“Nakamura-san?” he called.
“Yes?” came the reply in an annoyingly condescending tone. The arrogant fool had not even bothered to address him properly.
“My friend, I would like you to perform a duty for me. Singlehandedly, you could win us the battle.”
“Oh?” the fat man raised an eyebrow.
“I would li-” Naharai began.
“I will most certainly not lead the first assault if that is what you had in mind. I’m an imperial officer, not cannon fodder,” Nakamura scoffed.
“They’ve lost all of their gu-”
“Well I don’t fancy getting cut open. I’m afraid my swordplay is quite poor.”
“Ah. I see,” Naharai looked at him coldly, “Well, I was not going to ask you to lead an assault. I was actua-”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Why work me up for nothing? Come now, Yamagata, let’s go have ourselves a meal. I really cannot stand listening to these cannons much longer. Can you get them to stop? Even for a little while?”
“I understand your concerns, Nakamura-san. However, I was just going to ask you to put on a little display that could win you eternal glory and the gratitude of the emperor.”
“Well, I am an actor at heart! Do you need me to inspire the men? I’m truly glad you asked.”
Naharai shook his head slowly. The immortal was astonished. Was Nakamura delusional? He could not inspire a single man, let alone an army, he thought. At last, Naharai managed to speak, struggling to hide the loathing in his voice, “No, my friend. That would be such a waste of your talents. I want you to lure the rebel samurai out of the hill so that we may end this once and for all.”
“How would I do that? They are brave, but not fools.”
“That they are, but I will give you a puppet, covered by a sheet. You will burn it and only then remove the sheet. Upon seeing it, they will come at us, enraged, and we will pick them off easily on open ground.”
A glimmer of guile appeared in Nakamura’s eyes. Burning a puppet seemed easy enough in return for the glory that he would gain for defeating hundreds of samurai. He nodded eagerly, “Where’s the puppet?”
***
Nakamura stood in the middle of the plain that lay before Shiroyama. Yamagata had snuck him out of the camp early in the morning, in case any of the sentries were secretly reporting to the enemy. He was confident that he was close enough to friendly lines to escape if the need arose, and equally importantly, far out of bow-shot from the other side. He held the puppet in both hands. It was a grotesquely large thing wrapped in a white sheet and tied to a long, wooden stake. He wondered what could possibly offend the samurai enough to send them into a suicidal frenzy, but he did not care enough to remove the sheet before the time came to do so. If he did, he would have to put it back on afterwards and that would be such a hassle.
He had sat for a few hours, waiting until he was certain that there was enough light so that the rebels would be able to see the mannequin. The time had finally come. He drove the stake deep into the ground and lit a match. Quickly, he set the bottom of the puppet alight and removed the sheet as he had been instructed. Almost immediately, a great roar came up from the hilltop. Nakamura smiled smugly. Yamagata had been right after all.
He turned to run to safety as he saw a swarm of angry figures begin to rush down Shiroyama, only to realize that the imperial soldiers were also crying out in outrage. Confusion turned to horror as he looked up at the burning puppet. It was a crude effigy of the emperor. What had that fool Yamagata done? Nakamura pelted down the plain in terror, cursing his superior. If they caught him, the rebel samurai would crush him to a pulp.
He arrived at the assembled lines of the imperial army to find a glittering row of bayonets blocking his way. Behind the rifles, furious faces glared at him in silence.
“Let me through, you idiots!” Nakamura barked, looking over his shoulder at the ever-decreasing gap between him and the seething mass of the rebel army. The bayonets did not budge.
“Please, let me through! Let me through, I beg of you. Don’t do this. I am samurai! Let me through, in the name of the emperor!” the fat man pleaded with them, a pathetic figure. The rebels were almost half-way down the plain.
“Please. I didn’t know. It wasn’t my fault,” Nakamura sobbed, “Plea-”
A single shot rang out across the battlefield. Nakamura went quiet and his mouth opened in a final ‘O’ before he fell, face down. They had all been so focused on Nakamura that no one saw who had done the deed. There was no time to speculate either, for the samurai were almost upon them.
