In what looked to be the last match, Tsukino challenged Durant and said, “empty hands.” Oleschenko had already lost his match earlier in the tournament, and Emily figured Kano would probably not fight at all, thinking the morale of his men would be no better served by a victory than a defeat. He would prefer to remain above the fray in their eyes.
“I think you’re right,” Lt Otani said, when Emily offered this interpretation. “Besides, Moon is the battalion karate champion.”
Emily nodded her approval, for Kiku’s benefit, when Tsukino took the first two points on speed moves. As much larger and stronger as Durant was, he just couldn’t keep up with the younger man. In one final point, Tsukino blocked a desperate, lunging punch and scored the winning point with a reverse-punch combination to the center of Durant’s chest that left him gasping for breath. Then, as Durant stumbled back, in what all the Marines standing around the ring took to be a gratuitous move, Tsukino pivoted into a spinning reverse-crescent kick that caught him on the nose. With his face bloodied, Durant fell to the ground in a daze, and Oleschenko and Ishikawa rushed in to help him to his feet.
“You have to challenge him LT,” Durant said, once he’d regained his wits.
Emily shook her head… and glanced over to see Tsukino staring at her, as if he were daring her to do anything about it.
“What would it accomplish?” she asked.
“She’s right, Sarge,” Oleschenko said. “There’s no point. Besides, if you couldn’t handle him, what’s she supposed to do?”
“He broke my nose,” Durant roared. “And he did it on purpose.”
“But it’s not gonna do anything for unit cohesion if I go in there,” she said. “You know this.”
By now, the uproar among the Marines had largely subsided, but when Tsukino bowed in their direction it came back to life, though now more as perplexity and embarrassment than as the expression of outrage.
“I don’t know, Tenno,” Oleschenko said. “We may have to do something. Just look at the men. They’re not gonna be able to fight alongside these guys… not with the memory of him taunting us like this.”
“They’ll get over it, sir,” she said. “Just give ’em time. And don’t look at me like that, Sarge. That nose was never your best feature anyway.”
Oleschenko rubbed his chin and cocked his head to one side, looking at his men, then at Durant’s nose, and then at Tsukino still standing in the ring glowering at them. “I almost can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but do you really think you can take him?”
“Do it for the men, LT, if not for my nose,” Durant said, with a bloody towel pressed against his face. Oleschenko nodded his assent, with an expression on his face that she knew was little short of a command.
Lt Otani rushed over as soon as she saw Emily remove her boots and strip off her uniform shirt.
“No, Tenno-san,” she cried out. “You mustn’t. It’s not permitted, and you’ll get hurt.”
“I’m sorry, Kiku-san,” she whispered. “It is what they wish.” She nodded to Durant and Oleschenko as she said this.
“You’ll need these,” Oleschenko said, and held out grappling gloves, a mouth guard and headgear. Emily pulled the gloves on, tossed the rest to the side, and stepped into the ring.
“Look at their champion,” Tsukino crowed. “This shows who they really are.”
Kano yelled at him to stop, and ran over to Oleschenko, but with Emily in the ring, there was no one to translate for him. Sgt Ishikawa offered his services, such as they were, and translated into the English he’d learned from watching a few too many American movies.
“Kano-san wonders if you haven’t lost your mind.”
“Tell him that your man has made it necessary.”
“And if she is hurt?” Ishikawa translated. “Sgt Tsukino is not a kind man.”
“We’ll take that chance,” Durant said.
Kano grumbled and looked across the ring at his own men, whose consternation at the prospect of this match was easy to see.
“This is unwise,” he said.
“Cooperation will be impossible as long as this hangs over my men.”
“Sgt. Tsukino has not acted dishonorably.”
“Maybe not,” Oleschenko said. “But he has acted foolishly.”
“If you can’t control your man, Lt Tenno can do it for you,” Durant said, and Kano scowled at him.
“Don’t worry, Kano-san,” Emily said, in Japanese, from inside the ring. “I won’t hurt him.”
