The challenge came in the ninth month, when the rice in the paddies round Kokura had turned gold and the first cold mornings were coming off the sea.
It came properly this time.
Not three young men at a gate, but a letter, folded and sealed, carried to Nagaoka Sado’s house by a servant in the livery of the castle guard.
Nagaoka himself brought it out to the yard, where John was doing kata in the early light, and handed it to him with a grave face.
Kiku read it aloud.
To the foreigner who lodges with the swordsman Miyamoto.
On the day of the island I said I would come for you, whichever way it went.
It went the way it went.
My teacher is dead and I have mourned him the full hundred days.
I ask to meet you with oak swords, on the gravel by the river below the smith’s weir, at a time of your choosing within ten days.
If you refuse, I will tell the town why.
Tsuda Gennosuke.
Kiku lowered the letter.
Nagaoka said something to her quietly and went back into the house.
“He says,” she told John, “that Tsuda’s father is a captain of the castle guard and a friend of his.
He says it would be very bad if Tsuda were killed.
He also says it would be very bad if you refused.” She folded the letter.
“He says he hopes you understand the situation.”
“I understand it,” said John.
He did.
He had been in Japan for six months.
He understood enough now to see the whole shape of it, the way he saw a circuit diagram.
Tsuda could not let it go: his teacher had died, and the town knew Tsuda had promised to come for the foreigner, and if he did not, he would be a man who made promises he did not keep.
John could not refuse: a refusal would be read as fear, and fear in Musashi’s student was Musashi’s shame.
And neither of them could kill the other, because Tsuda’s father served the lord of Kokura and John was the guest of the lord’s senior retainer, and a death on either side would turn a duel between two young men into a quarrel between two houses.
So someone would have to win, and nobody could die.
* * *
Musashi, when he was told, said nothing for a long time.
Then he asked one question.
“When?”
“The fourth day,” said John.
“At sunrise.”
Musashi looked at him with something that, on another man, might have been interest.
“Why sunrise?”
John told him, in his slow Japanese.
The gravel bank below the weir ran east to west along the river.
At sunrise the sun came up over the hills directly behind the forge.
A man standing with his back to the forge would have the sun behind him.
A man facing him would have it in his eyes.
“And you’ll stand with your back to the forge.”
“I’ll get there first.”
Musashi’s mouth moved, very slightly, at one corner.
“You watched the island,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Good.
Most people watch the sword.” He got up.
“No more lessons until the fourth day.
Eat.
Sleep.
Walk.
Split wood.” He paused at the door.
“And John.
You may not hold.”
John had expected it.
He nodded.
“Not because it’s cheating,” said Musashi.
“Because it makes you slow.
When you hold, you look at everything, and while you’re looking, he moves.
You have six months of body now.
Use the body.” He went inside.
* * *
He spent the four days the way Musashi had spent the ten before the island.
He did not practise very much.
He went down to the river below the weir three times, at sunrise, and stood on the gravel and looked at it.
He noted where the stones were large and rolled under the foot, and where they were small and packed hard.
He noted the line of the sun and the time it took to clear the hills.
He noted that the river was loud there, loud enough to cover the sound of a foot on gravel.
At the forge, Kaneshige watched him come back from the river each morning and said nothing until the third day.
“Tsuda,” the old man said then, at the anvil.
“I made his sword.
His real one.
A good blade.” He turned the bar he was working.
“He holds his oak too tight.
All Kojiro’s boys do.
Kojiro taught them to cut from the shoulder, big, beautiful.
The shoulder goes first, every time.
A blind man could see it.”
“Thank you,” said John.
“I said nothing,” said Kaneshige.
“I’m a smith.
I know nothing about swords.”
* * *
On the fourth morning John was on the gravel before it was light.
He stood with his back to the forge and the weir, in the grey half dark, with the oak sword held loosely in his right hand, the point resting on the stones.
Behind him the river came down over the stone lip of the weir in a long white sheet and made a steady roar.
He breathed slowly.
He did not think about the Hold.
He thought about his feet.
People came.
He had not expected that, but he should have.
Word had gone round, as it always did in Kokura.
By the time the sky behind the hills was turning pale, there were twenty or thirty people on the bank above the gravel: fishermen, Kaneshige’s apprentice, some of Tsuda’s friends from the castle school in their blue jackets, an official or two.
Kiku was there, standing a little apart, with her hands in her sleeves.
Musashi was not.
Musashi, Nagaoka had said, was asleep.
Tsuda came down the bank at the moment the first edge of the sun came over the hills.
