JIRO

IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME HE MADE IT BACK TO THE CAMP, VERY DARK, AND VERY COLD. The wind that sliced out of the north cut him down to the bone. Snow was falling, hard and heavy, a constant stream, and he couldn't stop shivering. He had a vague memory of his winter clothes, piled on the deck of a boat, the eastern cliffs of the temple looming up above him. He would've given anything for that coat, those gloves, just then, anything at all. His very pride would have been forfeit, if someone had only offered him a fire.

Which didn't mean all that much, he had to admit to himself. Pride had never been very important to him. Only power was important, power and success.

And right now, I have neither…

And it all started out so well, too…

The camp was practically deserted, the only signs of life the occasional peasant, picking through what remained. Once, he would have killed every last one of them, purely on principle, if for nothing else, but now, he ignored them. His men, his army, had been shattered, the survivors no doubt scattering to the winds, running for their lives. Whatever they had left behind was forfeit now; let the scavengers have their day.

After all, he was alive. That was what was important. He was alive, and he still had a chance. For what, he didn't quite know yet, but it would come to him.

He was Matsuura Jiro. If anyone could come back from this, it would be him. Just because he had lost, didn't mean he was beaten.

No, he promised himself, as he began rummaging around in what had once been his own tent, I'm not beaten yet. I refuse to give in. I will go down fighting, if only because I can.

It is, after all, in my nature to do so.

It took him awhile, but he eventually found what he needed, peeling off his armor and replacing it with heavy winter clothes. He even found some money, and scrounged up some food. He ate the food cold, not bothering to light a fire. He was sure it tasted awful, but he couldn't tell. He needed fuel; anything beyond that was extravagance.

There was still one thing left to do, though.

For some reason he couldn't quite fathom, he wasn't the least bit surprised to find Kojima still there. He found the man sitting before a strong fire, eyes closed, smoking a cigarette and humming a jaunty little tune. Lined up outside of what remained of the hut Jiro had had him locked up in, were what looked like thirty bodies, covered in blankets and rapidly disappearing beneath the snow. Jiro looked to the bodies, to the shattered hut, to Kojima, to the fire, back again, and started to laugh.

It seemed the most appropriate response.

Even Kojima seemed to think so. He stopped humming, tossed his current cigarette into the fire, his lips quirking up into a strange little grin as he lit a new cigarette with a burning twig plucked from the blaze. Chuckling, low and deep in the back of his throat, Kojima spoke, in a voice that trembled with amusement.

"Good evening, my lord."

Jiro shook his head. He walked over to the bodies, poked around until he found a sword that was still intact, a sword that he attached to his own belt, all the while, laughing.

"Good evening, yourself, Kojima. I can't say that I'm shocked to see you here."

Kojima nodded, pursing his lips as if in serious thought. "I would consider that a compliment, my lord, were it not for the fact that very little surprises you."

Jiro nodded, walking over to the fire, holding his gloved hands out to the warmth. The heat that seeped into his blood made him want to sob with relief. His body, his very soul, drank in the life of the fire, bathing in Agni's gift. "You know, I used to think that, too. I'm not so sure anymore."

Kojima shrugged, his eyes still closed. "Such is life, my lord. It has a way of throwing us for a loop."

Jiro concentrated on the fire, reveling in the warmth that was just short of delicious. "You know, seeing as you're still here, I'm going to have to kill you."

Kojima sighed. "So I expected."

"So…why are you still here? Why didn't you run when you had the chance? After all," he rolled his head towards the direction of the shattered hut, "I imagine that someone came and gave you an offer."

Kojima just shook his head. "They did. The most incredible young girl, only sixteen-years-old, if you can believe it. Born the only child of illiterate herders at the bottom of the world, barely able to even write her own name until she was twelve, and yet, she's going to change the world." He frowned, his shoulders slumping in resignation. "That, or shatter it to pieces. Or, even worse, return it to the way it was. Either way," another shrug, "the die has been cast. It's in the hands of the gods now."

"I don't think that even they have control over things at this point," Jiro observed, rubbing his hands together, working his fingers, grimacing as the blood began to flow once more. "Still…that doesn't answer my question."

Kojima scoffed. "I'm sure you have many questions, my lord."

Jiro acknowledged that with a thoughtful nod. "I do. For example…why? Why have you done what you've done? Who're you working for?"

Without saying a word, Kojima reached inside his coat, plucked something out, and tossed it to Jiro. Jiro caught it, held it up, leaned in, turned the thing this way and that, trying to puzzle out what it meant. I don't understand. It was nothing more than a Pai Sho tile, the white lotus piece, and a rather beaten and battered tile at that.

It meant less than nothing to Jiro.

"The fuck is this?" he asked.

