Sword of Honour

by David Kirk

  Nobutsura tried to rise at his feet, grabbing at a chest of drawers to pull himself up. His hands yanked them open, spilled their contents out onto floor, and there the golden crest that had once sat above Hayato Nakata’s eyes tumbled out. It fell at Musashi’s feet, and he looked down at it for a moment, and all within him flared hotter, and he looked at Nobutsura through a veil of perfect loathing.

  The bowyer fled out onto the street, whimpering and pleading. Musashi followed, slashing at his arms and his arse with the bow. A crowd had gathered now and they drew back in shock at the sight. Musashi threw the bow at Nobutsura, and then he bent down to retrieve the spear and the swords. The bowyer began to retreat, not running but rather caught in a great confusion, alternating moment by moment between begging Musashi for mercy and crying out for the steward who could not hear him, he lying beaten and senseless against the blacksmith’s walls.

  Musashi advanced after him steadily, watching him, observing each and every little thing he hated about the man, cataloguing them like piles of coals stacked before a furnace. He pursued him until they came to the river that bisected the town.

  The bowyer stopped on the banks.

  ‘Keep going,’ said Musashi.

  Nobutsura turned and looked down at the river. ‘But—’

  ‘Get in the water.’

  Nobutsura hesitated.

  ‘Get in the damned water!’ shouted Musashi, and he pointed with the tip of the spear.

  It was not a death sentence. The river was not deep and the current mild. Nobutsura jumped from the banks and stood looking up at Musashi. He commanded him to wade out into the centre, and there the bowyer stood with the waters up to his sternum. Musashi threw both scabbarded swords at him, and the weapons vanished beneath the surface, and still he was not sated.

  The outrage spiralled ever outwards: ‘Where’s the bastard in the palanquin?’

  He could have demanded anything and been granted it at that moment, so shocked were the witnesses at his rampage. He was led over the arch of a bridge that crossed the river, spear clutched in both hands, and the anger did not subside. He did not want it to. This all some wild improvisation on its behalf. He did not know why he had sent the man into the waters. He did not know why he had thrown the swords in after him. All he knew was that this had to be, that he could make this be, and he was carried and shielded, and how far could this take him? How far could he go?

  Ahead were the white plaster walls of a rich estate. The gates were oak and iron, studded and imposing. How many the men that had stood supplicant here, believed themselves supplicant? Musashi hauled on the handle but the gates would not open, locked or barred. He pounded on the gate, kicked at it, pried at it with the head of the spear. It held firm. Inside he heard roused voices.

  The walls were not high. He abandoned attempting to open the gates and instead threw the spear over the tiled eaves and then hauled himself over afterwards. There was a neat garden of grass that ringed a pond, and he saw that the minister and a woman half his age in a peach-coloured kimono had been sitting eating rice cakes beneath the shade of a wicker screen.

  A romantic little hideaway that Musashi had breached, and now the old man stared aghast, his pointed grey beard wavering.

  ‘You, that ordered such torture on another,’ Musashi said to him.

  The woven screen the pair of them had sheltered beneath was curved and beautiful, would no doubt stand up to anything shy of a gale, and Musashi saw this and snarled in his envy and his rage and picked it up and hurled it against the wall. The minister was not a samurai, had no swords to go for, and so he just stared. Musashi kicked the platter of rice cakes at him.

  ‘You can eat, after seeing that? After causing that to be? Choke on them!’

  The doors of the fine foreroom of the house were wide open to the fair weather. Musashi saw a styled copper kettle whorled with patterns, a plaster orb of the limbless saint Daruma and his benevolent scowl, the paper walls painted with a triptych view of Kyoto. Neat and beautiful things, gorgeous things, and what law was it that said such things should stand when in their shadow lay mutilation? He could not bear their existence suddenly, and he grabbed the minister and hauled him inside and sent him hurtling through the walls. Paper split, wood splintered, Kyoto was annihilated.

  He heard the sound of footfall, saw motion in the corner of his eye. The woman charged and threw herself at Musashi, dedicated as a samurai, perhaps even born samurai herself. She had a knife clutched in both hands and its edge cut across his forearm as he raised it to block. He hissed in pain and grabbed at her wrists, wrestled the knife away from her, and then he pushed her against a beam. She was much lighter than he was, and she bounced off the hard wood and fell to her knees and did not rise. He looked down at her. She looked up at him.

