Earth-Thunder

by Patrick Tilley

  The pangs of guilt had robbed Yoritomo of his erection, but Mishiko knew how to arouse his desire with whispered words and a range of artful caresses. He lay back, eyes closed as she brought him back up with her lips and tongue, then mounted him and deftly positioned the lips of her vagina against the head of his penis. The delicious sensation generated by that first deep thrust filled Yoritomo from head to toe and made his nerve ends tingle.

  She stretched out her body on top of his, framing his face with the long tresses of Mute hair that adorned her bare skull. Placing her legs outside his, she pressed his thighs together with her knees, then angled her feet in, planting them firmly over his. Starting in the middle of his forehead, she drew her hands round his face onto his neck then slid them along his shoulders and down his arms. Hand on hand, she entwined her fingers with his, locked them tight, drew them upwards to rest on either side of his head, and laid her elbows on his – pinning him down on the mattress.

  His penis, lying deep inside her, jerked and stiffened. Yoritomo liked to be dominated during the sexual act. The pretence of not being in control eased his feelings of guilt and shifted the blame for what happened onto his partner. His humiliation at their hands was a less painful version of the monkish habit of mortifying the flesh as a penance for harbouring sinful thoughts. When his desires had been satisfied he would berate himself for being weak and despise his partner for exploiting that weakness.

  Until the next time.…

  But there would not be a next time. Yoritomo, who had come close to killing any capacity she had for real emotion through his warped desires, had destroyed the one great love of her life, the Herald Toshiro Hase-Gawa, and now Mishiko was only seconds away from avenging his death.

  Sliding her belly back and forth on his, she pleasured Yoritomo with practised vaginal contractions and felt the head of his shaft swell as he neared the point of orgasm. She gave one more gentle squeeze. Another gasp of delight broke from her brother’s lips. His mouth opened wide as his body began to shudder. She felt his stomach muscles tighten and he started to suck in his breath in a last desperate effort to prolong the moment.

  With his hands elbows and legs still secured, Mishiko pressed down upon him, tightened her own belly muscles to hold him firmly inside her, then rolled the small glass phial she had been hiding in her cheek onto the tip of her tongue.

  Yoritomo opened his lips and loosed a long, shuddering sigh of delight. It was the moment Mishiko had been waiting for. The final curtain. Crushing the phial between her front teeth, she kissed her brother hungrily, plunging her tongue and its poisonous contents into the back of his throat. For a brief instant, Yoritomo smelt the odour of almonds, then gagged and swallowed involuntarily as the cyanide took hold.

  Mishiko, her face contorted in agony, was close to death as he threw her aside. Screaming with pain, Yoritomo staggered to his feet, clutching at his throat as he tried to spit out the poison.

  Alarmed by what sounded like a cry for help, his samurai bodyguard entered his private suite and burst into the bed-chamber in time to see the Shogun sink to his knees then fall dead at their feet, tongue extended from his gaping mouth, his lips blue. Behind him, on the bed, lay the naked body of Lady Mishiko.

  The guards held their lanterns aloft and surveyed the scene, momentarily bewildered. Only three hours ago they had witnessed the death of the Lord Chamberlain, and now they had lost the Shogun!

  Uesagi, Yoritomo’s valet, and his two assistants, drawn from their quarters by the commotion, appeared in the doorway and cried out in horror. They were joined by several more who were soon jostling each other to get a better view.

  Ryoku, the chief bodyguard, cursed them roundly, then ordered them to return to their quarters and stay out of sight. Uesagi, who had served Yoritomo for the last fifteen years, protested he had a duty to be at his master’s side.

  ‘With or without your head?!’ cried Ryoku. He called to one of his four companions to draw his long-sword and kill anyone he found loitering in the Shogun’s private suite after a count of three. The valet and the servants fled for their lives.

  Ryoku borrowed one of the lanterns and took a closer look at Lady Mishiko. She appeared to have been killed by the same poison, but there was also blood on her lips. Something glinted as it caught the light. Ryoku stooped over her and saw it was a tiny sliver of glass. One of several … Merciful Heaven! The poison had been concealed in her mouth!

