第89节
sk
why and, by the time the runner arrived to announce that the rowboat
had been sighted, Brickman had vanished into the night. No one in the
M'Call camp had any idea where he was. Knowing Brickman, the news gave
Mr Snow something else to worry about. He borrowed the pipe that was
being passed around a nearby group of Bears, took a few puffs to calm
his nerves, then led his companions to the shore below the trading
post.
Steve, now perched inside one of the giant paddle wheels, saw the
rowboat leave Yama-Shita's vessel and head towards the beach. Lanterns
hung from the ends of cross-beams supported by two posts that had been
fixed to the side-rails fore and aft. The boat was crewed by its usual
complement of whites, four oarsmen and a helmsman but the ornate red
and gold cabin in which Yama-Shita travelled was not mounted on the
deck. In its place stood an impassive masked samurai, legs splayed,
arms folded. Behind him, in similar postures, were his two
'red-stripes', both now holding slim, twelve-foot long poles topped
with pennants bearing the symbol of their house. The boat passed
within fifty yards of where Steve lay concealed. He followed it with
his eyes as it slid across the wind-rippled water, its lanterns
creating a soft-edged oasis of yellow-light in the all-enveloping
dark.
From where he now sat, at water-level, Steve could just make out the
vertical line of the tall trading post, silhouetted against the orange
glow coming from the fires of the more distant Mute encampment. The
actual lines and the enclosed bull-ring were hidden by a rise in the
ground. He saw tiny figures step out of the darkness to meet the
row-boat then, after a short interval, it began its return journey.
Steve was conscious of wasting valuable time but his curiosity was
aroused and nothing was going to budge him until he saw who was in the
boat.
The samurai now sat cross-legged facing his three seated passengers,
one in front, two side-by-side behind.
Behind them, stood the two reds, their pennants fluttering proudly in
the wind.
At a distance of fifty yards, in the warm fuzzy glow of the lanterns,
it was almost impossible to discern the features of those on board but
there was no doubt about the identity of the white-bearded figure who
faced the samurai. The crafty old coot. So that was why he had gotten
dressed up. What was he up to?
Steve was filled with a sudden urge to swim across and find some way to
eavesdrop on their conversation but commonsense finally prevailed. If
he was caught, armed to the teeth, on the big wheel's territory it
might sour what were clearly private negotiations and put Mr Snow and
his friends in mortal danger - not to mention himself. The fate of Mr
Snow's two companions was of little concern but he could not risk
losing the wordsmith .at this stage of the game. There was still too
much to play for. Steve waited until the rowboat reached its
destination, watched Mr Snow mount the steps and vanish with his
samurai escort, then he turned his attention back to the problem of
finding a way into the wheel-boat without being detected.
The samurai led Mr Snow and the two clan-elders through a door in the
rear of the galleried superstructure.
They found themselves in a large area covered entirely in moist,
sweet-smelling wood. The deep beams, which held up the planked ceiling
were supported by huge square wooden pillars set into a latticed
floor.
Mr Snow, who had never been inside any manmade structure bigger than a
Mute hut, found the wheel-boat's size and complexity rather
frightening. And to judge from their expressions, so did his
companions. To be within such a colossal construction awakened fearful
folk-memories of another time when their ancestors had been trapped in
flaming labyrinths of wood and stone, crushed under falling beams and
cut to ribbons by jagged shards of frozen water - the Mute way of
describing glass, itself a word that had been lost from the language.
Six big round tubs stood in a line, four of them filled with steaming