Sword of Honour (7 page)

It took time to dig a grave. A crowd drew near. It was late in the afternoon by the time the hole was dug to Musashi’s satisfaction. It was thigh-deep and Jiro’s body fitted neatly
within it lengthways. He looked at the minister setting the corpse in the grave. The man made to get out of the hole.

Musashi stopped him with the head of the shovel at his clavicle.

The old man looked up at him, quivering, smeared with dirt. His hands, unused to labour, were bleeding from the palms. This man, this pathetic man, was the power he had rejected at Sekigahara.
He was all Lords, all samurai, the Way. For two years Musashi had consented simply to hide from all this, agreed to a life apart, but now he looked and saw this man and his authority anew. Saw that
it could be confronted. That it
ought
to be confronted.

The anger told him this, made it truth, and how far could this take him? How far could he go?

‘Kneel,’ he said.

‘You cannot be serious,’ said the minister, sweating, hands bloody from the labour. ‘This is a crime of great magnitude. Reconsider. Do you know the power of my most noble
Lord?’

‘Is your Lord here?’ asked Musashi. ‘Let him draw forth his own sword and lay me low. Let he himself give me evidence of his power.’

The minister had no answer.

‘Kneel,’ said Musashi.

The minister did so, legs astride Jiro’s chest. Musashi took up the shovel and filled the grave around him, buried him up to the neck until only his head remained above the earth. Musashi
looked down at him and saw him for what he was. He placed his foot square upon the man’s crown and kept it there for some time.

‘I am going to go,’ he told the minister. ‘When I am gone, command these people watching to dig you free. See if they will. See how much true authority you hold over
them.’

He took his foot off. The minister’s head wriggled helplessly. He looked like a maggot issuing forth from a wound. Like a yellowed tooth in a rotting gum. Musashi raised his eyes to the
watching crowd.

‘My name is Musashi Miyamoto,’ he said to them. ‘I will hide no more. Musashi Miyamoto! Thrall to no man!’

It felt right to say. It felt as though it had to be said. The crowd heeded him in silence. He looked at them, he looked at the minister, he looked at what he had achieved. The anger had given
him this.

How much further could it take him? How much further could he go?

Musashi did not even know the name of the town, but when he left it he had declared a war upon all the world.

Chapter Four

Nagayoshi Akiyama climbed down from his saddle.

He rode a white horse, a steady creature bred not for war, nor racing, but for its stamina and constancy of temper. He hitched the reins to a post, and then drew his longsword in its scabbard,
from where it was hung amidst his bags of travel. He slid it into the wide silken belt around his waist, and then took a moment to right his clothes from where they had been pulled on the ride. He
wore greaves that clung tight to his shins, patterned trousers that bloomed out like paper lanterns over his thighs, and on his shoulders his jacket the colour of tea.

With fastidious hands he checked his hair the best he could. He had shaved his crown and oiled his locks up into a topknot before a mirror in the morning, and from what he could tell the ride
had not sullied his efforts.

He was outside a small compound, low walls of thin wooden planking greyed with age. Above the modest gate was hung a sign, varnished cedar with engraved characters painted black:

Sakakibara School of the Way

Akiyama set his shoulders, put his thumbs to his belt in proper masculine posture, and then strode a measured pace. He rapped upon the door, and it was opened all but
immediately. He was expected.

The master of the school was an old man, gaunt of face. He and a few younger adepts awaited Akiyama, and, as always, as they first beheld Akiyama and his red skin and his mossy eyes, there came
that jarring little instant. An instant Akiyama had long learnt immaculate hair styling or propriety of dress could not overcome, and yet, each and every time, he persevered, shaved and combed and
oiled and hoped anew and simultaneously loathed himself for it.

To be polite was to wear a face of serene unreadability, to put up a barrier so that you might not trouble another with selfish want or emotion. Yet behind this barrier for Akiyama there was
always another. A certain tension that did not yield, carried over as the polite words were spoken as they should be spoken and the protocols were observed as they ought to be observed.

He ignored it as he had learnt to ignore it and humbly he introduced himself with precision as Nagayoshi Akiyama, of the school of Yoshioka, of the realm of Tajima and of the bloodline
Tachibana.

