Chapter Seven: Lessons in Swordplay
To my relief, the lessons in flirtation were considered enough of a disaster by all parties that they were not repeated. Shingen survived his week without dessert, but not without a few vague martyred sighs every time Yuki or I came into his presence. My life was getting busier at Kasugayama anyway, so there wouldn't have been time for another life lesson, even if anyone had been interested.
Mornings were given over to training. Since I rarely stayed asleep past sunrise, I used the earliest time of the day to keep up my archery skills. Sometimes Yoshimoto would appear and practice as well, but usually I had the field to myself, and, even when he was there, we both worked in silence. It was a relaxing way to begin the day, to stand and focus on nothing but the target in the distance, the twang of string and whoosh-thump of the arrows reaching their mark.
This was followed by the least relaxing part of the day – fighting skills. Thanks to Kenshin deciding kill me on a regular basis, I began to improve my technique. At least a little. I had been inspired to practice more, often slipping away during the nightly gatherings to head for the training room. There, I would go through katas repeatedly. While I wasn't interested in becoming an accomplished samurai, or even a ninja like Sasuke, I was interested in being stabbed less often. Bamboo swords aren't lethal, but they still leave a mark. I was currently sporting more bruises than I'd ever had in my life, and that's saying something given how banged up I got snowboarding.
In between training, there was the daily message round in the castle town. I learned the fastest and most efficient ways to do these deliveries, also memorizing the dead-ends and blind alleys, and even, a couple of afternoons, took the time to see how far I could get across the town via rooftop. Mostly that was simply for fun, but maybe someday such information would come in handy.
Privately, I continued an investigation into the origins of the sniper. Though Shingen had his own vast network of spies, I followed up on the little things that I could. I had spent an afternoon with a local gunsmith, studying imported muskets as well as learning the subtle differences between the guns manufactured in places like Sakai, Yokkaichi and Kunitomo. Maybe I couldn't learn where the sniper came from, but I could at least figure out where his gun was made. That would be tomorrow's task, if Shingen would allow me to examine the sniper's confiscated musket.
For tonight, though, I had made my regular escape to the quiet training room. The repetitions of rising and falling, stepping forward and back, and striking horizontally, vertically, and diagonally were starting to feel as natural as breathing. Until coming to Kasugayama, I hadn't found the same meditative focus in swordsmanship that I did in archery, but my nighttime practice sessions, though not yet paying off in my sparring, were becoming a comforting ritual.
A familiar beat of footsteps in the corridor alerted me moments before my solitude was interrupted. I glanced to the doorway, as Shingen slid it open. Tonight, he was without his regular arm candy.
"This is where you sneak off to every night?" He joined me in the training room. "I had hopes that you used my example as inspiration and were involved in a romantic intrigue."
"I'll be a vast disappointment to you in that respect," I said, trying to keep my mind focused on the exercise. "There's not enough time in the day."
"That's what night is for. And early morning." There was a smile on his face that I didn't care to contemplate. Then he gave me a look that could almost be interpreted as fatherly. "I have noticed you're looking a bit tired. Am I working you too hard?"
He hadn't given me much to do at all – I still had the feeling that he'd just been finding things for me to do out of pity.
"Not at all. I like work. It's when I add in all the time spent keeping up my archery skills, and doing this that it starts to pile up." What wasn't worth mentioning was that the bigger issue was that I always had trouble sleeping, even in the best of circumstances.
He crouched to observe me from another angle, and I realized he planned to stick around for a while. I was one part annoyed to have my peace and quiet disturbed, and one part thrilled to be the beneficiary of his attention.
"There's no need to spend all your spare time training," said the man who I had noticed played and worked harder than anyone I had ever met.
"I do want to improve. Then maybe the morning training sessions will be less embarrassing." If the morning sparring sessions had been run like a school gym class, I would be the kid picked last every time (even after the kid who eats glue).
He watched me repeat a series of katas. It felt slightly awkward to be so closely observed when it was only the two of us in the room, but eventually I was able to shut out his distracting presence and concentrate on the feeling of the movement, until he asked, "When you do those are you visualizing where your opponent is in the space?"
"Er. No." I'd been enjoying it more as a meditative practice, but I had improved, I could feel it in my body, the same way I had felt it when I mastered an acrobatic skill or a snowboarding trick. So what was the problem?