Kojima smiled, a real smile, like normal people were capable of. For the first time in a long time, Jiro was completely shocked, and utterly lost. I didn't know he had it in him.

"That, my lord," Kojima said, in a strange, sing-song sort of voice, "will become clear, in time. For now, though, I would just imprint that image in your mind, and toss it into the fire."

That, Jiro did. It seemed the only sensible thing to do.

"Now," Kojima continued, as if they were just old men, sitting on a porch and talking about the weather, "as to your original question…why did I stay? Why am I calmly sitting here, awaiting my death, when it would be a simple matter, in your current condition, to tear you limb-from-limb? Well, that's simple, really: Because you're done, and I wanted to tell you that."

Jiro turned from the fire, walked calmly until he was behind Kojima, drawing his borrowed katana from its scabbard. "That's impossible, and you know it. I'm not done until I'm dead."

Kojima giggled. Somehow, that unsettled Jiro more than anything else. "Oh, my lord, I'm afraid you're wrong. You are completely and utterly done. It's only a matter of time. You will spend the rest of your miserable life trying to grasp at the phantoms that will be all that is left of the power you so ruthlessly and painstakingly gathered. In the end, you have accomplished nothing, other than bring about your own demise. You will be little more than a footnote, one of history's cautionary tales."

Jiro grasped the katana, waving it to-and-fro, getting a feel for its weight and its heft. "You won't be remembered at all."

Kojima scoffed. "That, my lord, will be a mercy. Monsters like us should be forgotten, the quicker, the better. But, at least I get this last, final vengeance."

"How so?"

Jiro couldn't see the man's face, though he wanted to. Kojima was little more than a silhouette against the flames now, a shadow, flickering in the darkness.

"Simple: Because you will never forget this moment. You're going to ask me a final question, and I will answer you. You will think you have finally won, achieved a true victory in the midst of your day of defeat. You will comfort yourself in believing that you mastered at least one person, one soul, and bound it to bend to your will. And then, maybe today, maybe next week, it will all click, and you will realize that, even when everything was in your favor, you were master of nothing. And then, you will march to the fate that awaits all tyrants, never understanding why."

Jiro shook his head. He didn't want to believe any of this, so he simply chose not to. He was incapable of anything else. He knew this, even as he did nothing about it.

"You're insane, Kojima."

Kojima laughed. "That's not my name."

Jiro raised the sword, tensed his body for the final blow. "Fine, then. What is?"

Kojima didn't even hesitate to answer.

"Kuwabatake Sanjuro."

Jiro smiled.

"Thank you, Kuwabatake-san."

And with that, he struck the head of the lackey who was never a lackey clean from his neck with one stroke.

He was saddling an ostrich-horse that he had found munching hay in what remained of the stables when something occurred to him. Following an instinct that he couldn't quite identify, he turned, found one of the scavengers who was picking through the remains of his hopes and dreams. "You there," he said, in Hangugeo, hoping the peasant understood it.

The peasant frowned, shrugging his shoulders. "Maybe Putonghua?" the man said, flashing a mouth that was missing a few teeth.

Jiro waved a hand around, encompassing the area. "What is this place? Or, what was this place before?"

The man scratched his head, looking a bit confused. "Well…um…truth be told, this used to be my farm. That hut," he pointed back to where Kuwabatake had been held, "was actually my house."

Jiro nodded. Something was prickling at the back of his mind, something he desperately had to see, even though he wasn't entirely sure that he should. "I see…what did you grow here?"

The man turned to one of the other scavengers, a woman whom Jiro could only assume was the man's wife. The woman looked up, shrugged, returned to her search. Turning back to Jiro, the man shrugged once more, in that way that only peasants truly can, and said, "Why, barley, if you must know, sir."

Jiro looked at the man, looked deep into his eyes, and realized, with a shock, that the man was telling the truth. He realized this, right about the time that he realized that the man was about thirty-or-so years old.

Jiro didn't do a thing to the man. He merely got up into his saddle, turned the ostrich-horse towards the southeast, and rode away.

It was a long time before he stopped laughing.

There's going to come a point, later in this book, that you're going to want to come back and re-read this, and wonder if Kojima was working some kind of very unique, very special spell. There's definitely going to be an element of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane going on later. Keep that in mind.

For those playing the home game, I just worked in a very convoluted Yojimbo reference. Yojimbo, for those not in the know, is an old Akira Kurosawa movie, and an excellent one at that. It's the movie that A Fistful of Dollars is a remake of, and by remake, I mean that Sergio Leone pretty much stole Yojimbo shot-for-shot. In Yojimbo, Toshiro Mifune plays, in essence, a samurai with no name, who, at one point, gives his name as Kuwabatake Sanjuro, the meaning of which should now be pretty obvious.

Moving on! In the next chapter, Sokka wakes up. Stay tuned!