Batman 5 - Batman Begins

by Dennis O'Neil

  “Yield,” Bruce commanded.

  “You haven’t beaten me,” Ducard replied. “You’ve sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke.”

  Ducard tapped the ice beneath Bruce’s feet with the flat of his sword. There was a loud crack and the ice tilted and splintered and Bruce plunged into the freezing water.

  Ducard watched Bruce flounder for almost a full minute, then reached down to help him up and out.

  Later that evening, next to a blazing campfire near the glacier, Bruce shed his jacket and shirt and rubbed his arms, trying to control the violence of his shivering.

  “Rub your chest,” Ducard told him. “Your arms will take care of themselves.”

  Bruce began to rub his torso.

  “You’re stronger than your father,” Ducard said.

  “You didn’t know my father.”

  “But I know the rage that drives you . . . that impossible anger strangling your grief until your loved ones’ memory is just poison in your veins. And one day you wish the person you loved had never existed so you’d be spared the pain.”

  Bruce stopped what he was doing and looked at Ducard as though he had just found something amazing.

  “I wasn’t always here in the mountains,” Ducard continued. “Once, I had a wife. My great love. She was taken from me. Like you, I was forced to learn that there are those without decency, who must be fought without pity or hesitation. Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you. As it almost did me.”

  Bruce took his shirt from where it had been drying near the fire and slipped it on. “What stopped it?”

  “Vengeance.”

  “That’s no help to me.”

  “Why not?”

  FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL

  I now know what my weapon must be. Men commit folly after folly because they are afraid. Fear was once mankind’s most powerful ally, giving enormous potency to the instinct for survival. Now, fear has become mankind’s greatest enemy, and such is the obtuseness of my race that its members do not realize it is the most powerful element of human existence. It is what drives them to embrace leaders who offer nothing more than false promises of security and doctrines that assure them that they are exempt from the inevitable consequences of being born, and to destroy the earth with insane consumption that does nothing more than distract them from their own mortality. They venerate charlatans and deny what is necessary to their own well-being because they are afraid. The situation is exacerbated by one of evolution’s cruelest jokes, the capability to deny to themselves what they are doing even as they are doing it.

  I have long taught my followers that to overcome fear they must first face it. As the American psychologist Rogers observed, one cannot change until one has accepted oneself fully. Long ago I learned that embrace of any dread that dwells within is necessary to fulfill one’s potential. I have also instructed my minions in manipulating an enemy’s fear, in the use of fear as a tactical weapon. I am woefully late in realizing that fear can also be a strategic weapon and I can base my whole campaign upon it.

  Fear is my weapon. I shall use fear.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bruce was aware that the months of brute labor on ancient ships had physically changed him, coarsened his rich boy’s palms and thickened the muscles of his arms, chest, thighs. He had thought that by the time he was locked in the Chinese prison, the change was complete. But at Rā’s al Ghūl’s monastery, he realized that his months at sea had only begun his transformation. He learned a different kind of power, one that came from the knowledge and efficient use of his body’s parts, not just raw, untutored strength. His mind, too, was altering. He was coming to depend on a relaxed alertness rather than reasoned thought, which was sometimes slow and not always reliable.

  His training, of both mind and body, was of a kind he could not have imagined possible, and he reveled in it. He slept, with a dozen others, on a thin futon placed on the floor of a chamber below the monastery’s main hall; he knew that there were other sleeping chambers both inside the monastery and in outbuildings.

  The monastery itself was divided into three tiers. The bottom, where Bruce slept, was barracks-style living quarters, food storage facilities, a kitchen, and a dining area consisting of several long, uncovered tables with backless benches along either side. The ground floor was almost completely occupied by the huge main hall, where Bruce had first entered, and included Rā’s al Ghūl’s throne, which was seldom in use. At its rear were two locked doors—a storage area of some kind, Bruce guessed. Once, he spotted a line of workers carrying crates that bore red warning signs in four languages into one of the forbidden chambers: explosives. Bruce wondered what use they might possibly be put to.

  The top floor of the monastery was, on three sides, a mezzanine, with exits to the balcony that overlooked the glacier. The fourth side was another forbidden area: the living quarters of Rā’s al Ghūl and Ducard. There were several outbuildings that, Bruce concluded, were for storage.

  Almost every day Bruce arose before dawn, wakened by the striking of a gong—almost, because sometimes he and his mates were not roused until the sun was high above the neighboring peaks. No explanation for the delay was ever given. After an hour’s running along the ridge on which the buildings stood, often through dense snow and icy winds, he ate the first of two daily meals, usually vegetables and rice, or a grain Bruce could not identify. To drink, there was a small cup of tea.

  At irregular intervals, the morning run was canceled and Bruce and his mates picked their way down the trail to the hamlet Bruce had passed through on his way to the monastery. There, they found stacks of boxes and sacks: supplies. They each lifted something and, sliding and stumbling, struggled back up the mountain. Once, Bruce saw the little boy he had spoken to, peeking around the corner of a hut. At other times, during the warmer summer months, he and his mates were put to work in vegetable gardens near the hamlet.