"Your form is strong, but you're moving more like it's a dance, instead of a fight." He picked up a bamboo sword and performed a simple left, right, downward strike pattern, with perfect and graceful technique. The marriage of his form with the movement of his body did call to mind the refinement of a ballet dancer, and I filed that image away in my head to daydream over later.
Then that image was nearly erased when he repeated the same pattern, at the same speed, but with a fierce look on his face and animosity oozing from every pore. If there had been an invisible opponent, that opponent was now decapitated, disemboweled, and bleeding all over the floor.
I wondered who he had been visualizing.
"It's not your skills, it's your mindset." He suddenly came at me with the sword.
Yikes!
Automatically, I defended myself, parrying several strikes, then used my smaller size and greater mobility to spin out of the way. Then I stepped back and paused to wait for him to attack again.
"And that," he said, coming toward me faster and with more force, "is where you made your mistake. Why didn't you attack when you had the chance?" And then with a hard cut, my sword was slapped out of my hand and skittered across the floor. "Is this still about the sniper?"
"Not exactly." Although, I didn't want to have to kill anyone else. "My thought process has always been to defend myself, escape, then run like hell." I had skipped the escape and run like hell portion, because I figured he wouldn't kill me. At least not with a bamboo sword.
"If that is all you want, your skills are adequate. But until you learn how to attack, that's all you'll ever be able to do." Shingen picked up my sword and tossed it to me. "Attack me."
I rushed forward to attack, then stopped, unable to move.
Balk!
Seeing me basically frozen there, Shingen lightly thunked his palm across my forehead.
"See. It's all up here." He rushed me again, and I hastily batted away his strike. "Kenshin can teach you technique, but he can't help you with your thoughts, because he doesn't understand not having the will to attack. He lives for it."
Again, his strikes came faster and faster – I was playing defense, successfully for certain, but hadn't tried to turn the advantage my way. "And so now that's your job? To get into my head?" I've already got an entire Greek chorus in there; I do not need one more voice throwing off the harmonies.
"You're the one spending all your extra time trying to improve your skills. For what purpose?" And slam! Once again my sword went flying across the room. "What is your 'why'?"
"To improve." He looked confused, and I guess this was the clash of the modern mind against the feudal. I tried to explain further. "I like pushing myself to do things that I couldn't do before."
"Interesting," was all he said about that. By which I understood to mean, 'ridiculous.' "Therefore, think of 'attack' as a new skill to acquire." He put his sword aside. "Do you have the same reluctance to attack when it's empty handed striking?"
I considered that. Even though hand to hand combat could be as dangerous as weapons, it felt more like sport. "I suppose not."
"Good," was all that he said before he advanced on me, hands moving as fast as the sword had been moments before.
Once again, my brain went "yikes!" but with hand-to-hand it was easier to lose myself in the rhythm of battle. Perhaps I wasn't supposed to think of it as a dance, but … it felt like one. If I focused on the sound of his body as it moved through space, I could anticipate where the hit was coming from – and move out of range.
"You're still not attacking," he said, as his hand ended up where I wasn't.
"I will." This time playing defense was practicality, not reluctance. He was taller and stronger and I needed to find a strategy to overcome that. If I attacked too soon, it would be all over. My toes gripped the comforting straw on the mat, poised to launch myself away from the next –
Ah ha… he was taller. I was faster.
He was stronger, but I was more agile.
He still had the advantage of strength, but after learning to be where he was not, I was able to time my attacks to where he was heading.
For a short while, I even may have had a slight advantage.
It didn't last. Once he realized what my strategy was, he adjusted his own, faking me out with a quick eye movement to the left of me. When I kicked toward where I expected his shoulder to be, I suddenly found myself on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
The ceiling was blocked by Shingen staring down at me. "Good work," he said. At least he seemed somewhat out of breath, so perhaps I had made him work for that victory.
"Thank you."
"Want a hand up?" He reached toward me.
"No. I'm going to stay down here and ponder my existence for a while. Perhaps I am more suited for a peaceful life of religious contemplation." It was quite comfortable on the floor, and I realized after all that work that my muscles had turned to noodles. Probably it was the work, and not his nearness. Probably.
He let out a short bark of laughter, then plopped down on the floor too. "First, there are never any answers in the ceiling." He lay back and looked up at the ceiling. "Maybe a spider."
"And possibly a ninja," I said, which earned me a quick grin.