He was in white, as if for a real duel.
He walked onto the gravel, and stopped, and saw where John was standing, and John watched him understand it.
He looked up at the sun, which was coming up behind John’s left shoulder straight into his face.
He looked back at John.
For a moment his face showed nothing at all.
Then he smiled.
It was not a pleasant smile, but it was not a stupid one either.
“You learned that from him,” he said.
“Yes,” said John.
Tsuda bowed.
John bowed.
Tsuda raised his oak sword above his head in the high guard, the beautiful one, the one Kojiro’s students all used, and began to move forward across the gravel.
* * *
John watched his shoulder.
He did not look at the sword.
He did not look at Tsuda’s face, though it was easy to look at, set and white.
He looked at the right shoulder, the one under the hilt, as Kaneshige had told him and as he had learned across the anvil for two months, watching the old man’s arm to know where the next blow would land.
Tsuda came in fast.
He was good.
He was very good, much better than the drunken ronin, quick on his feet and strong.
But the gravel under him was the loose kind, the kind that rolled, because John had stood where it was packed and left the loose stones for him.
And the sun was in his eyes.
And his shoulder, as he came, dropped a fraction to the right before the cut began.
John’s feet were already moving.
He did not decide to move.
That was the thing he would try to explain to Kiku afterwards and fail.
His body saw the shoulder drop and went to the left on its own, the sliding step, the groove of ten thousand mornings.
The big cut from above came down through the place where he had been standing and hit gravel.
Stones sprayed.
And as Tsuda’s sword hit the ground, John’s own oak was already coming round, low and short, the fourth movement of the kata, the one he had done more times than any other. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
It hit Tsuda’s right wrist with a crack.
Tsuda’s hand opened.
The oak sword fell from it.
He staggered, off balance on the loose stones, and went down on one knee.
John stepped in.
His sword came round again, high, and stopped.
It stopped a finger’s breadth from Tsuda’s temple.
He held it there.
It would have been very easy to finish the stroke.
With oak, at that speed, at the temple, it would have killed him, and nobody on the bank could have said it was not fair.
He held it there long enough for everybody on the bank to see that he could have.
Then he took it away, and stepped back, and bowed.
* * *
Tsuda knelt on the gravel holding his broken wrist against his chest.
His face was grey.
He did not look at his wrist.
He looked up at John.
“Why?” he said.
John had thought about the answer for four days.
He gave it slowly, in Japanese, so that everyone on the bank could hear.
“Because your teacher died fairly,” he said, “and you mourned him properly, and you kept your word to come.
A man like that is worth more alive.” He paused, searching for the words.
“And because I am a guest in this town.
I don’t kill my host’s friends.”
There was a long silence on the bank.
Then one of the fishermen laughed, a short bark, and someone else said something, and the crowd began to break up and drift away, talking.
Tsuda got up.
His friends had come down onto the gravel, and one of them tried to take his arm, and he shook him off.
He picked up his oak sword with his left hand.
He looked at it, and then at John.
“Next spring,” he said.
“When the wrist is healed.”
“Next spring,” said John.
Tsuda bowed, and walked away up the bank holding his arm, and did not look back.
* * *
Kaneshige was at the forge door when John came back up the lane with the oak sword over his shoulder.
He had his arms folded and smoke on his face, and he had certainly been watching from the top of the bank.
“His shoulder,” he said.
“His shoulder,” John agreed.
“Hm.” The old man turned back into the dark of the forge.
“Tell nobody I told you.
His father buys his blades from me.”
* * *
Kiku came down onto the gravel when they had all gone.
She stood beside him and looked at the river.
“You were very lucky,” she said.
“Yes.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“That’s what everyone will say.
That’s not what I mean.” She looked at him.
“You were lucky that he’s an honest man.
Many men would have gone home and sent their friends to find you in a lane at night.
He’ll come back in the spring, and he’ll be better, and you’ll have to be better too.” She hesitated.
“And you’ll have to decide again, then, whether he’s worth more alive.”
John looked at the place on the gravel where the oak had come down and sprayed the stones.
“Then I’ll be better,” he said.
When they came back up the lane, Nagaoka Sado was waiting at his gate, in his formal jacket, which John had never seen him wear before.
He bowed to John, very slightly, and spoke to Kiku for some time.
Kiku’s face went still while she listened.
“Lord Tadaoki has heard about the gravel,” she said at last.
“He wants to see the foreigner who doesn’t kill his friends.
At the castle.
Tomorrow.”