Two samurai went forward to restrain him but Toranaga ordered them away.
Together, Blackthorne and four seamen launched the oar like a dart over the side. It sailed for some way then hit the water cleanly, and its momentum carried it to the wharf.
At that moment there was a victory shout from the breakwater. Reinforcements of Grays were streaming down from the city and, though the ronin-samurai were holding off the present attackers, it was only a matter of time before the wall was breached.
"Come on," Blackthorne shouted. "Isogiiii!"
Buntaro pulled the girl up, pointed at the oar and then out to the ship. She bowed weakly. He dismissed her and turned his full attention to battle, his vast legs set firm on the jetty.
The girl called out once to the ship. A woman's voice answered and she jumped. Her head broke the surface. She flailed for the oar and grabbed it. It bore her weight easily and she kicked for the ship. A small wave caught her and she rode it safely and came closer to the galley. Then her fear caused her to loosen her grip and the oar slipped away from her. She thrashed for an endless moment, then vanished below the surface.
She never came back.
Buntaro was alone now on the wharf and he stood watching the rise and the fall of the battle. More reinforcement Grays, a few cavalry among them, were coming up from the south to join the others and he knew that soon the breakwater would be engulfed by a sea of men.
Carefully he examined the north and west and south. Then he turned his back to the battle and went to the far end of the jetty. The galley was safely seventy yards from its tip, at rest, waiting. All fishing boats had long since fled the area and they waited as far away as possible on both sides of the harbor, their riding lights like so many cats' eyes in the darkness.
When he reached the end of the dock, Buntaro took off his helmet and his bow and quiver and his top body armor and put them beside his scabbards. The naked killing sword and the naked short sword he placed separately. Then, stripped to the waist, he picked up his equipment and cast it into the sea. The killing sword he studied reverently, then tossed it with all his force, far out into the deep. It vanished with hardly a splash.
He bowed formally to the galley, to Toranaga, who went at once to the quarterdeck where he could be seen. He bowed back.
Buntaro knelt and placed the short sword neatly on the stone in front of him, moonlight flashing briefly on the blade, and stayed motionless, almost as though in prayer, facing the galley.
"What the hell's he waiting for?" Blackthorne muttered, the galley eerily quiet without the drumbeat. "Why doesn't he jump and swim?"
"He's preparing to commit seppuku."
Mariko was standing nearby, propped by a young woman.
"Jesus, Mariko, are you all right?"
"All right," she said, hardly listening to him, her face haggard but no less beautiful.
He saw the crude bandage on her left arm near the shoulder where the sleeve had been slashed away, her arm resting in a sling of material torn from a kimono. Blood stained the bandage and a dribble ran down her arm.
"I'm so glad-" Then it dawned on him what she had said. "Seppuku? He's going to kill himself? Why? There's plenty of time for him to get here! If he can't swim, look - there's an oar that'll hold him easily. There, near the jetty, you see it? Can't you see it?"
"Yes, but my husband can swim, Anjin-san," she said. "All of Lord Toranaga's officers must - must learn - he insists. But he has decided not to swim."
"For Christ's sake, why?"
A sudden frenzy broke out shoreward, a few muskets went off, and the wall was breached. Some of the ronin-samurai fell back and ferocious individual combat began again. This time the enemy spearhead was contained, and repelled.
"Tell him to swim, by God!"
"He won't, Anjin-san. He's preparing to die."
"If he wants to die, for Christ's sake, why doesn't he go there?" Blackthorne's finger stabbed toward the fight. "Why doesn't he help his men? If he wants to die, why doesn't he die fighting, like a man?"
Mariko did not take her eyes from the wharf, leaning against the young woman. "Because he might be captured, and if he swam he might also be captured, and then the enemy would put him on show before the common people, shame him, do terrible things. A samurai cannot be captured and remain samurai. That's the worst dishonorto be captured by an enemy - so my husband is doing what a man, a samurai, must do. A samurai dies with dignity. For what is life to a samurai? Nothing at all. All life is suffering, neh? It is his right and duty to die with honor, before witnesses."
"What a stupid waste," Blackthorne said, through his teeth.
"Be patient with us, Anjin-san."
"Patient for what? For more lies? Why won't you trust me? Haven't I earned that? You lied, didn't you? You pretended to faint and that was the signal. Wasn't it? I asked you and you lied."
"I was ordered . . . it was an order to protect you. Of course I trust you."
"You lied," he said, knowing that he was being unreasonable, but he was beyond caring, abhorring the insane disregard for life and starved for sleep and peace, starved for his own food and his own drink and his own ship and his own kind. "You're all animals," he said in English, knowing they were not, and moved away.
"What was he saying, Mariko-san?" the young woman asked, hard put to hide her distaste. She was half a head taller than Mariko, biggerboned and square-faced with little, needle-shaped teeth. She was Usagi Fujiko, Mariko's niece, and she was nineteen.
Mariko told her.
"What an awful man! What foul manners! Disgusting, neh? How can you bear to be near him?"
"Because he saved our Master's honor. Without his bravery I'm sure Lord Toranaga would have been captured - we'd all have been captured." Both women shuddered.
"The gods protect us from that shame!" Fujiko glanced at Blackthorne, who leaned against the gunwale up the deck, staring at the shore. She studied him a moment. "He looks like a golden ape with blue eyes - a creature to frighten children with. Horrid, neh?" Fujiko shivered and dismissed him and looked again at Buntaro. After a moment she said, "I envy your husband, Mariko-san. "
"Yes," Mariko replied sadly. "But I wish he had a second to help him." By custom another samurai always assisted at a seppuku, standing slightly behind the kneeling man, to decapitate him with a single stroke before the agony became unbearable and uncontrollable and so shamed the man at the supreme moment of his life. Unseconded, few men could die without shame.
"Karma," Fujiko said.
"Yes. I pity him. That's the one thing he feared - not to have a second."
"We're luckier than men, neh?" Samurai women committed seppuku by thrusting their knives into their throats and therefore needed no assistance.
"Yes," Mariko said.
Screams and battle cries came wafting on the wind, distracting them. The breakwater was breached again. A small company of fifty Toranaga ronin-samurai raced out of the north in support, a few horsemen among them. Again the breach was ferociously contained, no quarter sought or given, the attackers thrown back and a few more moments of time gained.
Time for what, Blackthorne was asking bitterly. Toranaga's safe now. He's out to sea. He's betrayed you all.
The drum began again.
Oars bit into the water, the prow dipped and began to cut through the waves, and aft a wake appeared. Signal fires still burned from the castle walls above. The whole city was almost awake.
The main body of Grays hit the breakwater. Blackthorne's eyes went to Buntaro. "You poor bastard!" he said in English. "You poor, stupid bastard!"
He turned on his heel and walked down the companionway along the main deck toward the bow to watch for shoals ahead. No one except Fujiko and the captain noticed him leaving the quarterdeck.
The oarsmen pulled with fine discipline and the ship was gaining way. The sea was fair, the wind friendly. Blackthorne tasted the salt and welcomed it. Then he detected the ships crowding the harbor mouth half a league ahead. Fishing vessels yes, but they were crammed with samurai.