Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [143]
No more sand sailed through the air. Jōtarō had disappeared. Gusts of wind whistled down from the peak of Mount Kasagi; tightly held swords glinted luminescently.
One against four, yet Musashi felt himself at no great disadvantage. He was conscious of a swelling in his veins. At times like this, the idea of dying is said to assert itself in the mind, but Musashi had no thought of death. At the same time, he felt no certainty of his ability to win.
The wind seemed to blow through his head, cooling his brain, clearing his vision, though his body was growing sticky, and beads of oily sweat glistened on his forehead.
There was a faint rustle. Like a beetle’s antennae, Musashi’s sword told him that the man on his left had moved his foot an inch or two. He made the necessary adjustment in the position of his weapon, and the enemy, also perceptive, made no further move to attack. The five formed a seemingly static tableau.
Musashi was aware that the longer this continued, the less advantageous it was for him. He would have liked somehow to have his opponents not around him but stretched out in a straight line—to take them on one by one—but he was not dealing with amateurs. The fact was that until one of them shifted of his own accord, Musashi could make no move. All he could do was wait and hope that eventually one would make a momentary misstep and give him an opening.
His adversaries took little comfort from their superiority in numbers. They knew that at the slightest sign of a relaxed attitude on the part of any one of them, Musashi would strike. Here, they understood, was the type of man that one did not ordinarily encounter in this world.
Even Kizaemon could make no move. “What a strange man!” he thought to himself.
Swords, men, earth, sky—everything seemed to have frozen solid. But then into this stillness came a totally unexpected sound, the sound of a flute, wafted by the wind.
As the melody stole into Musashi’s ears, he forgot himself, forgot the enemy, forgot about life and death. Deep in the recesses of his mind, he knew this sound, for it was the one that had enticed him out of hiding on Mount Takateru—the sound that had delivered him into the hands of Takuan. It was Otsū’s flute, and it was Otsū playing it.
He went limp inside. Externally, the change was barely perceptible, but that was enough. With a battle cry rising from his loins, Kimura lunged forward, his sword arm seeming to stretch out six or seven feet.
Musashi’s muscles tensed, and the blood seemed to rush through him toward a state of hemorrhage. He was sure he had been cut. His left sleeve was rent from shoulder to wrist, and the sudden exposure of his arm made him think the flesh had been cut open.
For once, his self-possession left him and he screamed out the name of the god of war. He leaped, turned suddenly, and saw Kimura stumble toward the place where he himself had been standing.
“Musashi!” shouted Debuchi Magobei.
“You talk better than you fight!” taunted Murata, as he and Kizaemon scrambled to head Musashi off.
But Musashi gave the earth a powerful kick and sprang high enough to brush against the lower branches of the pine trees. Then he leaped again and again, and off he flew into the darkness, never looking back.
“Coward!”
“Musashi!”
“Fight like a man!”
When Musashi reached the edge of the moat around the inner castle, there was a cracking of twigs, and then silence. The only sound was the sweet melody of the flute in the distance.
The Nightingales
There was no way of knowing how much stagnant rainwater might be at the bottom of the thirty-foot moat. After diving into the hedge near the top and rapidly sliding halfway down, Musashi stopped and threw a rock. Hearing no splash, he leapt to the bottom, where he lay down on his back in the grass, not making a sound.
After a time his ribs stopped heaving and his pulse returned to normal. As the sweat cooled, he began to breathe