Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [349]
“Where?” cried the men nearest the tree.
“Behind you!” came the throat-splitting reply.
The musketeer had his weapon trained on Musashi’s head. While sparks from the fuse showered down, Musashi’s right elbow described an arc in the air. The rock he hurled hit the fuse squarely with terrific force. The musketeer’s scream mingled with the sound of cracking branches as he plunged to the ground.
In an instant Musashi’s name was on every man’s lips. Not one of them had taken the trouble to think the situation through, to imagine that he might devise a means of attacking the central corps first. Their confusion was all but total. In their rush to reorient themselves, the ten men bumped into each other, got their weapons tangled, tripped each other with their lances and otherwise displayed a perfect picture of disorder, all the while screaming at each other not to let Musashi escape.
Just as they sorted themselves out and began to form a semicircle, they were challenged: “I am Miyamoto Musashi, the son of Shimmen Munisai of Mimasaka Province. I have come in accordance with our agreement made the day before yesterday at Yanagimachi.
“Genjirō, are you there? I beg you not to be careless like Seijūrō and Denshichirō before you. I understand that, because of your youth, you have several score men to support you. I, Musashi, have come alone. Your men may attack individually or in a group, as they wish.
“Now, fight!”
Another total surprise: no one expected Musashi to deliver a formal challenge. Even those who would desperately have liked to reply in kind lacked the necessary composure.
“Musashi, you’re late!” cried a hoarse voice.
Many took encouragement from Musashi’s declaration that he was alone, but Genzaemon and Jūrōzaemon, believing it was a trick, started looking around for phantom seconds.
A loud twang off to one side was followed a split second later by the glint of Musashi’s sword flashing through the air. The arrow aimed at his face broke, half falling behind his shoulder, the other half near the tip of his lowered sword.
Or rather where his sword had just been, for Musashi was already on the move. His hair bristling like a lion’s mane, he was bounding toward the shadowy form behind the spreading pine.
Genjirō hugged the trunk, screaming, “Help! I’m scared!”
Genzaemon jumped forward, howling as though the blow had struck him, but he was too late. Musashi’s sword sliced a two-foot strip of bark off the trunk. It fell to the ground by Genjirō’s blood-covered head.
It was the act of a ferocious demon. Musashi, ignoring the others, had made straight for the boy. And it seemed he had had this in mind from the beginning.
The assault was of a savagery beyond conception. Genjirō’s death did not reduce the Yoshiokas’ fighting capacity in the slightest. What had been nervous excitement rose to the level of murderous frenzy.
“Beast!” screamed Genzaemon, face livid with grief and rage. He rushed headlong at Musashi, wielding a sword somewhat too heavy for a man of his age. Musashi shifted his right heel back a foot or so, leaned aside and struck upward, grazing Genzaemon’s elbow and face with the tip of his sword. It was impossible to tell who wailed, for at that moment a man attacking Musashi from the rear with a lance stumbled forward and fell on top of the old man. The next instant, a third swordsman coming from the front was sliced from shoulder to navel. His head sagged and his arms went limp as his legs carried his lifeless body forward a few more steps.
The other men near the tree screamed their lungs out, but the calls for help were lost in the wind and trees. Their comrades were too far away to hear and couldn’t have seen what happened even if they’d been looking toward the pine tree instead of watching the roads.
The spreading pine had been standing for hundreds of years. It had witnessed the retreat of the defeated Taira troops from Kyoto to Omi in the wars of the twelfth century. Innumerable were the times it had seen the warrior-priests