Master Assassin: Tales of Murder from the Shogun’s City by Shōtarō Ikenami

Author:Shōtarō Ikenami [Ikenami, Shōtarō]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kodansha International
Published: 1991-04-24T17:00:00+00:00

The Chase

The following morning Hikojiro and Baian ate an early breakfast and packed their belongings so that they could leave at a moment’s notice. They sat in their room with the doors closed, waiting for the samurai to walk by in the corridor as he went out. The sound of his footsteps indicated that he was oblivious to the fact that he was being followed.

“Let’s go,” Hikojiro said, getting up.

“There’s no hurry,” Baian replied. He clapped his hands to summon the maid. “Here’s something for you,” he said, giving her a generous tip even though he had already tipped her the previous evening. He asked her to bring the inn’s register and waited until she left the room to open it.

There had been only two other guests in the inn the previous night, a merchant and the samurai. They had no trouble in discovering the name of their quarry. He had signed his name as Mineyama Matajuro, a retainer to Lord Matsudaira of Wakayama, and he wrote in a powerful, flowing script.

“Are you quite sure this is the man you’re after?” Baian asked quietly as he closed the register.

“Do you think I could make a mistake about a thing like this?”

“Of course not, it’s just …”

“Baian, we’d better get going or we might lose the bastard.”

“Don’t worry, I know the area. Just leave it to me.”

They left the inn, and soon after saw Mineyama on the road ahead of them.

“Hiko, I know it was twenty years ago,” Baian said as they walked, “but I still cannot relate the man we’re following with the beast who raped your wife.”

“Why not?”

The Lord of Wakayama was one of the most powerful lords in the country, and Mineyama looked every inch one of his retainers. Baian had never seen the man who had raped Ohiro, but Hikojiro had said that he was like a wild animal, and yet the man they were following was neatly dressed, well-mannered, and obviously well educated. He wondered if a person could change that much, even in twenty years.

Hikojiro is quite certain, so there can be no mistake, Baian told himself. But he had to repeat it several times before he could convince himself.

Mineyama did not look back once.

The samurai’s steps seemed a little heavier than on the previous day, but Hikojiro did not seem to notice. He simply kept his gaze fixed on his quarry, his eyes burning with rage.

The road they were on was very narrow, and had little traffic, so they kept quite a distance between themselves and the samurai. Sometimes they would even allow him to drop out of sight for a while, but they knew that there was nowhere he could go, and he soon came into view again.

Baian tried to make small talk, but Hikojiro was so intent on the pursuit that he did not notice. Baian was surprised: he had known Hikojiro for many years, and they had been through a lot together, but in all that time he had never before known him to lose control like this.

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