by David Kirk
A drum roll beg an, a dozen men pounding on the heavy taiko skins from somewhere unseen, and the sudden thunder sent a pulse through both man and beast. A cry of salutation went up from men outside, and then into the arena came Hayato and his bodyguard. Their dozen horses were identical purebred stallions large and black and fierce, their banners adorned with streamers of paper and silk that curled and fluttered like the trail of comets behind them.
Bennosuke saw Hayato Nakata as he passed, he and his men riding the circumference of the arena once to bask in adulation. The young lord had his helmet off, and though he did not seem comfortable he made an effort to smile and look heroic, waving to the crowds with the one hand he had. The stump of his other arm was concealed artfully by his armor, and a man rode close enough on either side of him to keep him steady.
The boy’s mare whinnied slightly as she felt her rider tense.
The Nakata rode to a halt somewhere toward the center, no doubt awaiting the ball to be thrown to them. Bennosuke did not take his eyes off their banners, gaudy and standing above all others. The drums came to a climax, and then there was emptiness until a single man appeared alongside the still gong. He gave a long and wordless yell, and the sheer strength of his voice was impressive. It carried across the ground as well as the drums had, and he held the note until all were looking at him.
“Hail, our esteemed regent Hideyoshi Toyotomi!” he called once he had their attention, raising one fist theatrically in the air.
“Ten thousand years!” yelled the mounted samurai in return, their voices a unified bark.
“Hail his majesty, the sovereign of heaven, our emperor!” called the man.
“Ten thousand years!” screamed the samurai once more.
“And hail our benevolent and noble Lord Nakata!” bellowed the man finally, his voice breaking with the force he put into it.
“Ten thousand years!” came the uncertain reply. That was a prestigious list Nakata had placed himself at the head of, and the samurai were caught between courteousness to their host and sacrilege.
The herald began to explain the rules of the game circuitously, his language honorific and unwieldy even if he had been merely speaking. Screamed as it was, it took some time simply to say they should get the ball out and through the gate upon which he was standing. As he howled, it occurred to Bennosuke then that as they had no weapons, Hayato’s men would not strike him down instantly. They would wrestle him from the horse and bind him, and then images of prolonged torture at the clan’s leisure came to him. He remembered the misery and terror he had felt within the straw helmet. That he did not want to know again. He would have to plunge the dagger into his own throat once Hayato was dead.
It was not seppuku, but good enough. Having made that decision, to be the master of his own fate, he suddenly relished what was to come. What had been welling in him peaked—he was terminally alive, and he locked the far bobbing banners of the Nakata in his sight.
Another man clambered up alongside the herald. He was huge and bared to the waist, a heavy ceremonial rope hung with paper folded into lightning bolts tied around his belly. In one hand he held a sling, and in the other massive palm he held the ball. The orb was polished, dark wood the size of a human head, tied with red streamers, and the object of everyone’s sudden attention. The herald dropped to his knees and watched as the giant wrapped the ball in the sling and then let it hang by his shins.
The giant waited for expectant silence, and then he began to rotate the ball with the slightest movement of his wrist, the circular motion almost insignificant. But at that gesture the samurai kicked their horses and began to trot around the arena following the direction of the ball’s spinning. Gradually the slinger began to increase the size of the spin and watched as the horsemen spurred their horses faster in time.
“Follow my lead,” said Kumagai, not looking back at his men. “We stay on the outskirts until I say otherwise.”
When the giant could swing it no wider one-handed, his arm out by his side, he began to pass it around his body from one hand to the other. A grin broke over his face as the horses below him started to canter. Hoof fall began to drown out any other sound, and the world became a myriad of colors for Bennosuke as the banners flicked between one another and the horsemen began to press inward. His mare whinnied and kicked as she was buffeted.
“Ukita!” screamed an unseen rider from beyond them, his voice passing quickly. “Ukita! Eat shit!”
“Knock that bastard from his horse, whoever he is,” growled a samurai ahead of Bennosuke, the man taking his eyes away from the ball for but a moment to try to spot who had shouted.