  He remembered the sound of a woman’s laughter from the palanquin.

  He spat at her, and then he went and picked the old man from out of the wreckage of the walls. The minister was moaning feebly, his body jarred. Musashi wrenched his arm behind his back and bent him double. He was helpless, and Musashi looked to the woman.

  ‘Do you see?’ he snarled at her, and to himself as well. ‘Do you see?’

  He forced the old man outside. In the garden, a servant was staring at the wreckage of the wicker screen in complete surprise. When Musashi emerged the young man turned and whimpered, dropped the shovel he had been holding and fled.

  One more tool. One more implement. Musashi picked the shovel up and entwined the old man’s arms around it, wrapped them around the wooden shaft. He cried out in pain, and Musashi forced him onwards. He unbarred the gates and walked back towards the town.

  ‘Please,’ the old man began to plead. ‘Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.’

  They crossed over the bridge. The bowyer Nobutsura was hauling himself out of the river up onto the banks.

  ‘Get back in the river!’ shouted Musashi at him.

  The bowyer gaped.

  ‘Get back in there right now or I swear to the heavens I will gut you!’

  He obeyed.

  The minister was moaning, ‘Where are you taking me? What are you doing?’

  Musashi forced them through the town, until they were back at the moor once more. The beaten steward remained slumped against the wall of the smithy, face bloodied. A gaggle of concerned apprentices were crouched nearby, fearful to approach him. The man could barely discern his own hands before his face, let alone rise to stop Musashi.

  The minister moaned when he recognized where they were, and again when he saw Jiro’s corpse. Musashi released him, pushed him towards the body. The man stumbled, then rose as straight as he could. He looked at what the torturer had wrought, then at Musashi.

  ‘Cut him down, take up the body,’ said Musashi.

  The minister stood there. He was repulsed and disgusted, and nor did he want to bear the shame of acting as a lowly corpsehandler would. Yet he feared Musashi more, and so he untied the lashes and with great difficulty bore the ruined remains of Jiro up across his shoulders.

  ‘Walk,’ said Musashi.

  There was no destination. He simply made the minister march back and forth across the moor until he collapsed beneath Jiro’s weight, exhausted. Then he threw the shovel at the man’s feet.

  ‘Dig,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ panted the minister.

  ‘Dig,’ said Musashi.

  The man shuddered in a half-moan. ‘I’ll pay for the corpse’s cremation, if that is what you wish. A proper cremation, at the temple—’

  ‘Dig!’

  The minister rose and thrust the head of the shovel into the earth. Musashi watched as he worked. He realized he was bleeding, examined the knife-slash across his forearm. It was not deep. He demanded the minister’s jacket, and when the man relinquished it he tore it into silken bandages.

  It took time to dig a grave. A crowd drew near. It was late in the afternoon by the time the hole was dug to Musashi’s satisfaction
. It was thigh-deep and Jiro’s body fitted neatly within it lengthways. He looked at the minister setting the corpse in the grave. The man made to get out of the hole.

  Musashi stopped him with the head of the shovel at his clavicle.

  The old man looked up at him, quivering, smeared with dirt. His hands, unused to labour, were bleeding from the palms. This man, this pathetic man, was the power he had rejected at Sekigahara. He was all Lords, all samurai, the Way. For two years Musashi had consented simply to hide from all this, agreed to a life apart, but now he looked and saw this man and his authority anew. Saw that it could be confronted. That it ought to be confronted.

  The anger told him this, made it truth, and how far could this take him? How far could he go?

  ‘Kneel,’ he said.

  ‘You cannot be serious,’ said the minister, sweating, hands bloody from the labour. ‘This is a crime of great magnitude. Reconsider. Do you know the power of my most noble Lord?’

  ‘Is your Lord here?’ asked Musashi. ‘Let him draw forth his own sword and lay me low. Let he himself give me evidence of his power.’

  The minister had no answer.

  ‘Kneel,’ said Musashi.

