KATANAGATARI 1

As a result, the quickdraw intrinsic to iainuki was absent from those practice sessions. Until today, Shichika’s only knowledge had come secondhand, from his father, but having witnessed it in action, he now understood a thing or two about iainuki.

“When they come at me like that…real, wooden, doesn’t matter─it bugs me out.”9

“Huh? Obviously. Who doesn’t when there’s a weapon in your face?”

“That’s not what I’m getting at…”

Shichika searched for the right words. It was hard to verbalize his impressions.

“A sword is more than just a weapon. It’s also a pretty effective piece of armor.10 I don’t mean just parrying, but you know, if I did this…”

Shichika thrust out an arm, still wrapped in the tendrils of Togame’s white hair. She reacted with an ambiguous grunt.

“In my case, it’s a hand─but when I do this, it’s hard to approach me, and hard to strike at me.”

“Only a stick─yet a wall.”

“Hey, that’s a good way to put it. Simple.”

Shichika smiled, glad to see that he was making sense. Of course, his choice of words being awkward at best, his point had come across mostly thanks to Togame’s acuity.

Put your sword between you and your opponent.

The teaching has survived into present-day kendo.11 The wall that your opponent makes is quite challenging to penetrate, as anyone who tries will quickly realize. There are several ways around this, and unless you are the Kyotoryu, you have a sword and your own wall at your disposal, whereby strategy comes into play.

“That Kiku move I’ve shown you is a great example. In the Kyotoryu, as a general rule, you treat the katana as part of the body and attack it─you turn their unity12 against them and break down the wall first─except in our case, you’ve forbidden it.”

Mutodori, or fighting without any katana, sounded well and good, but any blade subjected to a Kyotoryu move usually sundered. Since they were on a mission to gather the weapons, the aforementioned general rule was out of play. “Protect the swords”─that was Togame’s strict directive. In practice, the shackle mooted the larger part of Kyotoryu’s techniques. But given the mission objective, Shichika had no choice.

“Still, even if I’m not going to break down the wall made by the sword, I at least need to bring down that wall─but with iainuki, there’s no wall in the first place.”

“Ah…I see,” Togame said. “If the sword must be drawn, then it is in its sheath for the stance13…although ‘stance’ may not be the best word when Uneri merely sits cross-legged on the floor…then again, I’ve heard iainuki called za-ai,14 so I guess it works.”

“Yeah, but how’s he move that fast? If that wasn’t peak speed, I can’t imagine what would be. Not that I believe he’d be faster than light.”

“I wonder. It might not be a bluff. If we can’t see it, he might already be faster than light.”

“The Zerosen.”

Shichika cast a sidelong glance at Gekoku Castle. Can’t see it─just like the castle. They hadn’t seen it until the last moment, and had yet to see the blade─only Uneri.

“So because iainuki has no wall, it’s easier to attack him?”

“Wrong, Togame─no wall means it’s harder. If you can see it, you can counter it─and if you can’t see it, you can avoid it. But you can’t counter or avoid something that isn’t there.”

“…”

“Keeping your katana in its scabbard is like not showing your hand─that’s what Dad always said. I mean, the fact of the matter is, you never know when the first strike will come. He has it locked down, so you need to be cautious. Just when you think you have the upper hand, you’ll lose it. The moment you come within this guy’s range, he draws, just like he did with you─so simple, nothing to it. I need to be cautious, while he only needs to wait. Ceding the first move and settling for a counterstrike15─but at the same time no style is more aggressive.”

“So he intentionally leaves himself open─inviting you to attack.”

“Right. But all that aside, any quickdraw is a handful. Though I knew that from the beginning─”

“A handful? Why? A sword is still a sword.”

“Yeah…um…”

Togame the Schemer.

The head of a big-picture organization that directed military engagements with all manner of ingenuity and intrigue─lacked any proficiency, as bears repeating, in the martial arts.

She could not fight if her life depended on it.

