Sword of Honour (14 page)

Therein lay the predicament: close like this they could not be hurt, but if they yielded and retreated each would have to pass back through the cutting arc of the opponent. Where before they had
to step in, now they had to summon the courage to step out. They circled on tense feet, blades entwined, Akiyama’s oiled bright and Musashi’s dulled and worn.

Akiyama was superb. Musashi felt fear, real fear, the wooden sword victories he had notched this year hollow and worthless now. He had no conception of how he had managed to counter the
man’s opening attack, and now he could not unsettle him with his strength and his size.

It was Akiyama who made the first move outwards, withdrawing his sword slightly, taking the tiniest step back. Musashi consented, and in stuttering slivers they began to separate. Feet barely
leaving the ground, never crossing, left behind right, always braced. Blades in constant contact, but the point of that contact slowly moving up the length of each. Twisting, each man turning his
wrists, trying to keep his sword on top and watchful of a sudden thrust from the other, bit by bit until the points were circling around and around each other like swallow’s tails, and then .
. .

Freedom of space, and the same challenge as before.

Akiyama resumed his original stance, the sword concealed behind him once more. His face was serene, his mouth thin, his eyes unwavering. The perfect swordsman, no hint given at all to his
intentions. In turn Musashi’s mouth hung open, he unaware of it, his eyes roving, seeking, his sword now held horizontal at his waist, ultra-defensive, a turtle crawling into its shell.

Perhaps invited by that stance, or emboldened by the knowledge of his superiority, Akiyama did not wait long to attack once more. His second strike came without warning, and this time the blade
sliced from the side, seeking to cleave him at the waist. Again Musashi managed to parry, but before the blades had even met, Akiyama was moving into his next action: rolling his body around the
fulcrum of the swords, pirouetting as though the block was entirely expected, and making to strike at Musashi’s exposed back.

This time brute strength and speed did save him. Musashi threw himself backwards before Akiyama’s blade could start its slashing arc, barrelling into the man whilst his sword was still
rising over his shoulder and knocking him off balance. The pair of them scrambled to right themselves, clods of dirt flying, and then they whipped around to face one another once more.

Closer now, each sensing it, fear fading as they knew that into this they were inextricably caught and that it was nearing its end. Most duels ending in one move; all ending in under five.
Breathing heavily, Musashi saw the man and saw his killer, and the liberating anger came, the warmth, the fatalistic warmth. If he was dead then he was dead, and there was no point defending a
corpse, and what mad joy in that.

Musashi raised his sword above his head, pommel facing his enemy, the most aggressive stance he knew. Committed to one tremendous downwards blow, stomach and chest bared provocatively. Akiyama
saw the change in him, and changed in turn. He rose out of his crouch, brought his sword to rest at shoulder height so that the blunt back of it rested along his collar bone with the point towards
Musashi.

Twitching, each daring the other to go. Musashi towering, Akiyama poised. Breath heaving, blood racing. All things balanced. Mind unfettered, seeing all: unorthodox stances, where
Akiyama’s true ability came from perhaps. Unorthodoxy. Musashi grasped at this, clutched it with wild and final passion.

He stepped forward, arms beginning to bring the sword over his head.

Akiyama’s feet parting as he kicked off to lunge, sword whipping around, aiming upwards, seeking to sever those arms before they could bring the sword over, clever, pre-emptive.

Duped.

Musashi’s body checking the strike, jumping backwards instead, both feet leaving the earth, sword still high above.

Akiyama’s sword slashing across where those arms should have been.

Musashi twisting his body in the air, seeing the blade of his enemy arcing before him, slicing nothing. Landing, body sideways, immediately putting all his weight on his front foot.

Akiyama turning his sword, reacting, desperate, bringing it up to put the length of it between them, seeking to skewer Musashi’s onrushing heart.

Too short.

One hand only on his sword, long arm stretching out to its utmost extent, Musashi reached over the guard and smashed his sword downwards. All strength, all weight, body tipping forward,
everything behind the blow, battering Akiyama’s arms aside as it went.

The point of Musashi’s sword raking downwards, downwards, deep and cleaving, the proper cry of striking, a great
ssssssssa!
erupting uncontainable from his lips.