A few more minutes of growling and chin-rubbing brought no better solution to the quandary the commanders found themselves in, and Kano relented and let the match go forward. But first, he stepped into the ring and said, “You have created this situation. Do not make it any worse.”
“Yes, sir,” Tsukino grunted. “Shame her without physical injury.”
Kano shook his head, and said, “Just behave honorably.”
“I cannot be judged by the Americans, since they have no idea what honor is.”
“Focus on what I think honor is.”
Tsukino grunted at these words and bowed his head.
* * *
With her eyes closed, and her hands at her sides, Emily let the air move in and out and through, listening to the sound of her own breathing, and her thoughts slipped into focus. She heard the beating of her heart, at first made rapid by the exhilaration of the scene—in the ring again, surrounded by friends, and maybe a few enemies—then slower, as another side of the reflections in her heart presented itself. It almost felt like she could hear the breathing of all the people around the ring, a cacophony of winds, driven by all sorts of passions: fear, confusion, embarrassment, but also the hope of triumph, of vaunting glory, and anger in expectation of its reward.
Her heart followed her breathing wherever it led, through the crowd standing nearby, and the more distant observers who’d found some better shade on a riser. Tsukino’s heart was there, too, on full display: focused and resolute, and driven by a seething resentment she recognized to be only partly directed at her. Her mind soared past him, and rose up through the heavy haze that pressed so much humid air down onto the crowd, always seeking something even more still, more serene, in the clear blue above the clouds. Finally, her thoughts crested the upper atmosphere, and her heart gazed into the black, where the deepest silence held sway. Silence, she craved it, any sort of respite from the turbulence of so many distracted souls, and she had not found it for some months now. Perhaps she would find it once again in the familiar place, in the ring.
When she opened her eyes, Tsukino stood opposite her, his hands and feet in a standard fighting position. She felt his frustration—he so wanted to hit her, to smack her face, anything that would leave a mark, but something held him back, perhaps the puzzle posed by the prospect of fighting her as if she were an equal.
“I see you can’t decide if there is any glory to be won by defeating a woman. I can assure you it is somewhat less than what you will gain by losing to one.”
“This is not the time for words,” he said, and Emily raised her guard.
He didn’t know how to start, she saw this much right away, so she settled on a very traditional karate technique, a front-kick to the knee that was only meant to induce him to block low, so she could flick the same foot up to the side of his head in a roundhouse kick. But she’d already seen enough to know he was much too quick for the second kick to find its mark, and he might even trap her leg, even though this was against the usual rules of karate-sparring, and strike her knee so as to disable her.
She gazed at him over her gloves, peering into his hard, dark eyes, and kicked low. He leaned in to block and readied his counter. But she didn’t flick her foot up into the trap he had prepared, instead lunging forward and jamming her fist into his face. His head snapped back, but the strike did not break his nose—Durant would be disappointed—though she knew it stung like hell, and blood oozed out along his upper lip.
Tsukino stumbled bac
k and glared at her through watery eyes, then glanced around the ring to see the reaction of the crowd. Of course, the Marines roared their approval, and the Jietai murmured on their side, uncertain how to respond to the sight of their champion struck by a woman.
“Fine,” he snarled, and tore off his headgear. “Let’s do this your way.”
When he attacked this time, no longer able to wait for her to make the first move, he meant to hit her hard. But Emily’s fighting stance was perplexing, since she didn’t hold her fists up in the usual guard position. Instead, with open hands, she extended one up high, as if in greeting, and the other low, as if to receive a gift. Her block, such as it was, barely grazed his fist, just enough to push it aside, and the next strike as well; and when she didn’t retreat after several more, increasingly frantic strikes, the blocks became sticky, as if he couldn’t extricate his hands from hers.
She never grabbed on, since that would make her vulnerable, but neither did she let him pull back, always threatening the counter-strike his retreat would create an opening for. When his puzzlement reached a maximum, she saw in his eyes what he meant to do, and as he lunged at her, she ducked under his outstretched arms and threw him over her shoulder. An elementary jiu-jitsu technique, one even the youngest students learn in their first year—she knew the shame of falling for it would sting more than the impact with the ground.