Atop the platform the giant took the sling in both hands and began to spin his body now, around and around. Men stood in their saddles as their horses broke into a run. Tighter they became, Bennosuke’s stirrups meeting the flanks of other horses and the feet of other men. Ukita’s samurai pressed around him, shielding him. A human yelp came from up ahead, brief and stolen quickly downward, and then their horses stumbled for a moment over something beneath them.
The slinger put the force of his huge back into it, hunching his shoulders. It was an impressive piece of skill for a man of his size to balance on so small a platform as he whirled, the ball almost straight before him. Now the gallop began, and the noise of hooves became that of a pounding, white-foamed river, relentless and overwhelming and driving forward, always forward.
With a yell the slinger committed to the final rotations, ball dipping high to low, and then he released it. It sailed high into the air and flew like some rogue eclipsed sun, a hundred pairs of gauntleted hands reaching up toward it like pagans at prayer. A great roar went with it, from the riders, from the crowd, and from the lordly platforms. It arced and then plunged into the midst of the riders, gone from Bennosuke’s sight, but the boy felt as much as heard a sudden frenzy from somewhere within the press of men.
“Keep riding! Not yet!” yelled Kumagai, standing and straining to see. Bennosuke spared every glance he could to see how close they were to the Nakata. The burgundy men must have been near the center of the melee, for they barely seemed to move. The tips of their banners became as the polestar, a firmament around which the boy could gauge his frantic rotations.
“Ukita! Ukita! Die!” came a sudden fierce cry from ahead. A rider appeared as if from nothing against the flow of men, his horse wide-eyed and frothing in terror and the samurai’s face much the same in rage.
There was a frantic instant of parting for the wild charger, and then he was among them, his arm out trying to hook someone, anyone wearing Ukita colors, from their saddle. Bennosuke’s body froze, and all he could do was watch dumbly as the man struck him across the chest before vanishing into the mass behind them. The boy tumbled backward, the reins knocked from his hands. For a second he hung in a failing, flailing equilibrium, and then he felt his foot come free from the stirrup and his body begin to plunge into the stomping mass of hooves below.
A hand locked around his ankle before it passed entirely over the flank of the horse and he was lost, and then another Ukita samurai leaned down and wrenched the scruff of his armor up. Together the two men managed to right the boy without breaking pace, and gratefully Bennosuke clasped the reins once more and slung his body close to the horse beneath him like a drowning man holding driftwood.
“You all right?” barked one of the men to him, and all the boy could do was nod.
“Anyone see who that was?” screamed another.
“Just bloody watch for him again, we’ll get him if he comes back!”
Bennosuke ignored them, focusing on his balance. He was panicking, his equilibrium impossible to find once again, and all the while the banner kept catching in the wind, threatening to whip him from his mount. The hours he had spent practicing in the past two weeks seemed for nothing. Bennosuke hung on grimly, until he saw Kumagai suddenly slash his hand across and point toward the center.
“Now! Let’s go! Come on!” he screa
med, and wrenched his horse into a turn.
He had spotted an opening through the swirling outer rings of riders to the eye of the whirlpool, and he and his thirty riders plunged into it in a loose arrowhead. The impact that they made as they collided with the central mass of bodies drove the wind from man and beast, a shared exhalation of pain. Kumagai’s horse rose and clambered over another in desperate panic, knocking the rider off, and onward they all scrabbled over a floor that writhed.
There was no galloping in the center, barely any motion at all. They pushed on and forced other men around them, moving at the whim of the tide of crowd. Here, trapped in the crush, there were as many riderless horses as there were those still guided by men, and what samurai were left were in the frenzies of violence, wrenching and punching. It seemed to Bennosuke that this must be a glimpse of a hell of some sort; a press of bodies and flesh so tight, and nothing but animal terror and human hate between them.
“There!” barked Kumagai, his voice breaking with laughter as he pointed. “The ball!”
