Batman 5 - Batman Begins (9 page)

He had been in the monastery for months before he was taught actual combat. His tutors were not kind. On the contrary. Ducard and the ninjas who taught Bruce were unrelentingly critical and showed absolutely no tolerance of blunders. And blunder he did. He often felt as though he were wearing cardboard boxes for shoes and concrete gloves. He had imagined himself well versed in martial arts from his shipboard ordeals and the adventures he had had in ports of call, and in fact, after the first humiliating months, he had won most of his fights. But against the opponents he faced in the monastery, he was clumsy, oafish, more clown than combatant.

But he learned. And he did not make the same mistake twice.

For a long period, he was physically challenged to his utmost, forced to defend himself until his breath exploded from his lungs and he could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins and sweat coating his entire body. Then, abruptly, Ducard would stop the combat and have Bruce do breathing and visualization exercises. And then he would again be attacked. Eventually, Bruce decided that the purpose of this drill was to teach him to be as calm during combat as he was afterward—to train him never to allow body chemistry to impair his judgment. Ducard, as usual, neither confirmed nor denied Bruce’s conclusion.

FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL

Many years past I thought I had lost my capacity for amazement at about the same time that I lost my capacity for affection. I was mistaken. Bruce Wayne amazes me every day. He has already developed far beyond any student I have ever had and there seems to be no limit to his potential.

I have begun to have thoughts that disturb me because they fill me with what I fear is a false hope. They concern my daughter Talia and Bruce Wayne. Talia is of an age to reproduce and carry my lineage forward into the new world I shall create. No man I have ever met until now has been worthy of mingling his genes with mine nor worthy of the company of my daughter. Bruce Wayne may be an exception to this unhappy rule.

If I have a son of my own I will not need Bruce Wayne and Talia may then devote herself entirely to my comfort and convenience. But none of my consorts have given me the male offspring I desire. A noble son-in-law may in the long run prove to be as satisfactory as a noble son.

Bruce Wayne may yet prove unworthy of the beneficence I contemplate bestowing upon him. There is yet ahead of him the ultimate test that he like the others will surely fail. If he does not fail it I will summon Talia.

Bruce seldom saw Rā’s al Ghūl and wondered if their mysterious host even lived at the monastery. Sometimes, though, Rā’s appeared on his raised platform, or on the balcony overlooking the glacier, and watched, erect and motionless, his hands hidden in his sleeves. He never spoke, nor made any kind of sound at all, but his presence was always palpable.

Rā’s was on the platform the morning Bruce, bare-chested and wearing shorts, was fighting with a bald Japanese man of his own size and build. Someone shouted his name and for perhaps a half second Bruce was distracted. Could he have been called by Rā’s himself? No, the voice had been Ducard’s. His opponent struck twice, to the chest and jaw, and Bruce dropped.

When Bruce fully regained his senses, Rā’s was gone.

Ducard stepped forward and looked down at Bruce with disgust. “Childish, Wayne.”

“Resume!” Ducard ordered, motioning to the Japanese man who had knocked Bruce down, and a few seconds later, Bruce was punching, blocking, kicking, ignoring everything except the opponent in front of him.

So intent was he on his training, so involved in the tasks Ducard set for him, that Bruce all but forgot that months were passing, that the color of the sky and the angle at which the sun hit the glacier changed and the air both inside and outside the monastery was warmer, then colder.

Later, he reckoned that he had been at the monastery just under a year and that, after the initial period of adjustment, he was happy in the rambling building above the glacier. He forgot his old life, in Gotham and on campuses and the jet-set watering holes of the world and, eventually, his memory of his parents also dimmed. What was the color of his father’s hair? Of his mother’s eyes? How did they sound in the morning? At bedtime? He could summon the memories by force—he had learned that he could summon
any
memory by force—but they did not come unbidden into his dreams now. But the sight of them sprawled in the street amid bloody pearls—that did not diminish, nor did the hot bite of hate that inevitably accompanied it.