  The minister did so, legs astride Jiro’s chest. Musashi took up the shovel and filled the grave around him, buried him up to the neck until only his head remained above the earth. Musashi looked down at him and saw him for what he was. He placed his foot square upon the man’s crown and kept it there for some time.

  ‘I am going to go,’ he told the minister. ‘When I am gone, command these people watching to dig you free. See if they will. See how much true authority you hold over them.’

  He took his foot off. The minister’s head wriggled helplessly. He looked like a maggot issuing forth from a wound. Like a yellowed tooth in a rotting gum. Musashi raised his eyes to the watching crowd.

  ‘My name is Musashi Miyamoto,’ he said to them. ‘I will hide no more. Musashi Miyamoto! Thrall to no man!’

  It felt right to say. It felt as though it had to be said. The crowd heeded him in silence. He looked at them, he looked at the minister, he looked at what he had achieved. The anger had given him this.

  How much further could it take him? How much further could he go?

  Musashi did not even know the name of the town, but when he left it he had declared a war upon all the world.

  Chapter Four

  Nagayoshi Akiyama climbed down from his saddle.

  He rode a white horse, a steady creature bred not for war, nor racing, but for its stamina and constancy of temper. He hitched the reins to a post, and then drew his longsword in its scabbard, from where it was hung amidst his bags of travel. He slid it into the wide silken belt around his waist, and then took a moment to right his clothes from where they had been pulled on the ride. He wore greaves that clung tight to his shins, patterned trousers that bloomed out like paper lanterns over his thighs, and on his shoulders his jacket the colour of tea.

  With fastidious hands he checked his hair the best he could. He had shaved his crown and oiled his locks up into a topknot before a mirror in the morning, and from what he could tell the ride had not sullied his efforts.

  He was outside a small compound, low walls of thin wooden planking greyed with age. Above the modest gate was hung a sign, varnished cedar with engraved characters painted black:

  Sakakibara School of the Way

  Akiyama set his shoulders, put his thumbs to his belt in proper masculine posture, and then strode a measured pace. He rapped upon the door, and it was opened all but immediately. He was expected.

  The master of the school was an old man, gaunt of face. He and a few younger adepts awaited Akiyama, and, as always, as they first beheld Akiyama and his red skin and his mossy eyes, there came that jarring little instant. An instant Akiyama had long learnt immaculate hair styling or propriety of dress could not overcome, and yet, each and every time, he persevered, shaved and combed and oiled and hoped anew and simultaneously loathed himself for it.

  To be polite was to wear a face of serene unreadability, to put up a barrier so that you might not trouble another with selfish want or emotion. Yet behind this barrier for Akiyama there was always another. A certain tension that did not yield, carried over as the polite words were spoken as they should be spoken and the protocols were observed as they ought to be observed.

  He ignored it as he had learnt to ignore it and humbly he introduced himself with precision as Nagayoshi Akiyama, of the school of Yoshioka, of the realm of Tajima and of the bloodline Tachibana.

  The master Sakakibara pushed his brow to the ground. ‘It is an honour to receive an adept of the esteemed school of Yoshioka.’

  ‘It is I who am honoured by a reception I am unworthy of,’ said Akiyama formally. ‘I am in your debt. It was with great interest and gratitude that I received your missive.’

  ‘I trust it came not too late? Your initial request came some time before, but, regrettably, with things of this sort, one cannot offer assistance until, by chance, one is in a position to do so.’

  ‘I assure you, our school’s interest in Musashi Miyamoto endures.’

  Sakakibara smiled with his mouth.

  They knelt on soft tatami mats in the small tearoom that overlooked the garden of ordered and raked sand. Patterns of Zen abounded. One of the adepts had set about making tea for them. He stoked the hearth pit in the centre of the room and set a kettle of water heating. Akiyama watched him. The man fumbled and struggled, worked only with his left hand, for his right forearm was set in a splint.

  Given what he had read in Sakakibara’s missive, it was fairly easy to deduce why the man was wounded so, and not wishing to confront the man with his humiliation Akiyama elected to wait in silence. He and the master sat, offering neither assistance nor comment as the splinted man ladled the readied water into pewter dishes. Akiyama swirled the liquid, watched the green tea powder diffuse into the clear.

