Sword of Honour (50 page)

He walked the densest alleys, these so narrow that he could spread his arms and touch either wall comfortably, overhanging roofs stealing all sight of the sky. Even here in these unseen places
chains of paper bunting and lanterns hung limp and fragile in the humidity arrayed for the Regent’s festival. Here Musashi found no welcome, only a solitude, a sightless void of eyes turning
away from him, turning down as men and women pressed up against beams and walls to allow him to pass breast to breast. He walking as a beast in the night, unseen but of a volatile size enough to be
sensed regardless. A silence that followed him, a roaming and temporary cessation of trade as all the hawkers of the inutile shit he despised so found themselves voiceless.

This caused him no joy.

He came to the gate of the higher wards with its neat row of murderholes, the same samurai standing before it, and he looked at them. A dozen of them, maybe not the same men exactly, the faces
indistinct to him but the topknots and silks and the swords identical, and he just stood there. Surely they would recognize him. Surely they would offer him proof. Surely against them which he so
despised he would be able to judge some measure of progress. But that day he did not call out to them, he did not beseech them, he did not boast to them. He merely stood there and waited patiently
as a fisherman for their reaction. Any reaction.

They gave him none.

His pace slowed as his thoughts drew ever inward. His eyes lost their focus and the hundreds and thousands of the city passed him by like the waters of a river around a rock. Movement drew his
eye – a troupe of young women, fans twirling in their hands, stepping through the steps of a dance, practising, practising. They alone having space upon the street, they alone afforded
recognition as separate from the throng, and yet they all using this space to move as one.

Musashi stopped to stare sightlessly at them.

After some time a boy appeared at his side, peered up into his face.

‘It’s you,’ the child said, delighted. ‘I saw you yesterday, at the long Hall. You killed the Yoshioka!’ He was no more than ten, wearing clothes that marked him
either an urchin or a member of an impoverished family. ‘It was amazing!’ continued the boy, excitement gleaming in his eyes. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so amazing as you. Two
swords! There was what, fifteen of them? And you just killed them in moments!’ He lost himself in a fit of mimicry, slicing away with two imagined blades.

Streets away there was some kind of uproar, echoes of it felt rather than heard. Too distant to carry meaning, stripped of clarifying words such as
head
and
Miyamoto
and
vengeance
, and so the women kept on dancing and the boy kept on talking: ‘You cut his arms off and they fell off, and his leg, and blood was everywhere, and they were all screaming
and—’ And on he spoke like this until he was satisfied he had given a true account.

Only when the boy was done did Musashi look at him. ‘Is that all you took from what I did there?’ he asked. ‘The fight?’

‘What else was there?’ the child asked.

Musashi turned his eyes back to the women. He stood there trying to think of the answer, or any answer, and the dance was danced and the city flowed past him in a hot haze of colour and
motion.

The boy grew quickly bored, and Musashi did not notice him leave.

Chapter Thirty-three

The hour of the ox, the dead time after midnight. The time for vows and oaths and solemnity. Denshichiro opened the door to the dojo hall with his left hand only, struggling
with the weight. His right arm was swathed in a bandage, wrapped tight and pink and moist. There inside the dojo he found braziers burning bright, smoke coiling around the beams of the ceiling and
the school waiting in expectant silence.

All the adepts and all the acolytes arrayed around the edge of the hall on their knees, they in their number close and intimate, elbows interlocking. He looked around at them, and they looked
back.

In the centre of the hall knelt Tadanari.

The old samurai turned his face to Denshichiro. Grief had altered it, hardened it into a thing of shadows and ivory. Slowly, he reached out with one hand and gestured to the space before him.
There a long pale strip of cloth was laid out upon the earth of the floor, a band for tying around the head. Before the knees of each member of the school, before Tadanari also, a similar band was
spread.

The hand was held out, insistent, steady. Denshichiro approached the centre of the hall. As he drew close he saw that something was written upon the headband in black ink, the strokes savage and
quick:

‘No,’ said Denshichiro.