When she visited Haphazard Island, she did wear a katana under the pretext of challenging the Kyotoryu to a duel, but that weapon was already on its way back to Owari. As a schemer, this was a point of pride─or perhaps more like a point of caution. The “sword” had killed her father and wiped out her entire family. She would get the job done without laying a finger of her own upon a sword of any kind─and thus.

She had a tenuous understanding of what swordplay actually involved.

Ultimately, her job was to oversee the big picture.

Shichika, himself, had virtually no combat experience and was not in a position to enlighten her. The dicey16 conversation was holding together only thanks to the Schemer’s sagacity.

“It has to do with the ‘wall’ I mentioned─say someone swings their sword at you.” Shichika chopped his hand before her eyes. “How would you dodge it?”

“I would fail to, of that I am certain.”

“Do you need to sound so proud about it?”

“We’re not blocking it? Okay, then I guess to the right…”

“The correct answer would be: ahead and to the right. I’m not sure if this is just the Kyotoryu, or a general rule, but you ‘dodge forward’ against an attack that forms a vertical arc.”

“I can see why it would be alarming for someone to rush up at you in a lethal contest. Especially if you are supposed to be doing the attacking.”

“Same principle when they stab, but…”

Thrusting a spear hand at Togame and stopping just before her throat, Shichika followed up with a wide horizontal swipe─to trace the path17 you could expect from iainuki.

“This way, you can’t dodge forward. Or to the right.”

“If I tried, the sword would catch me.”

“If you can’t block it, you have to back away. Like you did,” he told Togame. To be precise, she hadn’t backed up so much as been yanked back─but she knew this was the wrong time to resent it or split hairs.

“Then what,” she egged him on. “Is that all?”

“When you can block, you block─but not against Zanto the Razor. If I caught it the wrong way, he’d slice all the way through me, like he did those chains on the Maniwac. In the Kyotoryu, just like we have the Kiku for when somebody takes a stab at you, a move called the Sakura counters sideway swipes, iainuki or not─but it would definitely snap the Razor.”

“Which defeats the purpose.”18

“Right, defeats the purpose. But this Zerosen, it’s not like I can see it coming. Evading it is the best I can hope for. I can’t see the path it makes and only hear it clicking back into the scabbard. The beginning and the ending come at basically the same time. I’m sorry, but on the spot, there’s no blocking such a move.”

“So you’re toast.19 Despite all your bragging.”

You’ve only had a taste of what the Kyotoryu is made of─well, that certainly was bragging. The Sakura might work against iainuki, but that meant nothing if he couldn’t use it. In which case, he just sounded like a sore loser.

“Hey, Togame. Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m not saying I can’t handle this─but he…Ginkaku Uneri, seems to know just iainuki and nothing else, doesn’t he? That’s unbalanced for a swordsman, but you could also say he has absolute confidence in his specialty. Um, that last Maniwac─what was his name again?”

“Shirasagi Maniwa.”

“Right. Shirasagi.”

The corpse of Shirasagi. Two clean halves. Before they entered Gekoku Castle, Shichika buried his body in the sand, and it was gone without a trace. Togame had said there was no need to give a ninja such a funeral,20 but Shichika had persisted. The man deserved the courtesy as much as anybody.

“Why do you think he lost to Uneri?”

“Why? A weird thing to ask,” Togame said. “We both know why. He fell prey to the Zerosen. That wound permits no other reading.”

“Sure. But how could Shirasagi lose to the Zerosen so easily? Don’t you think that’s strange? According to what Komori told me, dirty deeds are how a ninja makes a living─what would make a ninja challenge Uneri to a proper fight?”

“…”

Togame nodded. He had a point.

“It is─strange. The body didn’t look so old. Uneri and Shirasagi must have fought fairly recently─yet Uneri, for his part, showed no signs of injury… A Maniwa Boss, cut down without even dealing a parting shot?”

“Komori liked to entertain,21 but I gather that’s rare for a ninja.”

“Yes…but what of it? Do you have some kind of an idea?”

