Honor of the Ken - Part IV (643 hits)
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Submitted by Anthony Locascio (View user info) at 2006-05-09 23:55:52 EDT
I haven't written one of these in nearly a year. Refer to the links for the story until now.
http://www.ubersite.com/m/28464 Part I
http://www.ubersite.com/m/28661 Part II
http://www.ubersite.com/m/28781 Part III
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"Go ahead. Pick it up."
With hands trembling slightly, the small child wrapped his hands around the leather laced handle and lifted it. It was far heavier than he had expected, if only because he had seen the ease with which his father moved with it. He staggered back a step, then held firm, the blade at eye level.
"This is the odachi," his father said quietly. He looked up at his father and realized that he had never been alone with his father in his thirteen years - his mother was always a step behind him, ready to whisk the boy away to study or practice with so much as a wave of his father's hand. Today though, his mother was nowhere in sight. He and his father stood alone in the dojo, the place of the way, as his father called it, where every daimyo had trained for two hundred years. The odachi, which the boy had thought of only as an ornament, or a shrine to battle, had been taken down. Its scabbard lay on the low table before him. He had half expected the blade to be pitted or dull from its time in the sheath - the surest way to keep a sword was to use it regularly. When his father drew it with ease, it sent bright spears of light cascading around it, as though even the very rays of the sun feared to cut themselves on the blade.
"What you are holding is not a tool, Hiruko," his father said quietly. The boy turned his face to his father. The sheer alienness of the situation kept his attention fully - he did not fidget, nor wonder where his mother was or what she was doing. "What you hold is a weapon unlike any other. It is not the katana, which we practice drawing regularly. You cannot hunt with this weapon - you will foul the blade on a boar's ribcage. You cannot strip a tree of its branches - the blade is too light and will quickly dull under such use. This is a weapon, and it has only one purpose - that is, to kill another man. Men labored under the earth in darkness, carted heavy ore to the smith, purified it with white fire, hammered it, quenched it. The odachi is larger than the katana, three men are needed to forge it, and they must all work together well or the weapon will be imperfect. All of this effort, all of this work was to only one end - to kill the man who faces it.
"This sword is the symbol of our clan, of our dedication to our people. It is more significant in its sheath than it is when it is drawn. While it is at rest, we are peacemakers and leaders, we are diplomats. We settle disputes, we preserve lives. The odachi, while stored in its sheath, lends force to our words. To draw it is to acknowledge that you have failed as a leader. This is unavoidable, and not a breach of honor. No man can avoid all conflict. There is a greater failure, a failure beyond that of leadership."
"Once you draw the odashi, you are a killer. The weapon was made to kill men, nothing more. WHen you draw it, it should taste blood before you return it to its sheath. To do otherwise is the greater failure, for drawing a weapon such as this means there is killing to be done. A man must die before you replace it."
The older man stopped for a moment, looking at the wide-eyed child, whose dark eyes turned from his father's face to the sword and back. "You have a question my son?"
"Father, what if the man surrenders? Suppose he realizes he cannot win and submits?"
The older man shook his head condescendingly. "A man that submits only in the face of your greater might cannot be trusted. If he will not talk, will not be reasoned with, and surrenders in the face of your greater skill, he will strike again when your back is turned. You must kill him. If he throws his sword to the ground, you order him to retrieve it. If he refuses, strike hard and finish him quickly. To cut his hand off is not enough. Strike hard at the neck if you wish to be merciful, strike the gut if you wish to make him suffer. Whatever you do, do not leave the battlefield until he is done. Once you have drawn the odashi, you must give it blood."
The boy's already bulging eyes widened even further. "But father, you have drawn it today, and there is no blood to give it."
The older man reached down and took the weapon from the boy, moving it easily. The muscles in his shoulders bunched and rippled as he moved it in well-practiced motions. "That is why I have brought you into the dojo today, to bear witness if this is my last battle. Follow the rules I have taught you. Now come with me and be silent."
There was nothing in the world the boy wanted to hear less than that final sentence. His mind was brimming with questions, not the least of which revolved around the words "last battle". His father slid the paper screen back to the outside, where three men were waiting. Two were standing beside a third man who also had a sword belted at his hip. His father did not speak, merely counted seven paces and turned to face the man. The birds that normally chirped softly from the tall pines in the twilight hours went silent as the two faced off. Then, faster than the wind rippling their clothes, the two were moving at each other, light flashing off of rising steel. There was the ring of metal on metal once, and then his father had moved past the man, turning and flicking his sword out to the side. Droplets of red whisked off the blade and ran down the groove carved along its length. For a moment, it seemed that time had frozen. Then the man seemed to dissolve into a bursting sea of crimson so fast the ground turned muddy at his feet. Sliced nearly in half from shoulder to hip, the body crumbled unnaturally to the ground, entrails spilling out in slick coils.
Nonplussed, his father turned and barked an order at the retainers, then put his hand on his son's shoulder and led him back inside, closing the silk screen behind him. "It is over. The odashi can be put away now."
Hiruko watched as his father replaced the sword at the Shinto shrine at the front of the dojo. With the tanto blade mounted below it, he cut a small notch in the wood beam below it. It would be five more years before the boy would realize what the notches in the wood meant and would find that they numbered one hundred and forty one.
"How things have changed," Hiruko breathed, his horse pacing nervously underneath him. He had added many notches to the wood in his eleven years as a samurai under Lord Sokyu. The odashi was strapped to his back. He had killed the ninja assassin Kazuya, his childhood friend, and now he would feed Sokyu's traitorous blood to his family blade. Behind him, crouched low in the grass, was his "army", peasants and rabble armed with whatever tools they could scavenge - tonfa, bo, kama.
He dismounted, noting the sun was beginning its descent behind the mountains in the west. His lefthand involuntarily went to his hip, where the end of the odashi jutted past its mooring. This time, there was no father to guide him. He was as a child now, old an senile, only smiling at his son in vague recognition when the two met.
"Father, be with me this night," he murmured. Then he tethered his horse and sat in the grass to watch the sun go down, and wondered if he would be alive to watch it rise.
User Reviews
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2006-07-24 03:46:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow.
Yer really talented.
To bad yer a stupid ignorant cunt.
Good writing, though.
Pretty much what I think of you and your fellow idiots. [http://www.ubersite.com/m/90608]
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2006-07-23 22:01:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2006-05-11 09:22:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by georgemichael (user info) at 2006-05-10 22:22:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Judoka (user info) at 2006-05-10 22:16:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
the confrontation was...the best I can come up with is stilted.
Great overall though.
Submitted by highlander (user info) at 2006-05-10 06:44:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Plus 2 - damn, this is good stuff.
I love stories about feudal Japan. Ever read James Clavell's "Shogun" ?
Submitted by bob (user info) at 2006-05-10 00:40:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment