by Tabor Evans
The samurai looked the little boy over. "What do you want here, termite?" he growled. "Begone, you with your big eyes staring at my dinner."
The little boy took no step back or forward, but just stared, and wondered how to ask. Dinner meant little to the boy; how many times had he gone without it, or lunch or breakfast, for that matter? What the little boy wanted to ask… but how could he ever hope?
"Get out of here!" the samurai shouted. "Go, or else, instead of looking at my dinner, I'll cut you up and cook you with it!" The samurai pretended to start to get up, hoping to frighten the boy away, but the ruse didn't work. He settled back on his mat, to glower darkly at the little snip.
"It's not your food I want, noble warrior," the little boy began, but then he lost his nerve.
"Not my dinner, eh?" the samurai grumbled. "What, then? Money?" He waved away the boy in disgust. "I have no money. You wish money, go beg the bushi who have it, those who call themselves true warriors, and yet disgrace themselves and the warrior's code by teaching the martial arts to any student who has the coin to pay for the lessons. Once, before the cursed barbarians came to our land, there were plenty of excellent wars for a samurai to fight! Now it's gotten so a warrior can't make an honest living, unless he wants to open a stall next door to the flower-arranging teacher, and the tea-ceremony teacher, and the music teacher! Never! I for one. Hirata Soko, will never dishonor the bugei, the martial arts, by revealing them to a bunch of spoiled brats. Nor will I degrade them by turning them into what is being called these days budo — "Martial Ways," indeed! Just a rationalization so that dishonorable samurai can make money!"
"It is neither food nor money I wish, noble samurai," the little boy replied.
"Samurai!" the man snorted derisively. "I am no samurai!"
Startled, the boy replied, "Then what…?"
He was silenced by a wave of the man's hand. "I was a samurai, once. But a samurai is a warrior who serves a great lord. I serve no one! And what is a servant without a master? A ronin, a 'wave man,' blown here and there like the waves of the ocean, owning nothing, owned by no one."
Abruptly his fierce manner changed, and he beckoned to the boy.
"Come closer," the ronin said. "Come on! Hirata will not hurt you. I was only joking about cutting you up and putting you in the pot."
"I know," the little boy said bashfully.
"You know, do you?" Hirata laughed. "Tell me, how do you know?"
"I'm too skinny to eat."
At this the man threw back his head and roared his laughter. "Come closer, boy. Your voice is like the squeak of a mouse, I can hardly hear you." Hirata peered and squinted. "My eyes aren't what they once were, but you do seem strange to me, boy. Come closer, I'll not say it again…
"Samurai!" the man snorted derisively. "I am no samurai!"
Startled, the boy replied, "Then what…?"
He was silenced by a wave of the man's hand. "I was a samurai, once. But a samurai is a warrior who serves a great lord. I serve no one! And what is a servant without a master? A ronin, a 'waveman,' blown here and there like the waves of the ocean, owning nothing, owned by no one."
Abruptly his fierce manner changed, and he beckoned to the boy.
The little boy slowly came forward, within an arm's length of the huge ronin. The child had to stare up to look at the man's face, even though the warrior was seated cross-legged. The boy felt like he was standing next to a boulder of a man, a mountain of a man. Inhaling, he could smell, mingling with the food's aroma, the ronin's man scent, the smell of brute animal.
"How can it be?" Hirata exclaimed. "You are a barbarian child!"
"My father was… barbarian," the little boy said, lowering his eyes. "My mother was high-born…"
"And what is it you wish of me, boy?" the man growled, his ill humor revived by this living reminder of the rape of his homeland.
The little boy took a deep breath. He sent a prayer to his parents in heaven to prepare the way for him should the warrior chop off his head in a fit of anger brought about by his arrogant request. Fully expecting to be slain for his impetuousness, the boy said, "I beg that I be allowed to pledge myself to you as your servant and apprentice, that you teach me…"
That was all he got out. With a flick of his wrist, the man swept the boy's feet out from under him. He placed his hand across the boy's neck to pin him fast. Such was the breadth of Hirata's hand that he was able to place thumb and little finger on the ground, with his palm across the boy's windpipe.
The boy stared up at the fearsome face of the ronin. He was pinned fast, but so thin and scrawny had he grown that he felt no discomfort beneath the ronin's hand. The boy was about to beg for forgiveness, and to be allowed to wander on his way, but before he could, the man began to berate him.
"How dare you ask to be taught the bugei?" the warrior spat scornfully, his words causing the boy more pain than could any of his assortment of razor-sharp weapons. "You are not even fit to learn the budo. You are tainted with barbarian blood! You are impure! A…"
The boy closed his eyes, and allowed his soul to wander through the depths of his own anguished heart deep as a cave, so that the taunts and jeers of the ronin grew muffled and distant. Shame and guilt for his predicament fell from him. Lying on the ground, pinned by his tormentor, the boy felt anger and defiance wash over his frail, tiny body. The boy opened his mouth, and made a sound…
Just as the eerie howl of the wind is the aural manifestation of the terrific potential force of moving air, so is the kiai — the shout of spirit — the aural manifestation of ki, the all-encompassing, indefinable spirit of the universe, focused through the body and will of the master of bugei…
At that moment the little boy felt just that power grow in him. Another boy might have cried out in surrender, in a plea for mercy; in this boy it was a shout of utterly fearless determination.
It was the kiai, the shout of spirit. The boy sounded it as his tiny fist the size of a butterfly struck the ronin's massive forearm.
Hirata unpinned the boy at once. Awed, he stared at the place on his arm the boy had struck. The blow did not harm him, of course, but it did astound him, and touch his heart. This child's body — to be sure, a tainted body — housed a soul stripped pure and clean by adversity. This soul had been pitted against the world from birth. It had to tread the warrior's path.
"What is your name?" Hirata asked, and after the boy had told him, the ronin said, "Yes, I have heard the story of your mother's marriage. It is a well-known bit of gossip." He pondered the pale, frightened, but stoic lad lying sprawled before him; as he did so, love, pity, and sympathy flooded his heart, for the bugei's code decreed that such emotions must live in every true warrior. Corrupted budo be damned, Hirata thought. Here, at last, was a worthy protégé to whom Hirata could teach the strict, stern kakuto bugei — the true samurai's way. The boy had to tread the warrior's path, there was no other path for him to follow…
All of this the little boy did not then know, of course, but Hirata told it to him toward the end of their ten years together. As the little boy grew in both stature and strength. he learned the kyujutsu, kenjutsu. bojutsu, and shurikenjutsu — the arts of bow and arrow, sword, staff, and throwing-knife — and all the other fighting arts. The two of them, mentor and protégé, had many talks about duty and destiny and how those two guiding principals had merged on the day of their fateful meeting, during the ten years that the boy spent becoming a warrior…
Ki's keen ears picked up a strange-sounding voice. Instantly it seized his wary attention, hauling him back from the reverie into which he had drifted, floating on whiskey. The voice, with its European accent, catapulted him into the present, and his duty toward the woman he had sworn himself to protect, Jessica Starbuck.
A stranger had entered the Union Saloon, to take a table near the bar. The man looked to be in his thirties. He was tall and fit-looking, with close-cropped blond hair the color of goldenrod. and eyes as heartlessly pale blue as the sky
during a Texas drought. The man's handsome looks were marred by a thin red scar running the length of one cheek. He was dressed in a suit of black, but wore no hat. Beneath the man's long coat, Ki could see the bulges made by a brace of pistols.
Ki stared at the man from his own place at the bar. It was not the stranger's thick Germanic accent as he harangued the bartender for service that had tipped Ki off. It was the way the man carried himself. There were, after all, many Europeans who visited Sarah on legitimate business. The Scottish cattle barons were buying up ranches, as were the English and others, from the Continent, but this blond, scarred, pistol-packing stranger was no cattleman. Ki knew that it was quite possible that the stranger would sense him in the room and turn in his chair to stare at him. Instantly a silent sort of mutual recognition and acknowledgment would flow between them, even though they had never before laid eyes on each other. They would recognize each other not as men, but as warriors.
