Sensei (21 page)

Then Tomita spoke to me. "You think I am a madman, Burke? Because of the murders?" He nodded. "You cannot see. These acts are like ... ceremonies for the gods. They are fiercely pure. They lay bare kokoro, the heart of things. When the fight is done, you cannot imagine the feeling ... the sense of,.. fusion to the world of kami, of spirits." He smiled again. "And it is done on my terms."

"Tomita," Yamashita breathed, "this must end."

It was a strain to just wait there, listening to them and waiting for the ritual to unfold. Down deep, I could feel the currents swirling about the room. Despite the flow of words and the smiles, there was tension here. You could feel it building slowly, ratcheting up. Behind those dark eyes, there was rage.

I said nothing.

"So," Tomita said calmly as he kneeled again, "to the task at hand." He sat up a bit straighter and said, "I am Tomita..."

"Formerly of the Kunaicho," I interrupted, just to rattle him a bit.

Some of the true danger in him shot out briefly from his eyes, escaping from behind the barrier he had placed there.

"I am a student of the Morita-ha Tengu-shin ryu. I am menkyo kaiden there and a yudansha in Yanagi-ryu jujutsu and kendo. I have killed four men in duels. I request a lesson."

It told me nothing, other than that there were more victims than we were aware of. I had never heard of the Tengu-shin ryu. Tengu are the winged mountain goblins of Japanese legend. Master swordsmen, in the old stories they sometimes teach mortals their art. Depending on how "shin" was written, it could refer to some sort of divine revelation, the heart, or a deity of some sort. All I really could tell was that the man before me had had a variety of training. And he killed people.

He bowed toward me at the conclusion of his recital. It was my turn.

"I am Burke," I began. The Japanese tend not to use the given name in situations like this. "I am a student of Yamashita-ha Itto ryu. I am yudansha in Shotokan karate do and Kodokan judo. I have killed no man in a duel."

Tomita grinned fe rally at me.

"Until tonight," I concluded. His grin just got harder looking.

He stood up suddenly, and so did I. It wasn't really a conscious reaction on my part. It was as if we were connected by a string.

He was watching, and he nodded again in mock approval. He was always watching, that one. Everything, every gesture, every facial tic, told him something about his opponent. He gestured languidly to the side of the dojo.

"Here are weapons for you to choose from."

"Why me?" I asked. I was surprised to hear the words spoken out loud. It was the last squeak of the scared animal in all of us.

He paused and looked at me. "Ah? Why you?"

I just nodded. I didn't trust my voice any more.

"You are his des hi Mr. Burke. His disciple, yes?" I didn't answer and he didn't seem to care. Part of me was glad to have him talk; it gave me time to prepare.

"Your teacher destroyed my life. I have trained for years, and now I will destroy him. But before that, I will take away what he values most."

He paused and eyed me speculatively. "Have you been a teacher, Burke? Do you know what matters most to a sensed It is not life that is precious bus hi are trained not to fear death." He paused and glared at me. And in that look you could feel the fury that must have lanced through him every day of his life. "Before I kill him, I want him to know that I have destroyed everything he has worked to create." I tried not react in any way. "I will take away his most prized student, Burke. I will kill you."

He gestured again. A mat had been placed on the floor. Matched pairs of bokken and jo lay there. I moved cautiously toward them, stepping sideways to keep him to my front. The choice of weapon was critical, but only if I knew what he would be using.

"And you?" I questioned, gesturing at the weapons.

He faded back into the shadows and emerged, holding a familiar weapon. It was the katana I had seen in Bobby Kay's photos so long ago.

"You took it," I breathed.

He drew the weapon from its scabbard. The steel hissed faintly against the case. Tomita regarded the blade admiringly as the light winked along its length. "The opportunity was ... unexpected. But the good bus hi must act decisively."

Then Tomita gestured with it. "As I told Mr. Akkadian, I still have some use for this weapon."

