Sword of Honour

by David Kirk

  Akiyama often wrote poems he knew none but himself would ever read. The summer before, inspired by the sweet sound of cicadas, he had written what he considered his finest verse:

  Unseen for a decade’s slumber;

  Emerged from blackened earth but to sing.

  The song as fleet as the golden moon.

  Summer’s equilibrium.

  Miyamoto put him in mind of a cicada. Two years dormant, and now burst forth in sudden desperate struggle and unrelenting noise. The incident at the school, before that burying a man up to his neck and leaving him . . . On and on and on.

  Akiyama was surprised to even be here. He had never harboured much hope of finding Miyamoto, even from the very moment he was issued the command. A name and nothing more to hunt amidst the hordes of the defeated coalition that had flooded the country? A name was easy to shed.

  After six months’ initial cursory search he had been certain Miyamoto was either dead or irrevocably vanished. This, however, did not mean that Akiyama could return to Kyoto and the school: after so short a time it would seem he was derelict in his effort. He could not say, for example, that he had ridden to either end of the country in that span, which would be the very least of what was expected of him. He reasoned that eighteen months or thereabouts would stand as sufficient proof of dedication and tenacity to duty, which consequently Akiyama knew meant he would have had to sacrifice twice that or it would have been taken as unspoken proof of what all believed was innate in him.

  How could the Foreigner possibly understand basic Japanese ethics, after all?

  Two years, then, lingering nowhere, achieving nothing, and he had known this, had accepted it, had resigned himself to the waste of this plus a further year also. His life was a series of cycles that spun upon the same bitter truth, around again and again. This rotation, it had been Sir Kosogawa who was rewarded in his stead. This rotation, it was Musashi Miyamoto he hunted. Sir Kosogawa, seven years his junior and now swordmaster in Aki. Miyamoto the ninth man of no meaning he would kill. Never a champion that he could fell in the name of the school. Always the vermin and the outlaws, which he would extinguish in furtive anonymity.

  All this Akiyama knew, and what galled him most was his own complicity.

  Now that he had emerged, Miyamoto was the easiest man to track that Akiyama had ever hunted. Contacts of the school and those he himself had cultured over previous hunts awaited in each town or at the waypoints upon the road trading rumour for coin. Others simply coincidental witnesses of a man of great stature and flecked with pox scars, sullen innkeepers or shaven-headed priests or peasants thigh-deep in paddy silt, and slowly he was pointed across realms and mountain trails.

  The high summer found Akiyama in the province of Kaga, speaking to the captain of a garrison. A stern man who had been chosen to act as a second in the seppuku of a serial scapegrace, Ogawa. They had erected a palisade of silk out upon a meadow, and Ogawa was writing his death poem when Miyamoto had cut his way through the brocade. Burst in and disrupted the ceremony, beseeched Ogawa to forsake his honour and live.

  ‘The knave has proclaimed himself against the dignity of the Way previously,’ said Akiyama, nodding pensively.

  ‘Well, he mentioned nothing of that sort here,’ said the captain. ‘His true anger, if you must know, was directed at Ogawa himself when he protested Miyamoto’s interruption.’

  A confrontation had ensued thereafter, the resolution of which was unclear; the captain claimed to have cut Miyamoto down, but he could provide no proof of this. Akiyama did not challenge his assertion, but a woman with a baby slung across her back who lived at the edge of town said she had seen Miyamoto heading westwards at twilight.

  The woman also told him Ogawa fulfilled the ritual the following day.

  Through the wilderness outside of the sight of others, Akiyama rode with his hair unbound and unoiled. It hung in shaggy locks that turned a deep red when they were caught in the sun – curled and knotted in the manner of his horse’s mane, not the straight black hair of men, of samurai.

  Horsehair, a boy had called him in his childhood, a cat-eyed, horse-haired freak. They had duly got into a fight until the other boy’s father had hauled them apart by the scruffs of their necks and then dragged his son off. Akiyama had followed them, wiping blood from his nose as he hid around a corner and listened.

