Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [107]
“Next,” he called, reverting to his original position.
That was all: the challenger was finished. While he did not appear to be dead yet, the simple act of lifting his head from the floor was more than he could manage. A couple of the student-priests went out and dragged him back by the sleeves and waist of his kimono. On the floor behind him stretched a thread of saliva mixed with blood.
“Next!” shouted the priest again, as surly as ever.
At first Musashi thought he was the second-generation master Inshun, but the men sitting around him said no, he was Agon, one of the senior disciples who were known as the “Seven Pillars of the Hōzōin.” Inshun himself, they said, never had to engage in a bout, because challengers were always put down by one of these.
“Is there no one else?” bellowed Agon, now holding his practice lance horizontally.
The brawny steward was comparing his registry with the faces of the waiting men. He pointed at one.
“No, not today…. I’ll come again some other time.”
“How about you?”
“No. I don’t feel quite up to it today.”
One by one they backed out, until Musashi saw the finger pointing at him. “How about you?”
“If you please.”
” ‘If you please’? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’d like to fight.”
All eyes focused on Musashi as he rose. The haughty Agon had retired from the floor and was talking and laughing animatedly with a group of priests, but when it appeared that another challenger had been found, a bored look came over his face, and he said lazily, “Somebody take over for me.”
“Go ahead,” they urged. “There’s only one more.”
Giving in, Agon walked nonchalantly back to the center of the floor. He took a fresh grip on the shiny black wooden pole, with which he seemed totally familiar. In quick order, he assumed an attacking stance, turned his back on Musashi, and charged off in the other direction.
“Yah-h-h-h!” Screaming like an enraged roc, he hurtled toward the back wall and thrust his lance viciously into a section used for practice purposes. The boards had been recently replaced, but despite the resilience of the new wood, Agon’s bladeless lance plowed straight through.
“Yow-w-w!” His grotesque scream of triumph reverberated through the hall as he disengaged the lance and started to dance, rather than walk, back toward Musashi, steam rising from his muscle-bound body. Taking a stance some distance away, he glared at his latest challenger ferociously. Musashi had come forward with only his wooden sword and now stood quite still, looking a little surprised.
“Ready!” cried Agon.
A dry laugh was heard outside the window, and a voice said, “Agon, don’t be a fool! Look, you stupid oaf, look! That’s not a board you’re about to take on.”
Without relaxing his stance, Agon looked toward the window. “Who’s there?” he bellowed.
The laughter continued, and then there came into view above the windowsill, as though it had been hung there by an antique dealer, a shiny pate and a pair of snow-white eyebrows.
“It won’t do you any good, Agon. Not this time. Let the man wait until the day after tomorrow, when Inshun returns.”
Musashi, who had also turned his head toward the window, saw that the face belonged to the old man he had seen on his way to the Hōzōin, but no sooner had he realized this than the head disappeared.
Agon heeded the old man’s warning to the extent of relaxing his hold on his weapon, but the minute his eyes met Musashi’s again, he swore in the direction of the now empty window—and ignored the advice he had received.
As Agon tightened his grip on his lance, Musashi asked, for the sake of form, “Are you ready now?”
This solicitude drove Agon wild. His muscles were like steel, and when he jumped, he did so with awesome lightness. His feet seemed to be on the floor