MYTH-Interpretations: The Worlds of Robert Asprin (35 page)

"Whose troops and in what battle are they to be employed?"

"I represent the Zaibatsu, a community of Japanese-based corporations, and the focus of our attention is the Oil vs. Communications War currently in process."

"You want us to lead troops against those idiots? Our pick of men and our tactics?" Clancy smiled. "Mister, you've got yourself a mercenary!"

Tidwell ignored his friend.

"I'd like a chance to view the force before I give you my final decision."

"Certainly, Mr. Tidwell," Yamada nodded. "We agree to this condition willingly because we are sure you will find the men at your disposal more that satisfactory."

"In that case, I think we are in agreement. Shall we start now?"

Tidwell started to rise, closely followed by Clancy, but Yamada waved them back into their seats.

"One last detail, gentlemen. The Zaibatsu believes in complete honesty with its employees, and there is something I feel you should be aware of before accepting our offer. The difficulties you have been encountering recently, Mr. Tidwell with your equipment and Mr. Clancy with your assignments, have been engineered by the Zaibatsu to weaken your current employers and ensure your availability for our offer."

Again both men gaped at him.

"But
.
.
.
how?" blurted Tidwell finally.

"Mr. Clancy's commanding officer who showed such poor judgment in giving him his team assignments is in our employment and acting on our orders. And as for Mr. Tidwell's equipment failure
.
.
." he turned a bland stare toward Steve, ".
.
.
let us merely say that even though Communications holds the patent on the Throat-Mikes, the actual production was subcontracted to a Zaibatsu member. Something to do with the high cost of domestic labor. We took the liberty of making certain ‘modifications' in their design, all quite undetectable, with the result that we now have the capacity to cut off or override their command communications at will."

By this time the two mercenaries were beyond astonishment. Any anger they might have felt at being manipulated was swept away by the vast military implications of what they had just been told.

"You mean we can shut down their communications any time we want? And you have infiltrators at the command level of the Oiler forces?"

"In both forces, actually. Nor are those our only advantages. As I said earlier, this is not a casual effort. I trust you will be able to find some way to maximize the effect of our entry?"

With a forced calmness, Tidwell finished his drink, then rose and extended his hand across the table.

"Mr. Yamada, it's going to be a pleasure working for you!"

*
*
*

A few scrawny weeds dotted the cliff's face, outlining the outcroppings and crevices there. It would be a real obstacle, but there wasn't time to look for another route down.

The man at the top of the cliff didn't even break stride as he sprinted up to the edge of the precipice. He simply stepped off the cliff into nothingness, as did the three men following closely at his heels. For two long heartbeats they fell. By the second beat their swords were drawn, the world famous Katanas, samurai swords unrivaled for centuries for their beauty, their craftsmanship and their razor edges. On the third heartbeat they smashed onto a rock slide, the impact driving one man to his knees, forcing him to recover with a catlike forward roll. By the time he had regained his feet the others were gone darting and weaving through the straw dummies, swords flashing in the sunlight. He raced to join them, a flick of his sword decapitating the dummy nearest him.

The straw figures, twenty of them, were identical, save for a one inch square of brightly colored cloth pinned to them, marking five red, five yellow, five white, and five green. As they moved, each man struck only at the dummies marked with his color, forcing them to learn target identification at a dead run. Some were marked in the center of the forehead, some in the small of the back. It was considered a cardinal sin to strike a target that was not yours. A man who did not identify his target before he struck could as easily kill friend as foe in a firefight.

The leader of the band dispatched his last target and returned his sword to its scabbard in a blur of motion as he turned. He sprinted back toward the cliff through the dummies, apparently oblivious to the deadly blades still flashing around him. The others followed him, sheathing their swords as they ran. The man who had fallen was lagging noticeably behind.

