Earth-Thunder

by Patrick Tilley

  Cadillac, Roz and the rowers were the first to see the fan-shaped orange starburst light up the night sky. Their gasps caused everyone’s head to turn. What they saw was a roiling cloud of smoke lit from beneath by a blood-red glow. Silhouetted briefly against its flame-bright heart was a tiny black shape.

  Everyone knew, without being told, it was the junk which had carried them to Aron-Giren. In the last hour they had travelled some four miles, and now, in the wake of the distant fireball, the sound of the explosion reverberated across the water.

  … bbbaaa-bbbaa-bbboooommmm … bbba-booo-mmmm.…

  Cadillac looked across at Mishiko and saw her arms tighten around her two young daughters, Miyori, and Narikita. Toshi, her two-year-old son, cocooned in a sleeveless, padded cotton pouch to protect him from the cold, was held securely in the strong arms of his nurse.

  Pitching his voice higher for the benefit of the servants huddled round Mishiko, Cadillac said: ‘You were right, your highness. We owe our lives to your superior wisdom.’

  ‘Do not thank me,’ replied Mishiko. ‘Thank the loved one whose power guides our steps.’

  Cadillac accepted this with a bow of the head. There wasn’t room for any of the usual extravagant kow-towing. Pulling the hood of his cape as far forward as it would go, he huddled down beside Roz in a space he’d created between the baggage. A December night was definitely not the best time to go sailing on the Eastern Sea, but there was one small advantage of being dressed up as a courtesan; the close-fitting face-mask kept your nose warm.

  From the deep shadow cast by his hood, Cadillac studied Lady Mishiko and her children, and the uncomplaining servants perched on the baggage that surrounded her. Ever since Roz had aired her own misgivings, he had felt increasingly guilty about driving this woman to her death. Mishiko was strong, intelligent and – by Iron-Master standards – strikingly beautiful. She was also extremely stubborn, haughty and used to being waited on hand and foot.

  It was crazy, yet oddly touching, the way she had insisted on bringing all her luggage into the boat. If all went as planned she only had another forty-eight hours to live – so what did she want it all for? It was also sad to see her son who was condemned to die with her, wrapped up and cuddled protectively to prevent him catching a fatal bout of pneumonia.

  But it had to be done – for the good of the Plainfolk. Killing Ieyasu and her brother would give the Yama-Shita the chance they and their fellow-Progressives needed to topple the Toh-Yota. The Chamberlain’s desire to control every aspect of government had put too much power into one aging pair of hands. Removing him and the Shogun, and his nearest male heir, would plunge the ruling family into disarray. Any hesitation over the succession would create a power vacuum at the centre, unleashing the pent-up hatreds harboured by the less-favoured domain-lords. Hell-bent on settling old scores, they would split into warring factions, bring a period of instability and – with luck – a protracted civil war that would halt any plans to expand westwards.

  That would take the pressure off for a while. If the Progressives led by the Yama-Shita came out on top, then the centuries-old edict banning the Dark Light would be cast aside. In time, the technological gap between Ne-Issan and the Federation would start to close.

  The sand-burrowers wouldn’t let that happen because it was their superior technology that gave them the edge. They would have to wage war on Ne-Issan – and that would divert men and valuable resources from their current campaign against the Plainfolk. And by the time Tracker and Iron Master had fought themselves to a standstill, the Plainfolk would be ready. One nation under Talisman, the Thrice-Gifted One.

  Cadillac believed the time when Talisman would enter the world was drawing near, but he was equally sure there would be no overnight miracles. ‘Man-Child or Woman-Child the One may be … and He shall grow straight and strong as the Heroes of the Old Time.’ So ran the Prophecy.

  No matter how prodigious his or her talents were, the Saviour had first to reach adulthood. The promised victory under Talisman’s banner lay far in the future.

  Meanwhile there was a great deal to be done, and very little time in which to do it.…

  Chapter Nine

  Cadillac had been overly optimistic. When the packed long-boat grounded in pitch darkness on a stretch of beach to the east of Bei-poro, his concealed digital watch showed the time as 2:58 am. Mishiko’s eight guards had been taking their turn at the oars for nearly six hours instead of the estimated four.

