Talon wiped the sweat away from his forehead with his sleeve and thought about it for a long moment. “Yes. Would it be possible?” It had been a humbling experience, and he was still remembering the bewildering speed and the manner of the attacks. He shook his head in amazement. The speed of this old man who barely came up to his shoulder had been astonishing. “Yes, I would like to be taught more,” he said again.
Some of the other students paired off on the mat and began to practice. Talon watched them for a few minutes, observing the style of fighting. It was very fast, with one person attacking furiously, seeking an opening of any kind to complete the finishing strike, while the other defended with equal speed and fury; the clack of sticks echoed in the confined space of the training area. Talon had never encountered this method of fighting before but he could see that it was highly effective compared to the normal engagement of hack and stab that was used in his world. Before his bout with the Sensei he had been very sure of himself as a swordsman; it shook him to discover otherwise. He rubbed the welts on his arm ruefully and decided that he should come back as soon as possible, with Reza. They had some learning to do.
*****
Later that day he sat with Reza and Fuling at a small tea house, absently observing the pedestrians, and much further along the crowded dockyards where their ship was moored. They talked about the school.
“Do all the warriors of this nation go to schools like this?” he asked Fuling, rubbing his arm, which was still sore.
“No Master Talon, we do not value warriors the way you seem to, and certainly not as the Nippon do. They worship war in a manner we find distasteful. We Chinese prefer to win by trade and diplomacy, so warriors are not considered to be of an honorable class. My father, however, disagrees with this attitude, as do many military officers, pointing out that the Mongols pose a deadly threat to our entire nation. The Mongols believe only in the warrior class; they have nothing else to offer. Their cavalry is unstoppable in battle, yet they are ignorant barbarians; but my father says that our nation is in peril from them. The advisors to the Emperor, however, think that they can negotiate a peace rather than go to war.”
“I think your father is a very wise man,” Talon told him, the memories of the beleaguered Kingdom of Jerusalem still fresh in his mind.
“With so many people in this country, you must possess vast armies with which to fight the Mongols,” Reza remarked as he fumbled with his chop sticks, trying to fish a morsel of meat out of a bowl of soup. “I wish I had a spoon,” he complained.
Fuling smiled at his efforts, and then said. “We do have big armies, but we do not have a warrior class who study war with dedication and determination. There was a time, my father told me, when we did have great generals; but today the jealousies of the palace undermine the military.”
“The school you took me too today, that was very impressive. The teacher must surely be a highly respected man among the society here.”
Fuling shook his head. “Remember, my father told you that this school is not well known, and in fact does not want to be well known. Few go there. You might recall, Talon, we did not see many students.”
“I cannot imagine why not. He is truly a master of the art of swordsmanship, Fuling.”
Fuling nodded with a small smile. “He is one of those who come from over the sea from a land to the North and East of China. Fang worships him. My father sailed there some time ago and met the people. They have fierce and deadly fighters. The man who fought you today is one of them. He calls himself a Samurai. Fang was trained by them, which is why my father keeps him on as a family bodyguard.”
Talon and Reza looked at one another. “We should go to this man and learn all we can from him,” Talon said. Reza nodded, but Talon laughed at his skeptical expression.
“You wait, Brother. You will be as embarrassed as I was when you meet him. Let’s see if you want to stay when he is done with you.”
“I think you are just getting old, Brother. Once you were fast but now... well,” Reza waggled his hand, pretending to shake. “Old age has crept up on you. It happens to all of us, you know?” he finished wisely, with a grin.
“You wait!” was all Talon said, pretending to take a swipe at him. He was savoring the moment when Reza, too, would find his own considerable skills inadequate.”
They returned to the school later in the week, again with Fuling in tow. This time it was Reza who stood on the mat waiting. When the old man walked onto the mat, Reza directed a comical look back at Talon as though to say, “Are you sure this is the right man?”
Talon smiled, shrugged, and gave Reza a bland look. The inscrutable faces of the students sitting cross-legged around the mats told Reza nothing; hence he was not prepared when the old man, his long beard flying, leapt at him. This time it was Reza who was humiliated, although Talon had to admit Reza did somewhat better than he had. It still took about the same time for the old man to have Reza off the mats. Later, when the Sensei had left, Reza joined the grinning Talon and shook his head in disbelief.
“I have never met anyone like him before! ‘Pedar Sag’, but that was embarrassing!” he muttered. Talon laughed out loud at his friend’s chagrinned expression. “I said we should learn all we can from him, Brother. We have other skills, but this is a golden opportunity to learn much more of our craft. It is as though we have struck gold. Thereafter, they both went to the school as often as they could. The lead student would take them through a grueling set of exercises before taking them onto the mat in another area of the compound. They could hear the shouts of the other students in cadence over the rapid clack of staves as they battled one another.
The unsmiling student, called Liu, who was training them would use Fuling to translate for him. He showed them the rigorous stance that was needed to unleash the devastating rain of blows upon an adversary. The emphasis was upon keeping the center of the body’s gravity so low that nothing could displace it, thus providing the fighter with as strong a base as possible from which to deal out punishment to his opponent.