  ‘Don’t fight with him, not that one,’ the father was saying. ‘You don’t know what he’s going to do. Leave him be. He could bite you or gouge your eyes out. You want that? Just leave him. Beat somebody else.’

  Akiyama had delighted in this. As all children did, he had thought being feared was the epitome of manliness and adulthood. But time passed and with the contemplation of adolescence he saw that he had never been singled out and bullied as other aberrant children were, the stupid or the fat or the cowardly, and he realized this fear was not fear at all. It was merely an enmity perfectly devoid of all emotion, and the warrior he imagined himself was in fact a no more than a scarecrow; he was there, apart.

  The root of all this went back to Korea.

  A diplomat for the long-abolished Ashikaga Shogunate, Akiyama’s father had served as an envoy to the royal court on the mainland. He had served for a half-dozen years there, until things fell apart completely due to escalating skirmishes between the two countries on the seas, and all ties had been severed. His father was granted a grudging escort back to his homeland, and when he arrived on the docks of Osaka the Japanese wife of the Japanese father was pregnant.

  Oh, what scandal!

  The first time Akiyama was aware of it, he was perhaps seven or eight. Raised voices in the night had woken him, and, confused, he had crept through the halls to where his parents were entertaining a handful of other men and women for the evening. Things had gone sour; from the shadows he saw his father as he had never done so before, utterly furious, standing and pointing at a man who remained sitting cross-legged on the floor. Akiyama’s mother was on her knees, clasping at her husband’s waist, trying to still his hands and calm him.

  The skin of both of them was ivory, their hair straight and dark.

  ‘In my own house you question my wife?’ his father was shouting. ‘She is as faithful to me as any man could hope for. I trust her, but you! You think you can imply such vile things knowing what? Knowing nothing! Nothing, you fool!’

  ‘Please sit down, my dear, please,’ Akiyama’s mother was saying gently. ‘This is embarrassing. Oh, won’t you please calm yourself?’

  ‘I merely stated the fact that the boy looks—’ said the accused man stubbornly.

  ‘Again! Again!’ spat his father. ‘Have you no mind? You cur!’

  There was a silence then, the words exhausted. Akiyama’s father seethed, shoulders juddering, until his wife took one of his hands in both of hers and brought his fingers to her lips. He looked down at her, saw the sadness in her eyes, and that pacified him. The man sat down and took up the bowl he had been eating from. No one moved as he stared at what lay in his hands for a long while, and then he spoke:

  ‘You will eat my food, you will sleep in my bed, and then tomorrow you shall leave. If I hear of you saying anything the like of which you have uttered this night once more, you shall find me far less civil.’

  That was the end of it. No one had noticed Akiyama in the darkness outside the room. He had returned to bed, not quite understanding what he had seen. It was one of those little incidents that reveal themselves fully in time, age and understanding decoding what the innocent has witnessed.

  He had summoned the courage to ask his father only when he was a young man with his first peach-down moustache worn vaingloriously proud upon his lip. As Akiyama sat on the raised porch and listened, his father had paced back and forth in their little rock garden, not caring that he dashed the finely raked sand beneath his feet. The man had been both dreading and expecting the conversation.

  ‘Koreans don’t look like . . .’ you, he neglected to say. ‘They’re li
ke . . .’ us. ‘Except that they have . . . squarer jaws and eyes. You’d understand if you’d met them. And they’re not savages, whatever men say. They’re decent, kind, intelligent. They could have sent my head home in a box, your mother’s, too, but . . . But, your mother couldn’t have . . . My father’s grandfather was said to be dark of face, and . . . I’m sure your mother’s family must also . . . She couldn’t have – do you understand?’

  ‘I do, Father,’ said Akiyama, quite neutrally.

  ‘Yes. “Father”. Exactly,’ he said, rounding on him. ‘You are my son. My son, and her son.’

  Akiyama had nodded, and though he had seen the worry in his eyes and wondered about it at the time, again with the passing of more years he came to realize that this was merely the fear that all men harboured about their wives. He decided eventually that he believed him.

  There was only one other person who could have told him the truth, but what son could possibly ask that of his mother?

