Sword of Honour (19 page)

Goemon became aware that he was horizontal, that he was in the dirt, and so he sat up, and he found the street was dusty and that the swordless samurai were gone, and also that it felt as if his
teeth had shattered and that every bone in his ribcage had been forced inwards. There was no sound, though he could feel his throat moving spastically and knew he had to be making some kind of
noise.

There were bits of things everywhere, cloth and meat, the great banners of the Tokugawa he had been standing between annihilated. The man he had tried to haul backwards was nearby, he on his
hands and knees. His face was dirty or bloody or something, he didn’t look good, and there was sound now, painful, coming in from Goemon’s left ear like a lance of boiling water:
wailing, the samurai on his hands and knees, he was wailing piteously.

Across the street a storefront collapsed in fitful stages, belching more dust into the air. And there behind the dust he saw smoke, the flickering of budding flame, and he tried to shout
‘Fire!’, tried to summon someone to deal with it before the buds of it bloomed blazing, and perhaps he did, perhaps he formed actual words but he could not be sure.

From above then he thought he felt rain, but he did not look up, looked instead at the ground, at the folded piece of paper containing the names of the seventeen obliterated samurai, and he saw
that the rain that fell upon the paper was red, the smallest parts of their bodies that had risen the highest now falling, all the little gobs of gore and hair like warm sleet, and then Goemon was
horizontal once more, felt it pattering on his face, caressing him into oblivion.

The Goat’s ears howled with a piercing resonance. All was chaos, all was noise. Tiles slid from the shattered roof of the gatehouse, falling one by one arrhythmic,
crashing, shattering. A Tokugawa samurai rushed outwards to help, obliviously, only for a tile to connect with his head. He collapsed amidst the debris and bodies, added to them.

Later, tend to him later.

The Goat sought his captain first and foremost, and he limped and staggered as he checked upon those sprawled out in the street. He found Goemon senseless, and he grabbed him beneath the arms
and began dragging him inwards, struggling in his dazed senses and on his maimed leg.

Across the street in the wreckage of the buildings opposite he saw the flames now, rising fierce, erupting almost, consuming what had been a purveyor of grilled fish. Doubtless coals and hearths
had been burning within prior, and yet the Goat gaped aghast at the how rapidly the fire progressed, and so many buildings next to it, behind it, whether damaged or pristine, they were all things
of paper and wood, awaiting kindling . . .

A lowerborn ran up to the Goat, pulled on his shoulders as he pulled on Goemon’s in turn, trying to draw his attention.

‘Do something!’ the man was shouting. ‘The fire! Fire! Are you not in command? Are you not the Tokugawa? Do something!’

‘What?’ said the Goat. ‘Do what? What can I do?’

The words were barely heard, but he saw the look of horror and helplessness on the man’s face. Perhaps he owned one of the buildings. The lowerborn began to dance a pathetic fretting dance
from one foot to the other, hands pulling at his hair as he beheld the blaze beginning to spread from building to building.

He was not alone in this, so many dozens of people just staring, tentative shouts going up for the volunteer firefighters of the ward to assemble, but how long for them to arrive, to organize?
How many more buildings, more livelihoods would be turned to ash before then? The teeming despair, the dread, the fear, and, as it deepened, threatened to become abyssal suddenly there came a great
heroic cry.

Teams of men were arriving now, running down the street in perfectly arrayed columns. They were not lowerborn but samurai, and yet they came bearing the necessary tools for combating the fire:
hooked ropes, ladders, saws, mallets. The Goat stared at them, these samurai not of the Tokugawa, watched as with perfect discipline these dozens of men set to work.

With no choice but to sacrifice the block the fire was burning on already, the samurai cast their hooked lines on the buildings of the street fronts opposite and began the frantic process of
pulling down the structures before the fire could reach them, sawing and cutting and hammering where they had to, creating a firebreak that would isolate the blaze. So effortlessly skilled at it
were they that it was as though they had had practice in it, surprising for men of the sword, and on they cut and dragged and hauled, tireless, throwing their entire bodies into the cause, they not
panicking but confident, strong, shouting in unison as they worked.