It was the ki, the focused energy, or perhaps just the faint heat of it, that warriors could sense in one another. Ki had felt it radiating from Longarm that first time they'd met, up on the rise overlooking the place where Alex Starbuck had died. In Longarm, the fierceness was tempered by mercy and honor. Ki knew that Longarm suffered a tiny bit of each death he brought to his adversaries, Longarm was a warrior who still fought the most important battle, the battle to maintain a hold on his humanity while he lived by the sword — or gun. This was a battle Ki still fought as well. The first thing Hirata had taught him was that all of a warrior's prowess could turn into a thing of shame rather than pride if his soul was weak and he surrendered to the thrill of spilling blood.
Yes, Ki nodded to himself. He had instantly recognized this European stranger for what he was: a warrior, but not one like Longarm or Hirata. a warrior who had given himself over to dishonor, who plied his trade not out of duty and destiny, but for the dark and addictive joy of killing.
The bartender brought the stranger a bottle and two glasses. Ki watched and waited. When the stranger's drinking partner arrived, he would be distracted. Then Ki could perhaps move closer without tipping the man off. He would like to hear what this European killer had to say. Ki only hoped the conversation would be conducted in English. Unlike Jessie, he did not have a command of German, Spanish, French, and Italian. He could speak only English and, of course, his own Nipponese.
As the stranger looked about the room, Ki pulled his hat down over his eyes, so that the other could not see them. It was the eyes, mostly, that gave away a man's secrets. Even the most experienced warrior could not keep his eyes from telegraphing a warning to his adversary a moment before he struck his killing blow. Hirata had always taught that this did not matter, that the aim of a bushi was to strike a blow so perfectly executed that his adversary could not block it, no matter how much advance warning he had received.
Ki had never fully accepted this teaching, and that had been the only source of disharmony between himself and his teacher over the ten years of his apprenticeship. Hirata was proud and pure-blooded, after all. There was no question as to his place and stature in Nipponese society. He had been samurai, like his father before him, and his father's father. The only question was, how excellent a samurai. The ancient bugei tradition decreed that a warrior walk loud and proud, and in that way give lesser beings an opportunity to scurry from his path. Should a man even accidentally touch the scabbard of a samurai's katana, his long sword, that man could be instantly slain; the samurai's code demanded that the guilty party be cut down then and there. Hirata's way of handling this particular situation that Ki now found himself in would be to stride up to the blond stranger, demand to know what his business was in Sarah, and then kill him, then and there, if the man refused to say, tried to defend himself, or, in Hirata's estimation, attempted to lie.
This Ki would not do, just as he would not carry or willingly use the katana. Ki had often thought that it was this decision on his part that had finally broken the bond between himself and his teacher, effectively ending his ten-year apprenticeship.
* * *
"I simply do not understand," Hirata had shouted. The ronin had grown older and grayer over the years, but he was still a mountain of a man with hard stones for muscles and tree trunks for limbs. "The katana, the long sword, is a divine weapon, a badge of honor that links a warrior to his noble ancestry." They were sitting in front of Hirata's shabby house, situated at the end of the blind alley. As always, every evening, the cookfire was burning, and the pot of food the two would share was quietly bubbling away, the puffs of fragrant steam rattling the lid. "For the life of me, I cannot understand why you are so stubborn about using it!"
The young man only smiled. "Honored teacher, it is precisely for the reasons you have mentioned that I refuse to use it, even though I have practiced and mastered its techniques."
Hirata drew his katana from its scabbard, as if to seduce the young man with its exquisite, deadly beauty. The fine steel's lovingly polished length caught the fire's reflection. Hirata turned the blade this way and that, so that the flame's reflection glittered, captured in the gleaming sword, reminding the young man of precious gems, of the jewellike Siamese fighting fish in their crystal bowls, of the light in a woman's eyes when she is joined in blissful sexual union with a man…
"Honored teacher," the young man began, "you have described the katana as the link between a warrior and his noble ancestry. For this reason I turn my back on it."
"Explain yourself." Hirata growled like a tiger, and lifted his hand as if to cuff his pupil. He restrained himself only because it had been his experience that some unlikely seeds of wisdom had a way of sprouting from this half-breed's mind.