‘Kneel,’ said Tadanari.

‘We can’t,’ said Denshichiro. ‘Have you any conception of what he wrought, what he—’

‘Kneel,’ said Tadanari.

Denshichiro obeyed, his legs folding beneath him. He looked at the headband as though it were a stretch of tanned human skin. With the characters of that name upon it the cloth had undergone
transubstantiation, evolving from a thing that bound solely the hair to one that bound the soul and the will also; a profound declaration that Musashi Miyamoto would be foremost on all their
thoughts until he was dead.

‘As head of the school,’ said Tadanari, ‘you must be the first to take up the mantle.’

‘That is folly,’ said Denshichiro. ‘You did not see him. We must not be his enemy. No. Impossible. We must be done with him . . . He fought as men cannot. He is unbeatable.
He’ll kill whoever we send after him. Eight men he killed before me, in no more than ten heartbeats! And look, look what he did to me!’

Denshichiro raised his bandaged forearm up to Tadanari’s face. The elder samurai was unmoved.

‘Are you mad?’ said Denshichiro at the silence. ‘I am the finest swordsman in this school. And he beat me. Do you not understand? He beat
me
. He beat Seijuro! He beat
eight of us at once! There’s no shame in saying it . . . Miyamoto is a demon, an abomination, inhuman. To pursue any further feud with him is folly. Is that not what you wanted, Sir Kozei? I
bow to your will now. Let us be done with him. He will be forgotten. Snow in spring, as you said.’

The lids of Tadanari’s eyes were heavy and still as though they were carved of wax, gazing towards Denshichiro but not at him; through him, beyond him.

‘Is this because I ran?’ said Denshichiro. ‘You too, had you seen, would have run. There was no stopping him. How can I explain this to you any clearer? My duty is to live, as
the scion, as the bearer of the blood. Is it not? Is it not?’

He quailed in the silence, found no respite anywhere in the hall. Command withered. Denshichiro placed his palms upon the earth and bowed as low as he could. He held it until he dared to look up
once more.

‘Or, if you must kill him,’ he tried, ‘let us hire agents. Assassins. Let’s be done with him at a distance. No one will remember how he found his end. Snow in spring.
Snow in spring. Yes, or, or . . . Longbows. Let’s use the bows. Or arquebuses. We can buy guns and hire a rank of masterless to shoot him. That’s how he’ll be felled. We cannot
beat him with the sword. Do none of you understand this?’

He looked around the room at all the men and boys. There was no submission, only stillness. Hints of something further than that given and stolen by the whim of the firelight. Denshichiro turned
back to Tadanari.

He became aware then, perhaps the last place his eyes had ventured, that the longsword resting by the elder samurai’s side was Ujinari’s. The gorgeous lacquered scabbard studded with
the face of Fudo was blighted by an ugly wound. Through the sleek blackness a vein of bright magnolia wood ravaged a jagged path, the empty scabbard having snapped beneath Ujinari’s falling
body. Crudely it had been reset to house the unblooded blade once more.

Denshichiro’s face hardened. ‘Do you blame me for my actions?’ he said. ‘How can you? There were eight men, and myself. Any other man but Miyamoto would have his head
stuck on a spike outside the gate now, and you would be praising my bravery. You can not fault me for behaving as I should. Eight men I had! Whoever heard of one man standing against nine? The risk
was minimal, the idea was sound, the tactics, the strategy. I cannot be faulted in my intentions!’

Through the mullions of the high, thin windows smoke billowed, fled.

That you of all people should cause his last words to me to be lies.

‘I meant to fight Miyamoto myself,’ said Denshichiro. ‘A duel between the two of us alone. There was to be no risk to any but myself. The eight were there merely to encircle,
to prevent him fleeing. I intended to fight him one on one, truly I did. But the savage, the animal, Miyamoto – he leapt straight into combat before I could engage. There was nothing I could
have done, and, and . . .’

