Free Sword of Honour by David Kirk Page B

you?’ he called. ‘A lot of hay in there. It will burn quickly.’
    ‘As you will,’ said Miyamoto. ‘But I think as many bales as I see gathered here have been set aside for a reason, no?’
    The man had his wits about him. Frustrated by this, Akiyama stood rolling his tongue across the inside of his teeth. He waited for forty heartbeats longer before he admitted the futility of
waiting. Evidently, Miyamoto was not be goaded or tricked, which left him with only one recourse.
    He went back to the two samurai and his horse. He took his tea-coloured jacket off and hung it from the pommel of his saddle, and then began rolling the sleeves of his kimono up and binding them
under his armpits with a length of soft tasselled cord, freeing his arms for unrestrained motion.
    ‘Tell me of the interior,’ he instructed the watching samurai as he tied the knots. ‘Have I room to use my longsword?’
    ‘I do not know your style,’ said the senior man.
    ‘Would it be possible to wield
your
longsword in there?’ said Akiyama, beginning to detest these fools.
    And, of course, neither one of them answered.
    ‘The short it is, then,’ said Akiyama. He slid the unneeded longsword in its scabbard from his belt and replaced it within his saddlebags, then withdrew his short. The steel of the
blade was oiled and polished and gleamed in the light. ‘Anything else I ought to know?’ he asked. ‘How much straw exactly is in there? Other materials? How impeded will I be in my
ability to move?’
    ‘It will be narrow,’ said the wounded samurai. ‘I do not think you will have chance to manoeuvre around him. You will be facing him directly.’
    ‘And how large is he exactly?’
    ‘He will have reach over you, certainly,’ said the leader, and then his voice softened: ‘See sense – just wait an hour. Our men will be here then. They’ll have
lances with them, and—’
    ‘Or the outlaw will have fled.’
    That was all he would say. Akiyama rolled his shoulders, worked flexibility into them. His torso was crisscrossed and braced by the cord. He felt taut, balanced. He turned to the mill and strode
over without looking back. He was pensive, for he knew that he was more proficient with his long that with his short, but then he reasoned that in there a man as big as Miyamoto reputedly was would
be even more constrained. He made his strategies, took a breath, and then committed himself.
    He stepped up onto the wooden platform the mill was set upon and approached the door. He stopped two paces shy of it, peered in. He could see nothing. Braced, prepared to strike at anything
immediately, he broached the threshold.
    Nothing attacked.
    He stood there in the frame of the door, let his eyes adjust to the gloom within. He saw straw piled all around, the heavy blunted forms of blackened beams that were roughly hewn and shaped, and
before him the great mechanism of the mill and all its gears hung still and disconnected from the wheel outside. There was no trapdoor that he could spy from here beneath it.
    Neither could he spy Miyamoto himself.
    Holding his shortsword out before him in a low defensive guard, he ventured slowly in. Murky stacks of baled hay abounded, and each of them could hide a man behind it easily. He held his breath,
listened for Miyamoto’s. The beams were tight as a cage, constricting, concealing. He thought he heard something, turned, and then in his peripheral he sensed movement.
    From above.
    It confused him and he turned, and he looked, and he saw an open loft, a second floor that he had not been warned about, and there were bales of hay stacked there too, and one of these bales
tipped now, crashed down upon him. It was larger than he was, but Akiyama was quick and writhed mostly out of the way, was not crushed under it but rather knocked from his feet, and he lost grip of
his sword.
    Immediately, he struggled to right himself. There was further movement from above. Miyamoto jumped down and landed roughly,