第31节

tted to making a killing stroke that would dispatch

both woman and child.

For a fleeting instant, his raised sword wavered. It was the chance

Steve needed. Coming in from the side, he thrust his quarterstaff

forward, driving the full length of the blade in through the Jap's

exposed armpit into the chest cavity beyond.

Nine down, three to go.

He turned to face the final trio. They were a gruesome sight. With

the samurai who had just had his card cancelled, they had done most of

the close-quarter killing, and their body armour and swords were

smeared with blood.

And the next blood to be spilled will be yours, thought Steve. Come on

staff! Don't fail me now!

Emboldened by his spirited attack and the dwindling number of samurai,

the camp-women began to reappear.

Some of them picked up the halberds lying by the bodies of the earlier

defenders; others gathered up arrows and fitted them to bows. Over on

his left, two women finished off the stunned samurai whose arms he had

broken. The rest formed a ragged but resolute semi-circle behind the

trio of swordsmen facing Steve.

The scent of victory was in the air and they wanted to be in at the

kill. Steve waved to them to stay back. After the way those arrows

had been flying around earlier, he did not want to risk getting in the

way of a near miss at this stage of the game.

While the two outside samurai edged outwards, figuring how best to take

Steve, the guy in the middle spun on his heel and advanced on the

women, hopping from one foot to the other like a bandy-legged bogey

man, shouting angrily and brandishing his sword. For a minute it

worked. Two or three turned and fled. The rest wavered and took a few

paces backwards but then rallied and held their ground.

Steve knew he had to strike while the middle man had his back turned.

The two on his right and left were clearly planning to take him from

both sides. A frontal attack on one would leave him exposed to the

other.

Steve leapt through the space between them, twisting round in the air

so that he landed squarely on his feet behind both men, facing his

previous position. It was a tremendous jump. From a standing start he

had cleared over twelve feet. If his body had not been energised by

the power in the quarterstaff he would have been lucky to cover half

that distance.

As the startled Jap on his right turned to bring his sword to bear,

Steve swung the iron-shod butt of his quarterstaff up and round,

delivering a lethal uppercut to the base of the jaw. It landed at the

point where the hangman places his knot and produced the same effect a

broken neck. Then, in one continuous movement, he caught the sword

blow from the second Jap on the cross-piece set below his own blade,

and swung the butt forward and upwards in between the samurai's splayed

legs. The impact lifted him clean off the ground. As he came back

down and crumpled forwards under the pain, Steve snapped his head back

with another iron-butt-blow under the chin, then, sensing danger, he

spun round to face the attack of the advancing middle man.

The last samurai's sword was still poised above his head as Steve's

blade punched deep into his stomach. It was only when he toppled

forwards that Steve saw why the Jap's reactions had been so slow. A

shower of arrows had turned his back into a pincushion.

,Well done, ladies...

Steve turned back to make sure the other two were out for the count and

was just in time to see the woman whose life he had saved plunge the

first Jap's sword into the throat of the second.

Noburo Naka-Jima, leading the forty-six survivors from his band of

ronin through the secret door to his camp, was alarmed to find the

bodies of two of Lord Se-Iko's samurai lying in the passageway

beyond.