  The first task was to deposit Lady Mishiko and her children on dry sand. When this had been done, the guards returned for Roz and Cadillac to discover that both had climbed out of the boat. As the tallest person in the party, Cadillac did not intend to suffer the indignity of being given a chair-lift by a couple of bandy-legged japs whose heads only just came up over his shoulder.

  That they had any energy left at all was testimony to their toughness and resilience. But then these guys didn’t have an ounce of excess fat on them, and as Roz had pointed out, their diminutive stature and the shortness of their well-muscled limbs gave them an excellent power-weight ratio.

  They had been born and raised as work-machines. That was one of the more admirable aspects of Iron Master society – its vigour. Once these guys woke up, they were on the case. Calculating the profit on a deal with an abacus, writing contracts, hammering, sawing, forging and beating metal, fashioning swords, creating beautiful objects, constructing boats and buildings – they put body and soul into it. And they applied the same zestful energy to eating, getting drunk, sexual intercourse and killing people.

  All in all an amazing race. As he waited for the baggage to be unloaded, Cadillac’s thoughts turned briefly to the Mute slave population. The Lost Ones. What would happen to them if Ne-Issan became embroiled in a civil war?

  It had been foretold that one day they would cast aside their chains and rejoin the Plainfolk – before the climactic moment when Talisman would draw the clans from each of the bloodlines together under his or her banner.

  When it came, their departure would trigger another round of bloodletting. Ne-Issan’s prosperity was based on the concept of first- and second-class citizens, underpinned by a pool of slave labour – non-persons. The Iron Masters would not let them go without a fight.

  But even if they did escape what would happen when they returned home? A considerable majority of the Mute slaves had been born in captivity. Would they cope with their new-found freedom when it came? More important still was the question of their reintegration into Mute society. Would they be able to adapt to a way of life they had never known? Would they even want to – or was it the Plainfolk who would be forced to adapt to accommodate them?

  Sweet Sky Mother! As if he didn’t have enough to worry about!

  Cadillac silently berated himself for having dredged up yet another insoluble problem. That was what happened when you sat on your butt while other people did the work. Ever since Sioux Falls there had been too much talking and scheming. Too much ‘How about?’ and ‘What if?’, and not enough ‘Who cares?’ What he needed was some action. A chance to get out from behind the fancy dress, the wig, the stupid pasty-faced mask and into some mindless mayhem: the kind of thing his rival, Brickman, enjoyed. Roz was right when she’d said he sounded like Steve; he was beginning to think like him too.

  Before leaving the junk, Mishiko had secured a number of tarred torches from the captain. With the moon now back behind the clouds, four of these had been lit and stuck in the sand to provide some illumination.

  With the exception of Mishiko, her children, Cadillac and Roz, everyone helped to turn the boat over, then got ready to carry it into the sand dunes. Cadillac and Roz picked up two of the torches and walked alongside to light the way as mi’lady’s servants staggered off under the weight of the boat like a tipsy centipede. When they got to the dunes, they lowered the boat onto its port side, then propped up the hull with the oars to make a shelter from the wind.

  Leaving Roz standing on
top of a dune, Cadillac went back to Lady Mishiko and her children. Giving five-year-old Miyori the torch to hold, Cadillac hoisted her onto his left hip. Katiwa, the nurse carried Narikita, and Lady Mishiko in a breath-taking display of egalitarianism, gathered her son Toshi into her arms and actually walked the fifty or so yards to the upturned boat, while the guards and the maidservants transferred the baggage from the beach to the dunes.

  Roz beckoned to Cadillac as he passed. He set down Miyori in the shelter of the long-boat then scrambled with as much decorum as he could muster to the top of the dune. ‘What is it?’

  Roz pointed inland. ‘There’s a light over there. See…?’

  Cadillac sighted along her arm and peered into the darkness. ‘Can’t see a damn thing. Where is it?!’