Akiyama didn’t scream. He gave one low gasped grunt, fell to his knees, and then tried to stand once more but staggered away drunkenly. His sword fell from his hands, and then he pawed
feebly at his chest and collapsed onto his back.

Musashi was perfectly still, longsword held out by his side where the fullness of the blow had taken it. In him, though, the great joy of victory erupted, and everything seemed to hum as though
his spirit had been struck like a bell. These were the moments he was made for, that no wooden sword duel could compare to. He tried to keep the grin from his face, knowing that such delight was
shameful. But it was there, this marvellous wellbeing, this pride . . .

One-handed! One-handed! No one could cut a man with a sword in one hand! That was what they said, that was what they had said for centuries, what they were certain of. Another delusion of theirs
that he had shattered, another profound victory.

He wanted to scream and shout and dance, but he contained himself; rotated his sword in his single hand, saw the blood there, made himself look. He took deep breaths, thought of calm and
dignity. Slowly he rose out of his combat stance, and with one final inhalation forced the primal triumph from him, leaving him only with a deep, human satisfaction.

The smoke rose. The wind blew. The world went on. He turned to look at Akiyama where he lay.

The man was not dead. Slowly Musashi walked over to him, and looked down. So clean was the cut it seemed as if Akiyama was barely wounded, a thin dark line across his chest where the blood was
soaking into the brownish material of his clothing from beneath.

It occurred to Musashi then that perhaps this was why the samurai had taken the old Chinese swords, the heavy, short, double-edged weapons that were used for battering through armour as much as
cutting, and refined and refined them over centuries into what the longsword was now – a slender single-edged thing of grace designed purely for splitting and slicing.

Wounds so clean they were no more than a line drawn across a man, and the billows of a kimono masked this only further. The elegance of mortality, easy to believe that it was painless, that
dying for a Lord or a school was nothing. The long calligraphy strokes of a death cult writ upon the bodies of men.

Strokes that he here upon this hill had written.

Musashi forced himself to see, because he longed to be a good man, and because he thought a good man would want to understand what he had wrought. With the point of his sword he peeled
Akiyama’s torn clothing back, and saw.

When Akiyama breathed in it went
heeeeeeeeeee.

When Akiyama breathed out it went
ngu ngu ngu.

And when Akiyama started laughing, it gurgled forth from both his mouth and from his wound in a bubbling choke.

Chapter Nine

Kyoto

The cadastre was unfurled, spread across the hard darkwood flooring of Goemon Inoue’s personal chambers, and every morning he, the captain of Kyoto, would stand and look
down across his supposed city spread before him in the exact same manner as one who prodded a burn to see if it yet hurt.

See it then: the ten-thousand-year city, the millennial city rendered in black ink on white paper. Encircled by the peaks of thirty-six mountains, nestled between the river Katsura in the west
and the river Kamo in the east, and, from river to river and from north to south, Goemon saw the familiar recreated rigid angles of the great moat that had been built by the Regent Toyotomi that
marked the boundary of the city proper, saw the dozens of bridges broaching it, saw the myriad gates that led inward. In the north-east of the city he saw the abode of the Son of Heaven, in the
south-west the grounds set aside for the castle of his most noble Lord Tokugawa, and in between these poles like a geometric pattern on butterfly wings he saw the interlocking of all the streets,
blocks upon blocks thriving and vital, the estates of distant absent Lords and hovels reliant upon alms all marked and recorded here, dens of sin and peaks of virtue, the markets of great guilds of
rice and silk and salt and oil surrounded by backstreets and alleyways and all the deep cunning a city could hold; as long and as broad as the outstretched arms of two men, this cadastre,
ruthlessly detailed with minutiae of ownership and conflict and still so lacking.

Here a hundred thousand homes according to some, and a population in constant flux with travellers and merchants and warriors and Lords and scoundrels all coming and going, and within that
number and the number of the residents how many schemes, how many plots? Mouth dry, body slick with sweat, he stood and looked down upon it as he always did, and wished for nothing more than an
arrowhead of cavalry simply to plough through it all.