He tried to spring to his feet, but before he could fully right himself, she’d scissored her legs around his neck and twisted him face-down into the dirt, folding the wrist trapped between her legs into an exceedingly awkward position.
“I’d rather not break a limb, Tsukino-san,” she hissed into his ear. “There is no honor in losing like that.”
He groaned and roared at her, though in a higher pitch than one might have expected to hear. She increased the pressure on the back of his hand, until he tapped out.
Another point, another chance to hurt her—she glanced over to see Lt Otani cover her eyes, Durant and Ishikawa standing on either side, but oblivious to her distress. When she saw the expression on Lt Kano’s face, a few feet away, Emily regretted having stepped into the ring at all. What else could she accomplish there? Reconciliation with Tsukino now seemed impossible. The only other option, she knew, was to demonstrate the utter futility of his position. She studied him over her gloves, peered into his eyes again, and readied herself for the desperation of a beaten man.
He would probably remember little of it, but the crowd might—the Jietai and the Marines—and maybe leave her in peace. “That’s wishful thinking,” she muttered. He attacked first, for how could he not, as patience was all on her side; a fierce kick-combination, much too slow to catch up to her, since she’d anticipated it and stepped inside his leg before he could even extend the fist he’d meant for her face. The first strike merely caught his bicep just below the armpit, while a slap across the face dazed him as she struck the opposite bicep. He winced and tried to step back, to get out of range, but she’d already struck him several more times in the chest and face, none full force, but so many that he began to lose his bearings. Blocking was no longer possible, since she was still too close, and her strikes anticipated his responses, flowing from the back-and-forth movement of her hips and shoulders even as they thwarted the geometry of his body.
In a last, desperate attempt to create some distance, he tried to raise his foot, to kick her away, but she jammed a knee into his thigh and struck him once again, this time full-force, a reverse-punch to the soft spot in the center of the chest, just below the sternum. She let him stagger backwards, as he gasped for breath, then crossed one leg behind the other and stomped her heel into the same spot on his chest in a ferocious side-kick that practically lifted him off the ground.
“No,” he said, when she offered to help him up, and pushed himself on to unsteady legs to face her.
She stared at him as he stood opposite, and waited to see if he would bow. To do otherwise would seem absurd, given how she’d dominated him, the bow in such circumstances suggesting a plea for mercy. When he placed his hands together and lowered his head ever so slightly, she grunted and turned away.
Chapter 5
Shinai
“I challenge,” the voice said, and Emily stopped at the edge of the ring, turning to look over her shoulder. “My choice of weapon is shinai.”
“There is no need,” she said, rushing to the center of the ring to kneel at Kano’s feet.
“Do not insult me,” he growled. “You will accept my challenge… unless you think it is beneath you.”
“I would rather be your student, Sensei, than your opponent.”
A moment later, she stood on the side of the ring, as Ishikawa and Lt Otani helped her strap on protective equipment. Shinai are practice swords, made of bamboo strips bound together in a single shaft, lighter than a hardwood bokken, and with no edge. But in the heat of competition, an errant blow can still do some damage… and Kano did not look like he meant to tap her lightly.
“You should never have entered the ring,” Lt Otani said. “This could have been avoided if you had just let Sgt Tsukino have his victory.”
“Nonsense,” Ishikawa roared. “Moon behaved like a donkey. He deserved what he got, and she fought brilliantly.”
“What are they saying?” Durant asked from behind Lt Otani.
“Dice thinks I’m a fool, and so does Kiku-san.”
“No, Durant-u-san,” Ishikawa said, in the best English he could muster. “I think Tenno-san is awe-inspiring. But she is probably in for a beating.”
“I’m sorry for getting you in to this pickle, LT,” Durant said, after Emily glowered at him.
“Pic-kel-u?” Ishikawa said, with one raised eyebrow as he tried to fit his mouth around the word.
