Samurai

by Jason Hightman

  “I understand,” said Aldric. “But if you can help me find Alaythia, she could be of great assistance. There is already the Ice Serpent moving among the people here, and we now have the possibility of facing two Serpents at once. I think it may have been the Ice Serpent’s plan all along—to force us to confront both of them at once. They could then wipe out all the Dragonhunters in one fell swoop. We need to find Alaythia. We need all the help we can get.”

  “We never needed help before,” said Akira, angrily.

  “Haven’t you?” said Aldric.

  “I’ve seen nothing to suggest you will actually be of any help,” Taro said, looking down at the floor. “You are reckless and unthoughtful in your every move.”

  Aldric shook his head, saying, “The boy is still learning, but he has great skill.”

  “I was speaking of the older St. George,” said Taro. “But the boy is equally careless.”

  Aldric’s hands tightened. “I’ll thank you to watch your words about my son,” he said. “And you might look at me when you’re talking to me.”

  Taro met Aldric’s gaze. “You and your son have given away our secret sanctuary. The Ice Dragon knows of us, and may spread word everywhere. Your Saint George heritage is well-known to us from our scrolls, but you seem to have no greater abilities than our own—you did not manage to save the underground fortress of our ancestors.”

  “No one could’ve saved that—” Simon protested.

  “And your younger does not know his place,” said Taro, refusing to look at Simon. “I’m sure he’s a very fine boy, but this is a business for men.”

  “My boy keeps his own mind.”

  “Then let him keep it to himself,” said Taro, and Simon blushed. “We have trained good and hard, and long studied our chances, and we have decided to move on the Tokyo Dragon immediately. That is our plan and we will follow it.”

  “Change the plan,” said Aldric.

  “We follow the plan.” Taro’s voice grew louder. “Always.”

  “If we leave Alaythia out there any longer…” said Aldric. “I fear the worst. She’s gone to find the Black Dragon herself. He is old. We don’t know his mind. If we lose her, then you lose an ally. You could use her—she’s powerful.”

  “If we leave the Dragon of Tokyo alive any longer,” said old Toyo, breaking in, “then more people suffer and are tormented by his twisted magic. He keeps hundreds of people in his grip at all times. He uses his hospital as an immense torture chamber.”

  “And if you die in the attack,” said Aldric, “then I have no one to assist me in finding Alaythia. To attack two Dragons—which is what we will probably face—is bloody foolish.”

  “We have no time for searching her out,” said Akira, sounding fierce. “You may need us. But we, I think, do not need you.”

  “Well…now…perhaps we do,” said Mamoru, smiling. “I think perhaps we have need of each other, if we could see eye to eye. What’s your thinking on this, Kisho?”

  “There are two ways to see it. We might succeed only together, or we might just get in each other’s way,” said Kisho.

  “He is very wise,” Mamoru whispered to Simon.

  “He didn’t say anything,” muttered Simon in disbelief.

  Aldric grumbled. “Who am I supposed to be talking to? Who makes the bloody decisions around here, anyway?”

  “We all make them,” said Taro. “Together.”

  “Well, that’s your problem right there,” said Aldric sharply.

  “It has worked for us for ages,” answered Taro.

  Sachiko moved in between them. “Kyoshi, why don’t you show Simon your room?”

  Kyoshi nodded, and quickly took Simon’s hand. Simon shrugged it off, a bit annoyed, but started to follow him nonetheless. Fenwick trailed behind them, his bushy tail nearly knocking over a potted plant.

  “Your plan won’t work anyway,” Aldric said, almost pleading. “It relies on one Dragon, doesn’t it? What if there are two? Indeed, what if we are walking into a trap with many? I’ve been through that—what happens to your plan then?”

  “We have watched this one many days,” said Taro, “and there is no sign of an unlikely partnership with the Ice Dragon. We will attack each, one by one.”

  “What are you saying here, you’ve ‘watched him’? You mean you let this Creature go when you knew he was there?”

  “We had to be sure. We had to form careful plans, and wait for the right time.”

