Inevitably the patrol would come this way and be very close. His signal, the call of a night bird, gave the order.
At once they sank deeper into the foliage and kept their heads lowered, hardly breathing. The patrol approached, and then passed without seeing them--just as Katsumata had forecast when he had suggested their attack plan: "Initially it will be easy to be missed in the dark. Never forget surprise is with you. Your infiltration will be totally unexpected. Who would dare to attack the Shogun when he is surrounded by so many men? At a way station? Impossible! Remember, with stealth, surprise and ferocious speed two or three of you will reach the kernel--and one is enough."
Saigo watched the enemy marching away. A marvelous glow pervaded him and all his confidence returned. Another short wait until the enemy patrol had turned the corner, then he motioned for the attack teams to move into their predetermined positions. Protected from view by the shrubbery, four men slithered away to his right, two to his left. When all were in position, he took a deep breath to help slow his heartbeat. His signal, again the call of a night bird, gave the order to begin.
At once the pair on his far right eased out of the shrubs onto the path, adjusting the ties on their pantaloons, and began strolling away, their arms around each other as lovers will. Within moments they had been noticed by the guards at the nearest hedge.
"You two halt!"
The two youths obeyed and one called out, "Blue Rainbow, Blue Rainbow, Lord Sergeant" and both laughed, pretending to be shy at being seen, then continued to stroll away, hand in hand.
"Halt! Who are you?"
"Ah, so sorry, just friends on a nightly stroll," the youth said in his softest, most gentle voice, "Blue Rainbow, have you forgotten our password?"
One of the samurai laughed and said, "If the Captain catches you "strolling" in the bushes around here you'll get more than a Blue Rainbow and both pairs of cheeks will know another type of beating!"
Again both youths pretended to laugh.
Unhurried, they walked away, ignoring more strident calls to stop. Finally the Sergeant shouted, "You two. Come here, at once!" They faced him a moment, calling out plaintively there was no harm in what they were doing. Saigo and the others, covered by the diversion had been crawling into final positions. Taut with excitement that they had not been noticed, they rested a second, knowing this diversion was almost over. The sound of the night bird Saigo made this time was loud enough to reach the two youths.
Without hesitation, they pretended to laugh and ran off gaily, hand in hand, directly away from the guards as though playing a game. Their path carelessly took them through a pool of light and allowed them to be seen clearly for the first time. With a shout of rage the Sergeant and four men charged in pursuit. Sentries at the far main gate peered into the darkness to see what was happening, and those guards at the hedge who could see beckoned others nearby, all of them alert.
The two shishi were quickly surrounded. Back to back, swords ready, they stood silently at bay under a barrage of questions, nothing effeminate now in their stance or the way their lips were drawn back from the teeth.
Enraged, the Sergeant stepped forward a pace.
The youth opposing him readied. His right hand darted into his sleeve and came out with a shuriken and before the Sergeant could duck or move aside the five-pointed circle of steel was embedded in his throat and he fell burbling, choking in his own blood. Both shishi leapt to the attack but neither could break out of the net and though they fought bravely, wounding three of the samurai, they were no match for the others who, though wanting to disarm them and capture them alive, could not do so.
One of the youths took a sword thrust through the lower part of his back and cried out, severely wounded but not enough to kill him immediately. The other whirled to his aid and in that instant was mortally wounded and crumpled, dying. "Sonno-joi," he gasped.
Aghast the other heard him, made one last impotent attempt to close with an attacker, then abruptly turned his sword on himself and fell on it.
"Find the Captain," a samurai panted, blood streaming from a sword slash in his arm. One of the others ran off as the rest collected around the bodies, the Sergeant still gurgling though dying fast. "Nothing we can do for him. Never seen a shuriken so fast." Someone turned the two dead men over. "Look, death poems! Shishi all right--eeee, both Satsumas! They must have gone mad."
"Sonno-joi!" another muttered, "that's not mad."
"It's mad to say that aloud," a hard-faced ashigaru warned him. "If an officer hears you..."
