Sword of Honour

by David Kirk

  On he read, and over the course of an hour Tadanari began to learn of this strange masterless savage, this Musashi Miyamoto, until something intruded upon his solace. A sound, close and immediate and violent. He listened, and recognized it as the whip and slap of bamboo, again, again. It persisted until he could ignore it no more.

  Tadanari rose, went and sought the source of it. Outside in the courtyard an adolescent novice was on his hands and knees stripped to his waist, being lashed across his back by an adept of the school with a training sword. The blows he struck were vicious, ribbed sword scything through the air, the crack of impact across the knobs of the spine sharp but the acolyte bore it all. He gave no sound but the merest of whimpers.

  The dead eyes of Akiyama oversaw all.

  Tadanari tried to ignore the gaze.

  On, the adept struck. It appeared at first to be a matter of corporal discipline, but something seemed odd to Tadanari the longer he watched. There was no measured rhythm to the adept’s strokes, his hands clutched too tight around his ersatz lash. The novice’s eyes were red, his teeth clenched, lips murmuring something unspoken.

  Tadanari stepped outside. The sunlight made him squint. ‘What is occurring here?’

  ‘Master Kozei!’ barked the adept, snapped his body down in a low bow. The acolyte too swivelled in the dirt, forced his brow to the ground, his back a glistening tiger’s hide of scarlet welts and sweat. ‘Punishment!’

  ‘What infraction warranted it?’

  ‘Young Yuzen neglected his duties this morning, sir. Water was not in the troughs for the adepts to wash with when they rose. Furthermore his area of the barracks was unkempt.’

  ‘I sullied the premises of the school and hindered the adepts egregiously, master Kozei,’ said Yuzen, speaking into the earth. ‘This is unforgiveable. I begged the most honourable Sokuemon to help me atone for this, and graciously he has obliged me.’

  ‘He came to you?’ Tadanari asked of the adult.

  ‘He did, sir.’

  ‘How is that you failed to notice the infractions yourself?’

  ‘I—’ said Sokuemon, and nothing further.

  ‘Did you not wash this morning?’ asked Tadanari. The only response he received the lowering of Sokuemon’s head. Tadanari did not care about a matter of simple cleanliness, all attempts at it foiled by sweat in this weather regardless, and yet the man could not answer, which meant he hadn’t. Routine shattered. Tadanari turned his attention to Yuzen.

  ‘You,’ he said, ‘is there a reason for your dereliction?’

  He too was reticent.

  ‘I ask of you a direct question, and expect an answer.’

  ‘Answer!’ shrieked Sokuemon, raised the bamboo sword needlessly.

  ‘Forgive me, Master Kozei,’ babbled Yuzen. ‘I am shamefully negligent and worthy of punishment, that is all.’

  ‘You were the one who bore Seijuro’s stool to the Rendai moor, were you not?’

  ‘That honour was mine, sir. Undeserved. Undeserved.’

  ‘And are you aggrieved by Seijuro’s fate?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said Yuzen, hesitant, heard no response, wavered, attempted. ‘No.’

  Tadanari looked at the pair of them. Neither looked back. Eventually the elder of the school of Yoshioka stepped back into the shade, gave a small gesture with his hand: ‘As you will.’

  Yuzen brought his face up from the floor and spread his back level for Sokuemon to resume striking. This the adept did with the same zeal as before, little hisses of more than punitive diligence escaping him, droplets of sweat rising from the acolyte’s back with each blow. The pair of them men, or man and boy who walked the Way, which was the Way of emptiness and denied the existence of what might lie within a human heart. Disquiet, shame, grief . . . These ought not to be felt.

  But to strike and be struck were acceptable emotions, acceptable desires. The paramount two perhaps; Yuzen and Sokuemon here channelling, paragons of a sort.

  Tadanari watched them because he understood the necessity of it, watched until blood was drawn and Yuzen was forced down to his elbows, and yet behind his level eyes a worry. Something was afire in their collective spirit – was this not the reason for his own queer mood, his sympathetic musings to a traitor? – and he began to wonder how deep the malady ran.

  The steadying hand, the steadying plane; this Tadanari knew he needed to be.

  For them.

  For himself.