  Ryoku stood up and tried to work out what to do next. He had never faced such an appalling predicament before. The two most powerful men in Ne-Issan removed from office in the space of one night! And by the hand of the same woman! For it was Lady Mishiko who had been Ieyasu’s principal accuser.

  But who was behind her? Was it a family cabal which had yet to reveal its hand, or was it the work of the Toh-Yota’s enemies? And was Captain Kamakura to be trusted? The Shogun had placed him in command of the entire Palace Guard, but it was he who had helped the Lady Mishiko unmask the Lord Chamberlain! Who should they turn to for orders? To whom should they give their allegiance?

  Ryoku and the other guards were under no illusions as to their probable fate if the blame for Yoritomo’s death was to fall on their shoulders. Their working lives had been dedicated to preventing such a tragedy. They were the last line of defence – and a single woman had by-passed all the checks and body-searches because the Shogun himself had waved them aside.

  But who would be disposed to believe that? No one was going to say it was the Shogun’s fault. The family’s grief would not be assuaged until the blame had been pinned on someone else. Someone who was alive. There was no satisfaction to be gained by punishing culprits who were already dead.

  Ryoku cast these dark thoughts aside. If they could not avoid dishonour by taking their own lives, their fate at the hands of torturers on a public scaffold would have to be met with the same stoicism with which they had faced the daily possibility of death in the service of the Shogun. Their obligation to him demanded they remain alive to give their account of this black day. With their help, the true architect of this conspiracy might yet be uncovered.

  Ryoku pulled five dried flowers from a vase, cut off part of the stalks then cut one of the pieces in half. Aligning the tops, he concealed the unequal ends in his closed palm. ‘Whoever draws the shortest is to inform the Castle Commandant of what has taken place. The others are to stay here and mount a vigil over the Shogun’s body until we receive orders from a higher authority. Agreed?’

  His four companions accepted with an impassive nod. Ryoku didn’t have to elaborate. If Captain Kamakura was in league with those who had set out to kill the Shogun, then they – his personal guards – would be on the extermination list. There was no guarantee that whoever carried the news to him would return alive.

  Shimoya who, at 24, was the youngest of the five samurai, drew the short straw. He bowed to his companions and hurried away.

  Ryoku and the remaining guards carried Yoritomo’s naked body over to the bed, laid him alongside Mishiko and drew the silken eiderdown over them. Forming a line facing the foot of the bed, the four samurai knelt down and paid their last respects to the Shogun with a deep bow then sat back cross-legged, hands resting on their knees, and sank into a trance-like state of meditation.

  Nothing moved. Silence filled the room.

  Roz and Cadillac, crouched on the steps in the secret passageway, heard the death cries of Mishiko and the Shogun, and the thud of running feet as Yoritomo’s bodyguards and servants rushed to his aid, the angry exchanges between them, imprecations, squeals of panic, the choice of someone to carry the news of Yoritomo’s death to Kamakura, the soft shuffling of feet then silence.

  Praying that the steps would not creak under his weight, Cadillac stood up carefully, uncovered the pin-hole in the beam that gave a blurred-edged view of the room and put his right eye against it. Roz heard him sigh.

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ He sat down again. ‘The Shogun and his sister are in t
he bed and there are four samurai sitting in front of it! What do we do now?’

  ‘Why don’t we just leave?’ whispered Roz. ‘You’ve got Ieyasu’s head. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No! We’ve got to have both! Don’t argue about it. I’m not giving up on this – okay?!’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘Well, don’t just sit there! Help me!’

  Roz let out a sigh that spoke volumes and squeezed past Cadillac towards the top of the stairs. ‘You can be really stubborn – anyone ever told you that?’

  ‘Later, Roz. Just do it!’

  ‘Okay, okay. But when this is all over and you’re raking in the glory, just remember – it may have been your idea, but I made it happen.’

  Iron Masters were renowned for their toughness and resilience, and it was the samurai who set the standards to which all others aspired. They were fearless warriors whose martial skills made them formidable opponents, but in one vital respect they were no different to the rest of the population. They believed the world around them was also the home of good and evil kami – and spirit-witches.

