Katana and the Peacemaker

Chapter Six

Warrior Wandering

August ?, 1883





“Place your bets, boys! Place your bets!” shouted a whistle-blower in Japanese, surrounded by six others on a long sandy island beach.



The men were all clad in ragged clothes. For each man, that practically consisted of a loose shirt and pants cut off at the knees. They all had bad teeth, poor hygiene, vulgar attitudes, and brandished various assortments of weaponry in their hands as casually as if they were natural extensions of their own limbs.



The island, about eight square miles large and shaped like a teardrop, was bare of any sort of cover from the hot sun and was virtually flat except for a mountain to the south on the island’s tip. Along the vast beach, several rowboats were nestled in the sand, with more men performing various activities in and around them.



Offshore, a slender warship sat in the waves. It had a long black hull, three masts, a prow beam, and a screw-driven steam engine. Each side boasted six guns. Also on the hull were some Japanese characters that declared the ship’s name, the Kanrin Maru.



The seven men sitting in a circle in the sand were all shouting with excitement because they were gambling over two stag beetles battling it out atop a stump of wood. The whistle-blower produced chirping sounds mimicking a female stag beetle to entice the males into combat. It was a sport known as kabuto sumo.



“Come on! Win me some money!” cried a young Japanese man in slurred Japanese, obviously from drinking. He had the same shaggy pitch-black hair, scruffy face, and loose and ratty clothes his comrades wore. He was just more rigidly muscular than the others.



As one beetle teetered toward the edge, the young man bellowed angrily, “Hey, get your ass back up there! If you fall off, no sugar tonight!”



“HEY!!” shouted one of the men standing by the boats, outstretching his arm and pointing at an object in the distance on the sea.



The seven gamblers all stood up and held their hands over their eyes for a better look. It was a raft in the direction of the sun, glimmering off the surface of the water like light on a mirror, so it was no wonder it was difficult to see. They did not even realize the raft was moving toward the beach until it was only a few dozen yards off.



The scruffy men all checked their weapons over, making sure their guns were cleaned and loaded and their bladed weapons sharpened. Then they bolted along the shoreline to the place where the raft was going to land ashore.



The raft had already landed and the lone man using it had fastened the sail down to the bottom, made of tightly tied bundles of bamboo strapped together. The floating structure was covered with various items, from pots and utensils to maps and navigational tools. It also had a crudely made rudder and two oars. Picking up a large rock from the ground, the man tied a rope around it and dropped it, using it as an anchor.



Once they were close enough, the armed men barked at the stranger in Japanese, “HANDS UP!!!”



When the stranger did not cooperate, two others barked the same words in English and then French. “HANDS UP!” “Les mains en haut!”



He did not respond to those either.



The muscular one who had been losing earlier spoke to the others in Japanese, “Let’s just kill this idiot and see what he has stashed on the raft.”



“There’s nothing of any value on my raft… idiot,” the stranger retorted, in Japanese, no less.



The men’s jaws dropped and then their expressions became scowls.



The stranger’s round straw hat overshadowed his face and hid it from view. He was dressed in an indigo kimono robe and a wide seven-pleated ankle-length gray hakama skirt tied at the waist with an obi sash and a rigid board-like support in the lower back. The skirt’s fringes were stained with mud from much traveling and his feet were bare. Tucked in his belt were two scabbards bearing identical swords, with the exception that one was long and the other short.



The men’s eyes flickered with greed and they immediately set to muttering under their breaths, “Oh, my. Is that a katana?”



Nodding to the muscular man, the stranger said, “I came here for him… Suribachi Shinji.”



The man gasped. He had not been called by that name in years. Glaring, he barked, “Who the hell are you?! Couldn’t you have just taken a ship here?!”



“We have some important matters to discuss and my reasons for coming by raft are my own,” the stranger replied in unfazed fashion, tipping his hat up a bit to reveal a thin face with narrow soul-piercing eyes that observed much and shoulder-length obsidian-black hair.



Shinji gasped again, stuttering, “R… R-Rokuro?”



The hat was lowered again when Shinji had finally recognized the stranger, who asked, “May we speak in private, please?”



Still wide-eyed with disbelief, Shinji waved his comrades off and they walked a few yards away to chatter in a circle and ward off any others running over to apprehend the stranger.



“Stop looking so surprised, Shinji,” the man spoke in a calm voice.



“What else should my reaction be when the infamous samurai Matsumoto Rokuro returns from the dead after six long years? A joyful outburst of song and dance?” Shinji remarked sarcastically.



Rokuro remained stoic. “I need information.”



