The Way of the Warrior - Chris Bradford [13]
The shadow warrior nodded to one of his men, who picked up the key and disappeared below.
‘Now let my son go,’ pleaded Jack’s father.
The green-eyed shadow gave a throaty laugh, drawing back on his sword to deliver the killing strike…
Screaming as his eyes snapped open, Jack’s heart pounded.
He looked frantically around the room. A single candle flickered in the corner. A door slid open and the girl came and knelt beside him.
‘Aku rei. Yasunde, gaijinsan,’ said the girl with that same gentle voice he had heard previously.
She once again placed the cool cloth to his forehead and settled him back down.
‘What? I… I… I don’t understand,’ stuttered Jack. ‘Who are you? Where’s my father…?’
The laughter echoed on.
Jack’s father exploded with rage as he realized the shadow was intent upon killing Jack.
John Fletcher flung back his head, striking his captor in the face and breaking his nose. The garrotte loosened and fell away. John threw himself at his knife lying on the deck and, in one last desperate attempt to save his son, seized the blade and slammed it into the green-eyed shadow’s leg.
The shadow grunted with pain before he could deliver the killing blow and Jack, released from his choking grip, collapsed in a barely conscious pile. Whipping his sword round, the shadow flew at his attacker.
With a battle cry of ‘KIAI’, the green-eyed shadow drove his weapon down into John’s chest…
7
SAMURAI
Spotlessly clean, the floor of the small, unadorned room was covered in a geometric pattern of soft straw mats. The walls were squares of translucent paper that softened the daylight, lending the air an unearthly glow.
Jack lay on a thick futon, covered by a quilt made of silk. He’d never slept under silk before and its touch on his skin felt like a thousand butterfly wings.
After so long at sea, the nauseating motionlessness of the floor made his head spin as he tried to sit up. He moved to steady himself, but a sharp jolt of pain shot through his arm.
On examination, he discovered his left arm was swollen and discoloured and appeared to be broken, but someone had set it, securing it with a wooden splint. With an effort he tried to recall what had happened. Now his fever had broken, the disjointed images that had flashed through his mind became lucid and painfully real.
Christiaan dying in the doorway. Shadows in the darkness. The crew of the Alexandria slaughtered. His father fighting, a garrotte around his throat. The shadow warrior thrusting his sword into his father…
Jack could remember lying on the bloodied deck for what seemed an age. The shadows, thinking he was dead, had left the quarterdeck to ransack the ship. Then, as if surfacing from a deep dive, he had heard his father.
‘Jack… Jack… my son…’ he cried feebly.
Jack dragged himself out of his paralysis and crawled over to his dying father.
‘Jack… you’re alive…’ he said, a thin smile appearing on his bloodied lips. ‘The rutter… get it… home… it’ll get you home…’
Then the light faded from his father’s eyes and he exhaled his final breath.
Jack buried his head into his father’s chest, trying to stifle the sobbing. He clung on to his father as if he were a drowning sailor seizing a lifeline.
When his crying finally subsided, Jack realized he was utterly alone, stranded in a foreign land. His only hope now for getting home was the rutter.
He ran for the lower decks. The wako, occupied with loading the guns, gold and sappanwood into their own ship, failed to notice him. Below deck, Jack stepped over body after dead body until he entered his father’s cabin, where he found the now lifeless corpse of Christiaan.
The room had been ransacked, his father’s desk turned over, charts scattered everywhere. Jack flew to his father’s bunk, pulling away the bedding. He pressed on the concealed catch beneath and, to his relief, there was the rutter, safe in its oilskin.
He shoved the book inside his shirt and ran out of the cabin. He had almost