Satori

Nicholai contemplated which was superior and decided that it was the Chinese for beauty, the Japanese for killing.

On the far side of the pavilion, Yu inflicted Communist doctrine on his students. One of the victims, a thick country lad named Liang, stared wistfully off into the bamboo thickets, doubtless wishing that he could find sanctuary there. But Liang was something of a special pet of Yu’s and so good-naturedly sat through the lecture as if genuinely interested. Yu had great, if misplaced, hopes for him.

One more day on the Dragon’s Tail, Nicholai thought. They would reach the river late the next afternoon and load their cargo onto the waiting boats. It would be a nice change to be on the water and off the arduous trail.

He walked back to the chamber that had been assigned to him. It was a small room with a single kang, the classic Chinese raised bed, which was draped with thin mosquito netting. Someone had already come in, lit a lantern, and left a thermos of hot water and an old porcelain cup with which to make tea.

But Nicholai craved rest more than the stimulation of the strong southern green tea, so he stripped off his clothes, climbed into the kang, and stretched out. He closed his eyes and told his mind to allow him five hours of sleep. He wanted to wake up well before dawn to make sure that the caravan got an early start.

Nicholai’s proximity sense woke him before his internal alarm did.

The two men smelled of cheap Chinese tobacco. Their heavy steps made clear that they were bandits and not professional assassins – they tried to walk quietly but were clumsy and obvious. Amateurs assume that to step slowly is to step softly, while professionals know that the opposite is true and are both quick and light.

Willing himself to remain still, Nicholai measured the slow heavy footsteps of the lead bandit as they creaked on the wooden floor. If they were going to use guns they would have done it already, but they apparently didn’t want to make noise and spring the main attack prematurely, before they had eliminated the leadership. So it would be a sword, a knife or an axe, maybe a garrote, but more likely an edged weapon that could slice through the mosquito netting, sparing the extra second to open it.

So there would be time for hoda korosu.

He edged his hand along the kang, felt for the teacup, and slid it beside him under the thin sheet. Silently he crushed the cup in his hand until he felt blood running from his palm, and then pinched the sharp shard of glass between his thumb and forefinger.

Then he waited.

The footsteps stopped and Nicholai felt the bandit pause as he lifted his arm to strike.

Nicholai swung the shard in a horizontal backhand that sliced the bandit’s throat. The knife arm came down in a limp, useless arc and then the bandit, his left arm futilely clutching his throat, pitched forward onto the kang.

The second bandit made the fatal error of backing up and reaching for the pistol at his belt as Nicholai launched off the kang, grabbed the heavy metal thermos, and swung it like a club. The man’s skull fractured with a sickening crack. Nicholai bent over his body, took the pistol, and stepped outside.

Red muzzle flashes tore the black silk fabric of the night.

Yu, clad only in trousers, stood with a pistol in his hand, trying to form the startled men into some kind of order.

Nicholai heard the zip-zip of gunfire and felt the little pockets of air concuss as the bullets flew past him. He had experienced bombings, beatings, and hand-to-hand combat, but this was his first firefight and he found it chaotic. The bandits had chosen a good time to strike, the hours of deepest sleep before dawn, and the fight had the surreal quality of a waking dream.

The bullets were real, however, and Nicholai heard the hollow thunk of a round strike the soldier beside him. The boy reached down to the hole in his stomach and looked at Nicholai with an expression of hurt surprise, as if to ask if this were really happening, then howled with pain. Nicholai eased him to the ground as gently as he could. The boy would die and there was nothing he could do.

He could only try to save the cargo.

Nicholai exchanged his pistol for the soldier’s rifle and moved out.

Yu was already rallying the men he had left toward the crates stacked in the monastery’s central pavilion. A few of the sentries guarding the crates had already fled, two others lay slumped dead at their posts, while three crouched behind the boxes and returned the shots that were coming from the bamboo thicket on the far side of the pavilion. But they were under heavy fire and it was obvious that they couldn’t hold out for long.

Yu started across the pavilion for the pile of crates but Nicholai held him back. It was brave but useless to join the three soldiers in their isolated post. We would just become additional targets, Nicholai thought, a few more sacrificed stones in a soon-to-be eliminated position on the board. Better to create a new position and give the bandits something new to think about.

So Nicholai squatted behind a stone bench set at the edge of the pavilion. He waited until he saw a muzzle flash come from the bamboo and fired at it, then heard a man scream in pain. Yu did the same with the same result.

The shooting from the bamboo stopped as the bandits considered how to handle the new situation.

Nicholai used the pause to belly-crawl across that side of the pavilion to a bench on the perpendicular side. It would be better, he thought, if the bandits formed a tactic to deal with a situation that had already changed.

Go is a fluid game.

It was quiet for a moment longer and then a spray of bullets hit the stone bench that Nicholai had vacated. Yu pressed himself flat on the stones and survived the blast, but the bullets kept him down as a group of a dozen or more bandits sprang out of the bamboo and rushed the crates.

Nicholai, on the flank of the attack, easily picked the lead bandit off with his first shot but missed the second one and had to fire again. He dropped the next man, but the bandits in the bamboo adjusted quickly and turned their guns on him. Nicholai flattened out and the bullets passed over him.

Then he pushed himself up on his hands and the balls of his feet, took a deep breath, and vaulted over the bench.

Lit only by muzzle flashes, the scene before him played like cinema in a bad old theater with a creaky projector. Nicholai saw flickers of the melee at the crates – a bayonet thrust, a pistol fired at close range, a wounded man’s mouth agape. He plunged in, firing his rifle until the clip was empty. Then he used it like an ancient Chinese weapon – a sharp blade on one end, a blunt object on the other. He swung and thrust, ducked and dodged, beyond thought in the realm of instinct that came from constant training.

But the bandits were simply too many. The most skillful Go player will lose his few isolated white stones against a tide of black ones.

It was inevitable.

Die with honor.

Hai, Kishikawa-sama.

The cherry blossoms of Kajikawa floated in front of his eyes as he recalled his walk, so long ago, with the general. Kishikawa had focused on the beautiful blossoms to prepare himself for his death.

Then through the flashes of light Nicholai saw a row of brown-robed monks, bamboo staffs in their hands, advance onto the pavilion.

The fight became a whirling blur of bamboo, a tai-fung, but the rain pellets were wood striking flesh and bone, and then it was over, like a sudden squall. The surviving bandits fled back into the forest.

Without the precious cargo.

But six soldiers and one monk lay dead, and others were wounded.

Nicholai squatted beside the body of one of the bandits. Yu held up a lantern and they examined the dead man’s face. It took a moment, but then Nicholai recognized him… the orderly who had served lunch for Colonel Ki.

You have been careless and stupid, Nicholai told himself. “Michel Guibert” did not see the obvious ploy. Whereas Nicholai Hel would have. He resolved to retain a piece of his authentic self regardless of any situational guise.

The monks mopped up blood under lantern light.

Nicholai found the abbot, bowed deeply, and apologized for fouling the monastery with violence.

“You did not,” the abbot responded. “They did.”