Naharai shouted, “Infantry, take position and prepare to fire. Artillery, bring out the American gun!”
The gun in question consisted of a cylinder containing six long barrels. It was mounted on a wooden rack supported by two, large metal wheels. On the side, there was a crank. When one turned the lever, the gun would rain a devastating hail of bullets on any advancing enemy force, mercilessly tearing through many men before they could reach it.
Naharai smiled sadly as he saw the last true samurai charging across the field, katana raised, shouting their battle cries like the apes that had once attacked his people under a primeval glade. Reluctantly, he nodded to his officers.
“That is bushido. Remember those men. End it quickly.”
Then, he looked fixedly ahead, determined to honour their deaths with his full attention. If anyone had been looking, they might have seen a single tear roll down his olive cheek as the guns began to roar.
***
Murin-an. It was just as beautiful as he had envisioned it, years before. Naharai stood on a little stone bridge crossing the stream that flowed gently through his domain. Around him, as far as the eye could see, myriad trees and bushes dotted the landscape. It was a place so serene, so peaceful, that it was hard to believe that it was surrounded by the sprawling city of Kyoto. Maple trees, weeping willows and of course, cherry trees. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, a favourite of the Japanese people. Despite himself, Naharai loved the beautiful garden. He, who had spent so many eons ravaging and burning places like Murin-an, had designed and built the estate. More than that, he had fallen in love with his creation.
He thought of his beloved brother. Asriel would conquer vast, untamed lands in the name of empire. Then, he would come and lead great armies to raze the cities erected by those empires. Yet he knew that his brother had claimed the ultimate victory. Naharai had made the Mongol tribes into a mighty war machine. He had reduced countless cities to rubble and slaughtered their inhabitants in the name of the khan. However, they had grown weak. Complacent. So the Chinese had risen, and the Persians, and the Russians, and all those who had for so long borne the Mongol yoke. They had driven the descendants of Chinggis back into the cold steppe, leaving only resentment where they had ruled. The cities that they had destroyed had been rebuilt. They had left very little behind to mark where they had conquered. Asriel’s Rome, however, was still very much alive. Its imperial glory was long gone, but its systems, its values, its styles were all at the root of the Western world. The idea of Rome was still very much alive in the modern era, in Europe and, to an extent, in her colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas. What Asriel had helped to build would last far longer than any empire ever would.
He thought of his favourite sister. She was a beauty, wild and free. He had not seen her very often throughout the years, but he had heard that she was somewhere in the Americas. Truly, he felt sad for her. He knew how she loved the more primitive populations of the world. It must have been agony to watch them be driven back over the ages by the civilized world, until slowly, they began to disappear. At least, however, she had always had Asriel. They made a wonderful pair, even if they were complete opposites. Perhaps that was what made their relationship so special. Despite their differences, their love had endured. They were the spark in each other’s life, something that Naharai could not help but to envy.
At last, he thought of h
is other siblings. Ashmadu, Nuratum and Iltani, the three who walked the Earth as common folk. They had never achieved anything. They had never created or destroyed. They came to him occasionally, and told him all that they had seen in their travels. Honestly, he had always found them quite dull. Then, there were the six that had died on that terrible night so long ago. At the mere memory, he shut his eyes, a pained expression contorting his features. Their gruesome ends had never stopped haunting him. His people had been so weak back then. They had been so innocent. Ever since, they had grown strong, taking the future of the world in their hands. They had nothing to fear from the darkness anymore, for it had been driven away long ago by the fires of mortal man.
There was a fresh corpse waiting in the house, taken from a nearby graveyard, for when people came looking for the great Prince Yamagata Aritomo, Field Marshall of the Empire of Japan. Quickly, Naharai removed his decorated military uniform. One by one, he threw his medals into the lazy stream. He pulled out his lighter, a recent invention. Two flicks, and a little flame appeared. He threw it into the discarded pile of cloth and watched it burn until nothing but a scorched ruin remained on the stone bridge. Naharai ran into the forest, naked as he had walked in times before Japan was even a figment of man’s imagination. Naked as he had walked before man waged war on man.