  He called them all to assembly in the dojo hall. Light of the late afternoon sun streamed through the mullions of the westerly narrow windows above, half the hall lit brilliantly and half in shadow; the adepts and novices knelt on the eastern side gifted halos of loose hairs and skin albescent, the faces of those on the west difficult to discern.

  Uniform, though, the tough, dark sparring clothes, the wooden swords laid before each, the expressions.

  ‘Turbulent,’ said Tadanari, his words careful and slow. ‘Turbulent, these past few days. It has come to pass that Seijuro Yoshioka, first son of honoured Naokata, grandson of honoured Naomitsu, is no longer able to lead the school. This you all know. He is not, however, dead – I beseech you all to visit shrines of whatever creed you follow to pray for his health. Perhaps fate will bestow a miracle upon us. Such an occurrence withstanding, however, Denshichiro Yoshioka, second child of honoured Naokata Yoshioka, has assumed leadership of the school, as is proper.’

  ‘Hail Master Denshichiro!’ shouted the most senior of the adepts there.

  ‘Hail!’

  All bowed to the ancestral shrine of the school, which was set into the wall. An effigy of a red Shinto torii gate, a fat rope woven of women’s hair and two vases of pink hydrangeas, and beneath this were hung portraits of the previous heads of the school. Two of them faded, the wood showing through the paint where the decades told, one vivid still, scowling fresh and unyielding.

  The mood amongst the men was as Tadanari expected it to be, faces still, the façade striven for, and yet something beneath this: the eyes not inquisitive or attentive but guarded, spines rigid out of more than the protocol of posture.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said to them all, ‘the idea of defeat the likes of which Seijuro suffered was unthinkable to you. Nestled deep in the depths of your delusion. Shed your conceptions of individual invulnerability. The storm comes. Branches are torn away. The tree stands resolute. I ask of you: what truly has changed?’

  Silence, not one man wanting to risk exposing ignorance. Expected, respectful. But still uneasy. The heat in here, penned between door and wall, all but pulsating. Tadanari wished for autumn, wished for winter, but summoned all he could to quash the throttling grasp of it; advanced onto levity.

  ‘Has our flesh suddenly become enfeebled? Hollow the arms we have trained so long? What of our ability – has that been stolen from us? Kappa sprites maybe, crawling from the river Kamo in the night to suck it straight out of our sleeping arseholes?’

  A simple joke, something easy to affix to. As he hoped, the youngest novices were unable to keep straight faces at the crudity, and he turned on them now, pointed at the youngest boy he could see, hoped that the unchastened would lead where the taciturnly trained had long forgotten how to tread.

  ‘You,’ he said, and the boy assumed the dignified posture instantly, face hardened, ‘tell me, why does the floor of this dojo remain earthen when we could easily afford all the wood and varnish we might need for flooring?’

  Immediately recited: ‘This dojo was built by the founder Naomoto when the school was ascendant. He could not afford such then. If upon earth was how he learnt it, than on earth so too shall we, master.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tadanari. ‘A flawless answer, and flawless reasoning. All of you, remember this. Beneath you is the earth trodden by dozens of great men, who bested champions the length of the country, who taught Shoguns . . . Ashikaga Shoguns. This earth has not changed. This earth is still the same as it was a week ago. Know this. Feel this.’

  Some, the
younger, obeyed literally, palms placed broad and reverent.

  ‘And what of the sword?’ he said, drawing his longsword and holding it up so that the blade shimmered in the light. ‘Is this now empty of the souls of my ancestors? Has this now no more worth than a sickle, than a fish-gutting cleaver? No. It is immutable. Still just as bright as before. Of its methods? Unaltered. Two hands still hold it, the right hand at the guard, the left at the pommel, the same as before. Find assurance in this.’

  He pointed at three men, ordered them to stand, take up their wooden swords and assume the stance of combat. Around them he walked, pointing out their fine observation of technique to those still kneeling: the way they braced their ankles, the firmness of their forearms, the steadiness of the weapon in their hands. He bade all present to stand and do the same, to feel the confidence of familiarity.

  ‘Has our philosophy changed?’ asked Tadanari, walking amongst them now. ‘Why do our longswords bear a shorter blade than other schools?’