  ‘There! But it’s just gone out!’

  ‘For chrissakes, Roz – !’

  ‘No, look! There it is again! See? It keeps moving about!’

  Cadillac caught sight of a minuscule point of orange light and hugged her shoulders. ‘Well done. Keep your eye on it.’ He turned towards the long-boat and called out a string of words in Japanese to the samurai who led Mishiko’s guards.

  Hearing that a light had been seen, the samurai and a couple of other guards scrambled up to the top of the dune to check it out. Agreeing with Cadillac that it could be from a house, they got a bearing on it with the aid of a pocket-sized compass box.

  Cadillac and Roz followed them back down to the upturned long-boat where Mishiko and her children were now installed, surrounded by her precious luggage. A small fire, started with the aid of some driftwood, added a little warmth to the torchlit scene.

  The samurai explained that a light had been seen and proposed to investigate. If it came from a house, or better still a farm, then the occupants might be willing to provide some transportation to get his mistress and her entourage to the Summer Palace.

  Cadillac, who had learned from Lady Mishiko that she intended to enter the Palace via a secret tunnel known only to the Shogun and members of his immediate family, asked permission to speak with her in private. The samurai withdrew to a discreet distance.

  ‘Mi’lady, time is running out. If we are to achieve what we have set out to do, I urge you to follow this advice. You and I, and my companion, should go forward with three of your guards and one maidservant to where we have seen the light.

  ‘If it is a dwelling place whose occupants can provide help and shelter to a noble lady in distress, then one of the guards should return here to fetch your children, their nurse, and the other servants while we press on using whatever means of transport is available.’

  ‘Leave my children?!’

  ‘Only for twenty-four hours, mi’lady! If we three plus two guards and a maidservant can get into the Palace tonight, we can prepare the ground as we have discussed. When that has been done, we can make arrangements to bring your children and the rest of your entourage into the Palace by whatever means you choose, or as circumstances dictate. It is for you to decide when, but I think they should remain in hiding until tomorrow night.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Now – is there anyone at the Summer Palace in a key position whose loyalty to the Shogun is beyond question – whom you could rely on to come to your aid?’

  Mishiko replied without hesitation. ‘Yes. Captain Kamakura, one of the senior officers of the Palace Guard.’

  ‘Good. Let us hope he still holds that appointment. Now, mi’lady, if you will be so good as to tell your samurai what has been decided and pick those who are to go with us.…’

  The faint glimmer of light Roz had been lucky enough to catch sight of turned out to be from a lantern carried back and forth by a farmer who was tending a cow that had fallen sick inside one of his barns. Cadillac blessed the Great Sky-Mother for striking the animal down. Had all been well, no lamps would have been burning, and the farm itself would not have been visible until first light.

  Apart from knowing they had landed west of a place called Bei-poro – which they dared not approach – no one in the party knew the lie of the land or where the roads and houses were. With no light to guide them, they could have easily missed the farm in the dark and wandered around for hours before finding another.

  Walking due north with the aid of the compass would have put them in the vicinity of the castle, but Cadillac knew there was no hope of persuading Mishiko to travel nine miles on foot across open country, and after six hours of hard rowing he did not intend asking her guards to carry her – as they were doing now. With typical Iron Master ingenuity, they had cut up one of the oars to make two poles, and had used the sail to make a crude but serviceable litter on which she now sat with one of her clothes chests as a backrest.

  And she had insisted on four guards plus the samurai and three maidservants. The lady might be going to her death but she was hell-bent on doing it in style.

  As it turned out, her apparent lack of consideration for her underlings worked to everyone’s advantage. When they reached the outskirts of the farm, the samurai went forward alone bearing a torch. The startled farmer nearly died with fright when he saw an armed man bearing down on him. On learning that the Shogun’s sister had been shipwrecked and needed his help to get to the Palace, the sudden onrush of emotion came close to triggering a cardiac arrest. Begging the samurai to bring the noble lady towards his humble and totally unworthy abode, he rushed inside to awaken his wife.

