In The Falling Light (19 page)

It sounded like the sea. So she imagined,
having never left Oklahoma. It came in waves, making the treetops
sway and the leaves flicker, a soft rising and falling like a
never-ending whisper.

Hope sat on a bench in Filson’s only park, a
small square ringed by shops with the town offices at one end, a
dull bronze statue of a soldier at the center. Her twin sister
Faith sat beside her, both little girls swinging their legs slowly
and holding hands.

“It’s quiet,” said Hope.

Faith nodded.

A tendril of breeze spiraled down from
above, ruffling their hair and blowing a windshield flier across
the fresh-cut grass. Hope loved that smell.

Nothing moved on the streets, no cars or
farm trucks, no folks passing by to say hello. No squirrels played
chase-me games up and down the tree trunks, and the branches above
were silent in the absence of birds.

“I miss the sounds.”

Hope looked at her sister and squeezed her
hand.

“I miss mommy and daddy.” Faith’s eyes
welled up again, and so did Hope’s.

“Me too.”

They sat that way for a while, staring out
at the park, their tears turning pink as they tried to understand.
They didn’t want to think about the people lying on the sidewalks,
slumped over steering wheels in motionless cars. Didn’t want to
think about their little house three blocks away, just past the
intersection with the blinking yellow light and the Dairy Queen
that closed just after Labor Day. Daddy in the front yard by his
grass fertilizing machine, mommy on the floor of the small living
room with a spilled glass of tea.

Faith started coughing. So did Hope.

Filson, Oklahoma was quiet all over. The big
trucks by the grain silos were still, the high school gym with its
orange and blue decorations for Homecoming was silent. Only a
couple of small oil wells chugged slowly on at the west end of
town.

Faith covered her cough with her hands like
mommy had taught her, seeing crimson droplets on her palms. Hope’s
chest rattled and she leaned against her sister’s shoulder, her
eyes glassy.

“Do you think Jesus will be here soon to get
us?” Faith asked.

Hope didn’t answer. She was already
gone.

High above the waving treetops of Filson, a
large aircraft left a lonely white contrail across a cornflower
blue sky. Serious men and women aboard Air Force One spoke with
authority and confidence about biological warfare and acceptable
losses.

Faith’s body shuddered with coughs and she
put her arm around her sister, their heads touching.

“Goodnight, Hope.” She closed her eyes.

And the wind kept on.

A pearly mist hovered over the field, making
ghosts of the gnarled trees and hiding the large buildings of the
school. With the sun not yet above the horizon, the damp sea air
cast a morning chill. Three wooden posts were placed close together
on the field, each topped with a cloth bag, bamboo helmets strapped
to them. From within the mist an impatient horse snorted and
stamped. A pair of whispers in the mist, and a pair of arrows
slammed into two of the posts. Next came a rattle of armor and the
pounding of hooves.

A phantom charged into view, a man in
elaborate armor wearing a horned helmet, his horse thundering over
the field as the rider smoothly drew a weapon with a long shaft and
curved blade. In a moment of sound and speed the horseman was at
the posts, his
naginata
flashing in a deadly arc as he sped
past. The helmeted bag on the third post was cut in two, splinters
of wood sent flying as the horse reared and turned, shaking its
head and snorting steam in the morning air.

“Speed,” announced the mounted samurai, “is
the sister of surprise.” He waved a gloved hand. “In such an
environment you must take advantage of the elements, conceal your
location, choose when and where to attack. This tactic will be
useless, however, unless you close quickly with the survivors.”

Fifty feet away from the posts, twenty young
men in gray kimonos and shaved heads bowed as one.

Zenki Mokinoto, samurai and
sempai
,
instructor-student in the House of Itto, dismounted as one of the
students came forward to take the reins of his horse. He handed his
slender halberd, longbow and quiver to another boy before
approaching the group, tucking the ornate helmet under one arm.
Zenki had been born into a noble house, his father a general who
died in war during the boy’s seventh year. From birth he, like his
brothers, had been trained to follow his father’s path. The
general’s station assured his sons the finest instruction, here at
the Itto Ryu.