  In silence the three samurai drank.

  It was only when the splinted man left them to remove the kettle and the cups did Akiyama feel it polite to broach the subject of Miyamoto once more.

  ‘Tall and wild, lean and slender, no topknot,’ said Sakakibara, and his face darkened as he spoke. ‘On his face were scars, many scars sprent like a constellation of the stars. Pox in his childhood, perhaps. He stank, stank beyond incense. Stank like the masterless.’

  ‘And he came with sword drawn?’ asked Akiyama.

  ‘No,’ said Sakakibara. ‘But he came in aggression, I . . .’ He hesitated, struggled for words. He did not want to present himself or his students as incapable, but he was avowed to honesty and furthermore he had already weighed the potential disgrace against the worth of aiding the Yoshioka, and so he spoke on with a reluctant candour. ‘There was a confrontation on the southerly road. One of my students, an earnest young man named Yoshisada, encountered Miyamoto there. Yoshisada has taken to reclusion in his shame in the days since, and so I have not discerned the truth of that particular incident, but they arrived at our school with Miyamoto’s arm around Yoshisada’s throat, and Yoshisada stripped of his swords.’

  Akiyama nodded evenly. ‘A rare misfortune.’

  ‘I need to emphasize to you the size of Miyamoto,’ said Sakakibara. ‘You must understand, wrestling technique can only overcome—’

  ‘I do not cast aspersions upon the brave Sir Yoshisada’s ability.’

  ‘As you should not.’ Sakakibara nodded. ‘He is a diligent practitioner of all the martial studies, as are all my—’

  ‘Let us concern ourselves with Miyamoto only.’

  ‘Of course. Of course.’

  ‘Miyamoto arrives here maddened . . . ?’

  ‘Maddened as I have ever seen. He seemed as a monk when they work themselves up into a frenzy, feel the breath of old Saint Fudo blowing through them, that sort of look in his eyes.’

  ‘Why is it you and your adepts did not cut Miyamoto down where he stood?’

 
‘I will not suffer the ghosts of rotten men haunting my dojo.’

  The answer sounded false, and Akiyama simply cast his pale gaze upon the master until the man was unavoidably reminded of what he was sworn to.

  ‘Miyamoto issued a challenge of wooden swords,’ admitted Sakakibara.

  Thus challenged, one could not refuse. Drawing steel on wood was a tacit admission of inferiority.

  ‘How many men of yours did he overcome?’ asked Akiyama.

  The old master was now deeply ruing his vow of truthfulness. ‘Three, ultimately. Yet bear in mind that he fought with brute strength unrestrained, whereas my students were tempered with the grace of civility. One might as well swing a dirk at a bear.’

  Akiyama’s brow furrowed. ‘Miyamoto carries steel swords?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘But even so, and even though he was as maddened as you say, he did not give himself over to bloodlust?’

  ‘He did not.’

  Akiyama looked to the garden. Grey sands and grey rocks, and on them fallen petals of cherry blossom. Sweet detritus of the nascent year that danced in swathes of the breeze.

  ‘What was Miyamoto’s purpose in even coming here?’ he said.

  ‘Who knows how a frenzied heart beats?’ said the old master, and he cast a hand to nowhere. ‘He was spouting slanderous things. Shouting his name. Urging us to cast down the Way as he snapped bones. Saying all Lords were worthless. Saying he had come on our behalf. Things of this sort.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Sakakibara saw the expression upon his guest’s face. ‘You seem surprised by all this.’

  ‘I have hunted men of Miyamoto’s ilk before,’ said the pale-eyed samurai. ‘When they abandon the Way, ultimately they either turn to cowardice or become wanton. However, it sounds as though he has retained a code.’

  ‘There is no code outside the true code.’

  Akiyama nodded slowly. ‘Indeed.’

  There was little else for Akiyama to say. Sakakibara spoke on effusively for some time, obliquely implicating a hope this boon might lead to the start of cordial relations between the two schools. Akiyama could make no promises on behalf of men horizons away. He thanked the old master for his hospitality, wished the wounded a quick recuperation, and then set out upon his horse once more.