by Givens John
The Hell-kite attached the bullet pouch and priming-power flask to his battle jacket then hooked a pair of black powder canisters onto his sash. He stuffed a handful of charge-patches in one sleeve pouch in imitation of a shogunate gunner he’d seen. He hid a slash knife in the other sleeve except the weight of the stupid thing swinging there bothered him so he took it out again.
He hiked up through the forest, intending to circle around behind the bandit’s position, but what seemed like an easy route would veer off unexpectedly or follow a gentle gradient only to end in the dead-drop of a ravine. He backtracked then tried again with no better luck. The slopes and gullies and outcroppings of rock all looked the same, and he soon lost patience and went crashing through masses of prickle-brush and groves of willows and alders, kicking and slashing at entangling branches until he had fought his way out into the open.
The bandit was just downhill, sitting with his back to him. The Hell-kite dropped to his hands and knees then retreated until he reached an outcropping of rock, his heart pounding. He peeked out over the parapet. The bandit hadn’t moved. The Hell-kite blew on the punk cord until the tip glowed orange then locked the serpentine-lever back at the fully-cocked safety position. He poured in a charge of black powder. He fitted a lead ball on its patch and drove it home deftly. He primed the pan at the touch hole then closed the pan-cover, humming a wavering little war ballad under his breath as he shortened the serpentine to half-cock then rested the long barrel of his harquebus against the rock.
The bandit disappeared in the smoke of the discharge, the roar echoing in the autumn hills. The Hell-kite ducked down behind his rock cover. It was too loud. Even distant enemies would have heard that shot and known what it meant. But when he finally looked up again, he saw the bandit was lying on his back with a flap of meat knocked out of his shoulder and his legs kicking and twisting in an odd manner. He’d have time to get off another shot before reinforcements could launch a counterattack.
The Hell-kite opened his bullet pouch and picked out a lead ball, the sounds of battle thudding in his ears, horses charging and men shouting their war cries as the famous queller of bandits seated the next ball on its patch of silk cloth, fitted it in the muzzle then drew his ramrod and drove it down smartly into the firing breech, pleased with his skill and his calmness and his panache.
Except he had forgotten to put in the powder charge first.
He squatted back down behind the ramparts of his primary shooting position. Why did everything always have to happen to him? Enemy forces could be preparing an assault, and he had no one to defend him. This was the injustice of solitude. He always had to do everything himself, with no help from anyone ever.
The Hell-kite had a tool that could be used to force loose a blockage in the breech but he hadn’t brought it with him. He had everything else he could possibly want except for that one stupid tool. He felt his eyes fill with tears of frustration as he cursed his fate, cursed the mountains and forests, cursed the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky. But the superior man is not defeated by setbacks. Now was an opportunity to profit from a calm appraisal. He tried that. Then he turned his harquebus upside down and began slamming and banging the muzzle on the hard surface of granite, battering it harder and harder until the ball was jarred loose and dropped onto the dirt.
The bandit had come upright on his knees. One shoulder seemed to be shattered, and that arm dangled like a thing attached with a wooden peg. But he had some kind of vicious-looking weapon in his good hand, a hooked blade the colour and shape of a dried wisteria pod.
The Hell-kite pulled the stopper out of his black powder canister with trembling hands and dropped it. He poured in a charge then looked around for the stopper. He couldn’t find it so he tucked the still-open canister in a rock-cleft where it wouldn’t spill. He picked up the bullet and wiped it off then fitted it on a fresh patch and drove it home. The missing stopper had been under his foot. He snatched it up then stood holding the charged gun in one hand, the stopper in the other, staring down at the black power canister, unsure which to put down and which to pick up, his panic growing so that he tossed away the stopper and primed his gun, a loose spray of fine-grain powder spilling down his arm.
The bandit had managed to get to his feet. He was bent over at the waist but still carrying his deadly sword.
The Hell-kite closed the pan-cover then eased the serpentine forward to half-cock. The bandit had spotted him and started up towards his bastion.
