第37节
, in the grey twilight that preceded the dawn, they
descended a tree-covered slope and came in sight of the highway. The
old Pennsylvania Turnpike that Steve had been keeping an eye on since
leaving the wheelboat at Pi-saba.
Noburo raised his hand, signalling the column to halt.
Clearwater, Su-Shan and Nan-Khe were untied and lifted off their
horses. Still blindfolded, they were led to within about a hundred
yards of the road, then pushed into a kneeling position and harangued
at some length in Japanese by six ronin. The female minders bowed
repeatedly, bobbing up and down as if their bodies were on springs,
then prostrated themselves at the ronins' feet, pulling Clearwater to
the ground between them.
Steve, who loved to know everything, found himself wishing he could
understand what was being said.
The six ronin closed in and loosed off a final tirade, underlining
their words with several toe-jabs to the ribs and thighs. Nan-Khe and
SuoShan lay there, silent and unresisting. Satisfied that the women
had got the message, the ronin swaggered back to the rest of the party
and mounted their horses. Noburo led them back up the forested
slope.
Steve glanced back as the trees closed round them and saw that all
three were still lying flat on their faces, their heads towards the
road.
Nan-Khe and Su-Shan counted to one hundred twice as instructed, then
sat up and removed their blindfolds. The ronin had disappeared.
Untying the cloth covering Clearwater's masked eyes, they ushered her
on to the highway, and set off towards the east.
The ronin had told them they were less than five miles from the nearest
post-house. Once there, they would be able to discover the fate of the
convoy from which they had been kidnapped. If it was still in one
piece and had not travelled too far along the road, they might be able
to catch up with it and continue their journey. After attacks like
these, there were always delays while the local authorities took
statements from eye-witnesses and recorded details of the stolen
goods.
Had they been able to reveal that they were trusted servants of the
Consul-General of Masa-chusa and Ro-diren, brother-in-law to the Shogun
himself, every assistance would have been offered to them without
delay. But they could not do so. Their employer had threatened to
have their tongues torn out if they dared to utter his name. Their
papers identified them as house-women of a dried-fish merchant residing
at Nyo-poro. If anyone asked, they had been told to say they had
escorted 'Yoko Mi-Shima' to visit her relatives at Kari-faran and were
now returning with her to join said merchant at Fin, where he was due
to attend the next slave market.
But no one had told them what to do if they and their charge were
carried off by ronin. No one had foreseen a situation in which 'Yoko
Mi-Shima' might be taken from the sealed carriage-box and released on
to the highway where she would be exposed to the prying eyes of the
general public - and to official scrutiny.
It was all very worrying, and things were made even more precarious by
the fact that Su-Shan and NanKhe were duty-bound to report their kidnap
and release to the local magistrates' office - and answer any questions
put to them. The greatest danger lay in the fact that they had been
left stranded in one of the western domains which easterners such as
themselves regarded as the boon-docks. If one of these unsophisticated
provincial clerks insisted on seeing who was under the mask, instead of
treating the 'lady of pleasure' with the customary discretion, it could
prove extremely awkward.
And it was bound to happen, because their charge could not speak
Japanese and thus could not answer any questions put to her. Once the
long-dog was discovered, it would be immediately obvious that her
papers were forgeries.
Su-Shan and Nan-Khe both knew that the use of false documents was a
serious criminal offence. Trusted servants they might be, but as
Vietnamese, they were permanently relegated to the lower half of Iron
Master society. In essence, that meant they had neither the social