Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [63]
For another half day his arms remained folded over his breast as if locked. He feared something he couldn’t define and hesitated getting any closer to the stockade. Time and time again he upbraided himself. “I’ve lost my nerve. I never used to be this way. Maybe staring death in the face makes cowards out of everyone.”
He shook his head. No, it wasn’t that, not cowardice.
He had simply learned his lesson, the one Takuan had taken so much trouble to teach, and could now see things more clearly. He felt a new calm, a sense of peace. It seemed to flow in his breast like a gentle river. Being brave was very different from being ferocious; he saw that now. He didn’t feel like an animal, he felt like a man, a courageous man who’s outgrown his adolescent recklessness. The life that had been given to him was something to be treasured and cherished, polished and perfected.
He stared at the lovely clear sky, whose color alone seemed a miracle. Still, he could not leave his sister stranded, even if it meant violating, one last time, the precious self-knowledge he’d so recently and painfully acquired.
A plan began to take shape. “After nightfall, I’ll cross the valley and climb the cliff on the other side. The natural barrier may be a blessing in disguise; there’s no gate at the back, and it doesn’t seem heavily guarded.”
He had hardly arrived at this decision when an arrow whizzed toward him and thudded into the ground inches from his toes. Across the valley, he saw a crowd of people milling about just inside the stockade. Obviously they’d spotted him. Almost immediately they dispersed. He surmised it had been a test shot, to see how he’d react, and deliberately remained motionless upon his perch.
Before long, the light of the evening sun began to fade behind the peaks of the western mountains. Just before darkness dropped, he arose and picked up a rock. He had spotted his dinner flying in the air over his head. He downed the bird on the first try, tore it apart and sank his teeth into the warm flesh.
While he ate, twenty-odd soldiers moved noisily into position and surrounded him. Once in place, they let out a battle cry, one man shouting, “It’s Takezō! Takezō from Miyamoto!”
“He’s dangerous! Don’t underestimate him!” someone else warned.
Looking up from his feast of raw fowl, Takezō trained a murderous eye on his would-be captors. It was the same look animals flash when disturbed in the midst of a meal.
“Y-a-a-h-h!” he yelled, seizing a huge rock and hurling it at the perimeter of this human wall. The rock turned red with blood, and in no time he was over it and away, running straight toward the stockade gate.
The men were agape.
“What’s he doing?”
“Where’s the fool going?”
“He’s out of his mind!”
He flew like a crazed dragonfly, with the war-whooping soldiers in full chase. By the time they reached the outer gate, however, he’d already leapt over it. But now he was between the gates, in what was in fact a cage. Takezō’s eyes took in none of this. He could see neither the pursuing soldiers nor the fence, nor the guards inside the second gate. He wasn’t even conscious of knocking out, with a single blow, the sentinel who tried to jump him. With almost superhuman strength, he wrenched at a post of the inner gate, shaking it furiously till he was able to pull it out of the ground. Then he turned on his pursuers. He didn’t know their number; all he knew was that something big and black was attacking him. Taking aim as best he could, he struck at the amorphous mass with the gatepost. A good number of lances and swords broke, flew into the air and fell useless to the ground.
“Ogin!” cried Takezō, running toward the rear of the stockade. “Ogin, it’s me—Takezō!”
He glared at the buildings with fiery eyes, calling out repeatedly to his sister. “Has it all been a trick?” he wondered in panic. One by one he began