***
“Asriel,” a beautiful voice called from afar, out of place in the scenes that were unfolding before him. He became aware that he was Asriel, not Naharai. Regardless, he tried to ignore it. He wanted to see what Naharai had done with Jalal ad-Din, and where he had been after leaving Murin-an.
“Asriel,” it repeated, closer that time.
Still, he tried to put it out of his mind.
“Asriel!”
Suddenly, light filled his eyes and he found himself in an unfamiliar land. Asriel was lying on a rolling meadow that extended as far as the eye could see, fading into the horizon in every direction. He saw a golden sun illuminating the world as a gentle breeze carried the fragrant scent of a million, yellow flowers towards him. He saw long grass rising around him, reaching for the clear, blue sky above. He saw Belit.
Belit? It could not be. He wondered what cruel joke his mind was playing on him. Yet there she was, in the flesh, smiling at his surprise.
“What? Never seen a girl before?” she giggled, speaking in the language of their people. That voice was unmistakeable.
“My love? What is this? I thought you were…” his voice trailed off.
“Miss me?” she laughed.
“More than the world, my sweet. More than anything. Every day since you left has been agony.”
Her face softened. “I know Asriel. I know. Believe me, I know.”
“You don’t know where I’ve been, what I’ve done, I tried t-”
“Hush,” she knelt next to him and put a finger to his lips, giving him a sad little smile, “we won’t talk about that here.”
“No?”
“No. We are together now, why speak of sad things? Come, stand. Walk with me. Let us speak of merrier times.”
“Do you remember when the world was young? When we were but children in a savage garden?”
“Who could forget? We would wander, play, sing until the night came. Those were beautiful days.”
They stood and began to stroll down the glade, hand in hand. They talked for hours of times gone by. All the while, Asriel’s gaze did not leave her. He forgot his surroundings as he looked upon the miraculous return of a lovely face that he had believed forever lost to him. Yet as they spoke of Babylon, of Vienna and the North, a question formed in Asriel’s mind. At last, he could not hold it back.
“Belit, when I lost my memory, why did you let me think I was a mortal? Why did you wait so long to tell me the truth?”
She bowed her blonde head briefly, before looking up to meet his hickory eyes with her own. He saw shame in her sapphires as she began to speak, “Forgive me, Asriel. Please, forgive me. I feared that when you remembered, you would leave me. I did not want to be apart from you again.”
“Why would I ever leave you, my love? Why would you even think that?” he whispered, the hurt in his voice far worse than any rage.
“When you remembered everything, well, I didn’t want the shock to scare you away.”
“What shock? Belit, we have lived through millennia together, nothing could drive me away from you.”
“Not Uruk? The crimson mask, the mali-”
Asriel stopped and pulled her to him, pressing her head against his chest as she wept. After a few moments, he tenderly took her head into his hands and looked into her sapphires, using his thumb to wipe a tear from her beautiful face. He kissed her then, tasting her sweet ruby lips, savouring a moment which he had never thought to experience again. She melted into his strong arms, allowing their hearts to come together and beat as one.
“Belit, my sweet Belit. Do you truly think that I would ever abandon you? No, it would take much more than that to befoul my love for you. I was there all those centuries ago in those sad years, but their memory is long gone. No my darling, Asriel will never let you go,” he whispered as their lips pulled apart, still holding her close.
“Forgive me, my love.”
“It’s alright. It’s alright, my princess. Oh Belit, how can I ever go on without you? These mortals cannot compare with our people. For ages I had hope, but all they do is argue over the stupidest things while the innocent masses continue to suffer.”
“I know Asriel. I know, my love, but there is something you should see.”
“What is that?”
“Look around you.”
