Sword of Honour Read online

  SWORD OF HONOUR

  Also by David Kirk:

  Child of Vengeance

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © David Kirk 2015

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of David Kirk to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  222 Gray’s Inn Road

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  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN: 978-1-47110-244-8

  TPB ISBN: 978-1-47110-245-5

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47110-247-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Rona,

  As much as a book of this sort can be for her.

  Contents

  PART I: Wake

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  PART II: Foreigners

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  PART III: The Colour of Tea

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Interlude I

  PART IV: The Two Heavens as One

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Interlude II

  PART V: Rambo

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  ‘Do not mindlessly follow the way and customs of the world.’

  Fifteenth precept of Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

  Musashi Miyamoto, 1645

  Colour was everything, colour was all.

  The Forger of Souls looked up into the night sky and saw only the vast blackness, the white of stars and the grey of the shadows upon the autumn moon. The night was still and endless, and amongst it all he thought himself invisible where he sat upon the hillside.

  This was good; he needed this blackness. It was a canvas to contrast against.

  ‘O Forger of Souls,’ came a voice, ‘I believe the temperature to be adequate.’

  The Forger turned and saw the dull red outline of his apprentice, lit by what burnt behind him in the small hut. The drapes and the doors of the building were cast open, and the roar of the furnace within could be heard.

  ‘Good,’ said the Forger. ‘Let us go, boy.’

  The Forger was an old man, and rose stiffly. He had a name of course, which his wife and his sons and daughters knew. But to everyone else he was only the Forger; what else could they call him without insult? The apprentice in turn was thirty-four years old, but in their art was still fit only to be called ‘boy’. This the apprentice knew, and did not disagree with.

  The pair of them went to the hut and slid in, quickly closing the doors behind them and then pulling down the heavy velvet drape, sealing them in darkness within darkness save for that which burnt. As he turned inwards towards the furnace the Forger had to shield his eyes against the light for some time, feeling the familiar heat against the back of his hand, which had long ago been scoured of any hair.

  A pair of boys – actual boys, voices unbroken – worked a huge standing bellows, using the entirety of their bodies to force it through its wheezing motion, air heaving constant into a small pile of coals the flames of which burnt just shy of blue. From underneath this pile the blackened handle of a perfectly straight rod of metal was clasped in a long, heavy pair of tongs. A trough of water stood nearby.

  Wordlessly the Forger took an iron poker and began to concentrate the coals along the centre line, underneath which the rod lay, and he snarled at the boys to quicken the bellows. They were sweating and exhausted, having worked for near an hour already, but now they flung their weight with renewed determination. Their eyes shimmered with youthful awe; they could hardly believe that they had been chosen by the Forger to be a part of this.

  The apprentice, who many years ago had worn the same expression as he had worked the bellows, took the pair of tongs in his hands and stood braced and ready. He and the Forger had worked on the rod for near two months already. They had taken the ingots of tamahagane steel that looked like no more than ossified turds, had heated and hammered them and then assembled them like a mosaic into one long line segregated by which pieces the Forger deemed would yield hard metal and those that would yield soft. More hammering, more heat, forcing the steel together, and then the resultant rod they had flattened and folded nine times.

  That was the science and labour of it; what came tonight was the art.

  The Forger needed the eye of a painter now, for the metal rod needed to be heated to the exact temperature, and the only way to judge this was by the colour it glowed. He had heard some men describe this desired shade as that of the rising sun, others as burnished gold or persimmon peel. The Forger could not say with any clarity what colour he knew to be correct because he was not a man of words, but over the course of decades he had come to know it fundamentally.

  He nodded at his apprentice, and the man pulled the rod outwards from the furnace and held it at arm’s length up against the perfect blackness at the back of the hut. The rod glowed cerise through the ashen murk of the clay slurry with which it had been coated. The Forger shook his head, and so back in it went. The Forger tossed more coals on, rifled through those already burning, sparking them into greater flame, and shouted at the two boys for more air. Their little bodies bounced, bruises forming on their shoulders, and the flames roared and roared until the Forger saw in them the purple-blue of the kakitsubata iris that flowered on the slopes in the early summer.

  Twice more the rod was withdrawn and examined, and twice more it went back in. The third time it was so very close, so very near that the Forger took the tongs from his apprentice and began to move the rod back and forth underneath the coals himself, twisting it from side to side where he knew it needed to be heated just that little bit more and then . . .

