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 reached the companionway when a hand shot out of the darkness,
grabbing him by his shirt.
A blackened face loomed into sight.
It grinned maniacally, revealing a set of shark-like teeth.
'A plague on 'em! They ain't beaten us yet,' whispered a wild-eyed
Ginsel. 'I've set fire to the magazine.
BOOM!'
Ginsel's arms exploded outwards in a gesture of destruction. He laughed
briefly, then grunted, a look of surprise registering on his face. He collapsed
to the deck, a large knife attached to a chain sticking out of his back.
Jack looked up to see a sinister figure emerge from the shadows. A single
green eye glared at him and then at the rutter stuffed inside his shirt. The
shadow jerked on the chain, whipping the knife back into his grasp. Jack
spun on his heels and fled up the companionway, praying he could reach the
ship's rail in time…
Jack was flung as high as the yardarm by the massive explosion before
dropping with the rest of the wreckage into the ocean…
Then… then… a blank…
Flaring pain.
Darkness.
Blinding light.
A man's scarred face.
Strange unfamiliar voices…
Jack was suddenly aware he could hear those same voices now, talking
outside the room. For a moment Jack didn't breathe.
Were they wako? Why then was he alive?
Jack spotted his shirt and breeches, neatly folded in the corner of the
room, though there was no sign of the rutter. He staggered to his feet and
hastily pulled on his clothes. Crossing the room he searched for the door,
but was met with an unbroken grid of panels.
He was at a loss. There was not even a door handle.
Then Jack remembered one of his fevered dreams – the girl had entered
the room through a sliding door. Jack grabbed hold of the wooden slats to
pull but, still unsure on his feet, he reeled slightly and his hand shot straight
through the wafer-thin paper wall. The conversation on the other side of the
shoji door abruptly ceased.
The panel slid sharply open and Jack stumbled back, embarrassed by his
clumsiness.
A middle-aged woman with a round face and a stocky young man with
dark almond-shaped eyes glared at him. The man's expression was fierce.
Two swords – one daggerlike, the other long and slightly curved – were
thrust into his blood-red waistband. He stepped forward, his hand firmly
gripping the hilt of the larger blade.
'Naniwoshiteru, gaijin?' challenged the man.
'Sorry. I… I don't understand,' said Jack, retreating in fear.
The woman spoke firmly to the man, but his hand didn't leave his sword.
Jack was afraid he was about to use it on him. Terrified, he scanned the
room for a means of escape. But the man barred his way, partly
withdrawing his sword. Jack's eyes fell upon the gleaming blade, its razorsharp edge primed to cut off his head.
Then he remembered Piper's words. 'If you ever meet a samurai, lads,
bow low. Bow very, very low!'
Although Jack had never seen, let alone met one, the fearsome man
looked like he should be a samurai. He wore a T-shaped robe in crisp white
silk over wide black leggings spotted with golden dots. He had shaved the
crown of his head, pulling the back and sides of his remaining black hair
into a tight knot on the top. His face was severe and impenetrable – a
warrior's face. The man had the look of someone who could kill Jack as
easily as stepping on an ant.
Jack's body was battered and bruised, and every muscle ached, but he
forced himself through the pain to bow. As he did so, the man stepped back
in amazement.
The samurai then began to laugh, an amused chuckle that grew into a
deep roar.