"And secondly, you're too insubordinate for a life of religious contemplation." That was more than likely true. Hm, he was also right about the spider on the ceiling. I watched it make its way to the corner, where it had a web in progress.
We had slid into a companionable silence, both still a bit out of breath and sweaty from the exercise. But gradually, I became aware that he was lying right next to me. Ok, not right next me. He was lying on the floor. I was lying on the floor. There was at least a meter of empty space between my body and his.
Yet if I reached toward him, I might possibly be able to touch his hand…
I crossed my arms and stuck them behind my head.
Still, aside from the whole temptation to napalm my charade, it was … well it was nice to lie here quietly. The evening air had cooled the room down, the tatami mat had a comfortable give under my back, and slightly audible sound from the drinking party in the other room buzzed like a white noise machine. There was something soothing, almost ASMR about the atmosphere.
Closing my eyes, I relaxed into the softness. It wasn't like falling asleep – although my eyes were closed, I was the opposite of asleep, hyperaware of everything, from the sound of Shingen's breathing nearby, the weight of my head pressing my arms into the floor, even the spider spinning its web in the corner. And thus, sensing that Shingen was getting ready to stir, and take himself elsewhere for the night, I spoke up, hoping to prolong the moment with conversation.
"I spent this afternoon at Kinshiro's shop."
"The gunsmith outside the town? Why?" There was a rustle and soft groan – the sound a person makes when they move and discover previously unknown sore muscle. Shingen had sat up.
Out of politeness, I opened my eyes and sat up too as I explained how I'd taken a crash course in weapons identification (#CSISengoku). "Maybe if I looked at the sniper's weapon, I could figure out where it came from?"
"I already had it examined. It came from the Kunitomo village gunsmiths, although the individual craftsman is unknown."
"Oh."
And it had seemed like such a good idea. Shingen followed the direction of my thoughts. "Don't sound so disappointed. You had the correct strategy. I simply arrived at it first. If you'd come to me and asked, I would have told you to spare your effort – but I expect you'll figure out how to put that new knowledge to work sooner or later."
"I don't suppose it would be useful for me to go to Kunitomo?" The gun manufacturing operation there armed most of the country. Finding the purchaser of one single gun seemed unlikely.
"No. Too many people use Kunitomo forged weapons." I noticed his fists were clenched, veins ridging the tops of his hands and his arm muscles stood out in sharp focus. "Oda used thousands of them against me at Nagashino."
The Battle of Nagashino had occurred right around the time that Toshiie and I had landed here, although at the time, I was too busy adjusting to my new circumstances (to say that my digestive system had rebelled against the Sengoku diet would be a massive understatement) to pay attention to what was going on outside of the environs of Aki's manor.
I found myself going back to our previous conversation. "Is that your why? Revenge?" Occasionally, it seemed like I was getting little glimpses of what he hid behind that affable façade, and that only made me want to know more. He reminded me of that burr puzzle that I had yet to successfully complete – looks simple on the outside, yet deceptively complicated on the inside.
"Not revenge, although I would welcome the opportunity for that as well. The lands should be in the hands of someone who knows how to care for it, and its people. They should not be used to feed the ambition of someone like Nobunaga who would only waste its resources." Underneath the care for his people, I could feel an anger that I imagined would flatten everything in the vicinity, if he unleashed it. "Many were displaced, have lost their homes. I will change that if I am able. And those responsible should pay."
"But what if making those responsible pay ends up costing more people's lives and homes? When does it stop?" I understood fighting to make things better. But I'd also seen the cost, usually to those people who had nothing they could afford to lose. People who didn't care who was ruling them, because they were more concerned with feeding their families.
"It stops when the aggressors turn back and return what they've stolen. And then we rebuild." His posture was tight and immovable. "You seem to have led a nomadic life – you can't understand what it is like to be displaced. Kenshin has welcomed us, but in truth, we are refugees."
Like hell I don't understand what it's like to be a refugee. Try being tossed five hundred years into the past, then separated from your only living family. I hadn't simply lost my home and my brother. I had lost everything familiar. I had lost my identity.
"Not understand? My brother and I lost our home because of a storm – my nomadic life, as you call it, was not my choice." I'm used to trying to make the best out of things, and I didn't realize how angry I still felt about it until the words came out of my mouth. Angry, …and powerless. "But it's impossible to get revenge on the weather."