  He hauled it out and offered it up to the darkness, frail old arms quivering with the weight. Vivid orange leading into glorious yellow rife with shimmering albescence – the rod sang rightness. It was time, and so t
he Forger swivelled on his heels and plunged the rod into the water.

  Steam rose, and through the tongs he could feel the pull of the metal warping. The rod squealed, bucked first forwards and then back as hard and soft metal fought against each other, and then finally settled into a long and elegant curve, and thus the great transubstantiation was complete.

  A sword was born.

  When dawn had come they had scraped the clay from the cooled metal, and the four of them knelt covered in soot and ash and their hair in sweated disarray as the Forger held the unsharpened blade upwards to the rising sun.

  There was no religion here, not for this sword just quite yet. It was simple veneration and pride; the heavens were the heavens and men were men, and yet, of all the millions and millions of creatures upon this plane, it was men alone who had looked into the long dark chaos of the earth and sought to understand it, to improve it, to perfect it.

  The Forger held the immutable symbol of this fact skywards, and all bathed in the light.

  PART I

  Wake

  Late in the year, Fifth Year of the Era of Keicho

  Chapter One

  Hear it! Proclaim it!

  The sundered realm is made anew, the shattered gem whole once more! Upon the dales of Sekigahara east of the Great Lake Biwa a tower of thirty thousand heads stands in testament!

  The Armies of the East are triumphant! Proclaim it!

  Take it to the ashen slopes of the sleeping volcanoes spread beneath the amber sunsets of Kyushu, call it to the birds there as they flock south so they too may bear it forth across the waves! Carry it northwards, to the very tips of frigid Michinoku and the shores of alien Yezo, scream it so that the bearded Ainu hear it clustered in their frozen holes!

  All of Japan! Hear it!

  Oh, the very land beneath our feet hums that we should live in such a time! A Shogunate dawns once more, the progenitor of order, the bestower of benevolent peace, the way of things restored to how they ought to be! Serenity in the heavens, joy upon the earth!

  Hail his militant grace the most noble Lord Ieyasu Tokugawa! Hail his imperial and undying majesty the Son of Heaven!

  Swords at his sides, armour heavy upon him, onwards Bennosuke Shinmen walked in solitude. He had left battle behind him, left all behind him.

  A glancing blow from an unseen weapon had split his scalp, and the clotted wound now throbbed in time with the beat of his heart. The white of his left eye had turned crimson. The flesh upon his legs was scraped raw by the pinching of his greaves, knees and ankles calcified as he clambered over bush and trunk and waded through scrubland.

  But he was alive. That alone was important, he knew now. He smiled as he suffered. Sekigahara, his enlightenment.

  What things he had endured that day. Rout and defeat and the slaughter of those men that he had called comrade for two years. The army he fought for was vanquished, the powers that army served laid low. But it was not a defeat for him – not for himself, not for he as an individual. He had fled the battle and yet no words like coward nor any sense of shame at all occurred to him because he knew that he had not left in base terror but rather because his eyes had finally been opened.

  He had seen hundreds of samurai killed, thousands, and in their bleak end spread before him he had realized the futility of servitude to callous Lords that sought nothing more than selfish power. Thousands of men bringing their own meaningless deaths down upon themselves through the act of choosing to follow these Lords, choosing to obey them, and, even more than that, thinking such things glorious and proper. This, the Way of the samurai.

  Not for him, no longer.

  This Bennosuke had sworn to himself in the midst of the carnage, and he swore it to himself again now a thousand times over; all Lords, all thought of service or deference to them, he had left behind him to die alongside all those that thought such things righteous. The revelation was profound.

  He walked through wilderness headed for nowhere, but such was his rapture that he did not care. He was choosing to go – he alone. Bennosuke hauled himself up slopes, pulling at roots and creeping vines where he could. The gold leaves of autumn sighed deep around his feet. Hours passed. Gradually the pain from the wound on his head grew worse. His vision began to blur and eventually he vomited.

  Clouds were gathering above, threatening a great rain. He looked up at them in the dimming light, but they did not seem to him foreboding. They were there, as he was here; neither had any right over the other.

  With no energy to go further, he simply sat and watched as they darkened and burst, and as he felt the drops fall upon his brow he did not run for shelter. The rain grew heavy and it washed the blood from him, washed the filth from him, and he held open his mouth and let it fill with the water, and nothing he could remember had tasted so real, so immediate.

  A rare moment then that men meditated many hours seeking; a sense of perfect attunement.

