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Jak a hug each time one of the assortment of tiny steel balls bounced into a
winning slot.
Takei Yashknoto also passed by, pausing to try to outstare Ryan.
"Not surprised to see you're interested in pachinko
," the one-eyed man commented.
"How is that? It is a game meant only for young and foolish and weak people.
Not for honorable warriors who follow the code of Bushido."
"There's that word honorable again, Krysty," Ryan said. "As in saying that
it's honorable to take some of those innocent little steel balls and fire them
from a catapult to try and murder an enemy that you're scared of."
He hoped that the warrior might rise to his bait and give him an excuse to
challenge him to an out-and-out fight. But the scarred Yashimoto snorted and
turned away.
J.B. AND MILDRED HAD GONE for a walk among the ceremonial gardens that lay in
the large courtyard at the center of the ville, though they weren't gardens
like anything the
Armorer had seen before. They were very spare and seemingly barren, mainly
carefully raked patterns of gravel, kept immaculately smooth, with some
larger, rounded stones set at careful intervals. There were only two or three
plants, a brilliant red acer and a weeping cypress with a small cropped
willow. At the center of the garden, a tiny fountain dribbled water through a
series of iron bowls stained with ancient verdigris.
"Kind of restful," J.B. admitted.
Mildred smiled at him and kissed him gently on the lips. "Makes me feel
rested, too. In fact I wouldn't mind too much if we emulated Doc and went for
a short rest."
The Armorer considered it, looking past her at the steep roof of the main
house. She
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James Axler - Death Lands - Keeper of the Sun could see the fountain reflected
in his spectacles.
"Yeah," he said.
"Don't be too enthusiastic, love," she said tartly. "I can always go and watch
the water dripping."
"Sorry." He squeezed her hand. "Just thinking how well built this place is. To
have survived a hundred years of quakes. Knew what they were doing."
RYAN HAD BEEN TOLD that the captured ronin was being examined and tried in
front of a panel of the surviving samurai, headed by Mashashige.
"Wonder what the punishment is going to be?"
"I heard him say that he would fight the prisoner himself if he was found
guilty," Krysty said. "I can't imagine that there'll be much doubt about that.
Not with a hundred or more dead servants floating in the sea back there." She
shook her head. "Their attitude to death and dying is strange. Most villes
that'd lost three-quarters of their fighting men would be in a state of total
shock and anger. They just seem to feel philosophical about it. It's happened.
So we might as well get on with living. Don't understand it."
As they strolled together through the quiet corridors of the fortress, they
saw a pile of magazines set on a lacquered bamboo table in a room that looked
out over the courtyard and formal garden. They spotted Mildred and J.B.
walking past the window, hand in hand. Ryan was about to call out to them, but
Krysty hushed him.
"Leave the lovers alone," she said.
"Yeah. Guess you're right."
She walked to the table and picked up one of the magazines, finding that it
was a hand-
printed comic in bright colors. She flipped through the pages.
"Gaia!"
"What is it?"
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James Axler - Death Lands - Keeper of the Sun
"Look at these mags."
"What about them?" He picked one up and started to look at it. "Fireblast!"
"Strong meat, huh?"
He didn't answer, his eye held by the amazingly pornographic and startlingly
violent sexual images portrayed in the pages of the comic.
Though he couldn't read the Japanese lettering that was splashed across the
side of every page, it wasn't difficult to follow the story.
A woman pirate queen seemed to have taken a ship prisoner and was having all
the captives taken to her cabin for the most hideously inventive bouts of
sexual torture.
Krysty's was an alternate version of a similar story. It seemed like a
Japanese general from the Second World War had taken a truckload of American
women nurses by their uniforms prisoner, and was submitting them to an almost
identical hell to that shown in the magazine Ryan held.
"I've seen porn before," Ryan said. "Mostly I don't mind it, long as there's
not kiddies or animals in it. What's the old phrase they used to say before
sky-dark?"
"Consenting adults?"
He nodded. "I don't mind, long as it's consenting adults. But this is real
triple-sicko stuff."
One of the victims was bloodily bound with barbed wire, and his hands had been
severed at the wrists. He was stretched out on a rack in front of the pirate [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]