  “It is important that you feel a connection to what sustains you,” Ducard once explained.

  The regimen was not unlike what he knew of how religious communities and, for that matter, military boot camps operated. After breakfast, the group disbanded and each of the trainees did something unique to himself. In Bruce’s case, this was what he later realized were exercises and techniques designed to increase his flexibility and litheness. He did yoga stretches and trained on gymnast’s gear: rings, rails, parallel bars, and vaulting horses. Gradually, his bulky muscles grew smaller and sleeker and he was able to stretch and bend and twist his limbs in ways he would have once considered impossible, if not freakish.

  Then, for several months, he did very little that was physically demanding. Ducard would give him puzzles, or using cards, flash a random series of numbers and shapes in front of his eyes and demand he reproduce them on paper. Or ask him to work arithmetic problems mentally. Or have him sit in certain positions for hours, or just stand alone in a dark room or on the glacier. He was told that he was in the process of learning what he already knew and that this was not a conundrum, just a simple fact—one of the few times any explanation of any kind was offered.

  When Bruce resumed his physical training, he was swifter and stronger than ever.

  FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL

  Bruce Wayne apparently thinks that his training here is akin to the training he would receive at a military or religious installation. Such is his intelligence that he will surely come to realize that what most military and religious leaders do is to minimize individuality and maximize sameness in their charges. Indeed, that is what we do with most of those we recruit so their actions and effectiveness become both optimal and predictable.

  However, for centuries the League of Shadows has known that one must deal with extraordinarily gifted individuals differently. We seek to plumb their depths and discover all the strength within them, both physical and mental. We next devise a plan to allow them to access and increase their innate powers. Most of thei
r weaknesses we ignore, for if they are as intelligent as we know they are, they will compensate for most of their weaknesses with no help from without. Fear is always the great exception to this. Fear is usually the last enemy a man conquers and to do so he must be forced to do whatever is necessary. It is unfortunate that most men fail this ultimate test.

  At noon each day, Bruce joined his fellow trainees for the day’s second and final meal, usually identical to what they had had for breakfast, but occasionally spiced with a sliver of fish or smoked meat. There was no tea at this second meal, just water from the glacier. Bruce had eaten in the world’s premier restaurants with his parents, both at home and in Europe and Asia during family vacations, had dined on the finest efforts of the finest chefs, and had never enjoyed any food so much as Rā’s al Ghūls starkly simple fare. Not because of the food itself, though it was inevitably fresh and well prepared, but because he was learning to really taste what went into his mouth.

  After lunch, more exercises. At dusk, another run outside and then, as the sun was vanishing below the mountains and long shadows spread across the glacier, to bed.

  Bruce was always asleep within seconds of touching the futon. If he had dreams, he did not remember them.

  He sensed that nothing was done randomly—that every activity, however inconsequential, was part of a carefully planned curriculum.

  He had been in the monastery for months before he was taught actual combat. His tutors were not kind. On the contrary. Ducard and the ninjas who taught Bruce were unrelentingly critical and showed absolutely no tolerance of blunders. And blunder he did. He often felt as though he were wearing cardboard boxes for shoes and concrete gloves. He had imagined himself well versed in martial arts from his shipboard ordeals and the adventures he had had in ports of call, and in fact, after the first humiliating months, he had won most of his fights. But against the opponents he faced in the monastery, he was clumsy, oafish, more clown than combatant.

  But he learned. And he did not make the same mistake twice.

  For a long period, he was physically challenged to his utmost, forced to defend himself until his breath exploded from his lungs and he could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins and sweat coating his entire body. Then, abruptly, Ducard would stop the combat and have Bruce do breathing and visualization exercises. And then he would again be attacked. Eventually, Bruce decided that the purpose of this drill was to teach him to be as calm during combat as he was afterward—to train him never to allow body chemistry to impair his judgment. Ducard, as usual, neither confirmed nor denied Bruce’s conclusion.

  FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL

  Many years past I thought I had lost my capacity for amazement at about the same time that I lost my capacity for affection. I was mistaken. Bruce Wayne amazes me every day. He has already developed far beyond any student I have ever had and there seems to be no limit to his potential.

  I have begun to have thoughts that disturb me because they fill me with what I fear is a false hope. They concern my daughter Talia and Bruce Wayne. Talia is of an age to reproduce and carry my lineage forward into the new world I shall create. No man I have ever met until now has been worthy of mingling his genes with mine nor worthy of the company of my daughter. Bruce Wayne may be an exception to this unhappy rule.

  If I have a son of my own I will not need Bruce Wayne and Talia may then devote herself entirely to my comfort and convenience. But none of my consorts have given me the male offspring I desire. A noble son-in-law may in the long run prove to be as satisfactory as a noble son.

  Bruce Wayne may yet prove unworthy of the beneficence I contemplate bestowing upon him. There is yet ahead of him the ultimate test that he like the others will surely fail. If he does not fail it I will summon Talia.

