The Emperor's Men 7: Rising Sun. Dirk van den Boom

      Aritomo complied. He yielded with a sense of impending disaster, but the obedience to his superior had been implanted deep within him. He knew that another important condition for their survival was inner cohesion. They had to work as a unit. Otherwise, no strategy would be successful.

      After a short discussion, the commander prevailed, and that was the tenor of his speech to the crew. Despite his volatile reaction to the crying men, he finally seemed to hit the right note, because the men accepted his vision. Those of them who were gifted with a great deal of imagination quickly began to think a life in luxury, with servants and willing native girls, which heightened the general mood. Those who thought a little further frowned at these reveries. The one who lived in wealth and at the expense of others should better strive for his subject’s loyalty, otherwise, one morning he’d wake up with a blade in his chest. The numerical inferiority of the Japanese was something that no one could overlook, who didn’t intentionally close his eyes.

      Inugami then proceeded methodically, something he was quite good at.

      On their first night, the two bodyguards left the boat. Of course, the savages knew of no lighting, had only a few watchfires built around the boat, and still at a respectful distance. The two men managed to sneak undetected to the ground without problems to carry out Inugami’s orders. The Maya made it easy for both of them: At one of the watch fires, only one group of three men had gathered next to a single guard, two of whom had earlier joined their reception committee. Sawada was convinced to see them as notables or priests. In any case, his argument had been, they belonged to the upper class, most likely to those who could read and write.

      That was sufficient for Inugami’s plans. The bodyguards had been ordered to kidnap one of these men and bring him aboard. There he would be placed in the care of Sawada, with the aim of working on joint language studies. Inugami had formulated two intentions: The Japanese had to learn the savages’ language – that there was no way around, he quite accepted that –, and the savages should also be taught, but not in Japanese – that should remain solely the language of the new ruler’s elite – but English, which both the two officers and the two senior NCOs were quite familiar with. A barbarous language, good enough for savages of all kinds, and much easier to learn than Japanese.

      Again, Aritomo agreed that this decision wasn’t stupid. And again, he got a bad feeling in the matter – especially with the approach of the commander to force their first teacher and student to his lessons. That could surely be achieved in a different way.

      When the two bodyguards returned, they had an unconscious man with them, limp in their arms. They had caused a bit of commotion, but Inugami had asked them not to kill anyone, and they said they had stuck to it. Aritomo helped to put the man on the bunk in the captain’s cabin, as far as the glorified cabinet was to be called a cabin. It was one of the four men who had visited the boat during the day, no doubt about that. He slept peacefully.