  “Then wait a little longer. And do it right.”

  Simon waited at the end of the room, though he could see Kyoshi wanted to move on before they got into trouble.

  “Your feelings for this woman cloud your judgment,” said Akira.

  Aldric glared at him. “You don’t know my feelings. And you don’t want to.”

  Sachiko smiled and indicated a door. “Let us take a walk in the garden, Aldric, and let them speak privately. They understand, I’m sure,” she said, eyeing Taro, “that the woman is very important to you, and therefore to all of us. We will work to find a compromise.”

  Aldric let her lead him outside, while Simon was pulled down the hall to Kyoshi’s room.

  It was just like Simon’s room at home.

  Simon entered in amazement. Small Samurai figures lined the shelf just like the little knights Simon had kept since childhood. The same comic books he collected were stacked on the bedstand, exactly as they were in his room. Games that Simon liked to play were laid alongside his favorite music, and the bookshelves had Japanese versions of Simon’s best-loved stories, right down to the Ray Bradbury collections and Tolkien rip-offs that were his guilty pleasure.

  Fenwick skittered to a corner, as something large and white thumped down from above the door and landed on the bed. It was some kind of monster cat, thought Simon.

  “It’s a bobcat,” said Kyoshi, and helped the creature down from the bed. “His name is Katana. It’s the name for a Samurai sword. My mother brought him back from a trip to America.”

  Simon stared at Kyoshi. Fenwick stared at the bobcat.

  This is getting too weird, thought Simon.

  “Does he…do anything?” Simon indicated the bobcat.

  Kyoshi considered. “Not anything you would really notice.”

  Simon smirked. The kid was keeping secrets.

  “I keep a stash of food in here,” said Kyoshi, “for when I get sent to my room. Do you like Smoochers?”

  Simon looked at him. It was his favorite candy.

  He took the pack Kyoshi was offering, and watched as Kyoshi sat on the bed with his pet. Simon’s eyes took in the huge stash of candy in Kyoshi’s desk.

  “Do you get sent to your room a lot?” Simon asked him.

  “No,” said Kyoshi, “I get sent to my room as a reward for finishing my work, so I can come in here and play. The candy I get when I receive good grades in school.”

  “A lot of candy,” Simon noted.

  Kyoshi shrugged.

  “So, do people call you Key for short?”

  “No.”

  “Well, can I call you Key for short?”

  The boy shrugged again.

  “So, um, Key, how old are you…like, eleven?” Simon asked him.

  “Twelve,” the boy answered, obviously hurt. He crossed his small arms across his chest.

  “This looks a lot like my room,” said Simon, changing the subject. “Except you don’t have any swords on the wall.”

  “I can’t have swords,” Key answered.

  “No swords?”

  “They’re sharp.”

  “That’s why they’re good.”

  “I can’t have daggers or darts. Or arrows, either.”

  “Why? Arrows are the best.”

  “They can kill people.”

  “That’s the coolest part!”

  “My father doesn’t like me to have sharp things, or dangerous things, or fast things, or things that are too intense, or things that encourage me to play rough.”
<
br />   “What do you get to do?”

  “He will let me play with girls,” he answered simply.

  Simon smiled, and Key added, “Mother doesn’t like the girls so much.”

  “Key, you’re twelve years old,” Simon said. “Why am I totally sure she has nothing to worry about?”

  Key looked at him with a serious face. “Oh, she should.”

  He gave a half-smile and Simon started laughing.

  Meanwhile, in the study, the Samurai were getting no further in their talks. The discussion went on for an hour. Aldric, sitting on a bench outside, could see them through a window.

  “What are they doing in there? How much longer can they go on?” Aldric complained.

  “Try to be calm,” Sachiko said with amusement. “Enjoy the garden—it’s meant for tranquility—or else my grandfather got rich on silk for nothing.”

  Aldric looked at the Japanese garden, and felt nothing but emptiness and worry.