  Bruce seldom saw Rā’s al Ghūl and wondered if their mysterious host even lived at the monastery. Sometimes, though, Rā’s appeared on his raised platform, or on the balcony overlooking the glacier, and watched, erect and motionless, his hands hidden in his sleeves. He never spoke, nor made any kind of sound at all, but his presence was always palpable.

  Rā’s was on the platform the morning Bruce, bare-chested and wearing shorts, was fighting with a bald Japanese man of his own size and build. Someone shouted his name and for perhaps a half second Bruce was distracted. Could he have been called by Rā’s himself? No, the voice had been Ducard’s. His opponent struck twice, to the chest and jaw, and Bruce dropped.

  When Bruce fully regained his senses, Rā’s was gone.

  Ducard stepped forward and looked down at Bruce with disgust. “Childish, Wayne.”

  “Resume!” Ducard ordered, motioning to the Japanese man who had knocked Bruce down, and a few seconds later, Bruce was punching, blocking, kicking, ignoring everything except the opponent in front of him.

  So intent was he on his training, so involved in the tasks Ducard set for him, that Bruce all but forgot that months were passing, that the color of the sky and the angle at which the sun hit the glacier changed and the air both inside and outside the monastery was warmer, then colder.

  Later, he reckoned that he had been at the monastery just under a year and that, after the initial period of adjustment, he was happy in the rambling building above the glacier. He forgot his old life, in Gotham and on campuses and the jet-set watering holes of the world and, eventually, his memory of his parents also dimmed. What was the color of his father’s hair? Of his mother’s eyes? How did they sound in the morning? At bedtime? He could summon the memories by force—he had learned that he could summon any memory by force—but they did not come unbidden into his dreams now. But the sight of them sprawled in the street amid bloody pearls—that did not diminish, nor did the hot bite of hate that inevitably accompanied it.

  He never learned the names of his fellow trainees, and there had been hundreds of them. Ducard had made it known that any unnecessary fraternization would be severely punished and no one doubted him. But Bruce felt close to these anonymous men of varied nationalities, closer than he had ever felt to anyone except his mother and father and Alfred. They may have been nameless, but they were pieces of something of which he, too, was a part and that gave him a commonality with them that often felt like affection.

  None of them stayed for long. A new group seemed to arrive every few weeks or so, receive instruction, and leave. Only Bruce remained, although his skills were plainly superior to those of everyone except Ducard. He would ask, “Does Rā’s al Ghūl have something special in mind for me?” and Ducard would turn away, refusing to answer.

  Eventually, he stopped asking.

  Ducard remained aloof, always the savagely forthright instructor, never the friendly mentor, but a bond grew between him and Bruce regardless. Bruce could not have given it a label, or even described it. In neither his personal experience nor his reading had he encountered anything like it. But he knew it was there, as he knew he had blood in his veins.

  Was it possible to love a man who did little more than brutalize one? Was Bruce Wayne, this pampered child of privilege, suffering from some form of the Stockholm syndrome, becoming emotionally attached to his enemy? He had questions he could not possibly answer, at least not yet, not here. He did not forget them, but he did not worry about them, either.

  There was a scream from the far end of the monastery. Bruce saw two warriors dragging the man who had screamed toward an iron cage.

  “Who is he?” Bruce asked, getting to his feet.

  “He was a farmer. Then he tried to take his neighbor’s land and became a murderer. Now he’s a prisoner.”

  The portly farmer was locked in the cage and the cage was winched ten feet off the floor.

  “What will happen to him?” Bruce asked.

  “Justice. Crime cannot be tolerated. Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s ‘understanding.’ You know this.”

  Bruce nodded, staring at the man in the cage.

  “Or when you lived among the criminals . .
. did you make the same mistake as your father?” Ducard asked. “Did you start to pity them?”

  Bruce remembered the feeling of a hollow belly and a wide-eyed child in an alley and the taste of a ripe plum.

  He said, “The first time you steal so that you don’t starve, you lose many assumptions about the simple nature of right and wrong.”

  FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL

  The agony of suspense I have endured this past year will end within twenty-four hours. Though he himself has no inkling of it, Bruce Wayne will face his final trials very soon. His skill will be tested and also his courage and his resolve. We will learn if fear still dwells within him and how he has confronted it if it does. We will finally come to know if he has what weak men call ruthlessness. For if the world is to be saved it will be saved by those willing to do all that may be necessary. There will be a time for weeping and lamenting and even regret that draconian measures were needed, but that time will be later when we have accomplished our tasks and can afford the luxury of the weaker emotions.

  I actually have little doubt that the blood of Bruce Wayne will leak onto the floorboards of the monastery and we will use fire to dispose of his remains. He will die as his dozens of predecessors have died and in dying prove himself to be at last unworthy.

  If he continues to breathe two days from now I will allow myself to rejoice and I will summon Talia to return from Switzerland.

  It would be good to see my daughter once more.

  That night, as Bruce lay down on his futon, Ducard, clad in a ninja uniform, a short sword slung across his back, came to the doorway and spoke his name. Bruce rose, dressed, and followed Ducard across a moonlit courtyard to the throne room. Inside, they went to a workbench set against a wall, and Ducard said, “You traveled the world to understand the criminal mind and conquer your fear.”