The blast tore across the Hell-kite’s forearm, and he threw himself away from it, screeching and rubbing his burned skin, trying to slap away the pain.
But his enemy was on his back again, writhing like a gaffed eel, the lower portion of his face shot away.
The Hell-kite watched as the bandit rolled over onto his belly. He started dragging himself towards the sanctuary of a grove of alders, his shattered arm flopping loosely beside him, a flap of bloody flesh hanging where his cheek had been, his smashed jaw canting out from the side of his head like a poorly-fitted handle.
This time he said it aloud: charge first then patched bullet. This time when he spilled priming powder he brushed it away before storming the enemy fortifications. He was determined to conduct himself in the dignified manner of an well-established bandit-killer. He hadn’t brought his barrel-support and so was required to hand-hold the heavy gun; and even though he got within twenty paces of the enemy lines, his next bullet only tore a furrow across the bandit’s buttocks, jerking him around so that he presented his ruined face back towards his assailant, his cheek ripped open, the edge of raw bone from his jaw hung with a wobbly snarl of bloody meat.
The Hell-kite prepared to reload again. But he’d left the canister of black powder at his primary assault position. He went scrambling back for it, keening in rage and frustration at the unfairness of things and only remembering once he got there that a second canister was attached to his sash. He calmed himself. Now was a time for skill and resolve and tactical cunning. And panache. He reloaded again calmly, carefully, and returned to the battlefield. He confirmed that his enemy had not regained sufficient mobility to regroup his forces then found a good place to sit with the gun supported on his knees and shot him again, blowing a bright splash of blood out of his neck.
The bandit rolled over and lay on his back, bleeding into the dust from all parts of him.
With the tide of battle turned in his favour, the Hell-kite of Edo decided to confront his enemy in hand-to-hand combat. He seized him by one foot and dragged him more out into the open, twisting him over onto his belly in the process. The bandit probably couldn’t retrieve his sword; but the Hell-kite was cautious by nature, and he kicked the thing farther away then drew his own long sword, revered symbol of the warrior’s soul. This was what it was like. He darted forward, slashing down hard as he did so and employing what he understood to be the deadly ‘oblique-style’ technique of a skilled neck-cutter. But he’d swung too soon, his aim was poor, his balance all wrong, and his sword tip only took off an ear as it crashed into the side of the bandit’s already mutilated jaw, ripping it apart in a spray of blood slobber and loose teeth.
The Hell-kite paused and gathered himself. He was too excited. This was his opportunity to become what he wished to be, and he wanted to savour it. But he also had to finish before the stupid bandit bled to death.
He moved around to where he would have a better angle and swung a mighty swing, hitting the bandit too high again, opening another deep gash on his head and driving his face into the dirt.
The bandit lay with blood leaking out of his broken-open mouth, bits of bone and teeth jammed up into odd quadrants of what was left of his face so that the Hell-kite panicked and hit him again in disappointment and despair at the unfairness of things, this blow too glancing off the bandit’s skull; and he stood over him hacking downwards with blow after blow, finding his neck with some strokes and ricocheting off his skull with others, gouts of blood flipping up and bits of meat f
lying, but finally chopping the head free so that he could kick it away in triumph.
He stood over him panting. He was the scourge of bandits, the implacable restorer of justice and provider of retribution for all the suffering inflicted on all the … sufferers.
He pulled off the dead man’s robe and spread it on the ground then rolled the head onto it with his foot and tied up the sleeves to form a carry-sack. It was a poor thing, he knew, with most of the features hacked away; but there would be a time when he would look back over a distinguished career of saving towns and villages from the depredations of bandits, and remember this moment and smile ruefully and nod modestly and forgive himself for its awkwardness and accept the praise of those who owed him so much and to whom he had become something of a legend and a wonder and a marvel.
