Sword of Honour by David Kirk Page A

see!’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘And you will follow me now?’
    Musashi would not answer that, or could not.
    ‘But you live,’ said Dorinbo, still smiling but less exultant, his expression altering. Something behind his eyes burning less bright, something liquid subliming, ‘You
live.’
    ‘I live.’
    ‘You live.’
    Repetition robbed it of its status as a word, and it became just a sound in which its emptiness was revealed.
    ‘Live.’
    ‘Live.’
    Dorinbo would be amongst the sick and the maimed, of course, those he had dedicated his life to helping. Those with the twisted bodies and the festering wounds, those that Dorinbo had tended
with selfless love. They stood around him like a bodyguard, looking at Musashi through eyes missing or misted with cataracts or weeping with rheum.
    ‘Here are the things that I have done, that I have bettered, that stand in testament to me,’ said his uncle.
    ‘I live’ was all Musashi could say, but he could not bring himself to speak it aloud, and yet Dorinbo heard it nonetheless and Musashi’s silent voice had the cadence of a
child.
    ‘You come to me and you live,’ said his uncle, and his smile now was sad and pitying.
    ‘I live,’ said Musashi, and through the mended horde he looked into the eyes of his uncle, who was much taller than he now, and there was no pride in them as there ought to
be.
    ‘You live, Bennosuke.’
    ‘I am Musashi.’
    ‘Can you name a thing of worth that stands in testament to that name?’
    Outside there were many lanterns now that roved back and forth clutched in hands, light seeping through the cracks of the planking, and the night was rent with furious cries
and the heavy thud of footsteps on the wood above him, and this went on for some time but never did Musashi feel as though he would be discovered. He was immune, cocooned away by the thoughts of
higher things that temporarily burdened him.
    For a moment a form of perspective struck him. He saw the segregated triumphs of this year for what they amounted to, felt the hard, sharp forms of rocks beneath him, and he wondered if,
somewhere out there, there was not a grander path he might walk with these same furious steps, if only it might reveal itself.
    Thusly the hours passed, and he drifted into some semblance of sleep thinking of Dorinbo, and yet, when he was awakened just before the dawn by Seigan prising the plank free once more, all doubt
was dismissed. There was only the flight to focus upon, another achievable challenge, and he thanked the priest, who did not bid him farewell, and then he was away, out of the town, running between
the paddy fields that erupted with the cries of frogs, and then up into the forests of the hills and safe once more.

Chapter Six
    The rainy season was coming, skies greying in the day but not yet the deep charcoal colour they would become, and through the night the first waters fell. Akiyama sat huddled
in a damp stable listening to the drone of it spattering on the thatched roof above. His horse was nearby and there was a humid taste of straw and dung in the air, lining his mouth.
    A feeble bracken fire burnt before him, and he stared at it sightlessly.
    He struggled to understand how it was Miyamoto had managed to escape him at that temple. The lure had been sound, pitifully easy to construct. The dojo had belonged to a school who were awed by
the colour of tea, had gratefully loaned him the use of their hall. They had even paid for the proclamations of the false seppuku to go out across their realm, so eager and excited were they that
they might witness the fabled Yoshioka technique with their own eyes.
    But Miyamoto had done what he had done, had chosen to run and to take the priest captive, and Akiyama had marched around that temple compound a score of times or more and verified its entirety,
had posted men at its every corner, and still somehow Miyamoto had eluded him, slipping through the lot of them in the night.
    Perhaps the outlaw had the