He never learned the names of his fellow trainees, and there had been hundreds of them. Ducard had made it known that any unnecessary fraternization would be severely punished and no one doubted him. But Bruce felt close to these anonymous men of varied nationalities, closer than he had ever felt to anyone except his mother and father and Alfred. They may have been nameless, but they were pieces of something of which he, too, was a part and that gave him a commonality with them that often felt like affection.

None of them stayed for long. A new group seemed to arrive every few weeks or so, receive instruction, and leave. Only Bruce remained, although his skills were plainly superior to those of everyone except Ducard. He would ask, “Does Rā’s al Ghūl have something special in mind for me?” and Ducard would turn away, refusing to answer.

Eventually, he stopped asking.

Ducard remained aloof, always the savagely forthright instructor, never the friendly mentor, but a bond grew between him and Bruce regardless. Bruce could not have given it a label, or even described it. In neither his personal experience nor his reading had he encountered anything like it. But he knew it was there, as he knew he had blood in his veins.

Was it possible to love a man who did little more than brutalize one? Was Bruce Wayne, this pampered child of privilege, suffering from some form of the Stockholm syndrome, becoming emotionally attached to his enemy? He had questions he could not possibly answer, at least not yet, not here. He did not forget them, but he did not worry about them, either.

There was a scream from the far end of the monastery. Bruce saw two warriors dragging the man who had screamed toward an iron cage.

“Who is he?” Bruce asked, getting to his feet.

“He was a farmer. Then he tried to take his neighbor’s land and became a murderer. Now he’s a prisoner.”

The portly farmer was locked in the cage and the cage was winched ten feet off the floor.

“What will happen to him?” Bruce asked.

“Justice. Crime cannot be tolerated. Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s ‘understanding.’ You know this.”

Bruce nodded, staring at the man in the cage.

“Or when you lived among the criminals . . . did you make the same mistake as your father?” Ducard asked. “Did you start to pity them?”

Bruce remembered the feeling of a hollow belly and a wide-eyed child in an alley and the taste of a ripe plum.

He said, “The first time you steal so that you don’t starve, you lose many assumptions about the simple nature of right and wrong.”

FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL

The agony of suspense I have endured this past year will end within twenty-four hours. Though he himself has no inkling of it, Bruce Wayne will face his final trials very soon. His skill will be tested and also his courage and his resolve. We will learn if fear still dwells within him and how he has confronted it if it does. We will finally come to know if he has what weak men call ruthlessness. For if the world is to be saved it will be saved by those willing to do all that may be necessary. There will be a time for weeping and lamenting and even regret that draconian measures were needed, but that time will be later when we have accomplished our tasks and can afford the luxury of the weaker emotions.

I actually have little doubt that the blood of Bruce Wayne will leak onto the floorboards of the monastery and we will use fire to dispose of his remains. He will die as his dozens of predecessors have died and in dying prove himself to be at last unworthy.

If he continues to breathe two days from now I will allow myself to rejoice and I will summon Talia to return from Switzerland.

It would be good to see my daughter once more.

That night, as Bruce lay down on his futon, Ducard, clad in a ninja uniform, a short sword slung across his back, came to the doorway and spoke his name. Bruce rose, dressed, and followed Ducard across a moonlit courtyard to the throne room. Inside, they went to a workbench set against a wall, and Ducard said, “You traveled the world to understand the criminal mind and conquer your fear.”

Ducard took from his pocket a dried flower, the shriveled blue poppy Bruce had long ago carried to the monastery. Ducard put it in a stone mortar and used a stone pestle to grind it to dust. “But a criminal isn’t complicated,” he said. “And what you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power. Your own anger. The drive to do great or terrible things . . . You must journey inward.”

Ducard poured the dust into a small brazier, struck a long wooden match, and set it aflame. A thin column of smoke rose, twisted, curled. Ducard motioned Bruce closer. “Drink in your fears. Face them. You are ready.”

Bruce understood without further instruction. He inhaled the smoke and shook his head. Time roiled and shifted inside his skull and he saw:

. . .
himself falling into the well . . .

. . .
screeching bats exploding from the crevice and tearing at him . . .

. . .
Father staring down at a red splotch on the snowy white shirt that spread outward from a small, black hole . . .