Shinji rolled his eyes. “Figures. No catching up. You never were a very social man, you know, always scampering off to your wife and kid.”



“That’s what I’m here for.”



“Huh?”



“My daughter, Megumi… Where is she, Shinji?”



“What makes you think I know? The last time I’ve seen either of them was before the war –”



“Don’t lie to me, Shinji!” Rokuro barked, his face pulled back into a wolf’s snarl. “A highly reliable source informed me that you know where my daughter is!”



In a flash, he unsheathed his long sword, revealing a narrow three-foot-long slightly curved single-edged blade that he pressed against Shinji’s neck. The guard was rounded and had a unique lightning design engraved in the metal. Right up against the guard at the base of the blade and encircling it tightly was a piece of brass designed for locking it into place within the sheath. The long and narrow cylinder-like hilt was covered in fish skin and overlaid with layers of braided fabric wrapped tightly over it.



Shinji yelped in surprise as soon as the cold metal touched his skin threateningly, stuttering, “O-Ok-kay! Okay, okay! She… She… I saw her… five months ago… She was tied to a wagon with a caravan of slaves and slave traders. That’s all I know!”



“WHERE?!” he shouted, pressing the blade dangerously closer into Shinji’s skin.



“K… Th-The road t-t-t-to Kyoto! Like I said, it was five months ago! She could be anywhere by now!”



Rokuro sighed in pause and then said, “Thank you, Shinji.”



Then the sword was sheathed and Rokuro turned his back on Shinji, moving toward his raft.



Click!



Shinji was laughing now, holding up a Walker Colt revolver and aiming it point-blank at Rokuro’s back. “Oh, come now, Rokuro… Let’s catch up! After all, it isn’t just me that thought you were dead… I happen to know of an entire police department that would just love to meet you after thinking you’ve been dead for six years!”



“Shinji… you’ll put away that gun if you know what’s healthy for you…” Rokuro stated in a grave but calm voice.



“BOYS!!” Shinji hollered for his comrades, thirty or so of whom were rushing toward him. “‘What’s healthy for me?’ Rokuro, you’re outnumbered and what I’m holding is the weapon of the modern age! Your katana sword’s outdated… You’re aging and too stubborn to accept that… I’ve accepted the death of the samurai class long ago, so now I’m a pirate and I wield the most efficient and modern weapon of them – AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!”



While Shinji was flapping his mouth, Rokuro had been steadily preparing his katana for unsheathing. Then he had swung it out in a flash and spun around in place to sever the hand that held the gun from Shinji’s arm, letting it fall to the ground by his feet.



“AAAAHHHH!!!” Shinji screamed, eyes bulging in pain and terror while his unharmed hand clutched his hemorrhaging stump for a right arm in a pathetic attempt to stop the profuse bleeding.



Wiping his katana blade clean of blood with a cloth, which was caked in dry blood likely from previous incidents, tucked in his belt, Rokuro calmly sheathed his sword again and bent down to remove the pistol from the limp hand on the ground. He stood up and held the weapon awkwardly in his hand, aiming it at the band of pirates who had come to Shinji’s aid.



“I am leaving! Take your man and retreat a hundred paces the other way! NOW!!” Rokuro ordered, brandishing the gun and unnerving the pirates.



“You’re insane! Even if you made it out of sight on your raft, we have a warship that could catch up with you like a shark!” one pirate retorted while helping his comrades haul Shinji up in their arms and drag him back, away from the samurai.



“Yes, but if you want your man to live, I suggest you keep him here on the island to tend to his wounds and not place him in a cramped warship infirmary. Fresh air heals, they say.”



Keeping his pistol trained on the steadily retreating men, Rokuro slowly moved backwards until his feet were in the water and had bumped into the raft’s side. He stepped up onto it and tucked the gun into his belt once the pirates were far enough away. Drawing his wakizashi short sword, he cut the line anchoring the raft to shore.



As he had been moving the raft against the tide to make it to the island, his escape was made all the easier by the fact he was moving it with the tide now. Steering the rudder to go with the water’s flow, Rokuro removed his robe from his belt and pulled it off his body, using it to tie the rudder in place. He also did not need it anymore to hide the fact that he had only one arm from the pirates. The nice thing about kimono robes was that people who used them tended to cross their arms inside for warmth or other reasons, giving Rokuro the advantage of hiding his missing right arm, severed at the shoulder long ago, without arousing suspicion.



Raising the sail quickly, he sat down in a cross-legged position and began rowing with his left arm. He was unfazed when shots from the guns ashore several dozen yards away began firing at him, missing by a matter of yards and making harmless splashes in the water around the raft.