Sword of Honour (57 page)

For a long moment he stood there bereft, firelit and mutilated. Musashi looked up at him from his knees and wondered whether the samurai would die thusly on his feet, perhaps just harden into
some horrendous statue, remain in the world as a totem to endurance.

And then Tadanari stirred and came again, furious life yet in him.

Galled, exhausted, Musashi, too stupefied to move. Tadanari put a sandaled foot down upon Musashi’s longsword where it rested upon the floor and hooked it away, tearing it from
Musashi’s fingers. Then he was on Musashi like a beast, clawing with his surviving hand, kicking him, knees and elbows, gouts of blood flying from his stump and all Musashi could do was
recoil, try to squirm free from the samurai’s grasp.

He found himself on his hands and his knees, and Tadanari did not relent, sank his nails into his throat from behind, bent and down and started biting at his jugular, at his ear, teeth sinking
into the lobe of it, into anything, and the noise he was making – this hiss, this moan – uttered direct into Musashi’s ear.

There were no words in it, but the communication of it was perfect: Musashi understood then just how truly he was hated.

No swords now, the very last remnants of strength within him. Musashi fought to regain his feet, Tadanari still reaching over his shoulders, and then he hooked his hands beneath the
samurai’s legs. Up he took him, bearing Tadanari on his back, the samurai still biting at him, still making the same terrible noise, and what Musashi did was carry him and run.

No sprint but a jerking gait. He headed for the edge of the pedestal, clutching Tadanari’s legs tight to him. Musashi leapt and kicked his own legs out straight ahead of him, turned
Tadanari beneath him in their brief flight. The pair of them did not soar, flew no graceful arc, but instead went outwards and downwards, landed upon the foremost boulder set into the sand and its
cresting ridge of obsidian that seemed to glisten in the firelight.

The impact was such that it knocked the wind from Musashi, but it knocked the spine from Tadanari.

Musashi tumbled free, fell to earth, felt soft sand upon his face. He lay there for a long moment simply breathing. The sand was soft, delightful. It would be so pleasant, so right, just to sink
into it. But he fought the urge, rolled onto his back, looked up and saw Tadanari.

The samurai was splayed convex over the surface of the boulder above. He could not move himself from it. He was broken, dying now definitely, irreversible, and his inverted eyes glared down at
Musashi. Musashi looked up into them.

Imminent death only deepened what had been there, added coldness to it.

Eventually he was still.

After some time Musashi forced himself to sit up, the effort enormous. He looked down at his side, saw the wound all dirty with sand, and the sand all dirty with blood. There was no pain, no
feeling any more. He managed to shuffle himself over to rest his back against a boulder opposite that which Tadanari lay upon. There he sat with his head lolling back, looked up at the sky. The
stars were stolen by the glow of fire, and the moon it was not crimson.

He willed it to be so, tried to breathe, found the blockage of his nose painful, and suddenly insulting, unbearable. He had to breathe, he deserved to breathe. Both hands he raised to his face
and he braced himself, pinched the bridge of his shattered nose and pulled it upwards, crunching outwards, righting it, righting, white . . .

Aware now. Some time must have passed; the building closest, the clerical building within which he had ambushed, killed, that so long ago, that was now on fire, flames even
through the roof of it, or what was left of the roof. Musashi watched it burn.

Motion.

Languid, dark on dark.

Across the wooden walkway, foot after ponderous foot came the land turtle. Unhurried, unpanicked, it escaped the blaze with perfect calmness, made its way to the pedestal where the headless body
of Matashichiro lay. There it stopped, cast its black eyes out across the garden.

It looked at Musashi.

Musashi looked at it.

Perhaps it was instinct, or perhaps the creature remembered; slowly, the land turtle sank to its belly and withdrew its limbs and its head into its shell.

Chapter Thirty-eight

A time of wandering, free of any notion of anything other than existing.

How Musashi soared or felt as if he were soaring, and he deserved to soar, he knew. A great thing that he had done, a victory. Of all the places that he had the potential of visiting here so
liberated, he knew that he wanted to go to the temple of Amaterasu, to Dorinbo. He knew that he could face him now, face the monk with pride and tell him that he had proven himself.