The eternal glade was gone. They stood on a small bluff overlooking a lake. Below them, mortals swam and played. Their cries of mirth echoed in the trees around them, and they made great splashes as they jumped into the still, black water. They seemed so happy. So peaceful. He felt a sudden, irrepressible desire to join them. Laughing, he pulled away from Belit and, taking her by the hand, plunged into the lake. The cold water refreshed his olive skin as they swam back to the surface. Again, he pulled her close and kissed her as the waters settled around them.
“Do you see?” she gasped, pulling away. “This is worth hoping for. You remain with them for a reason. This is worth fighting for, my love.”
Asriel felt a new flame blossom in his heart. A new purpose. A future. Even as all around him, including his beloved Belit, fell into oblivion, he knew.
Asriel awoke.
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
-Matsuo Bashō, Japan
28
Asriel sat alone at a table in the Bukhara, a restaurant in the luxurious ITC Maurya hotel in New Delhi reputed to be amongst the finest in the world. For ten years, he had mulled over the visions that he had seen the night after his meeting with Jeremy and as he ate, he considered all that he had come to understand since.
After having known mortal man for so long, he could not give up on them. No matter what happened, he could not bring himself to do it. Yes, they were flawed. Unbelievably so. They were weak, arrogant little creatures. Yet somehow, mortals had tamed the vast, savage Eden that Asriel’s people had loved and feared since before the first hairy ape stood upright. Somehow, they had brought forth light, decimating the creatures that had once preyed upon them all in the night. It was mortals who had dreamed and built great cities, empires, monuments to stand the test of time. Despite their short lives, wicker candles in the wind to Asriel, they had achieved what neither he, nor fair Belit, nor any of their mighty brethren had ever even contemplated. They had pushed onwards through the ages until all that they had to fear was the darkness in themselves.
That was the greatest darkness, worse even than the primordial gloom that they had so successfully driven away. They had so many questions, but in such short lifetimes, how could they even begin to comprehend all the things that he had only now begun to understand? So in the face of that uncertainty,
they had sought to impose their own answers upon the world. From the memory of that ancient struggle between light and dark, they produced gods and devils. Over the years they slaughtered each other in vain efforts to conquer a darkness that had already been vanquished. The strong enslaved the weak, justifying it in myriad forms, forgetting that they had all once been conquered during a ferocious skirmish in a long forgotten glade. His beloved Alexandros had created an empire, driven by Phílippos’ belief in a superior, Greek race. After his conquest, the great Basileus had soon succumbed to the charms of the opulent orient and abandoned such folly.
Yet, by the time such moments of enlightenment occurred, humans would already have inflicted unforgivable cruelties on one another. Naharai had seen all of the deranged acts that mortals were capable of committing in their conceited quest for meaning. He had heartily helped them to butcher one another, destroying nations in fire and blood. He had enjoyed it when it had been so simple, so harmless in the great scheme of things. However, his time had come. There would never again be another great war for that timeless warrior to obtain the glory he so craved. Nations had developed the capacity to obliterate one another in a moment, a twinkling, the blink of an eye. Where was the honour in that? Peace had become the future, and Naharai did not know how to live in such a reality, one that rejected his very essence. Unwilling to accept it, he had gone mad, consumed by utter hopelessness, leaving destruction in his wake but never finding satisfaction until the end, when he was able to fight a final, glorious battle against an ancient foe.
In contrast, Belit had died gracefully. She had been wise. She had not resisted it, instead going willingly into oblivion. Belit had never abandoned the world where it had all begun. She had always pined for those pristine rivers and extraordinary jungles, those nights under the starlight when all they had was each other. Thus, she had spent most of her time in the remote extremes where mortals were still bound by ties deeper than any written law, where they lived innocent and free, far away from the shining cities of civilisation. Of course, those havens had gradually disappeared under the inexorable advance of mortal progress. He realised that it would have been selfish to keep her in the world, where she would have withered in her misery, becoming a vestige of her splendid self.
An Immortal Dance Page 20