“Nothing as solid as an idea─but I was thinking, maybe Shirasagi had no choice but to fight fair and square.”

“No choice…”

“I knew something weird was going on. Remember that bloodstained mat we saw before we got to Uneri’s room? It was a different color from the tatami around it, and worn differently too. We thought it must have been a mat from somewhere else.”

“True, but what’s so weird about that? You were right. We found Uneri in a room not far from there.”

“It might not be as big as some of the ones I’ve seen on our journey, but at the end of the day, Gekoku Castle is still a castle─and this guy has the whole thing to himself. He has plenty of rooms, to use however he likes. If one gets bloody, he can just switch. I don’t see why he would bother switching out a mat.”

“…I can see why you would think that─it stands to reason. But everyone is different, and people pick favorites… What if Uneri simply likes that room the best?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Shichika said. “But why does he like it?”

“…”

It certainly wasn’t luxuriant22 or comfortable23─cramped, and out of the way, it was a manifestly inconvenient living room. So why had Uneri chosen it as his den?

“Probably because it’s cramped and out of the way.”

“Are you saying that he likes it that way?”

“I bet he does, for repelling his enemies. It makes sense, if you look at how it’s built. To enter, you have to use the fusuma from the next room since it’s not connected to any other space. No windows either─if you replaced the fusuma with bars, you could use it as a jail cell. And so─to get to Uneri, you have to enter through the fusuma, and step in through that doorway, taking him head-on.”

“Head-on─ah, I see. Only from the front.”

“Exactly. In iainuki, the sword sweeps─it works great in front of you, but not so great behind you. Well, even if you’re swinging up or thrusting, it’d be the same. But in a room that small, people can’t get behind you. The sweeping arc gets in their way whether they’re trying to flank you on your left or your right.”

“Of course.”

No choice but to fight fair and square.

Not even a Maniwa Boss.

No room─for dirty deeds.

“So you’re saying that he didn’t chase us when we left─because his strategy depends on being in that tiny room. Of course─why would he let us go otherwise, after we already crossed swords.”

“In battle, you want to be on favorable terrain, right? Like when I fought Komori, on Haphazard Island, we were in my domain. But in that room─Uneri has the edge, no doubt about it.”

Every inch of the room fell within the range of the Zerosen.

And its speed defied imagination.

“In which case─we would be without any measures after all. Being so circumspect24 is unlike you.”

“I told you, don’t jump to conclusions. I’m thinking as hard as I can.”

And he was.

Shichika Yasuri was thinking.

But not because his natural tendency to call everything a pain had been suppressed─he may not have been saying so out loud, but in his heart, he chanted the words over and over. What a pain─even carrying on with Togame like this. He would rather run back into Gekoku Castle and get to it with Uneri.

But Shichika controlled himself.

For Togame’s sake─he could not lose.

As her katana, he could not allow defeat.

By any means necessary─they would take possession of the Razor.

Using all that he had learned from his father, and from his sister, and from Togame thus far on their journey─Shichika was doing his best to strategize.

He was not a thinker─but he was thinking.

“So, my first idea is to drag him out of the room.”

“Makes sense,” Togame agreed. “Just getting him into the next room would expand your options─you would enjoy considerably greater freedom of movement than in that cramped space where neither side can maneuver. But good luck with that. The man just sat there absolutely still and watched us go, as if roots were holding him in place. Uneri will never leave that room. Unless, that is, you have a way of luring him out.”

“Well, he’s holed up in his fort─weird as that is, when he’s already inside a castle. But if we turned this into a siege,25 he’d have no choice but to come out of that room sometime.”

“Don’t start thinking about lighting the castle on fire. It could cost us the Razor. Remember our foremost objective.”

“Hmm. We don’t have any missiles, and even if we did, they must be no match for the Zerosen. If that’s out, I guess we have no other choice.”

“Than?”

In other words, there was a way.

Togame could not contain herself.

“Come on, spit it out.”