  ‘So that they are easier to wield close,’ said the adolescent he patted on the shoulder. ‘We break the guard, advance so that we stand hip to hip with the enemy, and then bring our longsword within his tract of shielding to rake or stab at artery or joint, master.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Tadanari. ‘This is the flawless wisdom. We are not spearmen prodding from range. We are not bowmen, cowards who kill with no risk to themselves. We are swordsmen. Swordsmen who stand close to our foes, close enough that our spirits meet and shatter theirs with the focus, the magnitude of ours. This is the wisdom that has bested men from the Yagyu, the Kashima-Shinto, the Itto. This has not changed.’

  He set down his true swords upon a stand and took up a mock blade of his own, spread his legs and dropped into a stance before the original three commanded samurai. They in turn grew tauter, anticipating, moved to surround him. Tadanari rotated slowly between them, feet never crossing, moving his sword pointedly through many different positions: above his head, by his waist, braced across his collarbone.

  ‘Where are you looking?’ asked Tadanari, the question unnecessary but voiced all the same.

  ‘At your blade, master,’ said the man, the eyes of all three men following it unwavering.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Eyes can deceive easier than steel. Feet cannot harm you. The blade is where the danger lies, and so on that we focus.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Tadanari.

  He darted forward suddenly at one of the samurai, knocked his sword aside and ghosted down the length of it until their bodies met. There Tadanari forced the edge of his own sword across the man’s chest and turned immediately to meet the coming of the second man, tapping the point of his lunge away with a deft and almost imperceptible manoeuvre. The motion of his sword did not cease, lancing forward to run half its length across the jugular, before Tadanari swivelled on his heel and dropped to one knee in a slash that connected with the third man’s thigh. Three lethal blows, had they been using steel, delivered in less than three heartbeats.

  The students barked their respect. The pride Tadanari felt, as perhaps any swordsman did at the sensation of impact upon the palms of his hands, was carefully hidden from his face. He looked around at them all, saw them all now in the light, all eyes gleaming, all skin pure, and he mustered all the gravitas he could and put it into his voice.

  ‘These are the fundaments of our Way,’ he said, looking from man to man once more, encouraging, ensuring. ‘Know that they are unchanged. Know that if you follow them with honest dedication, if you are prepared to offer the years, mastery and the serenity that comes with it shall be yours. Keep your heads and your hearts calm. The school has stood for a hundred years, and will stand for a hundred more should we behave properly, behave as men. Turbulent though this wave is, it has come and we must ride it. We must not kick against it, or worse yet kick up another one. Faith: have faith in what has come before. Have faith in the Yoshioka. Have faith, as I do, in the steady and just nature of Master Denshichiro.’

  They, all of them in the light, shouted their obedience, their joyful, emboldened obedience, and within his breast Tadanari felt only a hollowness.

  He could not escape the mood. That evening Tadanari was sitting in the private inner garden of the school, stripped to the waist and his body slick with sweat. Before him in the bed of sand surrounded by the thirteen boulders was a tortoise. Idly he was tearing leaves from a head of spinach and tossing them down for the creature to eat. He watched its face as it devoured levelly, gnarled and grey with eyes implacably dark, and he envied the perfect stillness of it

  Envied more than that.

  The tortoise was a sort of mascot-pet of the school, an exotic oddity in a nation of sea turtles and river terrapins only. It had come from over the waves on a trader’s ship long ago, from China or perhaps even further, and had been here for as long as Tadanari could remember. It looked exactly the same as it had the first time he had seen it in his childhood, its shell as broad as a man’s torso, its step as calm and assured as the creeping of moss.

  Implacable to time.

  He fed the tortoise often, liked to feed it, and tonight for every leaf he gave it he took a swig from a clay jar of sake in turn. Stared down at his own bared chest and his stomach in bleak contrast to the unchanging creature. Moist and scrub with hair, repulsive for a moment, lined with the sagging of a skin apparently abhorrent of the muscle beneath. He pulled at it with a thumb and forefinger, staring with amused disgust at the length he could stretch it. An old man’s webbing.

  Another drink sucked through his teeth only heightened his amusement, smiling grimly at nothing. He was not enfeebled yet, far from it, but in him now the mourning of his youth, both wondering and knowing exactly where it had gone.