They would arrive back at the compound tired and bruised to tell the women of their latest humiliation.
“Just as we manage to get of his silly exercises right and can barely move he punishes us for working so hard.” Reza complained.
“How does he punish you?” asked Rav’an, who could barely contain her laughter at the disconsolate pair.
“He challenges one of us to a fight and thrashes us soundly,” Reza said with a scowl on his normally cheerful face.
Jannat laughed, then put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Reza, but I thought you two were the best there were!” she said, sounding sympathetic.
Talon didn’t think he heard enough sympathy in her tone.
“On one occasion he challenged both of us come to him and then finished us off in a minute!” Talon heard himself whining. He couldn’t forget the speed and precision of those blows.
“Do you think Hsü sent you there for a purpose, Talon?” Rav’an asked, trying to be serious for a moment.
“Probably just to humiliate us and see the back of us sooner rather than later,” Reza grumbled. Talon knew he didn’t mean it. Reza didn’t dislike Hsü as he first had. The man was providing them with a gift, and they both knew it.
“It feels like we have been sent back to school and found wanting,” he said.
“What has Hsü said since you started going?” Jannat asked. She had trouble controlling her laughter.
“You’ve see him. He looks us up and down from across the table, to see if we still have both our arms and legs, and asks us how we feel; but then he doesn’t wait for an answer and quickly changes the subject,” Reza told her.
“I’m going to go and practice on Rostam. At least I have some chance of winning,” Talon told his laughing companions with a rueful grin.
Talon and Reza knew well enough that they were receiving lessons they could not hope to learn anywhere else, so they took the beatings and the bru
ises without too much complaint. Although both men were lean, very strong, and had lost none of their speed, they still came back to the house of Hsü bruised and exhausted at the end of each lesson.
On several occasions, when bathing Talon’s back and shoulders, Rav’an would exclaim over his welts. “Are they doing this to you, my Talon? It is terrible to see!”
Talon winced as she applied a hot cloth to one particularly painful welt and mumbled that it was in a good cause.
He and Reza would sit over tea with Fang and discuss the lessons. Their communication was halting but improving slowly.
“You are learning from one of the best the highest art of swordsmanship, Master Talon and Reza,” Fang assured them. It was bleak encouragement.
It was hard sometimes to know if they were making any progress, but over tea one day Fang said, “I have heard from the student Liu that you make progress and that it will not be long before you will be given practice swords and taught how to use them. You must understand that it is only because of the influence of Hsü that you are being taken through this training so quickly. Normally it is years before a student is allowed to move up in this manner.”
The punishment from their teacher Liu continued, with very occasional visits from the old man, who watched how they were doing in silence and then was gone again without a word.
Before long, however, they began to see results. Liu was fond of beating the two of them together in one battle, but one day Reza and Talon managed to drive him off the mat with a very aggressive attack from both sides. Thereafter he would only take on one of them at a time; but now they made him work for every pace he tried to take away from them. Other times they were pitted against one another and, just as in the days when they were in the castle of Samiran learning how to use knives in their training as Fid’ai, they found they were very evenly matched; Reza was slight and wickedly fast, while Talon brought more cunning and strength to the bouts.
Then Liu brought in other students and they began to apply the difficult lessons to good effect. Both Talon and Reza could bring to bear their experience with real battles and fights. They began to defeat the other students regularly. Only the top two teachers were impossible to get past, and they meted out punishment vigorously.
One day Liu came back with another man, who carried three wooden swords that had been carved to the length and shape of a normal sword. This was a slightly older man, and Liu, who obviously respected him, made them understand that he would now be their instructor. Liu smirked and said, “If you think I have been harsh, then you are in for a surprise. Your new instructor is ruthless. This is Qian, who is the best swordsman next to our Master. Do as you are told, and learn.”
Both Talon and Reza, by now familiar with the etiquette, bowed to Liu’s departing back.
“I’m glad he is going away. I was just about ready to smack him on the head and take his pigtail away from him,” muttered Reza.
Talon stifled a laugh. “Now we have to start all over again, Brother,” he said, and then bowed very low to the new man, who bowed back, but not so low. He tossed a wooden sword at each of them and walked onto the mats. He began to speak as he showed them how to hold the new swords. He explained to them that each movement was defense, attack or preparation for either, and he showed them the moves: at first slowly, but then he demonstrated how it should be done.
They didn’t even see the motion of unsheathing his real sword. One moment he was still, the next his blade was in both hands and he was on guard. His body and the unsheathed sword were a blur of action and gleaming metal that ended with him back in the middle of the mat with the sword held in both hands, point up in the on guard position.
One day he barked a command at a student, who had been respectfully sitting on his heels on the edge of the mats next to a pot where a single stave of bamboo was sticking out of the middle to a height of four feet. The student leapt to his feet and placed it in front of Qian in the middle of the dojo. Qian touched the hilt of his sword and stood staring at the two inch thick pole in front of him. He shook his shoulders.