The samurai led his group back to the
courtyard of the great house. Without a word they formed ranks and
waited while he moved to a low veranda to remove his armor. Nearby,
another group of students was practicing the basics of
swordsmanship, using oak
bokken
, practice swords. They were
novices and clumsy, but their instructor – a man in his late
twenties wearing a green patterned kimono – was patient, explaining
techniques and working slowly.

Zenki ignored the group of novices as he
performed the slow ritual of removing the many layers of armor,
tying it into a tight bundle for storage. This was practice armor,
not the elegant suit for war, which would instead be placed upon a
stand and set in a place of honor. At thirty-five, the samurai had
already fought in five campaigns, from repelling Chinese invaders
as a teenager to enforcing the Shogun’s rule in smaller actions. He
was a master of the sword, a superb horseman and highly skilled in
the
naginata
, a difficult weapon to use when
not
on
horseback. Yet despite his abilities and experience, he understood
that every samurai was a student throughout his life, and so Zenki
kept coming back to the Itto School.

His reasons were not altruistic, for he was
an ambitious man. He had fought beside Itto Ittosai, the founder
and sensei of the school, had helped him put the Tokugawa clan in
power. Zenki was popular at court, and he understood the
intricacies of politics and noble honor. At one point he was
offered a post in the Shogunate, second-in-command to a
Daimyo
, a noble lord, but he turned it down, insisting
humbly that he was merely a student and unworthy. Instead of being
an insult, it made him that much more desirable and favored, as he
knew it would. It was all part of the game.

Ono looked up from his teaching at the
samurai kneeling on the veranda, then at the man’s ranks of silent
pupils. He frowned. Zenki had put on an impressive display for the
youngsters, showing them skills which one learned only after many
years of actual application. The demonstration had little practical
use here, where fundamentals must be mastered before advanced
training took place. Zenki’s group would have been better served by
performing a thousand repetitive cuts with their swords than being
an audience to the horseman’s prowess. Ono turned back to his
class, annoyed with himself. They were equals, both
sempai
charged by the headmaster with instructing the students. Each would
follow his own philosophy of training, and who was Ono to dispute
Zenki’s methods?

“Ono-san,” one of his pupils called.

“Please,” said Ono, frowning, “you must show
respect by addressing me as
sensei
.”

The student bowed his head at the shameful
error.

“What is it, Kano-san?” Ono liked the boy, a
youth of fourteen mired in the clumsiness of puberty. Kano was one
of Zenki’s sons, and Ono knew that if the boy had made such an
error in his father’s presence he would have been beaten.

“
Sensei
, forgive my stupidity, but
will you please show me the placement of the feet during
chiburi?”

Ono stood beside him and slowly demonstrated
the technique of snapping blood off the blade, the boy paying
careful attention. Kano thanked him and bowed, then concentrated as
he repeated the move. Ono nodded, moving on to another boy who was
having trouble.

Ono was the son of a samurai in charge of a
small village and monastery, his early life one of quiet
simplicity. Due to the proximity of the monks, he was raised in a
spiritual environment and had come close to becoming a holy man
himself. When bandits attacked the village, however, slaughtering
the monks and half the village samurai – his father included – Ono
learned that such a tranquil life could only exist so long as there
were swordsmen to safeguard it. Rather than be one who reaped the
harvest of peace, Ono chose to stand among those who defended it.
His father’s position gave him the opportunity to train at the
legendary Itto Ryu.

He was eleven when the Tokugawas came to
power, already training to be samurai. At thirteen he was recruited
as a spearman to defend the Shogunate against a coup attempt. At
twenty he was part of a force tasked with enforcing the Shogun’s
will with a
Daimyo
who refused to pay the full amount of
required tribute. This short and bloody campaign ended with the
Daimyo’s
samurai lying dead throughout his castle, the
feudal lord himself choosing the honor of ritual suicide. It was
during this battle that Ono gained the reputation of a natural
swordsman, an honor which embarrassed him, for he saw himself as a
mere student who had much more to learn. He believed surviving that
skirmish had been luck and divine providence rather than skill.