  The sound of a door being slid open from within the building behind him caused him to tense; too late for the domestic staff, it could only be one of two people.

  ‘Father?’ came a voice.

  ‘Here,’ said Tadanari, relieved.

  Ujinari came out into the garden, wide black trousers flowing like skirts, the tea-coloured jacket of the school rendered a kind of sienna by the lanterns.

  There, Tadanari thought, there.

  Distant youth, or youth that this night seemed distant, summoned. All his years spent travelling in the name of the school, to study other methods of the blade and then to prove the Yoshioka Way superior to them, he seeking Lords in search of swordmasters for their clans and armies. Imperative that he did this, he, Tadanari Kozei, for his blood was trusted more than any other and the Yoshioka themselves could not be seen to roam. They in Kyoto, always Kyoto, whilst he travelled from hall to hall after hall on Honshu and Kyushu and Shikoku, demonstrating cross-handed grips and the Strike of the Springtime Tide and whatsoever else was demanded of him.

  On and on, raising esteem of the name Yoshioka, and meanwhile the name Kozei faltering. His wife Ejima waiting childless as he roved far across the country for all but a few days a year. In these nights they were granted they were as husband and wife ought, but no babe ever resulted. Ejima enduring in her solitude until she was old enough that another woman so bereft would have been called a spinster, and absent Tadanari growing older, too, no longer needing to shave his scalp.

  Naomitsu died. Naokata inherited, and his first decree as head of the school was to adjudge Tadanari’s days as envoy over. Talk of having proven himself a master of the Yoshioka methods and thus fit to teach within the dojo of the school, and so on, and so on, and yet Tadanari knowing it was born both of Naokata’s loneliness for his friend and to relieve himself of the burden of the teaching he found onerous. Men like Naokata made solely to achieve, not to foster achievement in others. Tadanari did not care. The school was the school, what he served, and so back to the city he loved and to the woman with whom he was failing.

  He and blossom-wilted Ejima now permitted the time, and yet propagation unattained. It is I, it is I, she would say, my meadow is stony, and he would sit t
here and see her tears and not contradict her.

  Would sit there and think of a time down on forested Shikoku where a sickness had swept across the land, a hot swelling between the legs, behind the genitals. A realm of stricken men and women waddling to spatter the trunks of the vast trees with crimson urine, Tadanari these years later still revolted and fearful at the memory of that colour he emitted in agonizing ropes. Gory vandals, and what it was within him swelling and pulsating, and then gone overnight. Gone, and after the relief of its passing the worry that it had taken something with it, that it had hollowed some vital part, and now Ejima crying and begging him to forgive her for the failure she assumed was hers.

  And he a man and she a woman, and so he gave her nothing more than silence.

  Perhaps both of them faulty, perhaps one of them, perhaps neither. They were united in resolution and were rewarded: Ujinari. But no easy birth, not for a woman of Ejima’s age. A night spent shrieking and howling and bloodied rags and cloths being taken out again and again in front of Tadanari, he waiting outside petrified by the sound. The midwife’s tone was grave even as she informed him that the child had emerged, was of a healthy blue behind, but of the wife she would not say anything, would not meet his eyes.

  Somehow Ejima lived. A week in her bed, and then she was up and holding Ujinari in her arms; a strong heart, a hale samurai spirit as the people remarked. Vital and loving of her child, and Tadanari was joyous as he saw her with his son, and yet the memory of the harrowing night of the birth lingered, led to the question what exactly was to follow.

  She still had her monthly bleeding, was still capable, and yet the risk. The danger and the chance.

  Would not a swordsman commit himself to death if he saw the chance to slay his foe at the same time? Man and woman, samurai both; they both knew themselves fundamentally to be no more than prisms, the multitude rays of their respective families converging in them, Kozei and Chosokabe, passed through them unified and focused and strengthened. The glass itself was unimportant. The light was.

  Ujinari less than a year old, and she came to him one night without his asking and without her speaking. She was wearing his chainmail shirt, a gift that he himself had never worn, having never taken to the chaotic field of battle. She was swathed in it, her thin shoulders enveloped, not the first time she had worn it, and the eroticism of it he never could explain. The way the light shimmered down her side in seams, perhaps. The point of her chin enveloped in the cowls at the neck. Soft hair over hard steel.