Then there was a blur of motion, the sword flashed, there was a tiny sound like a ‘snick’ and he was back on guard. For the space of almost two heartbeats the bamboo stayed upright, then a piece of the pole fell off onto the mat. Talon and Reza gasped. Qian’s sword was back in its sheath
“Now this, I must master,” Talon whispered to Reza, who nodded agreement in awed silence.
*****
Hsü was in fact very interested in their progress. He was keenly aware that he owed them his life and had wanted to find a way that was more than monetary to repay them. He had suspected all along that these two men were very good fighters. The reports Fuling brought back confirmed it. The instructors were impressed, and the Sensei Saiki was prepared, for a handsome sum, to spend time with the two foreigners and teach them.
Having witnessed their practices with bow and stick on board, Hsü knew that he was bestowing a gift upon them for which they might thank him one day. “Ask the Sensei to teach them the arts of fighting without weapons as well as the sword. I shall be happy to pay for the lessons,” he instructed Fuling.
*****
Weeks passed and the pain continued, but as time went by both men began to master and feel the new skills they were being bludgeoned into learning. When they came back to the house and joined Fang for tea in the garden, they discussed these things with him, and he would nod his head and offer small encouraging comments. “I, too, went to that school, even after I had been to the monastery up north, because my master Hsü insisted. You will not regret it, although it is hard.” He smiled and slurped his tea nosily from one of the eggshell-like cups he possessed. “We have a game which I will teach you to play when you feel ready,” he told them.
After a few weeks Reza did remind him.
Fang nodded, then gave each a wooden sword, well balanced and exactly as long as their steel weapons in the dojo.
“You will stand in front of each other. The first to draw and touch the other on either the head or the neck is the winner,” he told them. “I will demonstrate.”
He had Talon stand in front of him, just within range of a sword blow. Reza was instructed to drop a silk cloth. As he did so, there was a blur as Fang drew his ‘sword’ and tapped Talon on the side of the head, sheathed his weapon and stood back. Talon had drawn his own weapon, but it was a long way from touching Fang, anywhere. He rubbed his head where Fang had tapped him, none too gently.
“This is how arguments can be settled on the street… very quickly,” Fang rumbled. Reza and Talon looked at one another and then began to laugh. They found this very amusing, its value not lost on either of them.
Fang was pleased with the speed with which they learned the game. They could even, on occasion, tap him on either the neck or the temple when he joined in.
“You are making good progress,” he told them one day. “To do this to an enemy is to demoralize his companions. One moment they have a live friend, the next his head is rolling on the ground.”
“You honor us with your tea, Fang. I am glad we are friends,” Reza told him.
Fang shifted. “It is because you brought my master and his son home, Reza. We owe you for saving their lives. Had it been otherwise I doubt if we would have met. The Chinese and the Arabs trade, but there is not much friendship there, and your religion is difficult for us to understand.”
Talon had become aware of the tension between the two peoples. It was not that evident on the surface, but there were dark undercurrents. He had not been able to pin it down before, but Fang had opened a tiny window. They had found that this man, reticent and older than either of them by a number of years, possessed a keen insight, and he closely followed the street news and currents. Talon had always found that the information gathered from the street was of great use.
“You as a people follow the teaching of this wise man called Confucius, is that not so?” he asked.
“Yes,
but many of us are Buddhists, and that has conflicts with the Confucius way of thinking. To us Chinese the approval of our ancestors is above and beyond anything else. It provides us with a deep sense of continuity.
“The differences between our religion and yours are profound, so when people from the Arab trading station try to impose Islam upon the local people, it does not go down well,” Fang told them.
“Was there trouble in the past?” Reza asked.
Fang looked uncomfortable. “Yes,” he said after some hesitation and a reflective sip of tea. “There was much trouble. But now there are laws, which are enforced, and the Arab traders are confined, as you know, and have to have a pass to go elsewhere in the city. It prevents aggravation. Each to his own customs, and still we can trade,” he finished.
Their training continued, and finally they were allowed to bare the blades in practice.
Qian made them work very hard, especially at drawing the blade and striking, all in one flash of movement, with the inevitable result that on more than one occasion there were cuts inflicted and some blood flowed. Rav’an and Jannat complained that they were patching up their menfolk more than they should be.
“How is it that today it is Reza who has cut you, Talon? The other day Jannat complained that you had cut Reza!” Rav’an exclaimed as she cleaned the light cut on his arm. “Are you not supposed to be expert warriors and capable of avoiding this kind of silliness?” she asked him, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “What if there is a real accident and Rostam loses a father? Have you thought of that?” she demanded.
Talon winced yet again as she administered to his wound. “It is all to the good, my Love. Reza and I are very closely matched, and a cut or two is going to happen. You should see the kind of swords they use! They are magnificent! The steel is unlike any other steel I have ever seen; even the Verangians do not have this kind of metal for their swords!”
The Dragon's Breath Page 36