Dragon's King Palace (18 page)

She picked up the long end of the rafter and swatted his forehead. He fell, with a thud that shook the room, and lay unmoving.

In the sudden quiet, the women stared at their vanquished foes, then at each other. Wordlessly they shared their disbelief at the success of Reiko’s plan. That the whole battle had lasted just an instant amazed Reiko.

She bent, light-headed, from delayed excitation. Her heart banged wildly in her chest, but she couldn’t spare any time to recuperate. “Help me tie the men up,” she told Lady Yanagisawa.

Quickly they rolled over the samurai, removed his sash, and used the long cotton cloth to truss his ankles and wrists behind him; then they did the same to the peasant youth.

“Why not just kill them?” Lady Keisho-in said. “The way they’ve treated us, they deserve to die.”

“We don’t want their comrades to take revenge on you.” Reiko pulled off the men’s sandals and jammed their socks in their mouths so that when they woke, they couldn’t call to their comrades. She snatched up the samurai’s fallen sword and thrust it into Lady Yan-agisawa’s hands. “Use this to defend yourself and Midori and Lady Keisho-in if necessary.”

Lady Yanagisawa held the weapon as though afraid of cutting herself. “… But I don’t know how.”

There was no time for Reiko to teach her sword fighting. “Do the best you can,” Reiko said. She yanked the samurai’s dagger from the scabbard at his waist, then hurried to the door. “I must go now.”

“Good luck,” Midori said. “And please be careful!”

“Bring back the army,” Keisho-in commanded.

Lady Yanagisawa sat in her disheveled garments, the sword wavering in her grip, her expression forlorn.

Hating to leave her friends so helpless, Reiko slipped out the door. She found herself in an empty room whose barred windows gave a view of leafy branches. Walls of thick beams embedded in plaster, blackened by fire, enclosed this room and divided it from the prison. In its center, a wooden staircase slanted upward to a square hole in the ceiling. Daylight poured through the hole. The foot of the staircase ended at another opening in the floor. Clutching her stolen dagger, Reiko hastened to peer down the hole and saw more stairs zigzagging through the building’s lower levels. She paused, listening. She heard only the sounds of birds, water, and wind. Then she plunged down the stairs.

Loose, uneven slats wobbled under her sandals. She leapt over spaces where risers were missing. The smells of old smoke and rotted wood intensified. She passed through a room similar to that above. As she clambered down the next flight of stairs, the need for caution vied with her urge to hurry. She slowed her pace near the end of the staircase and hesitantly entered the bottom level.

This contained a room that must have once been an armory; hooks and racks for hanging weapons protruded from the walls. On the stone floor lay a rusted cannon. Double doors, made of heavy timbers and iron plates, beckoned Reiko. One door stood opened outward, framing a rectangle of daylight. Reiko ran to the door and peeked outside. A narrow landing preceded a short flight of stone steps that led to paved, empty ground. Beyond this, a forest of pines, cypress, and maple obscured the distance. To her right and left rose more trees that grew close beside the building. Reiko savored the prospect of freedom. She hurried down the steps into cool, humid fresh air and across the cracked paving stones. A gap in the forest marked the path along which the kidnappers must have brought her and the other women. There Reiko paused, looked backward to see if anyone was coming, and got her first glimpse of her prison.

It was a tall, square tower. Many of the flat rocks that banked its sloped foundation had dropped away, exposing the clay understructure. The tower’s walls were plaster, once white but now discolored black and gray by fire and crumbling off the wood framework. Upturned eaves shaded the three lower stories and their barred windows. On the fourth, highest story, a crumbling segment of wall and the remains of a tile roof enclosed one corner. The room stood open to the sky, where dark storm clouds drifted over the sun. Fallen wreckage surrounded the tower. Reiko realized that her prison was the keep of a castle, probably ruined in the civil wars during the last century. But she had no idea where in the world the castle was located.

She crept down the path, over weeds flattened by footsteps. A breeze enlivened the forest; sun-dappled shadows whispered. Unaccustomed to the wild, Reiko flinched at noises. Was that an animal’s cry, or a human voice? A bird pecking a hollow tree, or someone drumming a signal? Reiko tiptoed, holding her dagger ready to stab, should anyone leap out of the forest at her. She regretted that her kimono, with its pattern of lavender irises on aqua silk, rendered her conspicuous.