"Listen, these motherless dogs had the password, there's a traitor here!" More nervously they looked at each other.
Over on the right the kitchen staff were transfixed, not knowing what was going on. Many samurai had been drawn away from the hedge and stood gaping at the bodies, creating the opening Katsumata and Saigo had planned.
Again Saigo signalled. His two strongest fighters broke out of the bushes on his extreme right and ran for the far southeast corner. Almost at once they were spotted. Cursing, the two nearest samurai rushed to intercept as others ran to their aid. Violent hand-to-hand combat began again, darkness helping the attackers immeasurably.
One defender screamed and went down clawing his half-severed arm. More samurai were drawn away from the hedge immediately in front of Saigo and just before the samurai overwhelmed the two fighters, in a coordinated maneuver the two shishi broke off the battle and pretended to flee pell-mell for the fence near the kitchens, well away from Saigo and the three final teams. As they fled they unwound ropes from their waists with small grapples on the end. Nearing the fence they threw them deftly, caught the top, and began to climb, their pursuers redoubling their efforts.
By now all attention was on these two. Guards near the entrance and the far side of the Shogun's complex, still not knowing exactly what was happening other than that two ronin were loose in the compound and were now trying to escape over the fence, hurried to intercept them. Others ran out and down the perimeter fence to catch them on that side.
One of the shishi reached the top of the fence but before he could scramble over it a knife impaled him and he fell backwards into the shrubberies. The other man abandoned his rope, leapt beside his friend and just had time to see him bury his own knife in his throat to avoid capture before he went down under a flurry of blows. He twisted and turned and fought with great strength but was soon disarmed and pinioned to the earth by four samurai.
"Now, who are you?" a samurai asked, out of breath. "Who are you and what's your game?"
"Sonno-joi... obey your Emperor," the man panted and again tried to fight out of their grip but could not. Others were collecting around him and he was confident he had done his part in the attack and could continue his diversion for a little while longer, unafraid of capture because there was a poison vial in the neck of his kimono within reach of his teeth. "I am Hiroshi Ishii of Tosa, and demand to see the Shogun."
From where he was hidden Saigo and the five men with him could hear their compatriot but their attention was fixed on the hedge facing them and on the far entrance. The few remaining guards left it to gather around the doomed man and now, at last, the target was open. "Attack!"
The six men leapt to their feet and charged, Saigo and Tora leading the wedge. They had covered perhaps half the distance before there was a warning shout and samurai surrounding the bodies of the first team began running back to head them off. At once Ishii redoubled his efforts to escape, shouting and raving to distract those holding him but a fist smashed him into unconsciousness.
"You two stay here," the samurai panted, sucking his bruised knuckles. "Don't kill the son of a dog, we'll need him alive." He got up painfully and limped off to join the others, a bad sword cut on his thigh.
Some of the defenders were gaining on the six shishi who still ran directly at the hedge that curled away in both directions. "Now!" Saigo ordered. Immediately the pair to his right turned back into defensive positions, shurikens in their hands. Warily the running samurai slowed, darted left and right, feinted, then attacked, the shurikens finding targets but not wounding badly enough and another hand-to-hand began, six samurai against the two of them.
Reinforcements were running from the main gate, others from the first diversion, all of them, defenders and attackers, converging on their lodestar--the gateway to the Shogun's lair. When the men from the Inn's main gate saw to their horror that the hedges and entrance had been left completely unguarded--though the doors were closed--with Saigo and three others running fast and not far from the hedge, they swung away to position themselves between the shishi and the entrance, leaving others to attack them, and frantically raced to protect the gate. Behind Saigo and Tora the two fighters were attacking, retreating, still covering their rear. Both men had sustained wounds but two samurai were on the ground writhing with pain. Four against two with others not far away.