The master Sakakibara pushed his brow to the ground. ‘It is an honour to receive an adept of the esteemed school of Yoshioka.’

‘It is I who am honoured by a reception I am unworthy of,’ said Akiyama formally. ‘I am in your debt. It was with great interest and gratitude that I received your
missive.’

‘I trust it came not too late? Your initial request came some time before, but, regrettably, with things of this sort, one cannot offer assistance until, by chance, one is in a position to
do so.’

‘I assure you, our school’s interest in Musashi Miyamoto endures.’

Sakakibara smiled with his mouth.

They knelt on soft tatami mats in the small tearoom that overlooked the garden of ordered and raked sand. Patterns of Zen abounded. One of the adepts had set about making tea for them. He stoked
the hearth pit in the centre of the room and set a kettle of water heating. Akiyama watched him. The man fumbled and struggled, worked only with his left hand, for his right forearm was set in a
splint.

Given what he had read in Sakakibara’s missive, it was fairly easy to deduce why the man was wounded so, and not wishing to confront the man with his humiliation Akiyama elected to wait in
silence. He and the master sat, offering neither assistance nor comment as the splinted man ladled the readied water into pewter dishes. Akiyama swirled the liquid, watched the green tea powder
diffuse into the clear.

In silence the three samurai drank.

It was only when the splinted man left them to remove the kettle and the cups did Akiyama feel it polite to broach the subject of Miyamoto once more.

‘Tall and wild, lean and slender, no topknot,’ said Sakakibara, and his face darkened as he spoke. ‘On his face were scars, many scars sprent like a constellation of the stars.
Pox in his childhood, perhaps. He stank, stank beyond incense. Stank like the masterless.’

‘And he came with sword drawn?’ asked Akiyama.

‘No,’ said Sakakibara. ‘But he came in aggression, I . . .’ He hesitated, struggled for words. He did not want to present himself or his students as incapable, but he was
avowed to honesty and furthermore he had already weighed the potential disgrace against the worth of aiding the Yoshioka, and so he spoke on with a reluctant candour. ‘There was a
confrontation on the southerly road. One of my students, an earnest young man named Yoshisada, encountered Miyamoto there. Yoshisada has taken to reclusion in his shame in the days since, and so I
have not discerned the truth of that particular incident, but they arrived at our school with Miyamoto’s arm around Yoshisada’s throat, and Yoshisada stripped of his swords.’

Akiyama nodded evenly. ‘A rare misfortune.’

‘I need to emphasize to you the size of Miyamoto,’ said Sakakibara. ‘You must understand, wrestling technique can only overcome—’

‘I do not cast aspersions upon the brave Sir Yoshisada’s ability.’

‘As you should not.’ Sakakibara nodded. ‘He is a diligent practitioner of all the martial studies, as are all my—’

‘Let us concern ourselves with Miyamoto only.’

‘Of course. Of course.’

‘Miyamoto arrives here maddened . . . ?’

‘Maddened as I have ever seen. He seemed as a monk when they work themselves up into a frenzy, feel the breath of old Saint Fudo blowing through them, that sort of look in his
eyes.’

‘Why is it you and your adepts did not cut Miyamoto down where he stood?’

‘I will not suffer the ghosts of rotten men haunting my dojo.’

The answer sounded false, and Akiyama simply cast his pale gaze upon the master until the man was unavoidably reminded of what he was sworn to.

‘Miyamoto issued a challenge of wooden swords,’ admitted Sakakibara.

Thus challenged, one could not refuse. Drawing steel on wood was a tacit admission of inferiority.

‘How many men of yours did he overcome?’ asked Akiyama.

The old master was now deeply ruing his vow of truthfulness. ‘Three, ultimately. Yet bear in mind that he fought with brute strength unrestrained, whereas my students were tempered with
the grace of civility. One might as well swing a dirk at a bear.’

Akiyama’s brow furrowed. ‘Miyamoto carries steel swords?’

‘He does.’

‘But even so, and even though he was as maddened as you say, he did not give himself over to bloodlust?’

‘He did not.’

Akiyama looked to the garden. Grey sands and grey rocks, and on them fallen petals of cherry blossom. Sweet detritus of the nascent year that danced in swathes of the breeze.

‘What was Miyamoto’s purpose in even coming here?’ he said.