He came toward me and opened his arms wide, the sword in his right hand. I put down the tanto my teacher had given me and picked up a jo.

He smiled grimly, then paused. "The jo, Burke? I had hoped for more of a challenge." He sighed and slowly sheathed the blade. "Very well. Let us play a little." He set down the sword and stooped to grasp a bokken.

The story goes that the samurai who codified techniques for the jo once challenged Miyamoto Musashi to a duel using another weapon and was defeated. Only after he had perfected the use of the short staff was he able to beat the master swordsman,

Musashi. The story was pretty well known, and part of me hoped it would act subliminally to erode Tomita's confidence.

Part of me just liked the weapon.

We stood facing each other in the ready position. The jo is longer than the wooden sword, but the bokken is heavier. Tomita watched me briefly, his eyes flat and his body relaxed. Then the attack came.

They say the thing that marks a true master is not the force behind an attack, but the speed it's launched with. When Tomita moved, it was a blur. I whipped the jo up to meet the strike, parrying and looking for the opportunity to counter.

Looking is not the right word. It implies some sort of visual isolation and mental identification. But Tomita was so quick, that was impossible. Things were happening so rapidly that the moves seemed to merge into a fluid sequence, a continuum of extreme danger. At such a high level of play, the weapons tended to "stick" we maintained contact with each other for as long as possible. The jo met the bokken and directed it away from the target. Tomita slid the sword forward and in along the length of the jo. I pulled it back into a reverse posture, but he pressed forward. I slid to my right, hoping to bring the staff up, around, and down, but he leapt out of range.

There was a tremendous amount of movement going on. We spun and surged through the alternating areas of darkness and light in the room. The effect was strobelike: the struggle pulsed and jerked in the alternating light levels. A great deal of fighting is keyed to sight cues that are extremely subtle. I could feel my eyes straining as I tried to follow and then anticipate Tomita.

At one point, there was a minute hesitation in his back step. It happens sometimes, for no specific reason that can be anticipated an irregularity in floor surface, a muscle group flexing or contracting a split second before it should but I leapt at the opening it presented.

The jo came whistling down from high on my right to smash his collarbone. He just managed to pull back from the strike and let the tip of the weapon carry on down toward the floor. I allowed the momentum to carry me in and past him, then reversed the jo's direction in a tight arc, cutting upward with a gyaku-uchi, a reverse strike.

Tomita sensed the threat and tried to roll out to his left side. Instead of smashing squarely into him, the tip of the jo only nicked his ear. But it was traveling so fast it actually ripped away part of the earlobe. I saw the bright start of blood begin there. Any wound on the head bleeds.

Yamashita had drilled me over and over again to pursue the opponents weakness without mercy. I let go of the jo with my left hand, and followed my momentum in toward Tomita. I slammed the open palm of my hand into the bloody side of his head, hoping to pop the eardrum. He flinched away in an automatic response. I closed with the jo and struck down on his right hand. The staff landed with a crack at the base of his thumb. He hissed.

There were schools of swordsmanship in the old days that specialized in cutting off the thumbs of their opponents. Without the thumb, you can't hold the sword. It was supposed to be a humane way to defeat someone without having to kill them.

I wasn't thinking humanely. Right then, I was just trying to land a decisive blow.

Tomita moved away, and I could tell that he couldn't wield the bokken well anymore. It's a weapon that needs two hands, and his right thumb was probably broken.

I pressed him, advancing with the tip of the jo pointed at his throat. Tomita exploded in a lateral dive. Landing among the weapons on the floor, he unsheathed the katana before I could get to him.

The long sword can be wielded with only one hand.

Lights caught on the highly polished surface of the blade. He rose from the floor in a fluid motion. I backed up, adjusting to the new threat.

The katana's cutting edge is like a finely honed razor. Mere incidental cuts can slice through a human form with ease. In a fight like this, even a minimal injury was a death sentence. But the katana's sharp edge is also its weak point: it is so brittle, you can shatter a blade with a wooden weapon. If you have the nerve to get close enough. And Yamashita had warned me against that.

