Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [30]
The men in the cellar scattered and tried to escape, but all of them could not. Spillbergen was choking, almost drowned. Some of the men slipped and were trampled on. Blackthorne had not moved from the corner. He just stared up at Omi, hating him.
Then Omi began talking. There was a cowed silence now, broken only by coughing and Spillbergen’s retching. When Omi had finished, the priest nervously came to the opening.
“These are Kasigi Omi’s orders: You will begin to act like decent human beings. You will make no more noise. If you do, next time five barrels will be poured into the cellar. Then ten, then twenty. You will be given food and water twice a day. When you have learned to behave, you will be allowed up into the world of men. Lord Yabu has graciously spared all your lives, providing you serve him loyally. All except one. One of you is to die. At dusk. You are to choose who it will be. But you”—he pointed at Blackthorne—“you are not to be the one chosen.” Ill at ease, the priest took a deep breath, half bowed to the samurai, and stepped back.
Omi peered down into the pit. He could see Blackthorne’s eyes and he felt the hatred. It will take much to break that man’s spirit, he thought. No matter. There’s time enough.
The trapdoor slammed into place.
CHAPTER 3
Yabu lay in the hot bath, more content, more confident than he had ever been in his life. The ship had revealed its wealth and this wealth gave him a power that he had never dreamed possible.
“I want everything taken ashore tomorrow,” he had said. “Repack the muskets in their crates. Camouflage everything with nets or sacking.”
Five hundred muskets, he thought exultantly. With more gunpowder and shot than Toranaga has in all the Eight Provinces. And twenty cannon, five thousand cannon balls with an abundance of ammunition. Fire arrows by the crate. All of the best European quality. “Mura, you will provide porters. Igurashi-san, I want all this armament, including the cannon, in my castle at Mishima forthwith, in secret. You will be responsible.”
“Yes, Lord.” They had been in the main hold of the ship and everyone had gaped at him: Igurashi, a tall, lithe, one-eyed man, his chief retainer, Zukimoto his quartermaster, together with ten sweat-stained villagers who had opened the crates under Mura’s supervision, and his personal bodyguard of four samurai. He knew they did not understand his exhilaration or the need to be clandestine. Good, he thought.
When the Portuguese had first discovered Japan in 1542, they had introduced muskets and gunpowder. Within eighteen months the Japanese were manufacturing them. The quality was not nearly as good as the European equivalent but that did not matter because guns were considered merely a novelty and, for a long time, used only for hunting—and even for that bows were far more accurate. Also, more important, Japanese warfare was almost ritual; hand-to-hand individual combat, the sword being the most honorable weapon. The use of guns was considered cowardly and dishonorable and completely against the samurai code, bushido, the Way of the Warrior, which bound samurai to fight with honor, to live with honor, and to die with honor; to have undying, unquestioning loyalty to one’s feudal lord; to be fearless of death—even to seek it in his service; and to be proud of one’s own name and keep it unsullied.
For years Yabu had had a secret theory. At long last, he thought exultantly, you can expand it and put it into effect: Five hundred chosen samurai, armed with muskets but trained as a unit, spearheading your twelve thousand conventional troops, supported by twenty cannon used in a special way by special men, also trained as a unit. A new strategy for a new era! In the coming war, guns could be decisive!
What about bushido? the ghosts of his ancestors had always asked him.
What about bushido? he had always asked them back.
They had never answered.
Never in his wildest dreams had he