The samurai stopped the practice and had his
pupils kneel for meditation designed to still their spirits, to let
them absorb what they had learned. He looked over to his
counterpart, seeing that Zenki had organized sparring among his
group. The older man strode up and down the lines of battling young
men, correcting errors with painful cracks of a bamboo cane and
shaking his head in disgust.

One of Zenki’s students tried to parry the
downward strike of his opponent, and the jarring contact of wood on
wood knocked the practice sword from his hand. The
bokken
pinwheeled through the air and struck Zenki’s foot. Practice came
to an instant halt as the samurai strode to the offending pupil and
slapped the side of his head, hard. He fell to the ground, and with
the bamboo cane, Zenki began whipping the boy’s back savagely. The
other students dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads
to the earth.

The beating was short and mean, yet the
youth bit back his cries and endured the master’s anger. At last
the cane broke across his back, and Zenki stood over him, barking
about clumsiness and the dishonor of losing one’s sword in combat.
He ordered the boy to retrieve his
bokken
and resume
practice, even though he was clearly in great pain, lines of blood
seeping through the back of his kimono. The boy obeyed, and the
other students quickly returned to their sparring.

Ono watched the incident quietly, arms
folded. The boy essentially belonged to Zenki, and if the samurai
chose, he had every right to inflict whatever punishment he
desired, for any offense, or even no offense at all. His methods,
however, were distasteful to the younger samurai, and it was no
secret that Ono objected to Zenki’s harsh manner. Neither was the
fact that both men intensely disliked the other.

As he watched the other
sempai,
Ono
reflected on this. Was it jealousy? Clearly Zenki was a far better
swordsman, and was without question an exceptional horseman. Horses
frightened Ono, a shameful fact he tried to hide and which left a
large gap in his skills, making him incomplete. Zenki was famous,
favored at court, adept in the subtleties of bureaucracy, another
area which held little interest for Ono, and in this modern day of
1620 a necessary skill. The older man’s flower arranging was
inspiring, and his silk paintings were much in demand. One piece –
a spidery sketch of two cranes – was rumored to grace the Shogun’s
private chambers. What was Ono compared to Zenki, the perfect
samurai?

Perhaps it
was
jealousy, shameful and
bitter, an emotion unworthy of the teachings of his father and the
monks. And yet, Ono truly believed Zenki lacked the proper humility
of a samurai, lacked the spirituality that would lead to
enlightenment. Zenki did not understand Itto’s philosophy.

Arrogant ass
, Ono chastised himself.
Do you dare to believe you understand the old man’s philosophy?
Who are you to judge another man’s spirit? Who are you to say who
is a fit samurai and who is not? Tend to the gardens of your own
failures before casting an eye upon your neighbor’s field.

Ono closed his eyes in shame, then dismissed
his class. They joined the weary students of Zenki’s group, filing
into the great house to bathe before more studies. As they left,
Zenki stood across the courtyard, fists on his hips and his stance
wide, silently challenging the younger instructor to say something
about the whipping.

Ono bowed respectfully and quietly left the
training ground.

The sun was below the mountains, the coming
night clear and pleasant. A soft breeze rattled the wooden chimes
on the veranda, making a row of colorful paper lanterns sway. Ono
and Zenki, dressed in comfortable silk robes, knelt on soft bamboo
mats, enjoying the open air and peacefulness. Itto Ittosai, seventy
years old with a balding head and weathered face, knelt beside
them. He was dressed in simple white robes with a silk sash,
sipping the
sake
being served by Ono’s wife Maiko. The old
man’s face was serene, his eyes gentle as he thanked the lovely
young woman.

Zenki held out his cup, ignoring Ono’s wife
as she served, as was customary. He did not notice her beauty, did
not notice her at all. Nor did he often take notice his own wife,
whom he kept tucked away tending to his house and children, never
passing up an opportunity to remind her that she was plain and
undesirable. His two concubines, however, were quite beautiful, and
his wife could never hope to match their grace. She had given him
two sons, however, and for that he was somewhat grateful. But then
it was her duty. Kano and Mifune would one day bring honor to his
name.