warmth of the flames. The cook knelt nearby stripping chicken.
The girl opened a shutter to clear the air and saw through tear-blurred eyes soldiers hurrying across the courtyard. For a moment she assumed it would be another search but something about the focus and urgency of the soldier’s movements suggested they were coming for her.
‘Close that window,’ ordered the cook. ‘You’re letting out the heat.’
/> The girl pointed at the onions, her face, then the pantry screen to convey that she was stepping out of the kitchen a moment to allow her burning eyes to recover.
‘All right,’ said the cook. ‘But hurry up. Plenty more work to do.’
The girl casually stepped into the pantry, pulled the screen closed behind her and immediately broke into a run. She sprinted past sacks of rice and barrels of apples. She ducked cured meat hanging from ceiling hooks.
She stepped out of a side door into the courtyard, walked along the edge of the yard, forcing herself to move slowly and casually. She hugged the wall until she reached the storehouse and ducked inside.
* * *
‘They’re looking for me,’ said the girl, entering the upper room of the storehouse.
The samurai looked out the chink between the window shutters. Troops were mustering in the courtyard. The captain of the watch shouted orders and squads fanned out.
‘They’re going to be here any minute,’ said the samurai.
The girl pulled her katana from Ariyo’s pack and tucked it into her obi, ready to draw.
‘Can we get back out onto the roof?’ asked Ariyo. ‘With all those men out there? If we open the window will they see?’
‘We’ll have to risk it,’ said the samurai. ‘This side of the building is in shadow. Perhaps that will hide us from view.’
They opened the window and looked down. The courtyard sentry was gone. Ariyo climbed onto the sill and hauled himself onto the roof. He helped the samurai follow. The girl passed them their packs. She heard clattering footsteps on the stairs leading up to the second floor – soldiers were nearly at the door. She gripped the edge of the window intending to haul herself up and out onto the roof. A split second realisation: the soldiers would be upon her before she could make it to the roof.
