Young Samurai by Chris Bradford

Author:Chris Bradford [Bradford, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141971025
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

37

Wraith

Three torturous days … three painfully long nights … with neither sight nor sound of Akiko.

Jack had barely slept for worry. Had daimyo Kato killed her? Snapped her neck as he’d promised? Or was he torturing her? Making her pay for their defiance. After all, unlike Jack, she was of little value to the daimyo. The best he could hope for was that she was languishing in another foul cell like his, perhaps crouched in a damp filthy corner worrying about his fate. Jack pictured her sitting in the only light that came from a pale crescent moon, barely glimpsed through the bars of a tiny grate high in the wall. There was a chance she might be still alive, looking at that same moon. For three whole days Jack had clung to that dream. But now he felt it slipping from his grasp, a nightmare consuming every flicker of hope.

Daimyo Kato rules with an iron fist … prides himself on the brutality of his samurai …

In their situation, a quick death might have been the most merciful option. Jack shifted his position on the dirt floor and groaned, rubbing his bruised and battered ribs. The guards checked on him twice a day: to bring him food – a thin rice gruel – a jug of slimy water and, at the end of every visit, a fresh beating. Nothing that would permanently damage him for his presentation to the Shogun, but enough to make his stay in the cell as painful and unpleasant as possible.

A rat scuttled in the darkness and Jack batted it away with his foot. The creature had squeezed itself under the door and was looking for anything to eat. Jack shuddered at the thought that he might fall asleep, only to wake and find vermin gnawing on his hands or bare toes. He couldn’t afford to lose another finger.

On the first night, Jack had explored every inch of his cell for a way out – a loose bar in the grating, a weak panel in the door, a crumbling area of plaster in the wall. But his prison was secure, mostly below ground level at the base of the keep, the tiny grate his only view of the world outside.

Music now drifted down from the upper storeys of the fortress. Jack strained his ears to listen to the insistent twang of a shamisen, accompanied by the percussive beat of tsuzumi drums and the click-clack of wooden clappers. Every so often he’d catch bursts of laughter or applause, the joyous sounds seeming to mock his pitiful state. Judging by the night’s frivolity, Jack guessed that the Shogun’s samurai must have arrived and were being entertained by daimyo Kato. The samurai lord would be buoyant in the knowledge that he could demonstrate his loyalty to the Shogun in the highest possible manner – by successfully capturing and delivering the infamous gaijin samurai.

Jack surrendered himself to despair. He’d been in many difficult and desperate situations before, when escape or salvation had seemed impossible.

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