  Dark now, full night, only the sound of the rain falling through the half-bared branches, landing heavy and fat on the metal and wood and leather of his cuirass and spaulders. He sank onto his back, nestled himself into a cleft in the earth half covered by a fallen trunk in which leaves had gathered and now formed a soft bed for him. As he sheltered there, lying in wonderful solitude, it occurred to him then that this was a good place for Bennosuke Shinmen to die.

  Bennosuke Shinmen had wanted to be a samurai above all else, after all. Like breath clearing from a mirror, the name to which he had been born now clarified its stark obsolescence.

  No, what he had done was choose to live, and in that choice redefined himself. Choice mattered. There was a name that he had used, that until now he had worn only as disguise. But it seemed to him natural to become this name now because, ultimately, it was he who had chosen it for himself.

  Musashi Miyamoto.

  It felt good. It felt right.

  In the darkness, Musashi smiled.

  Sleep came soon, one that he knew he would wake from, and for that time all was well.

  But how quickly the world imposed itself back upon him.

  He was drawn back into consciousness by the sound of a man howling in rage and despair. The blackness was entire, the stars and the moon stolen by the clouds. Only the screaming and the sounds of the rain told Musashi that he had woken at all.

  Musashi listened for some time. There were no words in the man’s wailing, just a racked and torturous lament that had no end. Whoever it was did not sound far away, doubtless oblivious of the presence of any other, such was the dark. Musashi felt the chill of the rain now, his limbs numbed. He tried to rise. His hands groped blind and his feet found uneven purchase, a mess of leaves and roots and mud beneath.

  ‘Hello?’ he called.

  The howling stopped immediately. Musashi peered towards its source but it was hopeless. He could not discern his hands before his face, let alone some distant figure amidst the trees. After a few heartbeats he called out again, and this time the man answered tentatively, ‘Who is it that skulks out there?’

  ‘I am not skulking,’ said Musashi, and thought for some time about what to say next. The voice waited in guarded silence.

  Eventually, Musashi said, ‘I was at the battle.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘I am. Are you?’

  ‘I am.’

  They were both of them hesitant to offer any more. Was there a harder thing to trust than an unseen voice in the night? Yet the pain in the man’s voice had been too real, and so Musashi put aside his own suspicion.

  ‘My name is Musashi Miyamoto,’ he said, and how natural it seemed. ‘I fought for the western coalition.’

  ‘As did I,’ said the man after a moment.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘That matters not now,’ said the man. ‘What Lord do you serve?’

  ‘That matters not.’

  ‘No. It doesn’t, does it? It’s all of it des
troyed.’

  The rain spattered off Musashi’s armour, a cold rhythm on the metal. ‘Where are you? Shall I come to you?’

  ‘I am here.’

  ‘Keep talking, I’ll find you.’

  ‘And speak of what?’

  ‘Of what you will.’

  Musashi began to try to move towards the voice. Against his face he felt bare branches and he stumbled and slipped over unseen obstacles. His longsword at his waist caught against something, twisted him.

  ‘You’ll not find me in this dark, and I do not ask you to,’ came the man’s voice. ‘I ask only of you to bear witness to something.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘I hereby pledge my soul against the Lord Kobayakawa. It was his betrayal that doomed us to defeat. He, the insidious thief that stole our dignity from us, that son of a whore, that son of a . . .’ The voice cracked in rage, and was silent. When it spoke again it was leveller: ‘For these reasons I protest his existence to all creation and pray for his damnation to the myriad hells. My ghost shall haunt him mercilessly until it has its rightful vengeance.’

  ‘Ghost?’ said Musashi, hands closing on something slick, wet moss upon a bough, perhaps. ‘Why would you speak of ghosts? You live yet. Are you wounded?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do you speak of ghosts?’

  ‘Only one thing remains left undone,’ said the voice.

  Seppuku. Self-immolation. Emblem of the Way.

  Nausea returned to Musashi’s empty stomach. ‘Do not do that,’ he said.

  ‘It is all that remains.’

  ‘It is not.’

  ‘Why should I live? All is gone. Now, I am no more than the stink of smoke after arson.’

  ‘No!’ said Musashi. ‘No, you are not.’

  ‘If you would like, I in turn shall hear any final vows you should care to make.’

  ‘Do not perform seppuku!’ said Musashi. ‘Wait for me, I’ll—’

  He forced himself through the blackness. He slipped and fell, felt the stomach of his armour smash onto something hard like rock. Though he was shielded, the shock of it still hurt. He hauled himself to his feet once more.