But neither Dorinbo nor the temple appeared. What coalesced instead, out of the long haze of colour and heat, was the form of Munisai, his father who was not his father, there in the armour that
Musashi had cleaned so often as a child. Loathsome. Beautiful. Munisai’s face beneath the elegant copper crest of the helmet, moustached and close, so close it consumed, enveloped.

‘You killed them all,’ he said, and there was a tone in his voice that Musashi had never heard from the man’s fleshly throat. ‘You killed them all.’

Anchored now.

Other voices. Actual voices. The fire was gone. So too the darkness, the blue of coming dawn above. Vile stink of smoke. Tadanari’s corpse still there sprawled upon the rock. The wound
still there upon Musashi’s side.

‘Is there anything left?’ someone was saying, a man, distant, unaware of Musashi. ‘Can you believe this?’

‘Why were we prevented from action?’ said another man. ‘We had enough men to chain buckets to the canal. Why did they make us pull the surrounding buildings down
instead?’

‘Got here quicker than us too, though their garrison’s the other side of the city.’

‘Bastard Edo interlopers—’

‘Guard your tongue, they’re just outside still.’

Nothing for a while, save for the crunching of debris beneath feet. Then a yelp of sorts, part shock, part disgust, quickly swallowed.

‘What?’

‘More.’

‘Bodies?’

‘Nnn.’

‘Yoshioka?’

‘I cannot tell. The fire has claimed them all.’

‘It must be them. Perished, all of them perished. Can you believe this?’

The other man had no answer. Musashi found strength in his legs, pushed himself up the boulder he lay against, sat himself on top of it with his feet still in the sand. He was filthy, blood and
ash and sand caked across his arms, his clothes no more than rags now. His throat hurt, his lips were dry. He longed for water, even for the feel of sweat.

Around him he saw nought but ruins of the school left, obelisks of scorched foundation beams jutting through piles of roofing tiles stacked and blackened like the slopes of volcanoes. Even the
greenery of the garden had been eradicated. Musashi looked at the sandbed around him, grateful for his little pocket of protection.

He counted thirteen boulders.

Two men appeared then. Young, hale, cropped hair. Over plain jerkins they wore cloth jackets patterned with red and blue hexagons, emblazoned with the name of the ward of Imadegawa on their
back; volunteer fire guards from amongst the local residents, picking through the ruins. They almost missed Musashi sitting upon his rock, he all but obfuscated in the like colour and tone around
him, gaped in shock when they saw that something lived here still.

Musashi grinned at them, and even that was a struggle.

‘I did it,’ he said to them. ‘I’ve done it. I beat them. Do you see now?’

‘Here!’ one of them screamed. ‘Here!’

Other fire guards heeded his cry, emerged and gathered to stare at Musashi. All he did was grin back. They took in his joy, and then they took in the great swathe of destruction all around them,
saw Tadanari, saw what was left of Matashichiro upon the pedestal.

‘You killed them,’ said one.

‘Yes.’

‘All of them.’

‘Yes. For you, for all of you.’

‘Why?’

‘To show you.’

His voice was rasping. He could feel every word in the wound on his ribs. More of the firemen were still coming, faces blackened with soot and smoke. They stared, and hesitantly they found their
tongues:

‘How many men dead by your blade?’ said one.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Even the boy,’ said another. ‘The youngest Yoshioka.’

‘Not me,’ said Musashi, and nodded at Tadanari’s corpse. ‘That was him. That was Kozei.’

‘Child killer,’ said someone else.

‘He was no child: he was thirteen,’ said Musashi, trying to see who had spoken. ‘Do you know what I did at thirteen?’

‘Was it you who set the fire too?’

‘No. That was them. I didn’t . . . I fought them only with my swords. The fire, that was them.’

‘You mean to suggest they burnt their own school?’

‘Yes. To kill me. They wanted to kill me. Or it was an accident, or they . . .’

‘The Yoshioka? The most dignified men in the city turned to arson?’

‘Lies – look how proud you are. You set the flame.’

‘Child killer.’

‘They challenged me. They chose to fight me. And I won. For you.’

‘My grandfather helped raise that dojo hall.’