A young samurai had the darkwood ball clasped to his chest, his knuckles white around it as other men clawed at him. His horse was not moving, held tight by those around it. Behind him, Bennosuke saw burgundy advancing. The Nakata were going for it too.
Achingly slow, fighting for every inch, the Ukita turned their horses and began to try for the ball. But their collective will was irrelevant; they were a mere part of a mass that heaved and pulsed with desires and plots. They became entangled, their horses buffeted and spun like leaves on a river, and then suddenly another group of men were intersecting with them, pushing through them.
Someone grabbed at Bennosuke from behind, fingers hooking around his shoulder. A samurai was falling, seeking any purchase to try to save himself. He was not Ukita, and his fingers were gouging and tearing at Bennosuke, clutching at his helmet and then his face, his eyes, his mouth. The man was heavy, Bennosuke was off balance, and then the two began to slowly sink together.
The boy was lying almost straight across the back of his horse before he started hitting the man, lashing out with his elbow and the back of his fist again and again. The man could not see where the blows were coming from, and he swore and cursed in confusion and pain, but he held on. Bennosuke bit down on the fingers in his mouth and tasted blood as he desperately tried to wrench himself up, twisting his body and hauling upon the reins.
There was a snapping sound, and Bennosuke imagined for a moment that it was his mare’s legs popping with the strain, but it was too loud and too brittle to be bone. His body shot up suddenly free, and he felt lighter. He turned, and down through the legs of the horse he could just see the vivid color of his banner held in a hand frantically trying to shield itself. The man had clung to whatever he could, and the weight of a body was too much for mere bamboo.
The remnants of the splintered standard stood up behind him like a primitive spear as he twisted in the saddle, disoriented and alone. Somewhere Kumagai was still laughing, but he was gone from Bennosuke’s sight. So too for a horrible few moments were Nakata’s banners, but they were tall and gaudy and eventually he saw them—and then beneath them Bennosuke saw Hayato Nakata. The lord was not thirty paces away. The dagger throbbed on his wrist.
Knowing that his father was watching, that the forces of the world that believed in righteousness were with him, he forgot about Kumagai and the Ukita. He needed their shielding no longer. He tried to turn, to make for his goal, but he was held in limbo, pressed and pinned by the whirling embrace of the throng. It was a form of torture to see Hayato so close, and he found himself screaming in frustration and anger at his immobility. He dug his fingers into the manes of the horses nearby, as though he might drag himself and his mount across the gap.
Then without warning, the vagary of the crowd suddenly favored him, and he burst forth on a wave of bodies. People seemed to part for him, and he was carried to Hayato so fast that their armor clattered together with a slap. The lord turned quickly, and Bennosuke saw that under his helmet his eyes were wide and terrified, darting around in their sockets.
“Get away from me!” he mewled, his voice high and pathetic. He did not recognize Bennosuke; he just saw another unknown entity in a world the lord did not understand. That was not good enough. Hayato had to know who was killing him. Bennosuke pushed his head so close that the brows of their helmets touched.
“You! Away from him! Away!” growled one of Nakata’s bodyguard, but he was too far to intervene. He gestured in vain, as trapped as Bennosuke had been a moment before.
“Are you samurai?” hissed Bennosuke, ignoring the shouting as though it were a world away.
His eyes bored into Hayato’s, and he could see confusion come into Nakata for just one moment. The lord pulled his head back to try to examine the face before him, close enough still that the boy could smell his breath. Bennosuke knew that this was his ultimate moment. His right hand went up the sleeve of his left, wrapped around the hardness of the dagger’s handle. The boy closed his eyes, and willed the image of Munisai to spur him forward, to vindicate him …
Instead, what he saw was five small men in a distant bath of boiling oil, naked and flailing. He saw the sky and the earth and a ring of crucifixes around a dirty little hamlet, and he saw no meaning to any of it. The little figures writhed and writhed forever …
“Away! Away!” came the bodyguard’s voice.
