Young Samurai: The Ring of Sky (29 page)

‘A
daimyo
?’ queried
Akiko, dismounting from her horse. ‘But he should be protecting farmers like
you.’

The old man shook his head. ‘Our
previous lord, Arima,
certainly did. But he was exiled last year by
the Shogun for his Christian beliefs. Now we’re under the rule of a
tyrant … and he’s hell-bent on persecuting us Christian Japanese
–’ The old man suddenly clammed up, realizing he may have said too much.
‘Who are you people?’

From what the old man had revealed about
himself, Jack decided to take a risk and removed his hat. The man’s eyes widened
like saucers when he saw Jack’s face.

‘You’re a foreigner!
A … Christian?’ he asked, almost hopeful.

Jack nodded his head. ‘You can trust
us. My name is Jack.’

‘I’m … Takumi,’
the old man hesitantly replied, and bowed his head.

Now he opened his heart to them.

‘You must have seen the monstrous new
castle in Shimabara?’ he began, wiping his nose with his sleeve. ‘Matsukura
cleared an entire Christian district just to make way for it. All those he evicted he
forced into slavery to build his prideful fortress. And to pay for his folly he’s
doubled the rice tax on all farmers … yet he still demands more!’

‘So his samurai came to take the rest
of your rice?’ said Saburo.

‘No, we’ve very little
left,’ sniffed Takumi. ‘It’s not enough for him to tax us to death.
One of his patrols visited our village and we were forced to perform
fumi-e
.’

‘
Fumi-e
?’ questioned
Jack.

Takumi nodded. ‘We
must … 
trample
 … on a picture of our Lord Jesus
Christ,’ he explained, his face contorting from horror to revulsion at the memory
of such a sacrilegious act.

‘But why?’ asked Saburo.

‘To prove we
aren’t
Christians. If anyone – man, woman or child – refused, they were taken away to be
executed on top of Unzen-dake.’

‘So why did they leave
you
behind?’

Takumi’s expression now became
guilt-ridden. ‘I … I performed
fumi-e
.’

He rose to his knees, hands clasped in
desperate prayer.

‘
Oh Lord, please forgive me for my
sins.
I only did it to save my family …’ He now turned to Jack,
almost pleading. ‘But my daughter wouldn’t … and now she and my
granddaughter are …’ He broke into wailing sobs.

‘I know your God will forgive
you,’ said Yori, trying to console the broken man.

Takumi stared up at Jack again, his eyes
wild and lost to grief.

‘Go now!’ he cried. ‘Leave
this Hell, young foreigner, while you still have a chance.’

‘That’s good advice,’ said
Benkei, already taking the lead down the road.

‘I can’t walk on by,’ said
Jack. ‘Not when fellow Christians are suffering like this.’

‘A rescue mission? We can’t risk
that,’ Miyuki argued. ‘Matsukura’s samurai must be on our trail by
now. And this
daimyo
’s got an axe to grind with foreigners like you. With
the Shogun and Kazuki already baying for your blood, you don’t need another
enemy.’

Jack pointed to the hellish peak that had
haunted him since their arrival. ‘But there are innocent women and children up
there being tortured and killed, purely for their beliefs!’

Akiko looked torn by the situation, her
heart and her mind
at odds with one another. ‘You can’t
save every Christian in Japan, Jack,’ she said eventually. ‘Our priority
must be to get you safely to Nagasaki and on your way home. You’re the one
Christian we
can
save.’

‘But isn’t this exactly what a
samurai is supposed to stand up for? Honour, Benevolence and Rectitude.’

‘It’s not about
bushido
. It’s about what’s possible. There are just six of us
against a
daimyo
and his entire army. What difference can we make?’

As harsh as the decision was, both Saburo
and Miyuki nodded their heads in agreement with her.

Yori now piped up. ‘A tsunami once
washed ten thousand fish up on the shores of Japan,’ he began. ‘A monk went
down to the beach, saw the fish flapping on the sand, and one by one started to pick
them up and throw them back into the sea. A samurai sitting nearby saw the monk and
laughed at him. “Foolish monk! There’re miles of beach and thousands of
fish. What difference will that make?” The monk picked up a gasping fish and
tossed it back into the sea. With a knowing smile, he replied, “It made a
difference to that one.”’

46
 
 

They crouched at the lip of the volcano and
peered into its depths. The immense crater was a desolate bowl of black ash and grey
rock smeared with patches of sickly yellow clay. Vents torn into the earth bled
sulphurous clouds of steam, while lurid ponds and bubbling mudpools blistered the ground
like grotesque boils. As wafts of vomit-inducing steam passed overhead, a shrill
screaming filled the ghastly air.

‘Sounds as if we’re already too
late,’ choked Saburo, his voice muffled behind his hand in a vain attempt to block
the stench of rotting eggs.

The constant screeching, like ragged
fingernails down slate, set Jack’s teeth on edge. Yori was forced to cover his
ears, the anguished cries of the dying too much for his sensitive soul.

‘That’s just the noise of the
“Great Shout”
jigoku
,’ croaked Takumi, having guided them up
Unzen-dake to
daimyo
Matsukura’s favoured place of execution. He pointed
a gnarled finger towards the seething Hell at the base of the crater, where steam
rocketed out like a dragon spitting fire.

Beside the boiling Hell pool, a unit of
samurai stood guard over a group of cowering villagers. Not that any of them
could put up much of a fight. They were all emaciated, many were
women, some old men and the youngest a mere babe-in-arms.

‘The steam’s so dense I can
hardly see them,’ remarked Akiko.