The young man, meanwhile, had not flinched from the threat of the blow. An apprentice can learn nothing until he trusts his teacher, and the ultimate sign of such trust in the world of the warrior is for the pupil to calmly await any sort of strike from his master, knowing that an expert bushi can perfectly control the force and intensity of the attack. "How can I carry a symbol of noble ancestry?" the young man explained, not even looking at Hirata's unpraised ham of a fist. "Society has shunned me, and even my mother's own family has denied me my birthright."
"Ah…" Hirata sighed, and looked away from his pupil. What the young man had said was, of course, quite true. The ronin felt his heart grow heavy with pity. The young man had an indomitable spirit, a spirit that had not been broken by the stigma of his barbaric sire, but oh, how that spirit — once so tender and vulnerable — had been scarred! "I did not mean literal ancestry," Hirata said gruffly, "but spiritual, my boy. This spiritual link you have with all the great warriors of the past, despite your unfortunate parentage."
"That I understand," the young man said. "That I believe, just as I believe you are my spiritual father."
"Ah… go on. now," Hirata sputtered, turning eyes grown liquid away from his pupil. "None of that, else I will cuff you…"
"But despite the spiritual link, honored teacher. I will not carry the katana." the young man continued. "I would have to kill far too many men who I suspected were scoffing at my pretensions. No, I will make it a point to use the sai, the bo staff, the nunchaku. and the small, deadly shuriken throwing blades and stars. I will use the weapons perfected by our homeland's vanquished foes, the weapons of China and Okinawa, the weapons of the downtrodden, the underdogs. If I am to be a samurai, honored teacher, I will not be samurai to the noble class, as you were. I will be samurai to those who suffer through no fault of their own, in the land where my father was born."
"To this vow of yours I have no answer," Hirata replied softly. He sheathed his sword, then reached out and took his pupil's hand. "Tradition compels me to reprimand you, and yet the barbarians have taken over our country. I, once a noble samurai, have been reduced to living in a hovel. I have my pride, my strength, my katana, and my honor. But each day I grew a little older. Soon my strength will be gone. How then will I sustain my pride? What then will become of
my honor?"
"You are the last true samurai," the young man answered. And then he smiled. "You are the last because you would not degrade the code by teaching budo. You would not take on a student for money."
"And I never did," Hirata smiled back. "I took on the last true pupil. In you I have been able to turn the wheel of my life one complete cycle. Now that I have taught you all I know, you must go off to wherever your vow shall take you."
"When?" the young man asked.
"Now," the old ronin answered. "Come back in a little while."
"I understand," the young man said, very, very softly, taking care to keep his tone totally neutral.
"Of course you do," Hirata chuckled. "You were my student."
The young man rose, bowed to his teacher, and then walked off to a quiet park in the city, where he meditated for an hour. When he returned to the old shack that had been his home for a decade, he saw the still, lifeless body of Hirata. The master was slumped over, his two hands still holding the hilt of the short sword lodged in his abdomen. The young man did not have to examine the body to know that his teacher was dead, just as he did not have to examine the long, self-inflicted horizontal and vertical slashes in his teacher's belly to know that the cuts were crisp, clean, and totally excellent. Even in dying, the old man had remained true to the ancient spirit of bugei. In recent times it had become the custom among samurai committed to seppuku — suicide by ritual disembowelment — to appoint a second who would stand by, prepared to lop off the suicide's head as soon as he had made the first thrust with the short sword, thus sparing him the agony of the two long, deep cuts. Typically, the noble Hirata had shunned this cheapening of the samurai's ultimate act of courage.
The young man turned to where his belongings had been neatly stacked. On top, in its scabbard, was Hirata's katana. Smiling, the young man drew the sword, and with it saluted his teacher. Smiling he slid the blade back into its scabbard. He did not thrust it through his sash, as was customary, but holding true to his vow, he wrapped it in his clothing and carried it on his back as he left Hirata for the final time. He brought the blade with him to America. He kept it clean and sharp, and when he was sure he was alone, he practiced with it, hearing Hirata's whispered instruction in the singing of the sword as it sliced through the air.
