The Shogun's Daughter

by Robert Ames Bennet

We darted forward, leaving five of the murderous band already accounted for. Four more were intent upon driving the bearers of Azai’s norimon on across into the side street. All the others were crowding around the few survivors of the vanguard in furious attack. Only supreme masters of Japanese swordcraft could have so long withstood the tremendous blows of the assassins throughout this atrocious massacre.

To fling ourselves into the midst of the deadly struggle was sheer madness—but it was a glorious madness. Having a moment’s start of my friend, I dashed ahead, past the rearmost norimon, from which the younger lady-in-waiting was frantically struggling to free herself. The norimon of the princess had been swung about, and its reluctant bearers were being forced into a trot by prodding dirks.

Shouting a command for the bearers to halt, I ran upon the ronins at the rear, who were directly before me. Until this moment they had been too intent upon driving the bearers to perceive us. The sight of their fallen comrades and the possibility of a check in their plans seemed to madden them. They rushed to meet me with a silent rage that flamed into wildest fury at sight of my tojin eyes.

“Demon! Kill! kill!” they yelled, and their strokes flashed out at me so swift and strong that I was beaten back a full two yards, and saved myself from the whistling blades only by the nimblest of footwork and parrying.

In a moment, though none too soon, Yoritomo sprang to my side and crippled one of the grinning fiends with a leg cut. This man must have been the leader of the band, for as he and his mate fell to our thrusts, the pair at the head of the norimon checked their charge upon us, and shouted loudly to their fellows.

Only three of the hatamotos now stood in the merciless circle of swords, and but one of their assailants had fallen. At the cry for help, the greater number of the ronins wheeled about and charged upon us, with the rain splashing upon their downbent helmet brims.

“Shoot!” gasped Yoritomo, bending over to lean upon his sword. “My arm weakens!—Shoot!”

Already my right hand was thrusting into my bosom. As I drew out one of the revolvers and cocked it, I stepped forward and to the left, that I might have the norimon between me and the charging ronins. At the same moment the young samurai woman from the rear norimon darted between the bearers and stood up across from me, facing the ronins, with upraised dirk. She could not have hoped to stop the ruffians for an instant, but she thought they meant to injure her mistress, and so was offering her own bosom first to the murderous blades.

The sight of such absolute courage and devotion steadied my twitching hand. I raised my revolver, and fired as rapidly as I could work hammer and trigger. The ronins were too close for me to miss even through the swirl of wind and rain. I risked no glancing of balls from mailed breasts, but aimed at the devilish faces below their broad helmet brims. To shoot wide of such large marks within a distance of ten paces and less would have been difficult, and a man shot from the front anywhere between mouth and brows never requires a second ball. Down went the foremost ronins, sprawling backwards in the flooded roadway, one at every shot.

To these mediæval warriors, acquainted only with antique matchlocks and Tower muskets, the mysterious appearance and rapid fire of my revolver must have been even more appalling than the death of their leaders. Before I could snatch out my second pistol, every man of them still on his feet fled towards the narrow cross street, shrieking that I was the daimio of demons. To aid their flight, I sent after them a leaden message that glanced from the helmet of the rearmost man, yet sent him staggering for a dozen yards.