‘My grandfather tiled it.’

‘What if the entire city had caught alight? Would you still have cause to smile then?’

‘The little boy, look at him, there’s his head in the sand.’

The fire guards had lost their hesitancy now, the voices growing in number and in volume. Musashi stopped trying to answer, simply looked between their faces.

He thought of vessels, and of cups.

He rose to his feet, and his motion silenced them. They thought him lethal still, though he was barely able to walk, the effort of each step immense. He forced himself forward. The men stepped
out of his path, watched him as he fumbled for his swords where they had fallen. Gore was scabbed upon them both. Still filthy, he slid them into their scabbards and then headed for the courtyard,
away from here, away from them.

The men followed after him, keeping their distance, stepping in time to his feeble pace.

‘Butcher,’ said someone.

‘Arsonist.’

Through the ruins of the compound they went, past corpses, some burnt, some spared incineration and draped in the colour of tea still. Blood had dried ugly like the shadows of vines upon the
paving stones.

‘Child killer.’

‘Demon.’

Through the courtyard and the bodies there, the braziers all burnt out, filled now with white ash. The gate was gone, no sign of it all, burnt entirely or pulled down and dragged away. The
street outside was frantic with dozens of men, teams carrying hooked ropes, ladders, mallets, saws, implements of all sorts. They looked exhausted, their desperate work having been to create the
isolating space around what had been the Yoshioka compound now.

Not all of them wore the bright jackets of the fire guard. Not all of them were lowerborn: Musashi saw a multitude of Tokugawa samurai in their dark livery and their topknots scattered
throughout the crowd, either helping with the labour itself or directing it. Nearby a helmeted officer stood conferring with a subordinate, this samurai having of all things an unstrung longbow
resting across his shoulders.

One of the fire guards ran up to the officer as soon as he saw him.

‘Sir samurai,’ he said, bowing and then pointing at Musashi, ‘it’s him that did it. We found him in there. He killed the Yoshioka. He set the fire. He’s an
arsonist. Take him!’

‘He’s a child killer!’ said another.

‘Murderer!’

The clamour began now, now that there were other armed men here to protect them, and the firemen soon were shouting their disgust, and the other lowerborn in the street took up the cry. Musashi
stood in the centre of them, felt it all pass through him.

‘That’s him. That’s Miyamoto,’ said the samurai with the longbow.

The officer gave a gesture with his chin and a third samurai came forward. He bore a tool of suppression, a wide and blunted prong upon a spear shaft. The samurai lowered it and Musashi had no
energy to try to fight the man, to even go for his swords. He just watched it coming, watched as the samurai thrust it forward.

The pain of the steel meeting the wound on his chest was such that Musashi was senseless before his back met the earth.

Musashi awoke in a familiar cell in the Tokugawa garrison. How long he had spent there he did not know. He slept, and how good it was to sleep again, uncaring of the heat or
the worry. He got the impression that days were passing, and that perhaps the sleep was not always of his own volition, and this he had no quarrel with.

He found the straw beneath him replaced with proper bedding at some point, a thick mat and a pillow filled with dried beans. Men came in often to see him, old men with firm hands who looked down
on him with concern. A different man each time, changing the dressing upon his wounds – Musashi was several torpid times surprised anew to find himself bound in bandages, his body washed of
all filth and blood – and as these men worked Musashi remembered looking down between their ministrations and seeing his bared chest rent, a white gummy fluid there in the chasm of the wound,
and feeling a mild and distant nausea.

But it passed, it all passed, and soon the sleep became less deep, the throbbing and itching upon his ribs relented, and then he awoke to the sound of drums.

They were distant, many of them pounding out different beats converging together, a mess of pulses. Musashi lay listening to them, needing some time before he could distinguish them from his
heartbeat. Eventually he decided to sit up. When the dizziness passed he looked down to find himself naked save for the bandages wrapped around his chest. The mat beneath him was damp with sweat,
stank of it. Soaked through, ruined.

There was a basin of water and a cup nearby. He drank, and then ate one of a couple of satsumas that lay within a bowl. The taste of the fruit was so sharp it hurt his tongue, but he devoured it
all the same.