She’d traversed some thirty paces into the forest when the path divided. Looking down the right-hand branch, beyond a cypress grove, Reiko saw the peaks and gables of tile roofs that belonged to the castle’s other buildings. There the kidnappers must have their headquarters. Reiko hurried down the left path. It circled back around the keep, whose ruined top she could see above the trees. Then the path and forest ended.

Before her, a narrow strip of sloping ground, covered with tall grass, separated the forest from the water she’d heard while imprisoned. The water, rimmed with reeds, sparkling blue and indigo beneath the scudding clouds, appeared to be a lake that stretched some two hundred paces to the opposite shore, where woods rose into hills. The wind rippled little waves across the lake’s surface. Looking right, Reiko saw that the shoreline at her feet gave way to marsh as it curved into the distance. To her near left, the ground had eroded, and the keep jutted into the lake; waves smacked the stone base. Reiko was alarmed. She couldn’t cross the lake to safety because she didn’t know how to swim—females of her class weren’t taught during childhood, as were daughters of fishermen. Nor could she follow the lakeshore in the hope of finding a village, because she couldn’t get around the keep or through the marsh. She’d chosen the wrong direction and wasted precious time.

Reiko darted back into the forest, heading west and inland, climbing over fallen logs, wading through underbrush, and ducking under low branches, until she stumbled upon a path. This led her dangerously near the castle, within twenty paces of a burned building that had collapsed. Reiko saw smoke rising above the roofs of adjacent, intact structures. She smelled fish roasting over a charcoal fire. Her stomach growled with hunger, for she’d eaten nothing since the kidnappers had brought the food yesterday. She raced on, afraid of encountering the men, past crumbled walls and more trees, seeking a road to any place she could find friendly people. Soon she burst free of the woods—and foundered on another grassy slope that inclined toward more water.

She stared in disbelief at the sparkling lake, marshy shallows, and the forested land beyond. Had she lost her orientation and returned to the same place she’d just fled? But when she turned, she saw the keep behind her; and on the far horizon across the water were mountains she hadn’t seen before. Reiko’s heart plummeted as an awful thought occurred to her. She ran along the lakeside, first in one direction, then the other. The way the shoreline curved around the forest and back toward the keep, and the ever-present vista of the lake, confirmed her worst suspicions.

The castle was on an island.

She was trapped.

Gasps of anguish heaved Reiko’s chest as she gazed across the lake. The opposite shore, so tantalizingly close, mocked her disappointed hope. Clouds darkened the morning; raindrops dimpled the water. Reiko thought of Midori, Lady Yanagisawa, and Keisho-in, waiting for her to bring help, trusting her to save them. She thought of the risk they’d taken, only for her to fail. In her despair, Reiko wanted to wave her hands and shout to anyone who might heed a plea for rescue.

Suddenly she heard men’s voices, coming around the curve of the island. Fright launched her running into the forest. Crouching behind a tree, she peered out at the lakeshore. Three samurai, armed with swords, bows, and quivers of arrows, strode into view. Three more samurai came from the opposite direction. The two groups met and paused. With a thudding heart Reiko listened to their conversation.

“Any sign of her?”

“Not yet.”

They knew she’d escaped from the keep, Reiko realized with dismay. They’d found their comrades bound and gagged, and now they were looking for her.

“She can’t have gone far.”

“She must be hiding in the forest.”

The six men turned their gazes in Reiko’s direction. She held herself rigid, her breath caught, for fear that the slightest movement would reveal her. The men tramped into the forest, so near Reiko that she could have touched them as they passed her. Had they punished her friends? Reiko was sure they blamed her for the escape attempt and intended revenge on her. But despite her fear, a thought raised her spirits.

There
was
a way off the island. The kidnappers must have transported themselves, the women, and provisions for everyone across the lake to the castle by boat. Reiko might yet escape—if she could find the boat before the kidnappers caught her.

She hastened through the forest, away from the search party, toward the island’s north shore, which she hadn’t yet seen. Perhaps the boat was moored there. She didn’t allow herself to worry that she didn’t know how to sail or row a boat. Trusting in luck, Reiko fought past thorny bushes, then froze. Some fifteen paces distant, a lane crossed her path. Two rough peasant men carrying wooden clubs paced up and down the lane. Farther ahead, the forest thinned, buildings fronted the lake, and more figures moved. The kidnappers had marshaled their entire force to patrol the island and find the fugitive.