‘Who knows how a frenzied heart beats?’ said the old master, and he cast a hand to nowhere. ‘He was spouting slanderous things. Shouting his name. Urging us to cast down the
Way as he snapped bones. Saying all Lords were worthless. Saying he had come on our behalf. Things of this sort.’

‘Indeed.’

Sakakibara saw the expression upon his guest’s face. ‘You seem surprised by all this.’

‘I have hunted men of Miyamoto’s ilk before,’ said the pale-eyed samurai. ‘When they abandon the Way, ultimately they either turn to cowardice or become wanton. However,
it sounds as though he has retained a code.’

‘There is no code outside the true code.’

Akiyama nodded slowly. ‘Indeed.’

There was little else for Akiyama to say. Sakakibara spoke on effusively for some time, obliquely implicating a hope this boon might lead to the start of cordial relations between the two
schools. Akiyama could make no promises on behalf of men horizons away. He thanked the old master for his hospitality, wished the wounded a quick recuperation, and then set out upon his horse once
more.

Akiyama often wrote poems he knew none but himself would ever read. The summer before, inspired by the sweet sound of cicadas, he had written what he considered his finest
verse:

Miyamoto put him in mind of a cicada. Two years dormant, and now burst forth in sudden desperate struggle and unrelenting noise. The incident at the school, before that burying
a man up to his neck and leaving him . . . On and on and on.

Akiyama was surprised to even be here. He had never harboured much hope of finding Miyamoto, even from the very moment he was issued the command. A name and nothing more to hunt amidst the
hordes of the defeated coalition that had flooded the country? A name was easy to shed.

After six months’ initial cursory search he had been certain Miyamoto was either dead or irrevocably vanished. This, however, did not mean that Akiyama could return to Kyoto and the
school: after so short a time it would seem he was derelict in his effort. He could not say, for example, that he had ridden to either end of the country in that span, which would be the very least
of what was expected of him. He reasoned that eighteen months or thereabouts would stand as sufficient proof of dedication and tenacity to duty, which consequently Akiyama knew meant he would have
had to sacrifice twice that or it would have been taken as unspoken proof of what all believed was innate in him.

How could the Foreigner possibly understand basic Japanese ethics, after all?

Two years, then, lingering nowhere, achieving nothing, and he had known this, had accepted it, had resigned himself to the waste of this plus a further year also. His life was a series of cycles
that spun upon the same bitter truth, around again and again. This rotation, it had been Sir Kosogawa who was rewarded in his stead. This rotation, it was Musashi Miyamoto he hunted. Sir Kosogawa,
seven years his junior and now swordmaster in Aki. Miyamoto the ninth man of no meaning he would kill. Never a champion that he could fell in the name of the school. Always the vermin and the
outlaws, which he would extinguish in furtive anonymity.

All this Akiyama knew, and what galled him most was his own complicity.

Now that he had emerged, Miyamoto was the easiest man to track that Akiyama had ever hunted. Contacts of the school and those he himself had cultured over previous hunts
awaited in each town or at the waypoints upon the road trading rumour for coin. Others simply coincidental witnesses of a man of great stature and flecked with pox scars, sullen innkeepers or
shaven-headed priests or peasants thigh-deep in paddy silt, and slowly he was pointed across realms and mountain trails.

The high summer found Akiyama in the province of Kaga, speaking to the captain of a garrison. A stern man who had been chosen to act as a second in the seppuku of a serial scapegrace, Ogawa.
They had erected a palisade of silk out upon a meadow, and Ogawa was writing his death poem when Miyamoto had cut his way through the brocade. Burst in and disrupted the ceremony, beseeched Ogawa
to forsake his honour and live.

‘The knave has proclaimed himself against the dignity of the Way previously,’ said Akiyama, nodding pensively.

‘Well, he mentioned nothing of that sort here,’ said the captain. ‘His true anger, if you must know, was directed at Ogawa himself when he protested Miyamoto’s
interruption.’

A confrontation had ensued thereafter, the resolution of which was unclear; the captain claimed to have cut Miyamoto down, but he could provide no proof of this. Akiyama did not challenge his
assertion, but a woman with a baby slung across her back who lived at the edge of town said she had seen Miyamoto heading westwards at twilight.