Samurai and Other Stories (3 page)

There was no sign of any blood.
 

Duncan was struck momentarily immobile by the incongruity, and that gave the
Samurai
a chance. Fast as a snake-strike the shining blade came up and headed straight for Duncan. He saw it coming, and knew he had no time to defend himself against it, no time even to move.
 

Geordie chose that moment to enter the fight. He threw himself forward between Duncan and the descending blade. It caught him on the left shoulder and cleaved a path through to his right hip with no more effort than if it had been cutting paper. Duncan tasted blood that was not his own in his mouth and almost gagged. The two pieces of Geordie’s body fell apart with a moist sucking noise that Duncan knew he would hear for the rest of his life.

Which may not be too far away.

He got his sword up again just in time as the
Samurai
stepped into a new attack, faster this time, their blades flashing and clashing. Duncan knew he was at a severe disadvantage, both in the strength and weight of his sword and in the lack of armour.
 

And I took the booger through the heart. Yet still he fights.
 

In self-defence Duncan stepped back behind the treasure chest.

The
Samurai
went still, blade held across his chest.

In that moment of silence Duncan realized that he could no longer hear the noise of wood splintering from the rear of the temple.
 

Duncan blinked.

The
Samurai
no longer stood in the doorway.

*
   
*
   
*

Learning is a phenomenon of gold and dung.
 

Before you understand it, it is like gold.
 

After you understand it, it is like dung.

I will teach them this very truth.

They will learn.

*
   
*
   
*

Duncan stood looking down at what was left of Geordie before a yell came from the far side of the temple.

Big Bill is in trouble.

Duncan stepped across the treasure chest and out into the weak sunlight, expecting at any moment to be attacked. But no such attack came.
 

He ran around the side of the building. Big Bill was struggling with the Samurai. He had stepped inside a swing of the sword and now grappled hand to hand with the armoured figure. The
Samurai
still held its sword, but Big Bill was a seasoned fighter, and had positioned his wrestling grip such that the sword was useless in this struggle. Getting to that position had, however, cost him dear. The big man had already taken a sore wound to his side. Blood ran in runnels down his tunic and breeches, and Big Bill’s face was ashen, as pale as mist.

Underneath and behind the struggling figures Moorhouse was trying to drag one of the treasure chests through the hole they had made in the temple wall.
 

“Help me,” the little man shouted.

Duncan had other priorities at that moment.

He stepped forward and raised his sword. He cut down, hard, a blow that would have taken a man’s arm off at the shoulder. He cut through leather and steel and felt the jolt run through him, momentarily deadening his sword arm.

The
Samurai
did not flinch. It did not even register his presence. With seemingly no effort it lifted Big Bill off his feet. It dropped an arm, seemingly leaving a weak point which Bill immediately went for. But it had been a ruse. The
Samurai’s
hand went straight to Bill’s throat. It gripped, hard, and Bill’s face went from white to red. He started to choke. His legs kicked, thrashing against the thick leather apron. The
Samurai
did not relent. The grip tightened.

Duncan lunged forward with the sword again, thrusting the point deep into the
Samurai
’s back.
 

Still it didn’t flinch.

It
twisted
its grip on Bill’s throat.

The big man’s neck broke with a crack that echoed around the ravine.
 

The
Samurai
dropped Big Bill’s body unceremoniously at its feet and immediately moved towards Moorhouse. The little man cowered beneath the dark bulky figure, hands raised in front of his face.

“I will give you half,” he said, wailing. “Please. Take half.”

Duncan had half a mind to let the attacker do his job. But the
Captain
had been right all along. Duncan had a duty, a sworn duty.

What kind of man would I be if I let him die like a trapped animal?

Even as the flashing blade came down, Duncan had stepped forward. His sword blocked the attack and Moorhouse scurried away.
 

Duncan heard the scrape as the
Captain
dragged the chest out of the temple, but by then it was too late to do anything other than fight for his life.

*
   
*
   
*

The Dharma is without life, because it is free of the dust of life.

It is selfless, because it is free of the dust of desire.

It is lifeless, because it is free from birth and death.

It is without personality, because it has no origin and no destiny.

There is only now.
 

I will serve, and I will protect.
 

There is nothing more.

*
   
*
   
*

The
Samurai
pressed an attack that took all Duncan’s skill to repel, the silver blade flashing and spinning in a dizzying set of thrusts and slices. Duncan had no thought of attacking—everything was defence and parry, trying to keep the blade from vital organs. He took a deep slash to his left forearm and felt blood flow in his sleeve, but there was no time to assess the extent of the wound as the
Samurai
came on mercilessly.

From the corner of his eye Duncan saw Moorhouse drag the chest away. He retreated along the same path, keeping himself between the attack and the little man.

“For pity’s sake man,” Duncan shouted. “Leave the chest. Head for the longboat. There is no sense in dying for a bit of gold.”

If Moorhouse heard, he paid no attention. He had already dragged the chest as far as the steps down the cliff and was trying to manoeuvre the box over the lip.

Duncan blocked a blow that was heading for his skull and succeeded in gaining a second’s respite.

“It is sheer folly,” he shouted. “You’ll never get that box down that flight alone.”

Moorhouse laughed bitterly.

“Yet I must try, for there will be no life for me without it.”

With that he pulled the chest over the lip and was gone from sight.

