Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [348]
He was appalled. Without thinking, without remembering his years of training and self-discipline, he had been on the brink of begging for supernatural assistance. Something was wrong, for deep down he knew that the samurai’s true ally was not the gods but death itself. Last night and earlier this morning, he had felt confident that he had come to terms with his fate. And yet, there he was within a hairbreadth of forgetting all he had ever learned, beseeching aid from the deity. Head drooped in shame, he stood there like a rock.
“What a fool I am! I thought I’d achieved purity and enlightenment, but there is still, within me, something that longs to go on living. Some delusion stirring up thoughts of Otsū or my sister. Some false hope leading me to clutch at any straw. A diabolical yearning, causing me to forget myself, tempting me to pray to the gods for help.”
He was disgusted, exasperated, with his body, with his soul, with his failure to master the Way. The tears he had held back in Otsū’s presence poured from his eyes.
“It was all unconscious. I had no intention of praying, hadn’t even thought of what I was going to pray for. But if I’m doing things unconsciously, that makes it all the worse.”
Racked by doubt, he felt foolish and inadequate. Had he ever had the ability to become a warrior in the first place? If he had achieved the state of calm he had aspired to, there should have been no need, not even a subconscious need, for prayers or supplications. In one shattering moment, only minutes before the battle, he had discovered in his heart the true seeds of defeat. It was impossible now to regard his approaching death as the culmination of a samurai’s life!
In the next breath a surge of gratitude swept over him. The presence and magnanimity of the deity enveloped him. The battle had not yet begun; the real test still lay before him. He had been warned in time. By recognizing his failure, he had overcome it. Doubt vanished; the deity had guided him to this place to teach him this.
While believing sincerely in the gods, he did not consider it the Way of the Samurai to seek their aid. The Way was an ultimate truth transcending gods and Buddhas. Stepping back a pace, he folded his hands and, rather than ask for protection, thanked the gods for their timely help.
After a quick bow, he hurried out of the shrine compound and down the narrow, steep path, the sort of path which a heavy downpour would quickly convert into a rushing stream. Pebbles and brittle clumps of dirt tumbled down at his heels, breaking the silence. When the spreading pine came into view again, he leaped off the path and crouched in the bushes. Not a drop of dew had yet fallen from the leaves, and his knees and chest were soon drenched. The pine tree was no more than forty or fifty paces below him. He could see the man with the musket in its branches.
His anger flashed. “Cowards!” he said, almost out loud. “All this against one man.”
In a way he felt a little sorry for an enemy who had to go to such extremes. Still, he had expected something like this and was, insofar as possible, prepared for it. Since they would naturally assume that he was not alone, prudence would dictate that they have at least one flying weapon, and probably more. If they were also using short bows, the archers were probably hidden behind rocks or on lower ground.
Musashi had one great advantage: both the man in the tree and the men underneath it had their backs to him. Stooping so low that the hilt of his sword rose above his head, he crept, almost crawled, forward. Then he covered about twenty paces at a dead run.
The musketeer twisted his head around, spotted him and shouted, “There he is!”
Musashi ran on another ten paces, knowing