  Superstition, the fear of hob-goblins was their Achilles Heel, so it was not surprising that when a howling banshee burst through the outer wall and hurled streams of fire in their direction with her right hand, Ryoku and his companions came perilously close to a collective cardiac arrest. A second burst, from the fingers of the banshee’s left hand struck the mattress-bed, turning it into a blazing funeral pyre.

  To their credit, they tried to draw their swords – and found themselves clutching the necks of fiery snakes! Throwing them down only compounded the horror, for the serpents shattered like a porcelain vase and the burning fragments grew in the twinkling of an eye into a swarm of hideous, claw-fingered, orange-skinned devils who were clearly intent on tearing them limb from limb.

  Captain Kamakura, returning with Shimoya and fifty men, found the four unarmed samurai outside the entrance to the Shogun’s apartments, still trembling from their experience. Listening to their account – which caused the soldiers behind him to mutter nervously amongst themselves – Kamakura realised with growing dread that they had been the victims of witchcraft. There were, as far as he knew, only two exponents of this grey art in the palace – and he had met both of them!

  ‘Where is this banshee and her horde of devils now?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Ryoku. ‘They pursued us from the bed-chamber but’ – he paused, visibly perplexed – ‘the flames we saw consume the Shogun did not spread. Yet we saw the fire and smoke! We smelt the odour of burning flesh!’

  ‘Come with me,’ said Kamakura grimly. ‘The rest of you wait here!’

  The five samurai followed him into the bed-chamber. There was no sign of fire, the woven straw matting was unscorched. The naked bodies of Yoritomo and Lady Mishiko lay exposed on the blood-soaked bed. Both their heads were missing.

  Roz had not changed her mind and started a collection. She had urged Cadillac to behead Mishiko to take the heat off Captain Kamakura and his family. From her trip around his brain she knew he was one of the few honest men they’d come across. There’d been enough killing. If he had his wits about him, he would – she reasoned – quickly realise that Mishiko had also been bewitched. The authors of this crime lay beyond the palace walls.

  She was correct. Kamakura cottoned on fast. The fact that Lord Ieyasu’s head was also missing changed the whole nature of this affair. The power of magic had been present – that was evident – but the two spirit-witches had done more than cast spells. They were agents who had skillfully plotted two audacious murders, and who had gained access to the secret passages within the palace – passages that not even the Shogun’s bodyguards appeared to know about!

  The heads had not vanished into thin air, they had been taken, in the time honoured fashion, as proof that the Toh-Yota family had suffered a mortal blow. The hand of the Yama-Shita lay behind this, and Lord Min-Orota had been their treacherous intermediary – for it was he who had brought the spirit-witches to Lady Mishiko in the Winter Palace and provided the boat to bring her to Aron-Giren.

  The witches and their valuable trophies were probably still moving through the secret passageway. Kamakura knew the entrance lay hidden behind the right-hand wall beam, but because he had kept his eyes averted when Lady Mishiko had made her secret visit to the Shogun, he did not know where to find the release mechanism. The beam would have to be smashed open. To do that, heavy implements would have to be brought and valuable time lost. And when an opening was made – who would have the courage to go in after them?

  And there was something else he had to consider. If a subsequent enquiry found that the assassins had made use of a secret passageway to the Shogun’s bed-chamber, and he revealed his knowledge of it, someone who resented his meteoric promotion to Castle Commandant might accuse him of complicity in the crime.

  Kamakura decided to say nothing. When the big names in the Toh-Yota family arrived for the inquest, the air would be thick with charges and counter-charges. There was no point in rocking the boat when he already had more trouble than he could handle.…

  Chapter Thirteen

  Steve checked the luminous hands of his old-style watch. Two fifteen … over three and a half hours since they were yanked out of bed and thrown into a stinking hole in the ground, and they were still without any clue as to what unpleasantness their hosts had in store. The only cheering note had been his contact with Roz, otherwise they were in the dark, literally and metaphorically – just the kind of situation he hated.