The
Samurai
pushed forward in another attack, and once more Duncan was forced to retreat. Soon he found himself backing towards the lip at the top of the staircase. He took one step down, then another. The Samurai was now high above him, raining blows down towards his head that Duncan was hard pressed to defend.
 

He descended as fast as he was able but quickly came up against Moorhouse and the chest.

“Let it go man,” Duncan shouted. “Or we will both be dead in seconds.”

Moorhouse didn’t reply, merely started to drag the chest faster. Duncan could not turn to watch. The
Samurai
came after him, the sword coming down like lightning bolts. Duncan’s whole arm was numb and his sword had been badly notched in many places, but he had no choice but to keep up the defence for as long as he was able.

The descent seemed to go on forever. Duncan took another long cut, just above the bicep in his right arm, and immediately he felt the strength start to drain from him.

“Faster!” he shouted to Moorhouse, then had to duck as the
Samurai
aimed a kick at his head. He stumbled, almost fell, and put his foot down to balance himself. Instead of finding a step, he found Moorhouse’s hand, stepping down hard on it. Bones broke under his foot. The little man screamed then fell away, the scream ending in a distant thud.

Duncan risked a look.

The broken body of the
Captain
lay some twenty feet below. The chest lay on top of him. It had landed square on his head, crushing the skull.

Duncan looked up, expecting the attack to cease and the
Samurai
to go still once more, but the blows still came relentlessly, even when they reached the foot of the stairs.

His retreat became frantic, barely stopping the
Samurai
blade an inch from his heart.

I do not have much time left.

Once again Duncan allowed his right knee to crumple and he let himself fall sideways. The
Samurai
went for his unprotected side and Duncan took his chance. He thrust upward, a perfect stroke that should have disembowelled his attacker.
 

When he withdrew his sword it was shining and clean. The
Samurai
had not even slowed.

I cannot fight such a thing as this.

The next time the
Samurai
raised the sword Duncan did not defend. He let his own weapon fall to the ground and waited for death to come. The blow came down on his right shoulder and he heard the sword grate as it passed through his ribs.

Duncan felt strangely still and content as he crumpled to the ground.

The last thing he saw before blackness took him down and away was the
Samurai
reach down and remove the forgotten gold piece from his tunic pocket.

*
   
*
   
*

I should be dead.

Duncan came back to a semblance of thought some time later. His view was limited to two thin slits in the darkness. He tried to move but he seemed to be restricted. He felt heavy and encumbered.
 

It was only when he saw the three chests stacked on the red and gold plinth that he realized where he was.
 

And what he was.

I will serve, and I will protect.
 

There is nothing more.

RICKMAN’S PLASMA

He would call it ‘Soundscapes of the City,’ and it would make him his fortune, of that Rickman was certain.

How could it fail?
 

All it had taken was a reconfigured dream machine. Courtesy of Dreamsoft Productions, a particularly skilled burglar, and the latest software from MYTH OS, Rickman’s visions of bringing his music to the world were now that much closer to reality.

For the past forty nights he’d sampled and tweaked, taking the raw sounds that streamed into his loft apartment from the city outside. He merged them with his dream compositions and formed them into a holographic construct of sound and light and ionised gas, an ever-moving plasma bubble that hung like a giant amoeba in the centre of his room.
 

As they swam, his creations sang, orchestrated overtures to the dark beauty of the night.

It had been a long hard journey to this point. During those first few days everything was sharp and jagged, harsh mechanical discordances that, while they had a certain musical quality, were not what he needed... not if he was going to take the world by storm. The plasma had roiled and torn, refusing to take a permanent shape and Rickman despaired of what the city was telling him. Everything was ugly, mean-spirited. The music of the city spoke only of despair and apathy and his dreams didn’t make a dent when he overlaid them.

Then he had his epiphany.

Aptly, it came to him in a dream.

It starts with thin whistling, like a simple peasant’s flute played at a far distance. At first all is black. The flute stops, and the first star flares in the darkness. And with it comes the first chord, a deep A-minor that sets the darkness spinning. The blackness resolves itself into spinning masses of gas that coalesce and thicken great clouds of matter reaching critical mass and exploding into a symphony. Stars wheel overhead in a great dance, the music of the spheres cavorting in his head.
 

Rickman jumped from his bed and pointed his antenna upwards to the sky.
 

Almost immediately he got results.

The plasma formed a sphere, a ball of silver held in the holographic array. At first it just hung there in space, giving out a deep bass hum that rattled his teeth and set all the glassware in the apartment ringing.
 

Things changed quickly when he overlaid his dreams.
 

Shapes formed in the plasma, concretions that slid and slithered, rainbow light shimmering over their surface like oil on water. They sang as they swam, and Rickman soon found that by moving the antennae he was able to get the plasma to merge or to multiply, each collision or split giving off a new chord, the plasma taking on solid form.
 

But it still wasn’t right.
 

The really good stuff only really started to happen this very night. He played back his previous recordings while keeping the antenna pointed skywards.
 

The plasma roiled.
 

The sounds became louder, more insistent, especially when he pointed at a certain patch of sky.
 

Soon he had a repeating beat going, with a modulated chorus above it that rose in intensity, and rose again as the plasma started to pulse.
 

He set his recorders going and started experimenting, feeding the recordings back to the plasma through his one thousand watt speakers, merging the sounds with the compositions from his dreams.

 
Within the hour the globe of plasma was responding to his dream overlays. When he played the recordings back at full volume the plasma swelled. The music grew, the chords overlaying each other in an orchestrated dance.