Hayato’s eyes held his, and the lord’s throat was there, exposed and soft. The blade was strong, but the hand that tried to grasp it was weak. Bennosuke could not bring the weapon forth. His body was cold, paralyzed by a chill, and though his father’s ghost and righteous entities of heaven must be screaming, he knew then that he could not kill Hayato, because he was too afraid to die.
“Away!” said a voice in his ear.
The bodyguard had managed to squirm close enough to the boy to put a rough hand on him, and then he forced his body between the boy and the lord. Still Bennosuke could not move, but he knew his chance was gone. He had failed.
“Who is he?” asked Hayato. “Who is he?”
The lord never found out. Bennosuke forced his horse around before he could be unmasked, and then he pushed and pushed until he was free of the swarm, and then the mare ran, galloped out of the arena with the joy of the unshackled, past wounded men and horses with broken bodies, through the crowds and the vain shouts of guards until they were gone. Gone from the Gathering and gone from the town, and once he was out of sight of other men he fell from the saddle, moaning and sobbing in wracked, wretched shame, put his hands on the back of his head, curled himself into a ball and then forced his brow down into the dirt where he knew it belonged.
The bowl of noodles grew cold before him. Two boiled eggs split in half floated in the frothy, orange soup. Bennosuke watched the soft yolks within them slowly harden with the heat. He had wandered into an inn, still wearing the old cuirass from the Gathering, and had spent the last of his coin on the meal. But he could not eat it.
He was an empty thing pretending to be a human, and he sat blankly. This was not a moment he should be feeling, not a future he had considered. He wondered what he should do.
Well, something thought, you know what you should do. You know what a coward like you deserves. But then, you’re too weak for that, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here. That’s why you linger.
The boy tried to ignore the voice, but he knew it spoke the truth. He lived that moment again and again, saw the gap in Hayato’s armor and his jugular pulsing once more, and each time he tried to imagine a reality in which he had had the courage to strike. But always his arms were weak, always he pulled away, always he fled.
Why? Why this sudden outbreak of animal self-preservation? Why this sudden care for flesh when he had neglected his body for the year before in sole pursuit of that moment? He couldn’t answer. Was it simple fear and cowardice? If that was so, why had he seen Shuntaro and his men at that crucial moment, and not some primal i
mage of death or decay?
It didn’t matter. Whatever the reason, he had failed Munisai utterly, and his sullied soul remained anchored to this world of shame.
The yolks of the eggs coagulated before his dead eyes.
There was a clatter of heavy boots at the door, the curtain that hung across the entrance cast aside. Kumagai was standing there, half stripped out of his own armor, his swords back at his side. He scanned the room quickly, and almost missed Bennosuke tucked cross-legged into the corner of the inn.
“There you are, Musashi, you mad little bastard,” the man said, and he stomped across to stand before the boy. Bennosuke met his gaze, but said nothing. It was like looking upon a memory from a dream.
“Been looking for you,” said Kumagai, expecting an apology, but the boy offered none. “Where’d you go? Hmm? Why’d you run away? Thought you’d got killed or something. Been searching the wounded tents for you, all of us have.”
Still the boy kept silent. Kumagai shrugged and sat down. He shuffled under the small table, picked up a pair of chopsticks, and then helped himself to one of the halved eggs. He sucked it down with relish.
“Didn’t win, in any case. Never even touched the ball. Some gang of fools from the south got it out. Found that bastard who was telling us to eat shit, though, afterward. Didn’t find out why he was after us, but he won’t be … besmirching us again,” said Kumagai, a dark, satisfied grin on his face. He licked his lips of the sauce, and waited for the boy to share his mirth. When he did not, the man looked at him suspiciously.
“What’s wrong with you, eh?” he said. “Horse crush your balls or something? Where is your horse, anyway? We were looking for it hitched somewhere, but it’s not outside here.”
Bennosuke just looked back. The words meant nothing to him. Kumagai looked at him again for a few moments, and then he cast his eyes down and nodded somberly.