He was quiet for a long moment, his head bowed and looking at his hands, but seeing- I don't know what he was seeing. This time it was not at all a comfortable silence.
"No. There's no fighting fate," Shingen agreed, and there was an edge of bitterness to his tone that cut sharply and painfully into my senses. It was as if my pain, and whatever it was he was mourning had united. But instead of bringing us together in understanding, they created a chasm, the bottom of which was littered with invisible snares. Well, Katsuko, you were curious to know what was behind the façade. Can't complain when you step on a land mine.
Finally, he looked over at me, his expression still bleak. "Katsu, is that the thing you want, then? Your family? A home that no longer exists?"
"I want to find my brother. After that… I don't know what happens after that. I've not thought about it. I guess I don't exactly know what I want." With a nomadic life, as it were, sometimes it was enough simply to survive.
He seemed to get a grip on whatever it was that was gnawing at him. He stood up. "Then it's time you figured it out." He thumped me on the back, then left me alone with the dawning realization that I wanted…
I wanted.
I took a deep breath.
Oh.
A bath.
Yes. What I really wanted was a bath.
The inability to have a bath had been slowly driving me insane. As a lowly courier, I wasn't at the level where I could order up a bath to my room, and for obvious reasons, I couldn't use Kasugayama's bath house, or even the public bath house in town. I had been managing to keep clean enough by ruthlessly scrubbing myself with soap and a stone and a rough cloth, using water from the washbowl in my room – but that was a tedious way to wash my hair. It always felt like there was a layer of dried soap on me, because by the time I got to rinsing, the water was full of suds.
Out of desperation, I went to Mai for help, hoping that she would be willing to stand lookout for me if I went to the bath house, either late at night or early in the morning. Kenshin was currently out of the castle visiting nearby Daimyo, so her helping me wouldn't even be taking up their normal "alone time." Unfortunately, that wasn't a viable solution.
"Kenshin would be upset if left I my room in the middle of the night… he posts guards at my door, so he'd find out." I bit my lip to avoid giving her my opinion of that, but she caught a look at my face and quickly added, "To protect me."
"You can't tell him you're helping out a female friend with a problem?"
She didn't look directly at me. "It wouldn't matter. He once got jealous of a stuffed toy rabbit I made. I hugged it too much."
Mai, you in danger, girl.
But she offered what she said was a better solution. "There's a lake a short walk that way." She pointed downhill of the castle. "It's off the main paths, so nobody will be around at night. It probably won't be too cold this time of year."
Well, there went my hopes of a hot bath. And likely a warm bath. But a not-too-cold bath was better than no bath. Mai even procured a large piece of fabric that I'd be able to use to dry myself with.
So that night, while everyone was occupied by the "any-excuse-for-a-drinking-party" party, I slipped away as usual, but did not go to the training room. Instead, I made my way through the near darkness to the lake. I didn't want to attract attention with a candle or a lantern, and the quarter moon wasn't providing much light at all, but once my eyes adjusted, I did well enough, only occasionally stubbing my toes on exposed roots.
And, no, I didn't take Mai's assurance that "nobody will be around" completely at face value. I planned for a few contingencies, and hid my change of clothing in a tree, then staked out the area for a while to be sure it was private, before the lure of the water overwhelmed me and I jumped in and-
YIKES!
Being flash frozen was not a contingency I had accounted for.
Alright, one of these days I'm going to sit some folks down for a talk about what constitutes "too cold." Because. Brrrrrrr. The lake must be fed by an underground spring or something - it should not have been this frigid.
Despite the liquid polar vortex, I was so happy to finally wash and to dunk my hair under water, that I was willing to put up with the discomfort of the chill until I felt fully clean. So, I had to grit my teeth to keep from screeching every time I plunged myself underwater. That was ok. I didn't need a relaxing evening with wine, bubble bath, and a good book. I simply wanted to be clean.
I could put up with a bit of a chill. It was brisk. It was refreshing! It … was not a breath mint commercial, and I decided to pack it up before I became a carbonite statue. As I headed back to the shore, I promised myself that I would find an extra blanket to put on my futon tonight.
Or set it on fire. That would work t-
"Had I known there was a lovely mermaid inhabiting this lake," said a familiar voice in a Barry-White-would-be-envious come-hither tone. "I would have wandered this path more often."
With a shriek, I submerged myself with a splash.