Sword of Honour (10 page)

His sword in his hand.

There was to be no seppuku here. He looked at the Yoshioka samurai – Akamatsu? Akitani? – and knew implicitly from the set of his face that this man would not be argued down to some
test of pride with wooden swords, that Musashi’s head alone would satisfy him, and that furthermore the others watching would permit nothing less. A dozen of them, armed and prepared, and no
chance for him to stand alone against such numbers.

The Yoshioka samurai stepped towards Musashi, his eyes grave. Musashi snarled, upended a brazier of incense and sent the iron frame tumbling towards the samurai, scattering coals and sands and
embers that hissed and burnt and smoked, and then he turned and ran from the hall. He heard the outcry behind him, the cries of cowardice and the commands to halt, but he did not listen.

He chose to live. Always would he choose to live.

He ran back towards the hills beyond the edge of town and the safety of the forests upon them. He was a fine runner, honed from youth, and he had no doubts about his ability to outpace the men.
He worried, though, about leaving some incriminating trail a tracker could follow through the wilderness, and so as he ran he turned and looked over his shoulder, that he might see if he was
leaving footprints in the dust of the streets.

He saw instead that the Yoshioka samurai was chasing after him on a horse.

It was a white steed and its mane was long and shaggy and the hair flew wildly as its rider kicked it into a gallop. Musashi began to sprint, a stupid, instinctive response as though he might
outrun the creature, and it seemed the samurai was upon him immediately. Yet, though he had his longsword bared in his right hand, the Yoshioka samurai made no attempt to ride Musashi down or to
strike at him from the saddle as he passed. Instead he guided the creature in as wide a berth as he could around the young swordsman, and then halted perhaps twenty paces ahead.

The horse snorted and kicked at the ground, agitated, and the Yoshioka samurai stared at Musashi grimly and kept the point of his sword levelled at him. Musashi stared back. He did not know what
was happening. Then the samurai swung one leg over the horse’s flank and began to dismount.

The man expected him to stop and duel in full propriety.

Musashi could have laughed. Stupid form of honour, their honour, and he turned and ran back in the opposite direction. The Yoshioka samurai shouted a curse at him, grabbed at the reins and began
to haul himself up onto his horse once again, but before he could give chase Musashi ducked around the side of a building. The passage was narrow, walls close, and he hoped it was too tight for the
horse to follow directly. He had no idea where he was headed.

At the mouth of the passage one of the samurai from the dojo appeared. He raised his sword, and Musashi raised his. He had no intention of stopping, of being stopped. Musashi swung as wildly as
he could, led with the blunted reverse of his blade, and simply smashed it into the samurai’s weapon with all the force he could muster. There was a fierce crack and the samurai’s sword
was knocked askance, but the man managed to keep his grip on his weapon. He recovered, kept his eyes solely on Musashi’s blade, began to manoeuvre his body and raise his own sword to parry
any reverse blow, and, with the samurai’s focus directed so entirely, Musashi kicked the man so hard between the legs it lifted him partly off the ground.

He connected with his shin and he felt it all crushing against the bone of his leg, and the first the samurai knew of the unsighted blow was the pain, and then he was on the floor, writhing,
gasping in that ultimate male agony, and Musashi left him behind. Stupid as the Yoshioka man. Fighting was fighting, more than swords. He looked around, saw no horse, kept running.

Ahead he spied a torii gate, vermilion red and standing four times the height of a man. Holy ground, a Shinto shrine, a walled compound. As he ran beneath it he heard a scream of rage that told
him he had been sighted, and, as he turned to shut the far more humble iron and oak door that lay beyond the torii gate, he saw them coming, the samurai and the Yoshioka man on his horse all
charging in a mad rush.

He slammed the door shut, and then he pulled the wooden beam across to bar it. The door was heavy, thick, it would not be breached by anything short of a cannon. Musashi stood back, lungs
heaving, and heard the clamour outside as the samurai arrived. There was the pounding of fists, shouted threats, the sound of hoof-fall cantering back and forth.

‘Miyamoto!’ called the Yoshioka samurai, the sound of his voice moving with the sound of those hooves. ‘Come out and face me!’