Reiko veered south, hoping to circumvent the castle and find a boat on the other side. Rain sprinkled the foliage, while the sun’s glinting rays penetrated the clouds. As Reiko wove between trees, she heard footsteps crunching the underbrush.

“What was that?” a man’s voice said.

“What?” another man asked.

“A flash of light.”

The sun must have reflected off the blade of her dagger, Reiko thought with distress. She crouched in the brush, but the first man shouted, “I see her! She’s over here!”

Aghast, Reiko heard other voices calling replies and spreading the news. She ran, hindered by tree stumps and saplings. Glancing wildly around, she saw men crashing through the forest, converging on her, though she kept running. Her heart pounded; frantic breaths pumped her lungs. Now the forest gave way to a courtyard paved with cracked flagstones and surrounded on three sides by attached buildings that blocked her flight. The kidnappers had herded her straight to the castle. As Reiko skidded to a stop, she gleaned a vague impression of dingy half-timbered structures that rose two stories high, with balconies, shaded verandas, and latticed windows. She heard horses snorting and smelled their odor: The kidnappers had swum them across the lake and stabled them nearby. Cornered and panting, she turned to face her pursuers.

They stood, perhaps thirty strong, ranged in a semicircle against her. Samurai pointed their swords or held their bows drawn, arrows ready to fly; peasant toughs brandished their clubs. Grimy faces snarled. Reiko gulped panic and raised her blade, determined to fight rather than submit.

“Put it down, or we’ll shoot you,” barked a samurai.

Reiko recognized his face, saw the bloody bruise on the side of his head: He was the leader she’d knocked unconscious. While she hesitated, a bow twanged. The arrow grazed her hand that held the dagger. She shrieked, and her fingers involuntarily jerked open. The dagger fell to the ground. The men advanced on Reiko. Terrified beyond speech, she backed away until stopped against a veranda.

“Not so brave now, are you?” the wounded leader mocked. Reiko saw vindictive humor in his eyes. “I bet you ran away because you wanted a little fun. Well, we’re going to have some now.”

He grabbed her arm. Reiko cried out and pulled away. Chuckling, he let her go. Another samurai caught her. Then the men were shoving her from one to another, laughing raucously. Hands pawed her body, loosed her hair from its pinned-up knot, and yanked its streaming tresses. Reiko struck and kicked the men, but they only laughed harder. Someone tore off her sash. As she tried to hold her robes closed, the men made lewd noises. They pushed her back and forth, spun her, and clutched her. Sky, forest, buildings, and savage faces swirled around Reiko as she helplessly stumbled. Fear and vertigo nauseated her. The men ripped off her kimono. Naked beneath her thin white under-robe, Reiko cowered.

“Leave me alone!” she screamed.

“We’re not finished,” the wounded samurai said, then told the other men, “Hold her down.”

The men seized her, and though Reiko fought until she was breathless, they forced her to lie on the ground. They pinned her arms over her head; they spread and held her legs. Above her towered their leader, huge and menacing.

“Now you’ll pay for what you did to me,” he said. He lowered himself on his hands and knees, straddling her. His comrades cheered and hooted, egging him on.

“No!” Tossing her head, Reiko strained against her “Let me go! Help, somebody, please!”

Hysteria dissolved her speech into inarticulate screams. The leader’s ugly, grinning face blotted out the sky. Then a voice rang out above the commotion: “Stop!”

The noise ceased. In the abrupt hush, wind swept the trees; thunder rumbled closer. The samurai atop Reiko turned his head sideways, and confusion replaced the lust on his face. Reiko lay paralyzed, uncertain what to expect.

“Get off her,” ordered the voice. It was deep, gruff, and harsh with anger. “The rest of you, move away.”

Relief and gratitude flooded Reiko as the samurai climbed off her. The circle of other men broke and they scattered. Reiko cautiously raised herself on one elbow. She watched her tormentors stand at attention, facing the central building. Her gaze followed theirs. On the veranda stood a man. The shade under the eaves obscured him, and all she could discern was that he had the shaved crown and two swords of a samurai. Fresh terror eclipsed her relief.