But there were no horses here.

Goemon rolled the cadastre up and placed it back in the neat lacquered chest from which it came, and then began to prepare himself to actually walk upon those streets. He chose to wear three
underkimonos. Two of them were padded and added the appearance of weight to his midsection, intended to draw the eye away from his shoulders and make him seem solid, implacably balanced. Over these
came the outer kimono of dark silk, which hung to his ankles, and over the skirts of this he wore wide stiffly pleated hakama trousers. Both were bound tight around his stomach with a broad belt he
tied himself.

Finally, his jacket. This was of wide billowing sleeves and the hem of it hung to his midthigh. The silk it was made of was dyed a rich, deep black. On either breast, on either arm, and in the
centre of his back the crest of his Lord was sewn in white. Three inwardly facing hollyhock leaves, broad and pointed, encircled by a ring. The crest of the Tokugawa.

It still jarred his eye to see that aberrant symbol upon himself, jarred him in the manner of cold bringing forth white paths of scar.

He spent a few moments debating whether or not to wear his helmet of office. It was of steel painted black and circular in shape, a disc with a hammered indentation in the centre to accommodate
the crown of his head. The crest of the Tokugawa was inlaid at its fore in bronze. Militant and imposing, which was not in itself undesirable, and yet his duties today were civic. He decided it was
better to remind the city of his authority rather than his face, and tied the cords of the helmet beneath his chin.

A longer debate was whether or not to ride in a palanquin. Nobility and men of the highest office rode in palanquins. It would imply him high and worthy and a man to be listened to, and convey
the majesty of the clan. But was it majesty that the clan wanted him to convey? Kyoto was the Son of Heaven’s city, and no person or thing within it could compare, or even suggest itself
comparable, to that indisputable grace. He fretted, caught, and then went with what was most familiar to him. He left the garrison with a bodyguard of eight men and travelled the streets on foot.
Better to show his swords, the two things in this city in which he had unwavering faith, than the reed curtain of a lacquered box.

Goemon went first to the Chaya guild of salt, two great warehouses that stood in a walled compound in the south of the city. The men there bowed to him. He reminded them of their duty to pay
their taxes punctually and honestly. He went to the Kiyomizu temple on the slopes of Mount Higashi. There it was Goemon who bowed to the high priest in his purple robes, and assured the holy man
that his seat on the Son of Heaven’s council was safe and that the ascendant Lord Tokugawa had no intention of interfering with the council itself.

He followed his list of appointments diligently. His men carried the standard of the Tokugawa in lieu of the palanquin, here the crest black on a white field, an icon that had seldom been seen
in Kyoto until this year. Goemon was aware of the way the people stared at it balefully, of how they murmured of the delicate hollyhock flower suddenly thriving in the city as fierce as the
stubborn yutzu vine.

His face, however, he set in perfect sternness.

He arrived at the school of Yoshioka at least a full hour late, and Goemon was well aware of this as he and his men walked down Imadegawa avenue. He saw a member of the school standing waiting
in front of the gates, a bald samurai clad in their curious brown-green silk. The man must have stood there for the entire delay, yet Goemon did not increase his pace. He decided neither could he
apologize: he was the clan and the clan held the power.

The Yoshioka man sank to his knees at Goemon’s approach. ‘Most honourable Captain of the most noble clan Tokugawa,’ he said in the elaborate courtly tongue, ‘it is the
humble honour of Tadanari Kozei to welcome the most honourable Sir Inoue to the Yoshioka school of the sword.’

‘Rise,’ said Goemon.

Tadanari obeyed. He bowed and let Goemon enter. In the yard of their compound a cadre of adepts were waiting to bark a salute to the triumphant Lord Tokugawa. They were swordsmen, who merited
respect, but their numbers and their power paled to that of the Tokugawa. Acknowledging them fully would imply equality, perhaps, and after a moment’s hesitation Goemon gave only a stiff nod
to their assembly.

The master Kozei showed him around the school, the barracks, the gardens, and lastly the dojo. Goemon took it all in impatiently, having been subjected to a half-dozen similarly circuitous and
supercilious tours of buildings he held little interest in already that day.