  The two of them were intertwined, his odd looks and the fact that his parents had been outside, that he himself had been conceived outside. He often wondered, if he had been spared one ‘contaminant’, would he be treated as he was? If he looked as others did, would people have cared for the gossip of the geography of his birth? If he had been born to landlocked stoic retainers but still had these eyes, would people have dismissed his appearance for what it was – no more than the whim of fate?

  It was not that Akiyama felt open excitement the closer he drew to Miyamoto. He knew the ultimate utter futility of his mission, and yet it was impossible not to feel some sense of anticipation welling just as he had all the times before. Perhaps it was on some level beneath his human consciousness, a natural instinct that could be neither quelled nor ignored. He kicked his horse faster, he forwent meals, he rode through the night.

  He an eager servant of those who would not recognize him, who he knew would not recognize him, both quivering with the secret hope that maybe, finally, this would be the head that bought him welcome amidst his peers and despondent with the certain knowledge that it would not.

  A woodsman with an axe across his shoulder told Akiyama that he had seen a man matching Miyamoto’s description upon the road the day before, passing in the opposite direction to him. Looked as though he was heading to the nearby town, the woodsman thought, and that upon a fine steed like Akiyama’s he’d be there within the morning. Akiyama thanked him with a few coins from the school and spurred his horse onwards.

  He was hopeful of finding another witness or two within in the town, and yet immediately he knew that he had come across something far more substantial. He found panic, he found clamour, women fretting and men mustering, gathering what lower tools might suffice as weapons: hammers and sickles and shovels and clubs. Akiyama was reminded of the aftermath of earthquakes – everybody wanting to help or to assure themselves that all was well, and yet nobody knowing quite what to do.

  ‘What has occurred here?’ he demanded of the first person he drew close to, a young man consoling what must have been his equally young wife with one hand and a charred poker clutched in the other.

  ‘A masterless,’ said the man. ‘He attacked the steward and—’

  ‘Tall?’ barked Akiyama, and then he tried to contain the rush, clutched his reins tighter. ‘The masterless – was he tall? Full head of hair? Scars on his face?’

  ‘Yes! Odd-looking devil.’

  ‘Where is he? Which way did he flee?’

  ‘They’ve got him trapped in the mill down by the river, last I heard.’

  Akiyama’s horse was attuned to his mood. It reared beneath him eagerly as he asked for direction, and as soon as it was given the pair of them were off.

  He saw the wheel of the mill first, a great wooden thing set into the broad, fast-flowing river. It was attached to a plain and utilitarian structure that overhung the waters on a raised platform. The roof was thatched, the wood grey and square, and the wheel turned slowly, the paddles of it painted green with algae.

  The doorway was cast open, what lay within dark.

  There were two samurai standing watch over it at a cautious distance, huddling behind a wagon of straw that was half empty and hitched to nothing. A gaggle of perhaps ten of the boldest lowerborn also stood nearby, keeping a fearful vigil. There was a nervousness in the air, in their poise and manner, as though they had cornered a tiger in its lair.

  Akiyama headed straight for the samurai, and the two men saw him coming. Perhaps right then any unknown would be regarded as a potential threat, but rather than prepare to fight him the pair of them seem rattled. They watched him guardedly as he dismounted, and neither one of them bowed more than a sliver, lest they let their panicky eyes wander from him for more than a moment.

  They made their tense introductions, and then Akiyama jerked his chin at the mill. ‘Musashi Miyamoto? Is he in there?’

  What must have been the senior of the two turned to the other, and Akiyama realized this man was clutching a wrist with the other hand, pain upon his face. ‘Was that what he called himself?’

  ‘I believe so,’ said the wounded man.

  ‘Good,’ said Akiyama.

  ‘You know this vagrant?’ asked the senior samurai.

  ‘I have come for his head in the name of the school of Yoshioka.’

  The two samurai heard Yoshioka and looked at him anew. Stared at the colour of tea more than at the colour of his skin, as they had been previously. Akiyama let them. He stood examining the mill.

