Swordsmen of Gor

singleness of interest and purpose. I would learn later, however, that he carved wood, and composed small poems on bark. I had the sense he was without companion or slave, and by choice. Perhaps such might have distracted him from some more remote purpose, or goal, or ideal. He seemed to me a man driven, like a thing of nature, but from what or to what I did not know.

“Master,” said Tajima, bowing deeply, which greeting was politely returned.

“Master,” said Pertinax, putting down his head.

“It is he,” said one of the Ashigaru.

“He has come from the forest,” said another.

“He came to the sound of striking steel,” said another.

“He took seven heads,” whispered a man.

I bowed then, for I knew in whose presence I stood.

“I am Nodachi,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“It will be dark soon,” said one of the Ashigaru.

“May I speak to the men?” I inquired of Nodachi.

Whereas he held no office to my knowledge, nor any instituted authority, as far as I knew, I felt the inquiry, the question, was appropriate.

I sensed that those others in the vicinity, too, felt a deference, a respect, a recognition, a salute, a propriety of some such sort was in order.

His consent or approval seemed important to me, somehow, and to the others.

Some men are not officers, or daimyos, or shoguns, but are such that officers, daimyos, shoguns, or such, in their presence, would not hesitate to be the first to bow.

I sensed the awe in which this man was held, an awe to which I, not even of the Pani, was acutely sensitive. It seemed an awe as palpable as an atmosphere. Doubtless this was in part due to many things, perhaps to his unusual, imposing, even wretched, appearance, and in part to his reputation, an understanding of who this was, and what he had done, and what he could do, and perhaps, in part, too, to that sense of being in the presence of one who lives alone, undeviating and undistracted, one who is absorbed in, and centered upon, a quest, one not altogether clear to other men, a journey as much within as without. Some men are alone, essentially solitary, their lives given over unswervingly to an ideal, or dream, the search for a fact, the discovery of a cause, or planet, the unraveling of a mystery, the creation of a perfect poem. I thought of Andreas of Tor, and his longing for a song that might be sung for a thousand years, of Tersites, of Port Kar, and his plans for a mighty ship, finer than all others. This man was such a man, I suspected, a seeker, a traveler on uncharted, even invisible, roads, roads thusly undiscerned by others. The perfection he sought, I gathered, was a simple one, one sought by many, and found by few, one which I, even of the Warriors, and others of my brethren in arms, would find harrowing, and almost incomprehensible, and to which we surely dared not aspire, a perfection of heart, eye, mind, and body, to undergo a lifetime of meditation, sacrifice, and discipline, to understand and become one with, as it was said, the soul of the sword.

He was Nodachi.

“I am near the camp, but I am not of the camp,” he said. “I am one who is outside.”

I thought he was, indeed, in many ways, one who was outside.

I gathered from his remark that he eschewed an engagement in our work, that he chose not to concern himself with it.

This was his decision.

I bowed.

“Master,” said Tajima, bowing.

“Master,” said Pertinax, bowing.

These deferences were accepted by the strange figure who then turned about, and withdrew.

“It was Nodachi,” said a man.

“I have only now seen him, but I knew him,” said another.

“Who would not know him?” asked another.

“He is more than a man,” said one of the Ashigaru.

“He would deny that,” said another.

“I think he is less than a man,” said another. “He is part of a man.”

“Men are various,” said another. “He is one thing a man can be.”

“A single, terrible thing,” said another.

“Within him resides a demon,” said another.

“And a holiness,” said another.

“Or an evil,” said another.

“He is a monster,” said another.

“He is the blade’s brother,” whispered another.

“He listens to the sword,” said another. “It speaks to him.”

“The sharpness of his blade, unmoving in the water, can divide a floating blossom,” said a man.

I had seen that sort of thing, and did not doubt it.

It was not unusual for silk to fall, parted, from a shaken blade.

“His stroke can descend like lightning, cutting in two a grain of sa-tarna placed on the forehead of a man, without creasing the skin,” said another.

This was possible, I supposed, but I would not have cared to be the fellow involved in the demonstration.

“One stroke can cut through seven bodies,” claimed another.

If we were talking of the bodies of men this was unlikely. The force required would surpass the violence of a hurricane.

“He can strike out in eight directions at once,” claimed another.

Some of these things seemed to me obviously impossible, and were clearly the fruits of imagination, and myth, but it is common to suppose that at the foot of legends, in the lost soil of the remote past, there is a seed from which such legends sprang, and I had little doubt, in any event, that the mysterious fellow who had just appeared, and then departed, was both unusual and remarkable.

He himself, I was sure, was not the source of such conjectures. Indeed, I suspected they were legends founded on another individual altogether, legends to which he found himself, however reluctantly and unwillingly, an heir. Such legends tend to blossom and enlarge long after their alleged source has vanished, and is no longer about to contradict them. Humans are so fond of wonders that it seems almost churlish to call them into question. To be sure, such legends, in their way, betray and belittle he whose origin they might have been. Hercules and Perseus, and so on, if they existed, were doubtless remarkable enough in themselves, and might have found the wonders attributed to them embarrassing, at the least. Nodachi, I was sure, was a dedicated, great, and charismatic teacher and swordsman, in his own right, and did not require, and doubtless would not appreciate, the mantles of myth, woven for others, and misplaced upon him, mantles which might be cast upon him by smaller men, needful of marvels.

“Why did he come here?” asked one of the Ashigaru, uncertainly.

“We do not know,” said a man.

“He took seven heads,” said another.

He left them at the feet of Lord Nishida,” said another.

“Now he is gone,” said another.

I could see the trees through which he had disappeared. I wondered what his relationship, if any, might be to Lord Nishida, and his mysterious project. If he had put the seven heads before Lord Nishida, that suggested that Lord Nishida was his daimyo. To be sure, it seemed he had asked nothing of Lord Nishida. Was the presentation rather, then, in the nature of an assertion, a token, or even a defiance, or insult? Nodachi was clearly Pani, and yet seemed other than the Pani. He must be here for some reason, in the forest, I supposed, but for what reason?

I would learn more of Nodachi later.