. . .
bloody pearls spilling past Bruce’s face and clattering lightly on the pavement . . .

Bruce shook his head violently and blinked his eyes.
So real, the visions are so real . . .

Ducard tugged a ninja mask over his head. He pulled a second mask from under his jacket and handed it to Bruce.

“To conquer fear you must become fear,” he said as Bruce put on the mask. “You must bask in the fear of other men . . . and men fear most what they cannot see.”

Ducard raised a hand and a dozen ninjas congealed from the shadows: not the trainees Bruce had come to know by sight, if not by name—no, although these warriors were completely covered by their uniforms and masks, Bruce somehow knew they were fully trained, and he had no doubt that they were ruthless.

“It is not enough to be a man,” Ducard said. “You have to become an idea . . . a terrible thought . . . a
wraith
—”

Suddenly Ducard drew his sword and slashed at Bruce’s throat—a strike that would have decapitated Bruce if it had connected.

It did not: Bruce had spun out of its path.

The ninjas closed on Bruce, surrounding him. Then they parted to reveal a long, wide, flat wooden box: a coffin for a giant? Bruce gazed at it, still disoriented from the smoke he had inhaled.

From the darkness, Ducard spoke: “Embrace your worst fear . . .”

Cautiously, Bruce approached the box, lifted the lid, and peered inside. For a moment, he heard the flapping of leathery wings—

And the scene that was still echoing in his memory became real: screeching bats tearing at him . . .

Bruce dove away from the box, rolled, staring at the bats, blinking and flinching . . .

“Become one with the darkness,” Ducard said from some great distance.

The ninjas attacked.

Bruce should have been terrified. These men were killers and all had survived the ordeals that had been visited on Bruce and they outnumbered him at least twelve to one. They were armed, and his only weapon was his body. They were alert and he was still groggy from the smoke.

He should have been terrified, and immediately killed, and if he had taken even a second to think about his situation, he would have been. But he did not. No, he merely did as, without knowing it, he had been learning to do all these years. He became fully in the moment and let a wisdom deeper and vastly quicker than thought guide his movements.

A ninja jabbed. Bruce pivoted and kicked the man’s arm, and as the sword flew from the man’s grasp Bruce sent a palm strike to the man’s chin and caught the sword as it fell.

A blade ripped Bruce’s sleeve and the skin beneath it. Bruce retaliated by swiping his blade against his attacker’s arm and leaping over and behind the box.

In the rafters, bats flapped and screeched.

On the floor, Bruce whirled and leaped, pivoted, thrust, parried, moving as silently as fog among the black-clad assassins.

Ducard leaped forward into the center of the ninjas. He kicked the face of a ninja with a torn sleeve. The man fell to his knees and Ducard put his sword to the man’s throat.

“Your sleeve, Wayne,” he said. “Bad mistake. You cannot leave any sign.”

From behind Ducard, Bruce said, “I haven’t.”

The edge of his sword was against Ducard’s throat.

Ducard glanced at the ninjas. Five of them had slashed sleeves. He gestured and the ninjas fell back, lowering their weapons.

From across the chamber there came the sound of clapping. Rā’s al Ghūl sat on his throne, watching and slapping his long palms together.

“Impressive,” Rā’s said in English. It was the first time Bruce had heard him in months.

Bruce pulled off his mask and bowed his head in acknowledgment of the compliment.

The ninjas sat. Ducard escorted Bruce to the platform on which Rā’s sat and stood beside him. Rā’s rose, his robes rustling, and led Bruce and Ducard to a smoking brazier with a branding iron sticking from the glowing coals. Then Rā’s began to speak in Urdu.

Ducard translated: “We have purged your fear. You are ready to lead these men. You are ready to become a member of the League of Shadows.”

Rā’s again struck his palms together, not in applause but command. Two ninjas dragged the portly, frightened prisoner from a doorway and shoved him down next to the brazier. Bruce recognized him immediately: the farmer, the murderer who had been caged.

Rā’s pointed a thin, straight finger at the prisoner and spoke. Ducard translated: “First you must demonstrate your commitment to justice.”