Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [600]
“Don’t move,” shouted Jōtarō, arms outstretched.
“Who are you?”
“Never mind. Release Otsū!”
“You crazy? Don’t you know you can get killed meddling in other people’s business?”
“Osugi said you’re to hand Otsū over to me.”
“You’re lying through your teeth.” All three men laughed.
“I’m not. Look at this.” He held out a piece of tissue paper with Osugi’s handwriting on it. The message was short: “Things went wrong. There’s nothing you can do. Give Otsū to Jōtarō, then come back for me.”
The men, brows wrinkled, looked up at Jōtarō and moved onto the bank. “Can’t you read?” taunted Jōtarō.
“Shut up. I suppose you’re Jōtarō.”
“That’s right. My name is Aoki Jōtarō.”
Otsū had been staring fixedly at him, trembling slightly from fear and doubt. Now, scarcely knowing what she was doing, she screamed, gasped and stumbled forward.
The man closest to Jōtarō shouted, “Her gag’s come loose. Tighten it!” Then menacingly to Jōtarō: “This is the old woman’s handwriting, no doubt about it. But what happened to her? What does she mean, ‘come back for me’?”
“She’s my hostage,” Jōtarō said loftily. “You give me Otsū, I tell you where she is.”
The three men looked at each other. “Are you trying to be funny?” asked one man. “Do you know who we are? Any samurai in Himeji, if that’s where you’re from, should be familiar with the House of Hon’iden in Shimonoshō.”
“Yes or no—answer! If you don’t surrender Otsū, I’ll leave the old woman where she is until she starves to death.”
“You little bastard!”
One man grabbed Jōtarō and another unsheathed his sword and took a stance. The first growled, “You keep talking nonsense like that and I’ll break your neck. Where’s Osugi?”
“Will you give me Otsū?”
“No!”
“Then you won’t find out. Hand over Otsū, and we can put an end to this without anybody getting hurt.”
The man who had grabbed Jōtarō’s arm pulled him forward and tried to trip him.
Using his adversary’s strength, Jōtarō threw him over his own shoulder. But the next second, he was sitting on his behind, clutching at his right thigh. The man had whipped out his sword and struck in a mowing motion. Fortunately, the wound was not deep. Jōtarō jumped to his feet at the same time as his attacker. The other two men moved in on him.
“Don’t kill him. We have to take him alive if we’re to get Osugi back.”
Jōtarō quickly lost his reluctance to become involved in bloodshed. In the ensuing melee, the three men managed at one point to throw him to the ground. He uttered a roar and used the same tactic that moments before had been used against him. Ripping out his short sword, he jabbed straight through the belly of the man about to fall on him. Jōtarō’s hand and arm, halfway up to the shoulder, came away as red as if he’d stuck them into a barrel of plum vinegar, but his head was cleared of everything save the instinct for self-preservation.
On his feet again, he shouted and struck downward at the man in front of him. The blade hit a shoulder bone, and glancing sideways, tore off a slice of meat the size of a fish fillet. Screaming, the man grabbed for his sword, but it was too late.
“Sons of bitches! Sons of bitches!” Shouting with each stroke of his sword, Jōtarō held off the other two, then managed to seriously wound one of them.
They had taken their superiority for granted, but now they lost self-control and started swinging their arms with utter abandon.
Beside herself, Otsū ran around in circles, wriggling her bound hands frantically. “Somebody come! Save him!” But her words were soon lost, drowned by the sound of the river and the voice of the wind.
Suddenly she realized that instead of calling for help, she should be relying on her own strength. With a little cry of desperation, she sank to the ground and began rubbing the rope against the sharp edge of a rock. It was only loosely woven straw rope picked up by the wayside and she was soon able to free herself.
She picked up some rocks and ran straight toward