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will take arms against "
" 'The sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them,' " Doc said. "As the Bard puts it."
"I also know of Shakespeare, Doctor," the samurai said triumphantly. " 'Sling and arrow
of outrageous fortunes.' "
"More or less, my dear fellow."
"You say that you're finally moving against this gang?" Ryan asked.
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James Axler - Death Lands - Keeper of the Sun
"Yes. And you will all come with us."
Chapter Fourteen
Ryan kicked his heels into the flanks of the sturdy mountain pony that he had been given
for the expedition, moving it on at a canter to bring himself up with the ring of senior
samurai who rode around their lord.
"Mashashige!"
The shogun heard him call his name and turned in the high saddle of his own stallion,
beckoning the one-eyed man to join him.
"What is it?"
"You insisted that the women ride in those carry-carriage things?"
Mashashige nodded, his face betraying no emotion. "They are called palanquins, Cawdor-
san. You understand that it is only to honor you and your comrades that we allow the
weak ones these two strange women along with us on this fighting expedition? There
are no other women."
"I know that."
The column was entirely male, more than eighty armed men, all with pikes, and many
with rifles and automatics. Ryan had asked Hideyoshi why, if there was so much heavy,
polluting industry on what remained of the country, they hadn't got more firearms.
"Because we have too many people and too little land. Too much energy goes into
keeping alive with processed food. Also, we run out soon of raw materials. Coal and iron
in short supply. Ever shorter supply."
Eight samurai accompanied them, including Hideyoshi and Yashimoto. The fortress was
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James Axler - Death Lands - Keeper of the Sun
left with a skeleton defensive complement, the drawbridge up and all shutters closed tight
against any sneak attack.
Mildred and Krysty had been allowed along under strict tolerance, having to travel in the
ornamented palanquins. Each was carried by six servants, the relays changing at regular
intervals as they tired under the weight and the difficult terrain and the unbreathable air.
They were like large boxes on wheels, with curtains of embroidered silk, which both
Krysty and Mildred had thrown back because of the oppressive heat and stuffiness. They
had knotted silken cords to hang on to, trying to keep their balance in an awkward half
sitting, half lying position, struggling against the ceaseless jolting.
After a couple of miles both women had called for a halt while they got out and tried to
recover from bad bouts of travel sickness. Krysty had actually thrown up in an open ditch
at the side of the road, her nausea not improved by seeing a bloated carcass of a dead dog,
its legs missing, floating by in several inches of rancid, slime-topped scum.
After another mile Mildred had begged Ryan to go and entreat the shogun to allow them
to ride a couple of the spare ponies, or to walk with the foot soldiers.
"Anything rather than travel another yard in these goddamn puke boxes."
Mashashige looked at Ryan as though he'd asked him to check the sun in its afternoon
progress toward the west.
"Ride horses?"
"Yeah."
"It's difficult." Ryan had been long enough in Japan to know that this meant a denial.
"Why not?"
"Women do not ride."
"Then let them walk. They're happy to walk. J.B., Doc and Jak and me'll walk, as well.
Doesn't bother us at all. Been doing it most of our lives."
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James Axler - Death Lands - Keeper of the Sun
The shogun shook his head slowly. "There would be a bad losing of face."
"Not for me."
"No. For me, if it was thought by the peasants that my guests had to walk in the dust."
"Then let the women take a pair of the spare ponies. Be obliged."
Mashashige sighed. "Your barbarian ways will never be understood by me, however long
I try." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Let them do this." A thought struck him. "They
will ride with their legs apart?"
"Only way they know," Ryan replied.
Mashashige sighed, closing his deep-set eyes for a moment as though he were suffering
from an agonizing migraine. "Let it be so."
IT SEEMED that the gang of masterless samurai, known as the ronin, had been roaming
the land for some time, either years or months, depending on who was telling the stories.
And there was anywhere between a dozen and a hundred of them.
Yashimoto had warned Ryan, when they were safely out of the hearing of the shogun,
that this expedition was fraught with danger.
"You may not return from it, gaijin. Any accident might happen. A false step or an
unlucky blow. And then the spirit of my brother can sleep at ease."
The route would take them close to one of the sprawling conurbations that housed some
of the smoke-belching factories, into the mountains and down toward the sea.
The camp of the ronin was believed to be on a headland jutting out into the ocean,
something like a day and a half's steady march from Mashashige's fortress.
But like so much else in Japan, the real facts seemed shrouded in doubt and confusion.
Mashashige himself led the procession, with banner-carrying warriors on either side of
him, the huge silken flags proclaiming to the world that it was the great shogun
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James Axler - Death Lands - Keeper of the Sun
Mashashige who was passing by with his army of retainers.
There was also a marching band with brazen gongs and drums so large that two men were
needed to carry them. They beat out a blaring rhythm for the whole long column, from
the lord at its head to the dozen or so four-wheeled ox carts that carried provisions and
extra weapons.
Ryan rode in the center, with Krysty at his side, her fiery hair catching the bright
afternoon sun whenever it broke through the reddish haze of pollution.
"This air is vile," she said, wiping at her sore eyes, the bright green irises rimmed with
painful crimson.
"There doesn't seem to be any quiet bits of country." Ryan stood in the narrow stirrups
and scanned the area. They were climbing up a winding path that appeared to lead toward
a steep hog-back ridge. "It's either barren rock, or it's filled with sprawling villes of little
crowded houses and these stinking factories. And so many people."
Doc was just behind and he heard the conversation. "I lived in England for a time when I
was a young man. The big cities. London, of course, and Manchester and Birmingham.
They were rookeries of narrow streets and crowded back-to-back houses, with noisesome
alleys running between them. I saw a dozen or more living in a single room, packed
between the factories that vomited poisonous black fumes into the lowering air, day and
night. Slums! Stooped, sallow figures, coughing their lungs out, and pinch-faced babies
with hollow eyes and spavined ribs. It was a dreadful sight that I shall never forget." He
blew his nose, wobbling dangerously in the saddle, his long legs sticking out on either
side of the pony, looking in his frock coat like Abe Lincoln on a sway-backed mule.
HALFWAY UP THE MOUNTAIN they passed some kind of crude processing plant that
Hideyoshi said was for alum. Low sheds stood between steaming vats of bubbling, foul-
smelling liquid that was constantly stirred with long ladles suspended a few feet above
the cauldrons.
As the noise and color of the procession reached the place, the workers came scurrying
from their dangerous positions to watch Mashashige go by.
By the time Ryan and friends reached the spiked iron gates, it looked as if the whole
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