  “Taro will consider your feelings strongly.” She reassured him. “There is an idea we have, it is called ameru. Do you know it? It’s hard to explain, but it’s a very strong sense of…helpfulness, you could say. The word, to be literal, means the fierce love a mother has for her child, but it stands for more…it runs through the whole society, it signifies the notion that taking care of others brings the highest joy to yourself. Do you see? What I mean to say is, the others will weigh very heavily the risk of leaving your friend Alaythia out there alone.”

  “You said she was important to me. It’s more than that. I don’t think I can handle the boy without her. Or much of anything else…” Aldric’s voice drifted off. “She makes things understandable to me.”

  They sat in silence. Tranquility never came, but Aldric enjoyed the pretense of it.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” asked Simon.

  Key nodded, always with that serious face. “I have a few.”

  “A few?”

  “We go to gaming places. We go bicycle riding sometimes…if my father is satisfied we’re not riding near cliffs or mountains or traffic or…”

  “How do you end up getting more than one girlfriend?”

  “Around here, smartness counts for a lot,” said Key, moving his chesspieces around idly.

  “Oh.”

  “And it’s not as if I’m a dog.”

  It took a moment for Simon to realize he was joking.

  “We go in groups,” Key said. “I get along better with girls.”

  “What about you?” said Key. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “That’s kind of personal, isn’t it?” said Simon. Key still didn’t laugh, but he seemed amused, and Simon added, “Yes, I have a girlfriend. I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, okay, I don’t exactly have her yet. Give me some time.”

  They laughed, and Key used an umbrella tip to throw open a small wooden trunk at the end of the bed.

  “What’s that?” asked Simon.

  “My…yoroi. My armor,” said Key. “I never get to wear it.”

  Simon could hear the longing in his voice. The armor was shiny and black, with a gold emblem on the helmet.

  “I have also two katana. Sharp and beautiful. My father keeps them locked away, but Mamoru has shown them to me. I have also the throwing knives for boys, kozuka, but I never get to touch them. Do you know what this is?” He held up a little carving of a coiled Dragon. “You know it? Netsuke art?”

  “I’ve heard of that.”

  “You have?”

  “Comic books.”

  Key nodded. “It’s ivory. Do you want to see? Feel it. It represents the good force within Dragons, it’s sort of…the promise that they’ll bring good luck if they can turn against their natures. Hard to imagine, really.”

  “No,” Simon said, taking it in hand. “Not in the right situation. I knew one once. Doesn’t make any sense, but he saved my life. The Black Dragon.”

  “The Peking?” said Key, to Simon’s surprise. “He is named in our works. The scrolls tell of a time when the Dragons here helped the harvest. Food grew in abundance wherever Serpents lived. I have never known if that was an accident of their powers, or if they kept people well-fed just so they could draw on human misery.”

  “Yeah, well, understanding them is kind of a waste of time, isn’t it?”

  Key took his time to answer, as he had with every question. “I read a lot,” Key finally said. “From the ancient libraries. The lore is not clear. There are many old stories of the helpfulness of the Serpent. Probably the legends come from some truth about them….”

  “My favorite legends are about the dead ones.”

  Key stayed silent again, and Simon began to feel like everything anyone said would be analyzed by the boy. “I would hope to find a Dragon like this one that helped you, but there is good reason for the Samurai order,” Key said, his voice filled with bleak understanding. “I lead them where they need to go,” he went on. “I find the Serpent, and I have the armor to fight…but I cannot.”

  “I’ve done that,” said Simon. “And I’m not sure you really want to.”

  “Yes. I do,” Key answered, his eyes still on the armor.

  “Well, if you ask me, it doesn’t make sense to keep a support fighter out of this when we’re so shortchanged on people as it is.” Simon’s words rang true to Key, he could tell. “It seems a shame not to get some use out of that armor.

  “Key,” Simon added. “If I have anything to say about it, you’re going to get some use out of that armor.”

  The Samurai continued their discussion into the afternoon. Sachiko brought trays of lunch to Aldric and Simon, who had joined him outside in the garden. Key went back inside with his mother, so Simon and Aldric were left alone to wait. Munching on his fish with displeasure, Aldric complained bitterly about Japanese slowness.