‘For a ninja that’s an
advantage,
not
a problem,’ Miyuki replied pointedly. ‘It’ll
cover our escape.’

‘But how are we going to free them in
the first place?’ said Saburo. ‘There must be at least thirty
soldiers.’

Jack looked around the boulder-strewn
crater, trying to devise a plan. There were too many samurai for a full frontal attack.
They would have to rely on stealth and ninja tactics to overcome such a force. He was
about to ask Miyuki for ideas, when –

‘DO YOU RENOUNCE YOUR FAITH?’
boomed a voice that seemed to emanate from the very depths of Hell.

‘That’s Matsukura!’ cried
Takumi, shrinking back in fear.

The samurai lord was dressed in purple and
red robes and wore a coal-black helmet crowned with stag antlers. His face was a knot of
fury as he glared at the scrawny farmer trembling before him. At the man’s feet,
cast upon the pitted ground, was a stone tablet into which was carved the image of
Christ on the cross.

‘Stamp on your god or DIE!’
demanded the
daimyo
.

With a single shake of his head, the farmer
knelt before the effigy and put his hands together in prayer. Incensed by such a blatant
act of defiance,
daimyo
Matsukura backhanded the man across the jaw. The
farmer’s head rocked with the force of the blow. A thin stream of blood seeped
from his mouth, but he kept praying.

‘BOIL HIM ALIVE!’ yelled
daimyo
Matsukura.

Two samurai seized the farmer by his bony
shoulders and dragged him towards the steaming
jigoku
. The farmer now prayed
out loud, ‘
Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy
–’. They
threw him into the scalding Hell. The farmer plunged beneath the super-heated waters and
came up howling the Lord’s Prayer ‘–
on EARTH as it is in HEAVEN. Give
us
–’. His agonized cries were drowned out by a screech of steam.
Scrabbling for the bank, he was pushed back by the spear of a samurai.
‘
FORGIVE those who trespass against us
–’ he gasped. The
daimyo
watched with a fiendish glee as the farmer writhed in agony.
‘–
deliver us from evil
–’ The man’s skin was peeling off in
flakes, his flesh turning red raw. ‘–
thine is the kingdom
–’ Then
the tortured farmer’s voice faded towards the end of the prayer ‘–
forever and ever
–’ before he slipped beneath the bubbling
surface.

‘
AMEN!
’ cried the
condemned villagers, finishing the prayer for their fellow worshipper. Tears streamed
down their faces as they chanted ‘
AMEN!
’ over and over again.

The
daimyo
glowered at this defiant
protest to the Shogun’s outlawing of Christianity.

‘NEXT!’ he bellowed, now
apoplectic with rage.

A young woman and her daughter were shoved
forward by the samurai guard. The girl looked too young to even understand what was
going on. She just clung to her mother’s leg, quivering with fear.

Beside Jack, Takumi gasped and fell to his
knees, clawing at the black ash around him. ‘
Those are my
girls!
’

Sickened by the gruesome scene he’d
just witnessed, Jack knew in his heart he’d been right to risk his life for these
innocent farmers. He couldn’t allow such an atrocity to
happen again.

Jack unsheathed his
katana
. There
was little time for stealth now. ‘We’ll have to gamble everything on a
surprise attack.’

‘Wait! I’ve a better
idea!’ said Saburo. ‘Yori and Benkei, come with me. Jack, you go with Akiko
and Miyuki. Get close to the samurai. Then, when I give the signal, free the prisoners
and run as fast as you can.’

‘What’s the signal?’ asked
Jack as Saburo raced off with Benkei and Yori in tow.

‘You’ll know it when you see
it,’ he replied with a roguish grin.

Leaving Takumi to pray for his family, Jack,
Akiko and Miyuki darted over the lip of the crater. They sprinted from boulder to gully
to rock, using the cover of steam to hide their movements. But the billowing clouds were
as much a curse as a blessing. Although they concealed their approach from the samurai,
they also hindered their progress. It was hard to see where they were going – twice they
lost sight of their target and once Akiko even stumbled. Jack just hoped they could
reach the little girl and her mother in time.

They hunkered down behind a black boulder.
They were now so close they could hear the terrified mutterings of the villagers. Some
were praying, others begging and many sobbing. The young woman and her daughter faced
the
daimyo
.

‘Stamp on your god or die!’
ordered the
daimyo
.

‘We can’t wait much
longer,’ said Akiko in a tense whisper. ‘What’s Saburo up
to?’

Through the swirling steam, Jack caught a
glimpse of Saburo and the others behind one of the larger boulders along
the crater rim. ‘I’m not sure. But whatever he’s
planning, he’d better be quick about it.’

In response to the
daimyo
’s
command, the little girl had picked up the effigy of Christ and was hugging it to her
chest.
Daimyo
Matsukura snatched the stone tablet from her grasp.

‘Throw this evil child and her mother
into Hell!’ he ordered.

Two samurai grabbed the woman by her hair. A
third picked up the little girl around her waist. Kicking and screaming, she and her
mother were borne towards their deaths.

Unable to hold off any longer, Jack and
Akiko rose to their feet, while Miyuki pulled a
shuriken
from her belt. Then an
ominous rumbling was heard above the screech of the
jigoku
. The clouds parted
briefly to reveal shale trickling down the crater sides, rapidly building into a flood
of stone, clay and ash. Leading the charge, a huge boulder came bouncing down the crater
slope towards the samurai and villagers, gathering speed as it went.

‘
That
must be the
signal!’ cried Miyuki in disbelieving horror.

47