The Ring of Water - Chris Bradford [53]
‘Keep it,’ he grunted, quickening his pace more to escape the incessant chattering of Hana than to stay ahead of Kazuki and his Scorpion Gang.
‘Really?’ she replied, and slipped it proudly into her obi. ‘My first sword! Will you teach me, Ronin? I want to be a samurai like you and Jack.’
‘You need to be born samurai.’
‘But Jack’s not even Japanese!’
‘He was adopted by a samurai. And he’s not a thief either!’
‘Oh!’ replied Hana, a little upset by Ronin’s curt reply. She pondered for a moment. ‘You could adopt me!’
Ronin stopped in his tracks, his face blanching. He turned to reply, then thought better of it and strode off.
Hana looked at Jack. ‘Was that a yes? Or a no?’
Jack shrugged noncommittally, but knowing Ronin he didn’t think the samurai was the adopting type. ‘We’d better keep moving,’ he said.
They powered on, not even stopping for lunch. A couple of times they had to backtrack to avoid other travellers and skirt a village. As dusk settled, they worked their way into a lower valley and found a secluded spot beside a stream.
‘We’ll camp here for the night,’ Ronin declared, clearing the ground for a fire.
Hana went off to collect kindling, while Jack cut some branches from a tree and made a simple clotheshorse so they could dry their damp kimono. Ronin opened the cloth sack that held their food and cursed loudly.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Jack.
Without replying, Ronin angrily shook the bag’s contents on to the earth. A straw container of rice, a small cooking pot, an onion, half a cabbage and a couple of white daikon fell out. These were accompanied by an ominous tinkling as several ceramic shards tumbled out too. The impact of landing in the water had smashed Ronin’s last bottle of saké to smithereens.
Hana returned with the wood and saw the enraged expression on Ronin’s face. The samurai snatched up the cabbage, sat upon a log and began to hack at the vegetable.
‘Let me do that,’ suggested Hana, worried that most of it was going on the ground rather than in the pot. ‘Why don’t you make the fire?’
Grunting moodily, Ronin shoved the mauled cabbage into Hana’s hands and started breaking the branches and throwing them into a pile. Thinking it best to leave Ronin to himself, Jack helped Hana with preparing the food. They heard him curse a few times as he tried to light the tinder and the two of them exchanged concerned looks. But once it caught Ronin settled down and contented himself with prodding the fire with a stick. Although their meal was meagre, the vegetable soup and rice seemed to revive Ronin’s spirits a little.
‘News will travel fast of Araki’s defeat,’ he said to Jack, ‘and with this Scorpion Gang hunting you, you need to make for Nagasaki and home as fast as you can.’
‘I have to go to Nara first.’
Ronin shook his head. ‘Not worth the risk.’
‘But Nagasaki’s the direction Kazuki will expect me to go in.’
‘True. However, he’ll use the main roads to get ahead of you and block your path. Even I would question your ability to defeat an entire gang single-handedly.’
‘I’ll have to take that chance. I must go to Nara. My father’s diary is there. I also want to know what happened to me. Several days of my life are missing. A blank. This Botan will be able to tell me.’
‘You’ve got your pearl, kimono and your swords. Is your father’s diary that important?’
Jack nodded his head, deciding now was the time to fully trust Ronin and Hana. They had certainly proved their loyalty in the past few days. ‘It’s much more than a diary,’ he replied and began to explain the rutter’s true signifiance.
When Jack finished talking, Ronin queried, ‘So this logbook is irreplaceable … invaluable?’
‘Yes,’ replied Jack. ‘But only I can decipher all its content. And I made an oath to my father to keep it safe. It’s my duty to find it.’
Ronin sighed deeply and threw another log upon the fire. ‘I understand a son’s duty. You’ve a responsibility to fulfil your father’s dying wish, and I respect that.’
He stabbed at the glowing embers with a stick.
‘You can’t be allowed to fail your father … like I did mine.’ Ronin appeared