Tomita moved toward me. Almost subliminally, I registered the slight droop of the sword tip that comes before a strike. It was a common error, and I should have been suspicious. But momentum has a power all its own, and I was drawn to the apparent flaw. The end of my jo touched the side of his blade. I tried to follow the katana up as Tomita pulled it over his head for the strike. But suddenly, he lunged forward with his foot raised, and brought it down with a stomping kick directed at my left thigh.

It was a bone-breaking move. The idea is to distract the enemy by making him focus on the sword, then deliver a lower-level attack with another weapon. And I almost fell for it. As it was, I had to collapse the leg and fall with the direction of the kick in order to save myself.

His foot still smashed into me with an almost paralyzing force. I rolled out and away, desperate to avoid the sword blade. I stood, trying to test the leg, which felt numb and wobbly, without letting him see what damage he had caused. I attacked.

Looking back, it was a big mistake. He was fighting left-handed, and most practice in Japanese swordsmanship is based on right-hand dominance. My leg made things even more awkward. The attack faltered. Tomita shuffled back slightly. I was over committed and felt myself toppling in toward him, losing my balance.

He shuffled back again, trying to pull me in more. I scrambled desperately to regain my footing, but the muscle damage in my left leg made it sluggish and clumsy. I felt myself going, losing the balance that is critical in a fight. Tomita loomed before me, katana raised.

Instinctively, I turned away, flinching from the blow about to come. I heard the temple gate crash open and a shout from Yamashita. Then I made a last, desperate attempt to lurch out of range. My teacher shot across my line of vision and rammed into Tomita. But the younger man deflected him and continued to move in on me. Yamashita fell hard and collapsed in a heap. I heard the whistle of the sword as it arced down. It bit into me, and I could feel the tip bump across the ribs in my back.

I was down. I knew I should keep moving, but the impact of the cut was like a paralyzing jolt from a high tension line. For a brief second, I was shocked into stillness. Then Tomita was on me.

He must have dropped the sword. Maybe he lost his grip. Maybe it would have been too easy for him to finish me that way. I was slumped there, half-sitting, holding myself up with my left arm. The dying Gaul. He came up behind me and his arm circled my neck, snaking around from the left like a thick, steel cable. The other hand pushed against the right side of my head, forcing my neck against the arm.

It's a version of had aka jitne, a choke hold in judo. Very simple. Very deadly. When an opponent gets it in right, you have about three seconds before the pressure on your neck cuts off the flow of blood to your brain. After that, the world turns into blackness.

The only thing I had going for me was the fact that one of Tomita's hands was less than fully functional. I tried to squirm into a better position, but he was up against me from behind, and the cut in my back seemed to be limiting my ability to move.

I struggled against the pressure he was exerting. The vertebrae in my neck made little popping sounds as I tried to resist the force of the choke. I was desperate to work my chin and jawbone down below the choking arm to protect the neck. I couldn't get there. Then Tomita spoke in my ear.

"That night after the performance, I had hoped to finish this with your master, but you interfered. He escaped, and I will take his life soon. But you, Burke," he hissed, "he values you. I see this. And now I will take you from him. It will destroy him. You are beaten, Burke. Say it." He squeezed a little tighter. "Say it." His tone almost sounded like a giggle, except the voice was too raspy, too deadly serious. "Say it and I might let him live." He paused. "Then again, maybe I won't..."

Part of me was listening, but part of me was somewhere else as well. Yamashita had told me this gap would appear. Tomita's need for recognition. For dominance. He was playing with me, but it was important to him that I respond. I could feel the arm tighten slowly around my neck as he talked, building to a final, mighty squeeze, timed to end as his little speech did. He was expecting me to explode. It would be the reaction he needed. The acknowledgment he sought.