He felt a sudden urge to urinate and thought he might piss on the corpse of his opponent but was also a little frightened of that idea and so chose the bandit’s fortress instead, the yellow of his urine splashing against the green of the alder bushes.
There were no villagers nearby to appreciate what he had done for them so the Hell-kite started back to his pre-battle camp, intending to hide his gear then continue on to the Land of Dewa with his trophy for the pleasure of the praise he would find there. He lost his way immediately and wandered crimped with irritation until he spotted a familiar gorge and headed off again in the right direction.
Then he stopped as if maul-struck. He’d left his harquebus on the battlefield.
As he retraced his steps, he almost wept at this latest demonstration of the unfairness of things, of the injustices that dogged him so that even now, in his moment of victory, he still had to compensate for the stupid karma that had caused him to be born the child of peasant instead of the son of a samurai. Nothing came easily for him. Nothing was ever given to him. He was on his own always and had to do everything himself, with no help from anybody ever.
The Hell-kite got back to his camp late in the afternoon. His horse lay on its side shivering. When it spotted him approaching it began struggling to get up; but its bad leg had become broken, and it toppled over each time and screamed in a sound he hadn’t known could come from a horse.
He had left it tied in a manner he thought was about right and now this. He darted in and stabbed the horse in the belly, barely avoiding its flailing hind legs. He stabbed it again then stepped back to wait; and once it had died, dragged his gear around to a low, marshy dell and hid it in a grove of willows. It was probably too late to reach Dewa. Warriors lived off the land. He decided to butcher the horse, using his small sword since his long sword, the warrior’s soul, was too precious for such a menial task.
The horse was harder to cut than he would have thought. Drawing the edge smoothly through the target was the secret, but that didn’t seem to have much of an effect. His neglect of his blades might have been partially at fault. But nobody showed how to care for them, and he began jabbing and hacking at the tough hide, splashing blood all over everything in his frustration, but managing to gouge out a ragged crater eventually and earn himself a few strips of stringy meat.
He built a fire pit with rocks then started his evening fire. He regretted not having a more martial battle-camp, with watch fires blazing on the horizon, and war banners mounted on tall poles. He wished he had an enclosure with camp stools and a rack for displaying the heads of slain warriors. He would have liked to sit up under the full moon after the others had retired and gaze on the heads of the men he had overcome and speculate on the sadness of the nature of things. Or perhaps just the sliver of a three-day moon in a clear sky? Or, no, the full-moon but wreathed in mist. And the cries of fearful prisoners pleading to be spared. And maybe their wives and daughters on their knees begging for mercy. And the melancholy note of a single flute mournfully tootling of the sadness of things. But so then not the cries of captives but just a row of severed heads in the moonlight. But still maybe with a few daughters, young ones with long, lustrous hair. And also only wearing their underskirts. And how at first they’re afraid of him, but then when he’s in his quilts they all creep in too. Or maybe just one does. But then the next night a different one.
When the fire seemed about right he washed the horse meat in the nearby stream then skewered it on peeled willow sticks. He raked apart the fire to expose a bed of glowing coals then positioned the strips of meat between two upright stones. He went off to collect more firewood before full dark, and came back to find that the skewers had burned through in the centre before the meat was hardly more than singed and his meal had dropped onto the fire, smothering the flames so that he had to pluck out the raw chunks of bloody muscle and take them down to the stream to rinse off again then come back and get his fire blazing again, almost incapacitated with frustration. He banked the burning branches under the tallest upright wedge of granite then draped the stringy bits of muscle down over the front of it. The bottoms of each strip charred while the tops remained raw, but by reversing them and moving them around this way and that, he managed to burn the flesh sufficiently to be able to choke it down. War drums wouldn’t have helped.