  “They can’t seem to get hold of the idea that Alaythia is urgently needed, right here, right now,” mumbled Aldric. “I’m afraid they think women are for decoration.”

  “We’ll find out what they think,” Simon responded, and he looked toward the manicured bushes, where Fenwick was just pushing his way out. The fox growled in alarm at an antique archway, where Simon realized the bobcat had been watching them. The cat hopped away as Fenwick nuzzled Simon’s knee.

  “You didn’t leave him to spy on them, now, did you?” Aldric asked with scorn.

  Simon ignored him. His eyes met Fenwick’s darkening pupils, and he could see what the fox had observed. “They think we’re too pushy, too loud, and that you’re lying about all the things you’ve done,” he said, reading Fenwick’s eavesdropping. It was better than a spy camera; he heard their words in his head, a mixture of English and Japanese, the kind of hodgepodge mix-speech Simon was used to hearing around the world more and more these days. “Dad, they don’t think they can trust us.”

  “They can’t, apparently,” Aldric chided his son, and he rose to go in.

  Simon stood in embarrassment as Aldric broke in to their discussion inside the mansion. “This has got to end,” he said loudly. “There’s too much to be done.” Seeing the commotion, Key tried to get Simon to come back to his room away from the argument, but ended up nervously following Simon to a good place for listening in.

  “Eavesdropping is not allowed,” said Key, not looking like he meant it.

  “It isn’t?” asked Simon, staring at the bobcat in Key’s arms. So the bobcat did have a use, after all.

  “Well, you did not say anything interesting,” Key mumbled. Simon half-grinned, and the boys turned toward the meeting to watch. The irony was instantly obvious to both of them; the Dragons could never end their disagreements long enough to dominate humankind, and here were the Hunters fighting just as pigheadedly.

  “We are decided.” Taro was addressing Aldric.

  “Are you?” asked the Englishman, irritated. “I suppose my viewpoint didn’t much matter. So what’s your choice to be?”

  “We
have decided we will discuss this decision in private, firstly.”

  Unreal. They decided not to decide, apparently. Simon sighed.

  But Aldric turned angry. “You will choose now,” he said, “there is no more time for discussion.”

  “If you want a decision now,” said Taro, “you will not like it.”

  The other Samurai came up behind him, forming a wall.

  “The Dragon of Tokyo will die,” said Taro. “And then we will see to this woman, Alaythia.”

  Aldric looked at Simon. There was no understanding these people.

  Chapter 20

  NEVER GO TO TOKYO WITHOUT A SWORD

  TOKYO SEEMED A NEON blur as the armored black sedan breezed down the boulevard, Taro in the driver’s seat, Sachiko beside him. The other Japanese men, with baffling efficiency, had found room somehow beside them and in the next row.

  Simon and Aldric sat in the very rear of the car, crammed in beside Key and Mamoru. Aldric had never looked so uncomfortable, with his shoulders pinched, knees pushed together, and a stern expression on his face.

  Simon hadn’t said a word on the journey. The rice fields and country houses were long gone, replaced by the high, anonymous, knifelike buildings of Tokyo. Kyoto had buildings that were sheets of glass and steel, too, but it had elegant structures laid among them, and wraparound greenery. Crowded as it was, Kyoto was modest compared to the fast-forward bustle and the sheer functionality of Tokyo. This city was like a socket with highrise batteries sticking out of it, powering a giant toy that did nothing but make light and noise and push figures pointlessly and hurriedly around.

  Watching the street’s giant television screens looming over him, Simon felt powerless. Taro had insisted both Fenwick and Key’s bobcat were left behind in the Kyoto mansion, and Simon was sure it was just to show who was in control. He wanted to glare at the man, but didn’t have the nerve.

  The bargain Taro left them was simple: the St. Georges would give their support to the attack on the Japanese Serpent, and then the search for Alaythia would continue.