Musashi ignored him, ignored all of them. He stood looking at the walls of the compound, gauging their worth. They were not imposingly high. He supposed if he jumped he might grab the top, and
that meant the shorter samurai outside could certainly do so if they raised one of their number upwards on their shoulders. Or if they went and found a ladder in the town.

Or if they leapt from the saddle of a horse.

The walls were vulnerable, suddenly of no worth at all, and he felt a panic begin to form. The samurai continued to pound upon the door, but the number of blows was beginning to lessen, and they
too must be peering up at the walls, they too realizing what Musashi had realized. From behind him came the priest of the temple, striding over with his mauve robes flowing

‘What is going on here?’ he demanded of Musashi. ‘What is this madness?’

Musashi silenced him with a slash of his hand. The priest obeyed out of sheer confusion.

‘Make no attempt to enter here,’ Musashi called over the walls to the samurai outside. ‘My blade is at the throat of the priest. If any of you try to scale the walls, I swear
that I will kill him.’

There was a fierce outrage. ‘Dog! Cur!’ they shouted, and more insults besides, and then they silenced themselves, a tense, worried hush stealing over them. One of them spoke up
after a moment: ‘Seigan, wise Seigan? Are you harmed? Do you yet live?’

The priest looked at Musashi. His momentary confusion had passed, and now he was stern, unafraid, cynical. Musashi’s eyes narrowed.

‘Must I actually raise my blade?’ he hissed.

The priest sighed in irritation. ‘I am fine,’ he called over the walls. ‘The wretch has not harmed me. Heed his words. I wish for no violence here.’

There was a further roar, further threats and vows, and Musashi shouted over all of them.

‘Leave this place now!’ he commanded. ‘Away from the walls!’

‘If the priest is defiled the slightest, Miyamoto,’ one of them called, ‘you will be flayed and crucified. I promise you this.’

‘Then do not test my resolve!’

Reluctantly, the samurai retreated. Musashi pressed his eye to the seam above the hinges of the gate, checked to ensure they were not merely feigning. Yet he could see no trickery – the
lot of them were going, including the Yoshioka samurai on his horse. The concern in their voices for the priest had sounded genuine, something beyond mere protocol and respect for the holy, and
this pleased Musashi. That meant they would be less callous, less likely to try to force a resolution.

But that simply left him trapped here. He had bought himself time with the ruse, but not escape.

The priest Seigan stood watching: ‘What is it you intend now? They will surround this compound, you know.’

‘I promise that I will not harm you,’ said Musashi. He sheathed his longsword.

‘It is not myself I am worried for.’

Hours passed.

Musashi scoured every sliver of the temple grounds. The shrine was modest, larger than the one of his home village, but far from grand. The gong that hung above the altar was dented, scabbed
green with age. There was a hovel where the priest lived his ascetic life. Opposite in the easterly corner was a pond where placid carp mouthed nothing at him, and a spring of water that had been
channelled so that it turned a little wheel. The grass was short and lush and emerald.

There were no further exits or entrances that he could find, concealed or otherwise.

The priest sat on the steps of the shrine with his hands on his thighs and his back straight. He watched Musashi cautiously, but it seemed he was not prone to panicking. A man of austere
countenance, and the longer he stared the more Musashi began to feel a sense of being judged. Eventually, when no avenue of flight revealed itself after the fourth time of inspection, he relented
and went and spoke to the man.

‘You must help me,’ Musashi said.

The priest shook his head. ‘I refuse to aid an outlaw.’

‘Please,’ said Musashi, his voice low. ‘I cannot die here.’

The priest looked at him for a long moment, looked at him deeply, and then his eyebrows moved the slightest amount. He rose to his feet. Musashi watched as he went over to his hovel and went
inside. When he emerged he had in his hands two peaches. He tossed one to Musashi. Then he sat down where he had been before, and began to peel his own fruit with his thumb.

Musashi looked at the man in disbelief. The priest did not look back. His concentration in the peeling was either entire, or a pointed dismissal. The peach in Musashi’s hand was half
green, unripe, and, since there was nothing else he could see to do, he took a bite, skin and all. The flesh had little flavour. It sat poorly in Musashi’s stomach, and soon he regretted
eating at all.