Scrambling up the rock slide they threw themselves at the sheer cliff face and began climbing at a smooth effortless pace, finding handholds and toeholds where none could be seen. It was a long climb, and the distance between the men began to increase. Suddenly the second man in the formation dislodged a fist-sized rock that clattered down the cliffside. The third man rippled his body to one side and it missed him narrowly. The fourth man was not so lucky. The rock smashed into his right forearm and careened away. He lost his grip and dropped the fifteen feet back onto the rock slide.

He landed lightly in a three point stance, straightened, and gazed ruefully at his arm. A jagged piece of bone protruded from the skin. Shaking his head slightly, he tucked the injured arm into the front of his uniform and began to climb again.

As he climbed, a small group of men appeared below him. They hurriedly cut down the remains of the straw dummies and began lashing new ones to the supporting poles. None of them looked up at the man struggling up the cliffside.

They had finished their job and disappeared by the time the lone man reached the top of the cliff. He did not pause or look back, but simply rolled to his feet and sprinted off again. As he did, five more men brushed past him, ignoring him completely, and flung themselves off the cliff. Tidwell hit the hold button on the videotape machine and the figures froze in midair. He stared at the screen for several moments, then rose from his chair and paced slowly across the thick carpet of his apartment. Clancy was snoring softly on the sofa, half buried in a sea of personnel folders. Tidwell ignored him and walked to the picture window where he stood and stared at the darkened training fields.

The door behind him opened and a young Japanese girl glided into the room. She was clad in traditional Japanese robes and was carrying a small tray of lacquered bamboo. She approached him quietly and stood waiting until he noticed her presence.

"Thanks, Yamiko," he said, taking a fresh drink from her tray.

She gave a short bow, and remained in place, looking at him. He tasted his drink, then realized she was still there.

"I'll be along shortly, Love. There's just a few things I've got to think out."

He blew a kiss at her and she giggled and retired from the room. As soon as she was gone, the smile dropped from his face like a mask. He slowly returned to his chair, leaned over and hit the rewind button. When the desired point had been reached, he hit the slow motion button and stared at the screen.

The four figures floated softly to earth. As they touched down, Tidwell leaned forward to watch their feet and legs. They were landing on uneven ground covered with rocks and small boulders, treacherous footing at best, but they handled it in stride. Their legs were spread and relaxed, molding to the contour of their landing point, then those incredible thigh muscles bunched and flexed, acting like shock absorbers. Their rumps nearly touched the rocks before the momentum was halted.

Tidwell centered his attention on the man who was going to fall. His left foot touched down on a head-sized boulder that rolled away as his weight came to bear. He began to fall to his left, but twisted his torso back to the centerline while deliberately buckling his right leg. Just as the awful physics of the situation seemed ready to smash him clumsily into the rocks, he tucked like a diver, curling around the glittering sword, and somersaulted forward rolling to his feet and continuing as if nothing had happened.

Tidwell shook his head in amazement. Less than a twentieth of a second. And he thought his reflexes were good.

The swordplay he had given up trying to follow. The blades seemed to have a life of their own, thirstily dragging the men from one target to the next. Then the leader turned. He twirled his sword in his left hand and stabbed the point toward his hip. An inch error in any direction would either lose the sword or run the owner through. It snaked into the scabbard like it had eyes.

Tidwell hit the hold button and stared at the figure on the screen. The face was that of an old Oriental, age drawing the skin tight across the face making it appear almost skull-like—Kumo. The old sensei who had been in command before Tidwell and Clancy were hired.

In the entire week they had been reviewing the troops they had not seen Kumo show any kind of emotion. Not anger, not joy—nothing. But he was a demanding instructor and personally led the men in their training. The cliff was only the third station in a fifteen-station obstacle course Kumo had laid out. The troops ran the obstacle course every morning to loosen up for the rest of the day's training. To loosen up.

Tidwell advanced the tape to the sequence in which the man's arm was broken. As the incident unfolded, he recalled the balance of that episode. The man had finished the obstacle course, broken arm and all. But his speed suffered, and Kumo sent him back to run the course again
before
he reported to the infirmary to have his arm treated.