  Neither of them knew Mishiko by sight, but when she was ushered respectfully into their presence, she was quite unruffled and her clothes were virtually spotless. Compared to Cadillac, Roz and the guards, she was – to use a pre-Holocaust phrase – ‘in showroom condition’. Pristine, untouchable. In the eyes of the lowly farmer and his wife – now rocking back and forth on their knees repeating a litany of greetings and apologies – she could not be anything else but an illustrious member of the ruling house.

  Could they – she asked – furnish her, as a matter of some urgency, with an ox-cart and directions to the Summer Palace? Of course, immediately! Had she asked, man and wife would have willingly placed themselves between the shafts!

  Could they shelter and feed her children and the rest of her servants until they were sent for on the following day? It would be an honour! No effort would be spared!

  Could they keep her visit and their presence a secret if they knew the Shogun’s life depended on it? Wild horses would not drag a confession from them!

  Such selfless loyalty and devotion could never be influenced by mere monetary considerations – but there was nothing like gold to cement a relationship. Lady Mishiko instructed her samurai to hand over a generous number of coins not – she emphasised – as a reward, but to defray some of the costs incurred in offering such warm-hearted hospitality.

  At 05:46, when the enveloping darkness had changed from black to a dark, leaden grey, the ox-cart drew up by a stone mausoleum patterned with lichen and carpeted with decaying leaves. It lay some way back from the road at the end of an overgrown path amid trees and tangled undergrowth about half a mile south of the Summer Palace.

  It had lain neglected for over eight decades because the occupant – a former Shogun – was from the Dat-Suni, the family which had ruled Ne-Issan before being deposed by the Toh-Yota, ably assisted by the Yama-Shita, the Min-Orota and others. Over those same eight decades, ambition and envy had eroded the blood-bond forged in battle. Gratitude had been replaced by suspicion, culminating in the present barely-concealed struggle for power in which Lady Mishiko was an unwitting pawn brought into play by Cadillac.

  On leaving the farm, the samurai and one guard had gone back to bring the beach party to safety. Another guard now coaxed the sweating oxen round and trundled off southwards to return the cart to its owner. That left Cadillac, Roz and Lady Mishiko, one maidservant to provide an arm for Mishiko to lean on, two more to carry the chest of clothing, and a brace of armed men to help meet any trouble on the way in.

  Mishiko had a key t
o open the rusty iron door, but with the usual Iron Master cunning, it did not fit into the open keyhole but into another lock which was concealed under a large decorative iron stud. There were thirty-six of them, arranged in a geometrical pattern covering the door. Thirty-five of them were immovable; the third one down from the top in the row to the right of the open keyhole could be loosened by three turns to the left, pivoted to one side – and hey, presto! – a well-oiled lock that opened the door onto a pitch-black tunnel about seven feet high and just wide enough to accommodate two people side by side.

  The guards lit the two new torches they had brought with them. One entered the tunnel first followed by Lady Mishiko and her supportive maid, then Cadillac and Roz, the two baggage handlers, then the second guard with the other torch. The door was relocked under Mishiko’s supervision, the key was handed back to her and off they went.

  The tunnel did not run in a straight line. It had several ninety degree turns to right and left, with other tunnels running off it every now and then. Mishiko, who gave directions to the guard ahead, seemed to know exactly where she was going. Cadillac counted off the paces as they went. Towards the end, there were several short upward flights of steps and it was here that the corridor narrowed, forcing them into single file.

  Mishiko took over the lead from the torch-bearer. Motioning them to make as little noise as possible, she shed her sandals and walked on, leaving them for her maid to pick up. Everyone followed suit and proceeded with equal caution on their stockinged feet.

  They now came to a wooden staircase whose top end spiralled through ninety degrees and came to rest against a timbered ceiling supported by heavy beams. Mishiko signalled for absolute silence. Cadillac and Roz watched her creep up the steps until her head was against the ceiling. She listened for a moment, then gently eased what turned out to be a short length of planking upwards, then slid it aside. She repeated this action with the adjacent plank.