It was infectious, and, though the flames and the heat rose and rose, the people of the city saw the fearlessness of these samurai and felt their own dread lessen. They began to cheer the
swordsmen on, felt joy in their hearts as they knew these men, these familiar samurai, to be their protectors, their true benefactors. They and their school of the city and for the city, and though
the air was rent with smoke their kimonos all shimmered in the shade that all of Kyoto knew and revered, shimmered the colour of tea.

The crowd cheered for them rhythmically: ‘Yoshioka! Yoshioka! Yoshioka!’ And the chant went on as the fire raged against, and then died in, its cage; and, as the ash blew and
reddened eyes dried, the Goat recognized the bald samurai who had led the Yoshioka.

Tadanari Kozei, and through the smoke he was looking at the ruins of the Tokugawa garrison, and on his face was a wide smile of black satisfaction.

Chapter Twelve

The dawn was nascent as a cobalt smear in the eastern sky when Musashi felt eyes upon him. A primal instinct that pierced his slumber. He saw two brown orbs low to the ground,
catching the light of the remnants of the fire that smouldered still. A canine form, and he thought it first a ranging wolf poising to strike, and started. The animal, though, skittered back at his
sudden movement, and he realized it was in truth a famished dog.

Its hide was mottled tan, though great clumps of it were missing and the bare skin beneath revealed lean muscle and the shape of bones. One of its pointed ears had been torn away in some
long-ago struggle.

An exile from nearby Kyoto, perhaps.

Wary, it did not approach, but neither did it flee. Musashi watched it for a long while. He realized the creature must be tantalized by the smell of the mushrooms he had boiled the night before.
Some remained in the little cast-iron pot. He picked one of them up and held it out in the palm of his hand, offered it to the dog. The dog lowered its head and growled, distrustful.

Musashi smiled.

He tossed the mushroom towards it, and quickly the dog snapped it up. One by one he continued to throw the remaining vegetables, closer each time, drawing the dog in. Eventually it was close
enough that he could reach out and touch it, and to his surprise the dog allowed this. Its fur was brittle, the missing ear a ridge of hardened scar. He stroked it, soothed it, and he felt right
then a profound sympathy and kinship with the dog, saw himself in it.

Most men would prefer to think themselves the wolf, some fearsome master of the wilderness stalking the night the more pleasing and romantic image. But the truth was wolves were born wild. Dogs
were bred to the leash, as Musashi had been born to the Way. He and the dog, the pair of them here had liberated themselves, earned this life of meagre subsistence and magnificent substance.

Toughened.

Pure.

Words of this sort, he told himself.

Across from him, over the fire, Ameku stirred. The woman rose to sit. He wondered if the blinded had some acuter form of hearing, if the dog’s gentle panting had not somehow disturbed
her.

‘Here,’ he said softly.

Her head turned slightly, but she asked no question. She understood what he meant – that it was he that was awake, and that Yae and Akiyama slept still. It was a laconic form of
communication that had developed over the months together. She sat there rubbing and stretching the doze from herself in silence, not wanting to rouse the others. Musashi continued to watch her,
scratching the dog on the hard scruff of its neck.

Always Ameku put the fire between them, so that he saw her mostly through some veil of smoke. Always she turned and hid her features with the long locks of her immaculately combed hair, so that
he only ever saw her jaw, her lips, and nothing more. Her face remained a mystery to him. Never had he seen her blinded eyes.

The dog continued to pant, and her head twisted in query.

‘What is here with you?’ she asked.

‘A dog.’

‘A dog?’

He grunted.

‘Dangerous?’

‘He’s an ugly old thing, but he seems friendly.’

Ameku said nothing.

‘Do you like dogs?’ he asked. ‘Would you like to touch him?’

‘No.’

The dog took the rejection evenly. Musashi continued to pet it. In the woods around them the insects of the summer pulsed and sang. They recognized no difference between the sun and the moon,
the chirping crickets, the quavering suzumushi, the howling cicadas, offered their chorus relentlessly. Ameku fumbled around her until she found her bamboo flask. She pulled the stopper from it and
drank from the stale water within.

‘Today – Kyoto?’ she asked.

‘I believe so.’

