Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [17]
As the child of nature became a man, he grew bored with swaggering about the village as though he owned it. It was too easy to intimidate the timid villagers. He began to dream of bigger things. Sekigahara had given him his first lesson in what the world was really like. His youthful illusions were shattered—not that he’d really had many to begin with. It would never have occurred to him to brood over having failed in his first “real” venture, or to muse on the grimness of the future. He didn’t yet know the meaning of self-discipline, and he’d taken the whole bloody catastrophe in stride.
And now, fortuitously, he’d stumbled onto a really big fish—Tsujikaze Temma, the leader of the freebooters! This was the kind of adversary he had longed to lock horns with at Sekigahara.
“Coward!” he yelled. “Stand and fight!”
Takezō was running like lightning through the pitch-black field, shouting taunts all the while. Ten paces ahead, Temma was fleeing as if on wings. Takezō’s hair was literally on end, and the wind made a groaning noise as it swept past his ears. He was happy—happier than he’d ever been in his life. The more he ran, the closer he came to sheer animal ecstasy.
He leapt at Temma’s back. Blood spurted out at the end of the wooden sword, and a bloodcurdling scream pierced the silent night. The freebooter’s hulking frame fell to the ground with a leaden thud and rolled over. The skull was smashed to bits, the eyes popped out of their sockets. After two or three more heavy blows to the body, broken ribs protruded from the skin.
Takezō raised his arm, wiping rivers of sweat from his brow.
“Satisfied, Captain?” he asked triumphantly.
He started nonchalantly back toward the house. An observer new on the scene might have thought him out for an evening stroll, with not a care in the world. He felt free, no remorse, knowing that if the other man had won, he himself would be lying there, dead and alone.
Out of the darkness came Matahachi’s voice. “Takezō, is that you?” “Yeah,” he replied dully. “What’s up?”
Matahachi ran up to him and announced breathlessly, “I killed one! How about you?”
“I killed one too.”
Matahachi held up his sword, soaked in blood right down to the braiding on the hilt. Squaring his shoulders with pride, he said, “The others ran away. These thieving bastards aren’t much as fighters! No guts! Can only stand up to corpses, ha! Real even match, I’d say, ha, ha, ha.”
Both of them were stained with gore and as contented as a pair of well-fed kittens. Chattering happily, they headed for the lamp visible in the distance, Takezō with his bloody stick, Matahachi with his bloody sword.
A stray horse stuck his head through the window and looked around the house. His snorting woke the two sleepers. Cursing the animal, Takezō gave him a smart slap on the nose. Matahachi stretched, yawned and remarked on how well he’d slept.
“The sun’s pretty high already,” said Takezō.
“You suppose it’s afternoon?”
“Couldn’t be!”
After a sound sleep, the events of the night before were all but forgotten. For these two, only today and tomorrow existed.
Takezō ran out behind the house and stripped to the waist. Crouching down beside the clean, cool mountain stream, he splashed water on his face, doused his hair and washed his chest and back. Looking up, he inhaled deeply several times, as though trying to drink in the sunlight and all the air in the sky. Matahachi went sleepily into the hearth room, where he bid a cheery good morning to Okō and Akemi.
“Why, what are you two charming ladies wearing sour pusses for?” “Are we?”
“Yes, most definitely. You look like you’re both in mourning. What’s there to be gloomy about? We killed your husband’s murderer and gave his henchmen a beating they won’t soon forget.”
Matahachi’s dismay was not hard to fathom. He thought the widow and her daughter would be overjoyed at news of Temma’s death. Indeed, the night before, Akemi had clapped her hands with glee when she first heard about it. But Okō had looked uneasy from the first, and today,