That night the Hell-kite of Edo awoke with a searing pain in his belly. He thought he’d been stabbed, and he staggered up out of his quilts on his hands and knees and vomited in great heaving gasps. His mouth and throat burned with the foul discharge, and he stumbled down to the stream and fell to his knees at the edge of it, clenching himself in his misery and rage at the world that never relented, never relaxed in its determination to humiliate him. He drank deeply then started back up to his quilts, but an abrupt spasm in his bowels flooded him open in an uncontrollable rupture so that he barely squatted in time, jerking his robes up as he emptied himself, the stench of it awful, splattering his heels and ankles in this final violation of his dignity and panache.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, EXHAUSTED, starving, bent with cramps, the Hell-kite of Edo shoved his swords through his sash and set out on the road that would take him to the Dewa border, his harquebus wrapped in a light quilt and the bandit’s head packaged within its blackened and filthy robe.
The morning sun burned just above the ridge line of the mountains, and he walked with an ache in his belly that would not cease. He found what he thought might be blackberries and tasted them but only vomited again, hacking up a thin, watery bile. He drank from creeks he passed, his water gourd forgotten at his bivouac site, and he stopped occasionally, sat in wedges of sunlight and stared up at the empty blue sky.
By the hour of the ram, the Hell-kite had reached a narrow valley thick with flowering pampas grasses, the silver filaments glowing in the late autumn sunlight. His path led straight through this dry moorlands as if it had been cut with a blade. There was no stream that he could see, but an outcropping of rock bordered the path, and he flopped down to rest, his long gun beside him.
His eyes closed in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, the sound of the wind in the trees soothed him, and he dozed off then jerked awake.
A huge man was observing him from the road. He wore old-style body armour of polished leather strips laced together with red silk cords. His immense badger-belly protruded like a great flabby drum, and his coiffure was so heavily oiled it left greasy streaks on the rolls of fat at the back of his neck. The man’s naked arms and shoulders and thighs bore the scars of healed slash wounds, his fleshy red face was hatched with them, and he leaned on a heavy cudgel and gazed down at the sick warrior like a gate guardian.
You’re carrying something with you, Jirobei said.
No concern of yours, said the Hell-kite.
The huge man looked up at the steeply vertical mountains arranged all around them, the highest peaks bright with snow in the sunshine. You don’t belong here.
I’m called Tarō, Hell-kite of Edo, harvester of bandits.
Very good.
No one disputes my ferocity.
I’m sure that’s the case.
The huge man sat down across from him, his massive and
naked buttocks resting directly on the earth. What’s your family name?
Family name?
Jirobei nodded at the two sword hilts protruding from the Hell-kite’s sash. Your samurai name.
Tarō of Edo is what I use.
Jirobei said nothing.
The Hell-kite waited then said, Is this the road to the Land of Dewa?
Is that where you wish to go?
I’ve been in these mountains for days fighting bandits. I need rest. I need food and wine and warm quilts to sleep on.
Jirobei’s eyes on him didn’t waver. What are you carrying?
The Hell-kite pulled the harquebus up onto his lap in a demonstration of ownership; but Jirobei held his hand extended with the fat red palm turned upwards, thick as a saddle. Show me.
It’s mine, said the Hell-kite, but he handed him the gun.
That too.
He picked up the bundle and gave it to him.
Jirobei examined the harquebus then put it aside. He unfolded the blood-stiffened robe until the mangled head was exposed, hacked with slash marks, bits missing, a shard of half-jaw wrenched out sideways, the whole thing clotted and foul. You’re supposed to wash it. You wash it then comb out the hair and oil it then configure the topknot again with a pure white paper-tie and attach a name tag to it. You mount it on a shelf-stand and scent it with incense. Or, if you require it for activities at a later date, you place it in a cask of rice wine as a preservative and attach the name tag to the cask handle.
I didn’t have time to do any of that.
Jirobei said nothing.
Who would do all that?
Samurai do that for the men they kill, Jirobei said, his eyes buried behind fat red slabs of flesh. I myself don’t.
So I guess that means you aren’t samurai. I guess I didn’t need to be told that.
That is what it means, said Jirobei. He placed the mangled head to one side then set the harquebus there too. Give me your long sword.