‘I want to sleep on bedding once more,’ she said with blunt desire. ‘You think, definitely, I can find work in the city?

‘You can work a loom, and here . . . It is the capital. All things come from here, so too silk or tatami mats or . . . There must be great mills. There
are
great mills. Someone
will take you on.’

‘You are certain?’

‘Yes.’

‘But never have you seen Kyoto?’

‘No.’

‘Nnn,’ she said, entirely dubious.

‘There will be work awaiting you.’

He tried to put confidence in his voice. Whether she believed him or not he could not tell. It had taken some convincing to get her and Yae to accompany the swordsmen to the capital. He had told
her all these things many times, and furthermore insisted that with two samurai with them they would walk safely upon the roads. This had proven true – only once had Musashi seen a hostile
face peering out from the cover of the trees, and the man had seen both Akiyama’s horse and the sheer size of Musashi and the look that he returned, and then had retreated. There would be
others, given time, unarmed and vulnerable; banditry a game of patience.

The dog lay down on its side, warming its belly on what was left of the fire. Musashi nestled his fingers in the warm spaces between its ribs and let his hand rise and fall with the
creature’s contented breathing.

‘Do you have dogs on Ryukyu?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ she said, and she said it as though it were absurd to be asked so. ‘Cats too. Fish and birds and—’

‘It was only an idle question.’

She smiled, not quite kindly. ‘Do you think Ryukyu some . . . new world? All different?’

‘Your songs, the way you sing . . . It is like nothing I have heard before.’

‘Ah.’

‘The words . . .’ said Musashi. ‘Do you think . . . Could you speak your language for me?’

‘What would you have me say?’

‘Does it matter? Can you not just . . . speak?’

‘No.’

‘I . . .’ said Musashi, and he tried to think of some fine poetic utterance that he had heard across his life, ‘“Swift as the wind. Silent as the forest. Fierce as the
fire. Implacable as the mountain.”’

Her face twisted for a moment. Then she spoke. What she said was much longer than the phrase Musashi offered, and he wondered if it was simply a difficult translation or whether she was mocking
him.

In the silence after, Akiyama’s horse offered a great sigh as it slept on its feet.

‘What was that you had me say?’ she asked.

‘Something I heard. Something my father taught me, about the way men ought to be.’

‘You like the sound better in my tongue?’

Musashi did not answer.

‘Well, now, what matters the most?’ she asked. ‘If I sang my song in your words, words you know and understand, would you like it more? The same? Or is the, the . . .’
she said, struggled for a word, and then under her breath so as not to wake the others she hummed a wordless phrase of melody. ‘That alone, which you like? That which enters your heart? The
thing that has no meaning, the thing that you can give any meaning to?’

Musashi could not answer.

She smiled again. ‘I will tell you this: I have known Japan. I have known Ryukyu. They are the same. Dogs are dogs, men are men, women are women. Words are different, but their meaning . .
. ?’ She circled a finger over her heart, tapped her chest. ‘In there, the same. All as we are.’

The way she said it, the way she smiled – Musashi could not gauge the level, nor define the subject of her scorn, whether it was he himself she was toying with or whether she was earnestly
trying to teach him something she found so risible she took bleak amusement in it. If only he could see her eyes, he might ascertain which it was.

‘What of samurai?’ he asked. ‘The Way? Are these things also in Ryukyu?’

The blind woman sucked air through her teeth, thought about it. ‘In Japan, you have much iron. In Ryukyu, little, so in Ryukyu there are few men that wear swords. In Japan, you Japanese .
. . Some of you, swords the thing that you love. The star that you follow. This is true. But truly . . . do you think a small thing like a sword can shape a man? Change him?’

‘If it is wielded dishonestly.’

‘So you, Musashi, are honest?’

‘I am,’ he said.

Ameku said nothing further. Musashi sat looking at her with his hand upon the dog’s flank. She was cynical, hardened by something, but what exactly had made her this way he could not begin
to guess at. But he too had been hardened against all the wrongs of the world by his own circumstance, and, as the dawn fully broke above them both, he looked at her anew.

He began to wonder if he had not found in her one who felt as he did.