Stephen Hunter - The 47th samurai

“Sir, you don’t understand. I cannot strike a child.”

“Do not look and see form. Look at what is close as if distant and distant as if close.”

Bob dropped the shinai on the floor.

“No, sir. I come from a father whose father beat him terribly when he was a child. He never struck me and he made me understand, one does not strike a child.”

“Then you must go.” Doshu pointed to the door. “You do not know enough yet. Your mind is soft. You will die quickly if you stay. Go back to America, drink and eat and forget. You are not swordsman. You will never be swordsman.”

Bob saw how cleverly Doshu had penetrated him. The man had put him in a situation where his strength and speed were meaningless; he could not use them against a child, even if he had wanted to. Something deep in his fiber would prevent him. On the other hand, he had to win. If he didn’t win, he’d failed. He would not be a swordsman.

So how could he win? He had to find some way to fight soft. He had to anticipate, move, parry at a level higher than he’d ever been, much higher, and when he saw his opening, he’d have to take it but willfully disconnect from those things that made him a man-his strength, his speed. He had to take command of his subconscious and will it to govern him to a smoothness he didn’t have, a quickness no one had. He was trapped.

“I will fight,” he said. “But if I hurt her, I will hurt you. Those are the stakes here, sir. You understand that. You can’t put her in jeopardy without risking your own ass. And don’t think you can go aikido on me. I know that stuff too. I’ve been in a few dustups. Here, look, goddammit.”

Bob yanked down the corner of his little stupid jacket and showed the old man a few places where hot metal had tried to interrupt his life span. They were puckers, frozen stars of raised flesh, long gashes, healed but never quite vanished, relics of a forgotten war.

“I have seen much blood, my own and others’. I can fight, don’t you forget it.”

Doshu was not impressed.

“Maybe then you be good against little girl. But I think she whip ass.”

Bob faced the child. She looked like some tiny druid priestess. Her bokken, stout white oak, looked like Excalibur or Beheader of Kira and when she drove it into him, it would bruise to the bone. Her head was encased in a padded helmet, her face covered by a steel cage; the helmet wore two thick pads that flared laterally to cover her neck and shoulders. Her torso was encased in padding, and both arms and wrists as well; she wore heavy gloves; she looked part goaltender, part catcher, part linebacker, and 100 percent pure samurai.

They moved to the center of the dojo floor, bare feet on bare wood, under the wooden struts that sustained the place, which felt more like temple than gym. Swords hung on the wall, ghosts flitted in the distance.

She bowed.

He bowed.

“Five strikes wins. Also, kendo much head. I have asked Sueko not to hit head unless necessary. Also, war, not kendo. So any killing strike wins, not only kendo targets. Understood?”

He waited a second, permitting no questions, and then said, “Guard position.”

Bob stepped back, to segan-kamae, the standard high guard, his sword before him at 45 degrees, both elbows held but not locked, the tip pointing to her eyes. It was a solid defensive position, but you couldn’t do much with it. She, meanwhile, fell to gendan-kame, with her sword held low, pointed down and to the left. It was an offensive position, quick to lead to stunning blows, less efficient for blocking.

Bob tried to find the rhythm that had sometimes been there for him and sometimes not. He tried not to see “her,” that is, the child; instead he tried to see her bokken, for it was his real enemy.

Doshu stood between them, raised a hand, and then his hand fell.

He stepped in fluidly, she countered a little to the left, and suddenly, like quicksilver, she went low to high-“dragon from water”-and he could not get his shinai into a block fast enough by a hair, and she slipped her blade under his guard, screamed “Hai!” with amazing force, and he felt the bitter bite of the white oak edge, classic yokogiri, against his ribs. God, it hurt.

He realized, I have just been killed by a child. With live blades, she would have cut his guts out.

“One for Sueko. Swagger nothing.”

Rage went through him, red and seething. He had an impulse to revert to bully’s strength, flare and howl and race at her, using his bulk to intimidate, but he knew he wasn’t fast enough or smooth enough and that no answers lay in the land of anger. She would coolly destroy him.

She attacked, he gave ground and parried two of her blows; then, being limber and flexible, she split almost to ground level and swept at his ankles, but somehow the solution came exactly with the attack itself, and he found himself airborne-he knew that leaving the ground was a big mistake, one of the “three aversions,” to be avoided at all times, but in this case unavoidable-to miss the horizontal cut and, as he came down, he tapped her on the thick pad of the shoulder, near the neck, a somewhat uninspired kesagiri.

“Bad cut, Swagger. But still, you get point. One to one.”

The next two flurries were in hyperspeed. He could not stay with her for more than three strikes and she seemed to gain speed as he lost it, and each time, “Hai!” the bokken struck him hard, once across the wrist, making him drop the shinai, once on his good hip, a phenomenon known in football as a stinger. Oh, hoochie mama, that one hurt like hell.

Sweat flooded his eyes and he blinked them free, but they filled with water and the keenness of his vision went.

He felt fear.

He had to laugh. I’ve been shot at ten thousand times and hurt bad six times and I am scared of a little girl.

Was it the fear or the laughter or both? Somehow something began to come through him. Maybe it was his blurred vision, maybe that thing in sports called “second wind,” maybe a final acceptance of the idea that what came before meant nothing, there was only now, and her next kata seemed to announce itself, he took it on the lower third of the blade, ran her sword to ground, recovered a hair faster, and slashed the shinai across her center chest, kesagiri. She didn’t feel it, given the heavy padding, but Doshu’s educated eyes were quick to make note.

“Hai!” Bob proclaimed.

“Too late. Must deliver blow and shout in one timing. No point.”

Bad call. That was kendo; this was war. But you forget bad calls, as every athlete knows, and when she came, he knew it would be from the left, as all her previous attacks had been right to left; in the split second she drew back to strike, he himself unleashed a cut that seemed to come from nowhere, as he had not willed it or planned it; it was his fastest, best cut of the afternoon, maybe even the whole week, and he got his “Hai” out exactly as he brought the shinai tip as smooth and soft as possible across the left side of her head, and felt the bop as it hit her helmet.

“Kill, Swagger.”

He dropped back, going again to segan-kamae. He saw what she had that he didn’t. It wasn’t that she was stronger or faster. It was that she got to her maximum concentration so much quicker than he did, and her blows came so fast from the ready position; he could stop the first, the second, maybe the third, but by the fourth, he was behind the curve and he missed it.

Yet the answer wasn’t in speed.

Not if you “tried” speed, in the Ooof!-I-must-do-it! way. You could never order yourself to that level of performance.

What was the answer?

The little monster, however, had altered her stance. She slid into kami-hasso, issuing from above, the bokken cocked like a bat in a batter’s stance, spiraling in her grip as she would not hold it still because stillness was death.