Time crawled on like a tightening noose, and the shadows began to grow, distend, and so too his wariness. There came a noise, an innocuous single knock, and Musashi leapt into startled action,
convinced the samurai were trying to scale the walls. He screamed at them not knowing if they were truly there, repeated his threats, and though he received no response nor saw no enemy emerge it
took the longest time before he could admit that they were not near.

Twilight fell, and still he had conjured no escape. The sky was a serene shade of lavender and bats were in the air.

Over the wall came the calm voice of the Yoshioka samurai.

‘Miyamoto,’ he called, ‘it is I, Nagayoshi Akiyama.’

Musashi gave him no response. But the samurai was determined and steady, and he persisted in his communication until Musashi could deny him no longer. He went and stuck his eye to the seam of
the gate once more, and saw that the man had come alone, was standing not ten paces away in his jacket that seemed brown in the fading light.

‘Away with you, Nagayoshi Akiyama,’ said Musashi, ‘lest you want this priest’s death to stain your conscience.’

Akiyama was not deterred. ‘You cannot stay in there for ever,’ he said. ‘Come out. Behave as a man and let us settle what must be with dignity before the light
departs.’

There was something in his voice that surprised Musashi. There was no hatred. There was almost a sadness, a resignation, as though there were no personal desire in him to kill. Musashi stepped
back from the gate, stared at the constellation of the iron studs upon its surface, thought of how he might respond.

Above his head two bats passed spiralling frantically around each other, hissing at the limit of human hearing, and whether they were at war or in some mad dance of courtship he could not
tell.

‘Why is it you have come?’ Musashi asked eventually. The simplest question. The most potent.

‘I told you before,’ said Akiyama. ‘Insults at Sekigahara.’

‘No,’ said Musashi. ‘Tell me why
you
have chosen to come and kill on your school’s behalf? Don’t you understand if a man asks you to do something for him
he is weak? Don’t you understand if he is incapable he is unworthy of your service?’

There was silence that stretched on long enough that Musashi began to wonder with a burgeoning confusion if his words were not being contemplated. A span of time alive with a potential he had
not expected.

Who was this Akiyama? In truth he was surprised to have encountered him again. He had assumed after being shamed and humbled in the mill that the samurai’s pride would have consumed him.
But here he was, uncaring of any accrued dishonour in being bested by what the Way considered a subhuman, imploring Musashi to fight as though he were an equal. A man who had not run him down
mercilessly when he had the chance.

A man, Musashi realized for the first time just then, who must have constructed the supposed seppuku that afternoon as a lure for him and no other, and the complete specificity of this and what
this implied Akiyama knew about him set him reeling.

He stood there considering all this, wishing he could see the man’s face clearly that he might better gauge his supposed assassin, and then he thought he heard Akiyama sigh, a sad sigh,
and subsequently the Yoshioka samurai spoke.

‘Nevertheless,’ Akiyama said, ‘your head has been demanded.’

The statement quashed all, the gate was a gate once more and boundaries were boundaries. ‘Away with you!’ Musashi snarled. ‘Away!’

The pale-eyed samurai did not obey. He stood there continuing to beseech Musashi sporadically without any reply until it was undeniably night. Then, at some point Musashi could not be certain,
Akiyama retreated into the darkness, and was gone. Only then in turn did Musashi abandon the gate, returned to sit on the steps of the shrine beside the priest.

Seigan had busied himself lighting oil lanterns, and by their frail light Musashi sat with his longsword resting between his thighs. He was unsettled, one heel bouncing nervously off the earth.
Even though Akiyama was gone he felt as though the man watched him yet.

He
was
being watched. The priest Seigan had turned his eyes to him.

The stern gaze grounded Musashi, focused his thoughts.

‘Wise one, hear me fairly, without prejudice,’ he said to the priest, as honestly as he could. ‘I do not want to die, and neither do I want to kill. But these men will not
release me, and I fear before dawn they will attempt to storm the grounds. Do you wish for that to occur?’

The priest did not respond.

‘Do you want to see these fine grounds sullied with blood?’