Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [62]
Her mouth was parched. She felt as if she had a mouthful of thorns. “Master, water, please,” she called out feebly. Hearing no reply, she raised herself on her elbows and craned her neck toward the water basin just outside the door. Slowly she managed to crawl to it, but as she put her hand on the bamboo dipper at the side, she heard a rain shutter fall to the ground somewhere behind her. The teahouse was little more than a mountain hut to begin with, and there was nothing to prevent anyone from simply lifting out any or all of the loosely fitted shutters.
Osugi and Uncle Gon stumbled in through the opening.
“I can’t see a thing,” complained the old woman in what she thought was a whisper.
“Wait a minute,” Gon replied, heading toward the hearth room, where he stirred up the embers and threw on some wood to get a bit of light.
“She’s not in here, Granny!”
“She must be! She can’t have gotten away!” Almost immediately, Osugi noticed that the door in the back room was ajar.
“Look, out there!” she shouted.
Otsū, who was standing just outside, threw the dipperful of water through the narrow opening into the old woman’s face and sped downhill like a bird in the wind, sleeves and skirt trailing behind her.
Osugi ran outside and spat out an imprecation.
“Gon, Gon. Do something, do something!”
“Did she get away?”
“Of course she did! We certainly gave her enough warning, making all that noise. You would have to drop the shutter!” The old woman’s face contorted with rage. “Can’t you do something?”
Uncle Gon directed his attention to the deer-like form flying in the distance. He raised his arm and pointed. “That’s her, right? Don’t worry, she doesn’t have much of a head start. She’s sick and anyway she only has the legs of a girl. I’ll catch up with her in no time.” He tucked his chin in and broke into a run. Osugi followed close behind.
“Uncle Gon,” she cried, “you can use your sword on her, but don’t cut off her head until after I’ve had a chance to give her a piece of my mind.”
Uncle Gon suddenly let out a scream of dismay and fell to his hands and knees.
“What’s the matter?” cried Osugi, coming up behind him.
“Look down.” Osugi did. Directly in front of them was a steep drop into a bamboo-covered ravine.
“She dived into that?”
“Yes. I don’t think it’s very deep, but it’s too dark to tell. I’ll have to go back to the teahouse and get a torch.”
As he knelt staring into the ravine, Osugi cried, “What are you waiting for, you dolt?” and gave him a violent shove. There was the sound of feet trying to gain a footing, scrambling desperately before coming to a stop at the bottom of the ravine.
“You old witch!” shouted Uncle Gon angrily. “Now just get on down here yourself! See how you like it!”
Takezō, arms folded, sat atop a large boulder and stared across the valley at the Hinagura stockade. Under one of those roofs, he reflected, his sister was imprisoned. But he’d sat there from dawn to dusk the previous day and all day today, unable to devise a plan to get her out. He intended to sit until he did.
His thinking had progressed to the point where he was confident he could outmaneuver the fifty or a hundred soldiers guarding the stockade, but he continued to ponder the lay of the land. He had to get not only in but out. It was not encouraging: behind the stockade was a deep gorge, and at the front the road into the stockade was well protected by a double gate. To make matters worse, the two of them would be forced to flee across a flat plateau, which offered not a single tree to hide behind; on a cloudless day such as this, a better target would be hard to find.
The situation thus called for a night assault, but he’d observed that the gates were closed and locked before sunset. Any attempt to jimmy them open would doubtless set off a cacophonous alarm of wooden clappers. There seemed no foolproof way to approach the fortress.
“There’s no way,” Takezō thought sadly. “Even if I just took a long shot, risked