"Now!" Saigo ordered and the pair on his left broke away and stabbed for the entrance. No doubt they would reach it before the defenders and this caused others heading for Saigo also to change direction and make for the entrance as well. At once Saigo and Tora whirled and joined the fight behind them. Their ferocious charge dispatched two of the remaining four samurai and helped eliminate the remaining enemy--only Saigo and Tora, though breathing heavily, were untouched.
At once Saigo ordered, "Go!" the two men sang out, "sonno-joi" and, painfully, rushed to support the attack on the entrance, drawing off more samurai, leaving Saigo and Tora to resume their headlong charge for the hedge.
The first pair of shishi attacking the gateway reached the narrow path and ran for the doors. One man began to push them open. At that moment an arrow thwacked viciously into the wood and then both men were hit and shortly riddled with more arrows from bowmen amongst the reinforcements. They cried out, impotently tried to continue, and died on their feet. The second team gained the pathway. One rushed at the oncoming samurai, the other went for the gates, stumbled over his dead comrades, and died, pierced with four arrows. His friend hit the samurai head-on, and was quickly killed. Only minutes had passed since the beginning.
Now the way was open to the pathway. In moments the fleetest of the defenders would reach the entrance and then there would be no way that Saigo and Tora, almost at the end of their run and due to turn for the gateway, could reach their goal. So the pace of the defenders slackened, the bowmen took aim leisurely, confident of victory. To their astonishment, instead of wheeling along the hedge, Saigo and Tora kept the straight line of their rush and hurled themselves forward at the hedge, side by side.
Their momentum caused them to burst through it, that and the accuracy of their leap. Over preceding days, Saigo found that though the branches were tightly interwoven, the trunks of the trees were about half a metre apart, and, he had surmised, if judged correctly, a rush would carry them through.
It did, successfully, though the branches lashed them bloodily around the face and arms. The two men picked themselves up exactly where Saigo had planned--on the meandering path beside the veranda that led to the bathhouse. For a moment no one was in sight, then several terrified maids and servants gaped at them from a doorway and vanished. Saigo led the soundless dash down the path and up the steps and around the veranda corner.
Two anxious officials came out of nowhere, unarmed and unprepared, one of them the Chamberlain.
Saigo cut both down, killing the Chamberlain instantly, and wounding the other, and charged onwards.
Tora finished off this man, jumped over the bodies and rushed in pursuit.
Along the veranda and around the corner and smashing through the light shoji screen to burst into the bathhouse. Half-naked maids stared at them panic stricken: swords bloody, faces scratched and bloody, kimonos ripped and bloody. The air was warm, sweet-smelling, humid.
Saigo bellowed with rage. The steaming, shallow bath, fed from a natural hot-spring was empty, so were the four wooden steam boxes, and so were the massage tables, except one. In an instant he saw every detail of the tiny, naked girl lying there, the shock in her eyes, her half-opened mouth, teeth blackened, her plume of jet hair twisted into a stark white towel, more towels under her, small breasts and limbs and feet, dark brown nipples, all of her curved, inviting, golden skin now pinkish from the heat of the bath, oiled and fragrant--and the blind, half-naked masseuse, standing motionlessly over her, head cocked, listening intently.
So easy to kill the girl and all of them but his orders were not to harm the Princess at all costs.
Nonetheless his fury at being cheated--for their timing had been perfect, their intelligence perfect and the Shogun's pattern never varying--made his head seem about to explode. The fury turned to lust and shivered him, all of him wanting her, now, fast, brutally, any way, the wife before the husband, death to both of them but first her splayed.
His lips came away from his teeth and he charged across the expanse. The maids scattered, one fainted, the Princess gasped and lay motionless, petrified. But his obsession with the Shogun diverted him and his rush bypassed her and took him to the shoji door where again he crashed through and, once more, with Tora close behind, unerringly led the run along verandas towards the sleeping quarters and his prey, gardens to his right, rooms left--no longer a thinking man just a raging killing animal. Shoji doors were open, faces there.
Maids and youths and ladies-in-waiting and servants attracted by the commotion, dressed or half dressed for the evening or for bed or for bath, gaped at them.
No guards in these rooms. Yet.