You do not name him. Can you not bring yourself to?

In the face of silence, the wheel of Denshichiro’s emotions completed a full rotation: ‘Why am I facing this inquisition? This is outrageous. Fate sends a punishment like Miyamoto,
and you behave as though I am at fault for the, the, the cruelty of the universe. Outrageous!’

‘Don the headband, Denshichiro,’ said Tadanari. ‘Comport yourself like a man.’

‘No!’ shouted Denshichiro. ‘I refuse! It is madness! You are not the head of the school! I am! Yoshioka! Yoshioka! Do you not hear what I am saying? Am I alone left sane? Am I
alone thinking of the future?’

‘Don the headband. As your father would have done.’

‘You dare speak of my father?’ said Denshichiro. ‘Actually, it is good you do. I have tolerated this insubordination long enough – look at the portraits there hung upon
the wall, and ask yourself to whom they deigned to grant command by right of birth? Whose father, whose great-uncle, whose grandfather is venerated at the shrine that we all pray to? Mine! And you
will heed me when I order that we shall engage Miyamoto no further!’

Tadanari struck as he rose to one knee, rising and drawing Ujinari’s sword from its fractured scabbard in a fluid, beautifully observed motion. Decades of skill summated: he brought the
edge swift across Denshichiro’s throat, followed the arc through, held the sword high and still as blood fell upon the earth. Denshichiro clutched at his neck with both hands as he fell
backwards, legs kicking, fingers glistening red. No shout he made, no shout possible.

The watching samurai were as still as that crimson-spattered sword. The thrashing ceased with an intermittent, fading desperation. In its wake Tadanari rose to stand, looked around at the
gathered men, held the blade up to show the blood upon it to all of them.

‘The masterless vagrant Musashi Miyamoto has felled both Seijuro and Denshichiro,’ he said. ‘This, I declare truth.’

No man contested. Those that were most loyal to Denshichiro had gone to the Hall with him, or to Mount Hiei before that. Those that were here were all pupils of Tadanari. The dead man had been
the figurehead of the Way they sought, but the one that lived they knew undoubted to be its embodiment.

‘The leadership of the school,’ continued Tadanari, ‘duly falls to the third son of Naokata Yoshioka, Matashichiro.’

Silent assent.

‘Matashichiro’s reign will be long and virtuous, but for now he remains a child. I therefore propose that, until the young Master comes of a suitable age, I, Tadanari Kozei, Master
of the Way of the Yoshioka, assume the mantle of plenipotentiary. This is proper. Does any man here contest this?’

Some last spark of energy forced its way out of Denshichiro, a sad little gurgle emanating from the gorge across his throat. If any man read it as an omen or a protest from the departing spirit,
he did not voice it.

Tadanari shook the blood from the sword, wiped it pure again on silk as he slid it smoothly back into the scabbard. He then knelt, placed the weapon reverently on the ground, and took up the
headband. With ceremonial stillness and practised motions he placed the characters of his enemy’s name against his forehead and then slowly wrapped the length of the cloth around the dome of
his skull. Wrapped it tight, tied the knot over his brow so that the name within was forced up against the flesh, the mind.

The men of the Yoshioka followed his motions, hands moving in unison.

‘We are avowed,’ said Tadanari. ‘For his grievous insults to the school, Musashi Miyamoto must die.’

‘Death!’ echoed the men.

‘You have been killing already, and I say unto you: kill. There is nothing left to us but to kill. We will not use guns or arrows or even spears. We shall use the sword. We shall not take
him from behind like cowards, but give him warning so that he knows his doom is upon him. We shall observe our vengeance properly, as men that our grandfathers could respect.’

‘Sir!’

‘He is no force of fate. He is no demon. He is just a man. And even if we must throw ourselves upon his blade to smother him so that another may take his head, this we vow to do, vow
before each other, before all our forebears who trod this earth before us now. Do we not?’