Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead by Steve Perry Page A

right to commit suicide, the night before, the man had gone into the sand garden outside his home for a final meal. He was not kept in prison, of course, Hajime’s grandfather had told him, for although he had been forbidden to take his own life, his honor had been sufficient to assure that he would turn up on the appointed morning scheduled for his death. But for his last meal, he had sat down and slowly and carefully eaten several pounds of smooth stones. Enough to fill his belly from top to bottom.
    “Stones, Grandfather? Why would he do that?”
    The old man had smiled. “Because,” he’d said, “he knew that the enemy who had caused his downfall planned to stack him atop other condemned men to blood his new sword. And that the traditional strike is to the belly, below the ribs and above the hips. A well-forged blade would easily cut through human flesh and a living spine, but a cut powerful enough to bisect two, three, or even four men stacked up on one another? That would take a most sharp blade and a strong arm. And if such a hard cut was swung at a pile of rocks? It would break the steel . . .”
    The old man’s laugh stayed with Yamada for a long time. “How clever was that?” he had asked. “The perfect samurai revenge. How clear his mind was, to think of that.”
    “Did it?” the young Hajime had asked. “Did the sword break?”
    “Oh, indeed! I myself was a witness to the execution. The owner of the blade was an arrogant bastard—rumored to have had family come out of the merchant class—and his katana was a thing of great beauty, forged for him by one of the premier smiths of the day at great cost. It was his pride, and he meant to demonstrate it to the world.
    “Shattered as if it were made of glass when it hit. The condemned samurai died slowly, bleeding from the cut that did get halfway through his belly, but he died with a smile on his lips. Later, when it was found out what he had done, condemned men used for sword testing had to be specifically forbidden from swallowing rocks . . .”
    Yamada shook his head at the memory. Yes, while some men would be nervously composing their death-poems, the unnamed samurai had been methodically preparing his revenge. What calmness of mind and spirit that had shown.
    His own sword was a powerful blade, Yamada’s, and he had used it to release half a dozen souls from their flesh. He was a doctor, and he could heal, but he was also a samurai, and he could kill. Whatever was needed.
    He turned, the rain pouring over him like a waterfall, to face another imaginary enemy—
    —and saw in the trees a face that was not the least bit imaginary. Watching him.
    Without a second thought, Yamada raised his wooden blade and charged at the watcher—
    Gruber would have pressed on once the rain began, but he was quick to realize that the American, Englishman, and Japanese wouldn’t be doing so; and since he had to stay behind them and far enough back to avoid detection, then stop they must.
    He was eager, but he did not wish to behave rashly.
    He was drenched, his clothes soaked, and the tarp that had been quickly stretched and angled with ropes among several trees sagged under the weight of water that sluiced over the lower edge in a continuous sheet, like a waterfall on a river. The men laughed and joked, but it rained big here, and the lightning and thunder came close together—flash . . . boom!—so you knew the strikes were nearby, and when such happened, the laughter stopped before it nervously began again. The captain had forbidden smoking, and just as well—the gusty wind drove rain under the tarp, and cigarettes not kept in a tightly capped tin would have been too wet to light. But it was warm enough, the rain, the only good point connected to it.
    Gruber sipped from a flask of schnapps and watched as the water runoff from the tarp dug a trench in the muddy ground. This would certainly make walking more like slogging until it dried up.
    He didn’t envy the