The Ring of Earth - Chris Bradford [3]
2
AN UNFAIR FIGHT
The serving girl, a slip of a thing with a short bob of black hair, peeked fearfully over the counter. Her eyes never left Jack as he was backed into a corner.
Since it was an inn for commoners, the wooden building was a simple affair constructed mainly of bamboo and cream-coloured washi paper walls, with a few wooden pillars for support. The tables were rickety and worn. Beside the counter were a large cask of saké and several stone jars for serving the rice wine. Jack caught a glimpse of the girl’s father, hurriedly stowing away the few precious china bowls he owned, and wondered if there was a back way out of the inn. The sliding shoji door that was his most obvious means of escape stood on the opposite side of the room, with the three samurai in between.
‘Must we take him alive?’ asked the thin one.
‘No, his head will be good enough for the Shogun,’ replied the leader.
Jack, realizing he couldn’t defeat them all with a single sword, withdrew his wakizashi. He raised both weapons and prepared to defend himself. The two magnificent swords with their dark-red woven handles had been given to him by Akiko, his closest and dearest friend. They had been her late father’s and highly prized, made by Shizu, the greatest swordsmith to have lived. This would be the first time Jack had used them in combat. But their weight felt good in his hands, the blades perfectly balanced.
The leader hesitated in his attack, taken off-guard by Jack’s unusual fighting style. Most samurai only used their katana in a duel.
‘He knows the Two Heavens!’ the toad-like warrior exclaimed.
‘So what?’ spat the leader. ‘There are three of us!’
Despite his bravado, Jack noticed the tip of the man’s katana quivering slightly. The Two Heavens was legendary among samurai – a devastating double-sword technique taught only to the best students of the Niten Ichi Ryū. It was almost impossible to master, but those warriors who did were considered invincible. Masamoto, the founder of this samurai school and Jack’s former guardian, had fought over sixty duels and never lost one.
‘He’s just pretending. No gaijin could know such a skill,’ said the leader, pushing the fat samurai forward. ‘Kill him!’
‘Why me?’
‘Because I order you to!’
With reluctance, the samurai drew his sword. Jack glanced at the blade. It was clean and unchipped. He guessed the man had never been in a real duel in his life.
‘S-s-surrender, gaijin, or else!’ he stuttered.
‘Or else what?’ Jack challenged, playing for time as he positioned himself behind a table.
‘I’ll … cut your head off,’ the man replied with little conviction.
‘And if I surrender?’
The samurai, stumped for an answer, looked to his leader.
‘We’ll still cut your head off,’ replied the leader with a sadistic grin.
At that moment, he nodded a signal to the thin samurai.
‘ATTACK!’
All three converged on Jack at once.
Jack kicked over the table and the fat one tumbled to the ground, losing grip of his sword. The thin samurai sliced for Jack’s neck as the leader thrust for his stomach. Jack ducked beneath the first blade, at the same time deflecting the second attack with his wakizashi.
Before either of them could counter, Jack side-kicked the thin samurai in the chest, sending him flying into a pillar. There was a sharp crack as the wood splintered and the building shuddered. Spinning round, Jack now targeted the leader’s head with his katana. The blade whistled through the air, slicing clean above the samurai.
‘You missed!’ he cried.
‘Did I?’ Jack replied as the samurai’s topknot of hair slipped off his head and dropped to the ground.
Shocked at the loss of his status symbol, the leader didn’t notice the creak and crack of timbers until it was too late. Jack’s blade had also cut through the ties holding together a section of the bamboo ceiling. A rock-hard stem fell on to the man’s head, knocking him out cold, and he was buried beneath an avalanche of bamboo.
With a scream of outrage, the thin samurai attacked once more, thrusting for the heart. He forced