“You sure?”

“What’s the holdup.”

“Okay. So the first part is you go in the room.”

“Right. I go into the room.”

“And then you let the Zerosen cut you in half.”

“Naturally. The Zerosen cuts me in half. Good thinking, Shichika. What next?”

“If Uneri doesn’t like bloodstains on his floor, there’s no way he likes dead bodies. He’ll carry it outside, just like he did with Shirasagi Maniwa. He’ll leave not just that room, but also the castle itself. He’ll have nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide, in the desert.”

“Then? Then?”

“That’s when I get him.”

“Cheerio!”

Contending with less of a height difference than if they were standing, Togame’s sandal caught Shichika right in the chin. The force, however scanty, was enough to make him lose his balance─and tug at the white hair wrapped around his body, hurting Togame herself. To use a metaphor imperfect for the era, she felt like the kind of person who steps on her own shoelaces and takes a digger.

“But I’ll have been cut in half, won’t I!” she hollered as if they were a comedy act.

Way to be, Togame.

“I told you: ‘Protect the swords’ and ‘Protect me’! What kind of a bodyguard uses his employer as a decoy?”

“Yeah, so I guess we can’t use that one.”

“I guess not! What a plan to even consider!”

“So I give up on luring him out of the room, but─I still have this other idea.”

“…”

Togame’s glare warned that this plan better not involve her being sliced in half, but as if to wave away her apprehensive gaze, Shichika assured, “If fighting him fair and square is my only choice─I’ll fight him fair and square.” His voice was dead serious.

Nevertheless.

“…Shichika, if that’s the whole plan,26 I’m going to get angry.”

“Uh, haven’t you been angry all this time?”

“Don’t mock me! If we honestly have no choice but to fight him fair and square, why back out like we─”

“For one thing, I wanted to check with you about my reasoning. Not counting the time with Komori, where it just sort of happened, this is my first real battle ever. But─it won’t be my last. For this to contribute to my next fight, I need to be learning as I fight─because a win today is not enough to guarantee a win tomorrow. If I only win out of sheer luck, like with Komori, it’s no good.”

“Urk…” Togame wasn’t expecting her biting rhetorical question to provoke a sincere explanation and missed a beat. “You said that was the first thing. Aside from wanting to check whether Uneri would follow us, is there another reason why we took this time out?”

“The second one is more concrete. You were in the wrong position. On Haphazard Island, Komori abducted you while I was focused on fighting him, right? I didn’t want a repeat27 of that─and decided to regroup.”

“Oh.”

Yanked back by the Yuri, Togame had landed on her butt in the adjacent room. Not that she’d been scared stiff, but reeling from the impact, she couldn’t even stand up on her own─

“‘Protect the swords’─and ‘Protect Togame,’ right?”

“…If you know that, don’t dare come up with a plan where I get cut in half.”

The words themselves were snide, but it was not by chance that her voice betrayed embarrassment. Maybe Shichika noticed, and maybe he didn’t, but it had no effect on his own tone.

“That’s why you need to stay behind me,” he said. “Go behind me this time, like I did last time. We switch positions, like a changing of the guard. That way, I can protect you─and you can be my backup28 plan.”

“Backup?”

“Just in case. If I go at him, fair and square, and that doesn’t settle things─having you behind me is sure to come in handy. It might even bring down the domain he’s created for himself─”

“I think you already know, but I have to remind you… Trusting your back to my martial prowess may not be wise,” a dubious Togame counseled.

But Shichika laughed this off.

“I’m not sure I can explain this well…but I want you there. If it was just about keeping you safe, you could wait outside the castle while I went in, alone, to fight Uneri. But instead, I’m asking you to brave the danger because I need you there.”

“…”

“I guess you could say strength comes from having something to protect.”

■　■

Reason being.

Despite having owned one of the Possessed for quite some time and being a swordsman─Ginkaku Uneri had a strangely high tolerance for the katana’s poison.