“Just like tsukemono,” Lt Otani proposed.
Emily offered an alternative translation: “He means this is a difficult situation.” When Ishikawa still didn’t understand, she said, “I’m screwed.”
“Yes, yes,” Ishikawa said with a big grin. “Screwed.”
“Can you take him?” Oleschenko asked.
“Not if he’s anything like his father,” Emily said. “Besides, kendo is not my best subject.”
“Kano-san was national youth champion as a boy,” Ishikawa said. “He is kyoshi.”
“You knew his father?” Oleschenko asked, looking on as Emily tugged on her equipment to get it to fit better. “How is that possible?”
“It’s a long story, sir. Let’s just say it hasn’t put me in Kano’s good books.”
Emily glanced across the ring as she said this, and saw Kano glowering back at her, while Tsukino tightened the strap on his shoulder guard. Tsukino turned to look at her with a sneer, and then made some remark for Kano’s benefit. But it didn’t appear to have the desired effect, since Kano pushed him away with a sharp word that Emily couldn’t quite make out.
“He is very quick, Tenno-san,” Ishikawa said. “Do not extend your guard, or he will find an opening.”
“Why are you helping me, Dice?” Emily asked. Lt Otani seemed to have the same question written on her face.
“After what you did just now in the ring, I respect you, Tenno-san. And I do not wish you to get hurt. Maybe, if you can hold him off long enough, his temper will pass. Remember, strikes to the top of the head will not hurt as much, because of the helmet.”
When Emily stepped back into the ring, she noticed that the dignitaries had found their way through the ranks to stand next to Sgt Tsukino. Watching the women, something felt out of place, since Soga Jin and Heiji Gyoshin seemed rather too refined for the company of someone as coarse as Moon. “There’s a story behind that,” she thought.
Kano raised the shinai above his head, jodan-style, once she seemed ready, and Emily held hers over one shoulder. His movement was sudden and precise, as the shinai glanced off the top of her helmet, and the Jietai roared their approval. In fact, she hadn’t moved at all, not even to block, preferring m
erely to watch and breathe, to listen to her heart—and his—and admire the stillness out of which his stroke moved.
But his heart was not perfectly still; she could sense this. Turbulence disrupted his spirit, and she wondered about the source of it. Was it his irritation with Tsukino, or with her? Or perhaps some still-unresolved feelings about his father?
A second stroke slipped past her guard, and caught her on the shoulder, above the collarbone. If she hadn’t been wearing the guard, even the bamboo would have broken the bone—and Dice was right; it hurt much more than the head-strike. But Kano’s technique was excellent, and she would gladly let him hit her again, despite the pain, just for the privilege of seeing it up close.
When the third stroke came, she’d moved to block it, to protect her neck, but she couldn’t prevent it from scoring, a diagonal stroke across her chest. The Jietai cheered, and she bowed to him, before turning to leave the ring.
“Stop right there,” he cried out in a loud voice, more like a growl than speech. “Do you take me for a fool? Am I not worthy of your best effort?”
“You have my highest respect, Sensei,” she said, with another bow, and began to untie her equipment.
“That is not good enough. I am not a child, to be put off with easy falsehoods. Take up your shinai and face me again.”
“Do not seek this fight, Sensei. There is nothing to be gained in it.”
“Fight,” he roared one more time at her.
“Fine,” she muttered, and tossed the last of her protective gear aside, then picked up the shinai and stepped to the center of the ring.
He glowered at her and said, “Do you think I will not hit you without padding?”
Emily said nothing, and held her shinai out front, chudan-style, pointed directly at his face, but not well-positioned to protect her head and shoulders from an overhead stroke. His puzzlement was easy to see, and she could feel the question in his heart as she let her breath move in and out of her body: “Can I hurt her?” Part of him wanted to cause her physical pain, to work out his frustrations by beating her bloody. But she sensed another train of thought somewhere inside him, a doubt that threatened to pull down the entire edifice of his resentments, and perhaps of his confidence, too.
Girl Rides the Wind Page 4