  He sat down opposite Fran, leaving the width of the doorway between them.

  Her aggressive attitude and the threat to demote him stopped him feeling sorry for her. His wing-man training, followed by two years of roughing it on the overground, in constant danger of losing his life, enabled him to cope with this sudden downturn in their fortunes. Fran, on the other hand, was used to giving orders; being waited on hand and foot. Being sent to Ne-Issan with him was probably the biggest and riskiest adventure of her life, but she had still been wrapped in cotton wool. Until their sudden arrest and confinement, they had been privileged visitors, transported in relative luxury with japs bowing to them all along the way. There had been no whipping canes laid across her back.

  A pity. Steve recalled the painful beating he’d undergone at the post-house prior to his transfer to the Heron Pool. An experience like that might make her a lot easier to get on with.

  Pushing Fran and her personality problems out of his mind, Steve dozed fitfully for the next hour or so, then woke to the sound of several pairs of feet tramping along the corridor. The orange glow of an approaching lantern illuminated the square hole in the cell-door and spilled enough light inside for him to be able to make out Fran’s upturned face.

  They both rose as the footsteps halted outside, then stepped back as the heavy bolts were withdrawn. Steve didn’t resist as Fran searched for his right hand and gripped it tightly. The door was thrown open, and the all-enveloping darkness inside the cell receded as the jap holding the lantern raised it above his head.

  Steve and Fran found themselves looking at five men. Two were prison warders. There was another pair, dressed as soldiers, with helmets bearing the winged heron badge – worn only by the Shogun’s personal troops. The face of one of them seemed vaguely familiar. Steve couldn’t place him but there was no mistaking the diminutive jap who stood under the lantern.

  It was Skull-Face, aka Fujiwara. In his glittering battle-dress, with its overlapping plates, he looked like an overgrown armadillo.

  ‘Are these the prisoners you seek?’ asked one of the warders.

  Skull-Face nodded. ‘Bind them!’

  The two warders and the soldiers entered the cell. Steve and Fran offered no resistance as their arms were pinned behind their backs and clamped into two sets of manacles; one around their wrists, the other around their arms, just above the elbow. The upper manacles were attached to an iron bar which forced their s
houlders back unnaturally and soon proved extremely painful to wear – as was probably intended. As a final touch, their trail bags were hung around their necks, pulling their heads forward when the rest of their spine wanted to lean a different way.

  With Skull-Face in the lead, Steve and Fran were sent stumbling along the corridor towards the stairs that ran around the sides of the square ventilation shaft. Anxious faces crowded the windows of the other cell doors. Hands clutched the bars. A confused medley of voices, begging, complaining, protesting, swelled into a meaningless barrage of sound that was quickly silenced as the two warders lashed out right and left with their whipping canes, driving the frightened occupants back into the darkness.

  Steve’s heartbeat quickened as they mounted the stairs, passed through the last set of iron gates, then stepped out through the heavy timbered entrance door into the main courtyard. Fresh air and freedom. He was sure of it as soon as he saw the two soldiers who were waiting outside. These were part of the group who had been with Skull-Face on the beach.

  The pair who had been keeping watch outside quickly threw hooded capes around Steve and Fran’s shoulders, as Skull-Face masked his lantern and switched from Japanese to Basic. ‘Follow me. Stay close to the wall.’ He strode off quickly. Fran went next, then Steve, each of them steadied by one of Fuji’s colleagues.

  The scene in the courtyard was one of controlled confusion. Squads of foot-soldiers and cavalry were being assembled and despatched through the open main gates and across the bridge into the darkness beyond. Armed men patrolled the outer walls and galleries of the palace. Glancing back over his shoulder, Steve saw a handful of cowed suspects being hustled towards the underground jailhouse. More late arrivals. For many, besides themselves, this was obviously going to be a night to remember.

  They reached a large set of double doors, one of which contained a smaller door. Producing a key, Fujiwara opened it, then stood aside until everyone had passed through. Locking and barring the door behind him, he unmasked the lantern and ordered his men to remove the trail-bags and unshackle their prisoners.