The venom of Kiki Shikizaki’s blades.

A merciless venom that drove swordsmen mad.

That the Great Sword Hunt was the superlative expression of this insanity is no longer a subject of debate─and further to the point, Hakuhei Sabi, extolled as the greatest swordsman in Japan during his day, fell victim to the venom and betrayed Togame and thereby the Owari Bakufu. And as we saw in Book One of this saga, even Komori Maniwa─a ninja, not a swordsman─had not been totally immune to the Leveler’s toxicity.

But Ginkaku Uneri was different.

To be sure, the venom was gnawing at his body, potent as could be─but in terms of personality, there was no perceptible difference between who he was before inheriting the Razor from his father, and who he became thereafter. Mere possession of a Shikizaki blade will drive you to murder─but since Uneri felt the same drive before the Razor fell into his hands, and was already killing like it was his job, the sword could not be held accountable. No change transpired when he became the owner─which, for a swordsman of his caliber, was inconceivable. The venom of the Twelve Possessed was that intense.

After all─these were the swords that reigned over the warring states.

In sooth, ten generations back, in the Age of Warring States, the sword’s poison had overmastered Uneri’s forebear29 Kinkaku Uneri, permeating every nook and cranny of his body─how else could he have been so insubordinate, in his refusal to hand over the sword, as to make an enemy of the daimyo of Tottori and the Old Shogun, unifier of the nation? Even Ginkaku Uneri, at a remove of so many generations, suspected the account of the ten thousand slain was hogwash,30 but the madness had not stopped with Kinkaku: for henceforth, every son of the Uneri who came into possession of the Razor, all the way down to Ginkaku’s own father, was incontrovertibly deranged.

Crazed from the venom of the Razor.

There was no way around it─the Zerosen of the iainuki style passed down through the Uneri family matched the Razor so perfectly that the katana seemed custom-made to that end.

Swords don’t choose who to kill.

But─a sword will choose its owner.

And the Razor had chosen the Uneri.

As the lineage deemed fit for its insanity.

“…”

Notwithstanding.

Ginkaku Uneri himself, the current master, neither saw himself as crazy or not crazy─in other words, whomever the venom had possessed had no capacity for gauging the extent of its possession.

Yet it was from a place altogether separate from madness that Uneri safeguarded the Razor.

Ironically, it was just as Shichika asserted to Togame outside the castle─strength comes from having something to protect. Uneri derived his strength from protecting Zanto the Razor─and Gekoku Castle.

Five years ago─

Inaba Desert, hitherto a tourist destination that aided the local economy, suddenly turned against the people of Tottori.

At incredible speed, it grew before their eyes─swallowing the fiefdom whole.

Homes. Fields. Mountains. Rivers.

Life as they knew it disappeared.

Buried by the desert─without a trace.

But for one structure, Gekoku Castle, originally built upon the sand─since its occupants had vanished, it may as well have vanished too.

Indeed.

Down to the last living soul─they had fled the desert.

Abandoning Tottori.

For Hoki, Mimasaka, Harima, Tajima─anywhere but here.

Heading for the hills. Like bats out of hell, into thin air. They all left Inaba behind. However much a pariah,31 Uneri had not been without close friends in the town─but they were no exception to the exodus.

And so.

When the spread of Inaba Desert began to falter─all that remained of Inaba were Gekoku Castle and Ginkaku Uneri, on his own.

That is to say, he remained not by choice, but because he had no choice. Or by his own estimation, he felt that he had missed his final chance to leave.

If only he were not the last─had he been, for example, the second to last, he would have been uncertain, and would have had his reservations, and may have racked his brains, but likely would have absconded in the end.

But as the last man standing, he had no choice.

Even reservations were not his to have.

…During the Great Sword Hunt, Kinkaku Uneri had turned against Tottori, nay, the entire nation, to guard the Razor─holding his ground in Inaba. The city claimed a soft place in his heart─that is, if you believed the legends, but his descendent, Ginkaku, who for reasons beyond his control had been forced to dwell indefinitely in Gekoku Castle, understood that the emotions of his ancestor had not been so warm and fuzzy.