  ‘How many are in there with him?’ he asked.

  ‘Himself alone.’

  This seemed odd. ‘Why is it then that the two of you tarry out here?’

  Neither one of them could either answer or bear to meet his eyes. Akiyama swallowed his irritation.

  ‘We sent a man on horseback to the garrison eastwards,’ said the senior man obstinately. ‘We’ll have thirty samurai here before sunfall.’

  ‘A full cadre of swordbearers in addition to those levied here already,’ said Akiyama blackly. ‘A proportionate response indeed. That is, of course, provided the wretch doesn’t find an escape before then. I am to assume there is only the one avenue of entry into the building?’

  The wounded samurai spoke: ‘There’s a trapdoor down onto the river, hidden beneath the mill itself, and he’d have to swim, but if he searched thoroughly . . .’

  ‘Or simply had enough time,’ said Akiyama.

  The two samurai looked sheepishly to the distance.

  ‘It’s dark in there, he’ll not . . .’ the senior muttered.

  Akiyama ignored him, turned to examine the mill again, made a closer tactical assessment of it. It was a large building, but it had to be braced to take the strain of the wheel and the mill. Therefore there were many beams, which meant space would likely be confined in there. Violence would be close, and that was not something he relished, for he was a swordsman and he needed clear arcs of attack from every angle to practise his art.

  He scratched at his chin, pondered. He was reminded of Saito, twelve years prior, the second man he had been tasked to hunt for the crime of drunkenly shouting public profanities at an icon of the Buddha whilst clad in the colour of tea. Desperate, the shamed adept had taken refuge in an old dilapidated estate, and for much the same reasons Akiyama had been reticent to enter.

  Akiyama had found a direct solution then, and it presented itself here also.

  ‘This time of year . . . I assume there is straw or hay set to dry in there?’ he asked the senior samurai.

  The man nodded. ‘Bales of it.’

  ‘Then have you considered smoking him out?’

  The senior looked at Akiyama as though he had just demanded his wife for the night. ‘Absolutely forbidden,’ he said. ‘That’s the winter feed for my most noble Lord’s cavalry.’

  Akiyama grunted his displeasure. He stood there for some time, considered other options. The wheel continued to turn, the river continued to flow. There was no sign
of any motion from within. Every moment that they delayed was another moment Miyamoto might find his freedom, if he had not done so already.

  The thought of this gnawed at him until he could wait no longer. The two samurai and the lowerborn watched as he strode forward. Akiyama placed himself twenty paces from the door, and there he spread his legs, set his hands upon his hips. The door was wide enough for one man only to pass through at a time, and even at this proximity still the gloom inside was such that it was impossible to say who, if anyone, lurked there.

  ‘Musashi Miyamoto,’ he called inside, waited.

  There was no response.

  ‘I am Nagayoshi Akiyama, of the bloodline Tachibana, of the school of Yoshioka. I have come to claim your head.’

  Akiyama thought perhaps that he heard the sound of wood creaking, saw a shadow move upon a shadow. ‘Yoshioka?’ came a voice.

  ‘Of the ward of Imadegawa, foremost school and pride of Kyoto.’

  ‘I’ve no feud with you,’ said Miyamoto. ‘I’ve never even encountered one of your men before.’

  ‘You offered insult at Sekigahara.’

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘Regardless, your head has been demanded.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  There might have been, just about audible, a snort of laughter. Akiyama watched the door for ten heartbeats before he spoke again.

  ‘I call you out to duel,’ he said, imploring with an imperious gesture of his hand. ‘Come, face me honourably beneath the sun.’

  Now there was no doubt about the laughter: ‘So you and your men out there can swarm me?’

  ‘I stand alone.’

  ‘I’ll not run out there to be cut down by however many await.’

  ‘There’s fifteen of us!’ called the senior samurai.

  ‘So there are fewer than ten,’ said Miyamoto to Akiyama, amused. ‘Even so, even so . . . I am not in love with death. I think I shall remain here. But, if you’re so eager for my head, why don’t you come in here? All of you, why not? One after the other.’