Kumo ran a rough school. No one could argue with his results, though. Tidwell had seen things in this last week that he had not previously believed physically possible.

Ejecting the tape cassette, he re-filed it, selected another, and fed it into the viewer.

The man on the screen was the physical opposite of Kumo, who knelt in the background. Where Kumo was thin to the point of looking frail, this man looked like you could hit him with a truck without doing significant damage. He was short, but wide and muscular, looking for all the world like a miniature fullback, complete with shoulder pads.

He stood blindfolded on the field of hard-packed earth. His poise was relaxed and serene. Suddenly another man appeared at the edge of the screen, sprinting forward with upraised sword. As he neared his stationary target, the sword flashed out in a horizontal cut aimed to decapitate the luckless man. At the last instant before the sword struck, the blindfolded man ducked under the glittering blade and lashed out with a kick that took the running swordsman full in the stomach. The man dropped to the ground, doubled over in agony as the blindfolded man resumed his original stance.

Another man crept onto the field, apparently trying to drag his fallen comrade back to the sidelines. When he reached the writhing figure however, instead of attempting to assist him, the new man sprang over him high into the air launching a flying kick at the man with the blindfold. Again the blinded man countered, this time raising a forearm which caught the attacker's leg and flipped it in the air dumping him on his head.

At this point, the swordsman, who apparently was not as injured as he had seemed, rolled over and aimed a vicious cut at the defender's legs. The blindfolded man took to the air, leaping over the sword, and drove a heel down into the swordsman's face. The man fell back and lay motionless, bleeding from both nostrils.

Without taking his eyes from the screen, Tidwell raised his voice.

"Hey, Clancy."

His friend sat up on the sofa, scattering folders onto the floor and blinking his eyes in disorientation.

"Yeah, Steve?"

"How do they do that?"

Clancy craned his neck around and peered at the screen. Three men were attacking simultaneously, one with an axe, two with their hands and feet. The blindfolded man parried, blocked and countered, unruffled by death narrowly missing him at each turn.

"Oh, that's an old martial artist's drill—blindfolded workouts. The theory is that if you lost one of your five senses, such as sight, the other four would be heightened to compensate. By working out blindfolded, you heighten the other senses without actually losing one."

"Have you done this drill before?"

Clancy shook his head. He was starting to come into focus again.

"Not personally. I've seen it done a couple of times, but nothing like this. These guys are good, and I mean really good."

"Who is that one, the powerhouse with the blindfold?"

Clancy pawed through his folders.

"Here it is. His name's Aki. I won't read off all the black belts he holds, I can't pronounce half of them. He's one of the originals. One of the founding members of the martial arts cults that formed up after that one author tried to get the Army to return to the ancient ways, then killed himself when they laughed at him."

Tidwell shook his head.

"How many of the force came out of those cults?"

"About 95%. It's still incredible to me that the Zaibatsu had the foresight to start sponsoring those groups. That was over twenty years ago."

"Just goes to show what twenty years of training six days a week will do for you. Did you know some of the troops were raised into it by their parents? That they've been training with unarmed and armed combat since they could walk?"

"Yeah, I caught that. Incidentally, did I show you the results from the firing range today?"

"Spare me."

But Clancy was on his way to the case.

"They were firing Springfields today," he called back over his shoulder. "Those old bolt-action jobs. Range at 500 meters."

Tidwell sighed. These firing range reports were monotonous, but Clancy was a big firearms freak.

"Here we go. These are the worst ten." He waved a stack of photos at Tidwell. On each photo was a man-shaped silhouette target with a small irregular-shaped hole in the center of the chest.

"There isn't a single shot grouping in there you couldn't cover with a nickel, and these are the worst."

"I assume they're still shooting five-shot groups."

Clancy snorted.

"I don't think Kumo has let them hear of any other kind."