More like─a fixation.32

Or call it─a delusion.33

Perhaps, dignity.

For Kinkaku Uneri, protecting the Razor and remaining in Inaba had been two sides of the same coin─and this remained the case down through the family line, as each new generation of Uneri met the venom of the sword.

But its current owner saw himself differently. He understood where Kinkaku Uneri had been coming from, but it was only by being fundamentally different from the rest of the Uneri men. Ginkaku, being different, could see through to the essence of the situation. And just as he had missed his chance to leave Inaba─so too had he lost his chance to lose his mind.

He alone was different.

And yet─they called for his protection all the same.

I need them… he thought, quite calmly. I need something to protect.

Otherwise─I’ll lose the will to fight.

He was sure of it.

What did she call herself─the Schemer?

While he had forgotten the details, the white-haired woman, Togame, against whom he had drawn his sword (not as a warning, nor as a bluff, but intent on slicing her in two), had some connection to the bakufu. He had not attacked her thinking she was lying, but rather─presuming what she said to be true.

In this regard, I am just like my ancestors.

Different he may be.

But what they had protected─he protected.

Another Sword Hunt?

Apparently.

For quite some time, Uneri had been living in Gekoku Castle as the only resident of Inaba, but the visit from that “poser ninja” Shirasagi Maniwa was not his first─comers were in no short supply, and ran the gamut from common thieves to respectable merchants─

And down the gamut, to the last man, he had drubbed them out.

Most of his killings since hunkering down at Gekoku Castle had been emissaries from neighboring territories, dispatched to advise him to vacate his stronghold, but Uneri saw no issue: he was protecting what he needed to protect.

But it had been so long.

So long─since anyone had sought the Mutant Blade. But neither ninja nor agent of the bakufu─would make it more than three steps into his space.

Confined to his den, with his back to the wall, Uneri was able to execute his iainuki to its maximum offensive and defensive potential─holed up in his fort, indeed. No matter the size of the intruding party, no more than two people could step through the doorway at a time─

Felling ten thousand.

Perhaps here, Uneri mused, in this particular domain, it was a possibility.

However.

The trouble was─that lurch34 had noticed something notable about his domain. When he used his spinning kick to hook the unassuming Schemer through the doorway─had he realized?

I thought I saw him looking at the new tatami─or was it a coincidence?

Nevertheless, given the way he paused their dealings, and left the floor─and perhaps even the castle─that inkling had no doubt by now become a certainty. Lurch had seemed carefree─but could not possibly have been so dumb35 as to find nothing suspicious about Uneri declining to chase them. Unable to. And even if it had been a coincidence, and the lurch had noticed nothing, the white-haired woman would have when Uneri had not followed them. While he had managed to cut down the ninja, Shirasagi Maniwa, in one fell swoop─

Say they did notice─if that were all, I needn’t worry.

It would be a problem, but only a trivial one.

Far more serious, however, was what the lurch did next─dodge the Zerosen. Even if he had dodged first and noticed the tatami after─a dodge was a dodge.

What was it he said?

Right, Kyotoryu.

Master of the Kyotoryu, Shichika Yasuri (he had corrected36 his slip of the tongue).

Uneri knew of Kazune Yasuri─and Mutsue Yasuri.

One battled in the Age of Warring States, and the other was the Hero of the Rebellion. While Uneri did not know of the particulars, as rumor had it, the Kyotoryu was a style of swordplay that forsook the sword. When first he heard of it, he wondered if it was not an art of the fist rather than the sword, but evidently37 it was something else entirely. Having never heard from someone who had seen the Kyotoryu firsthand, its mysteries remained a mystery to him─

Until the man himself showed up.

Seventh Master, he said.

His given name seemed to contain the character for “seven,” which suggested that he was indeed Mutsue’s son. A big guy, but practically a kid…