Chapter 6 The Desolate Wolf Assassin Yoshi Onimura stepped through the field where the wild flowers grew. The sun had reached its peak and the day was warm. Against the sun he looked to be some older, some subtler relic, an ancient samurai of old, on the road of war forever. Like a man fixing his soul in the world of men, finding by chord the space between himself and the world beyond his being. He had long since shed his sandals. He had samurai blood enough for his task by inclination alone, as the blood carries within it a certain symmetry and the shape of the body and carries too an inner being of a certain shape and the wilder he became the more he knew himself to be at war with his own heart. He made his way through the large field and then he made his way past it and disappeared over the hill. The procession just now appeared on the horizon. It was composed of a daimyo who rode horseback at the lead. He wore a hat, a metal plate, with a crest of a wreath on the center. Behind him a horse pulled a two wheeled wagon where supplies were bundled. Several samurai dressed in traveling kimonos and straw hats were beside or behind this wagon and they kept up with it. The procession made its way across the field. The hoof beats of Yoshi’s warhorse came suddenly. The samurai stopped and lifted up the brim of their hats and looked to the distance. The daimyo saw what came and he shouted in alarm. Yoshi charged them aback his warhorse. He was armed with a naginata, a long poled weapon with a curved blade at the top. Mounted on each flank of the charging warhorse were wooden kegs of oil. The warhorse galloped closer and closer, and then Yoshi twirled the naginata around and stabbed one of the kegs and pierced it and it splashed clear oil on the brush. He flipped the naginata around and stabbed the other keg and it burst open and the oil sloshed out. He turned his warhorse sharply and he began to encircle them. The oil splashed on the growth and the warhorse galloped fast. Yoshi held the reigns in one hand and the naginata in the other. The startled samurai ran about, their hands on the handles of the katanas. The oil beaded on the grass and sparkled in the sun. Yoshi’s warhorse galloped fast and completed the circle. The samurai were screaming in fury. Yoshi stopped his warhorse, and he leapt off. He held the naginata at his back, blade down. He walked to where the daimyo sat horseback. “Who are you?” the daimyo shrieked. “Know that you attack a convoy on it’s way to the Akechi?” “Assassin!” Yoshi shouted. “Desolate Wolf!” “What!” Yoshi reached into his kimono and brought out a small wooden pipe. He moved the cap aside and pulled a rope from out of the length of it. The inside of the pipe began to burn. It smoked. He threw it far. It landed, burning, to the oil soaked growth. At first the smoke plumed up, then the fire burst alive, and the flames swept in the circle that the oil had made on the grass. The flames engulfed the perimeter, the smoke heavy and black, the breeze spreading the fire about. The horse of the daimyo screamed and reared backward, kicking its front legs off the ground in panic. The daimyo screamed as well. Yoshi ran fast beside the wall of fire. He held the naginata in reverse at his side. Then he jumped up and slashed the daimyo’s head in a wheeling arc that cut through the metal of the hat and through the man’s skull. Blood exploded from the wound. One dazed samurai stared in horror as Yoshi hung in the air, the naginata poised, the daimyo murdered. Yoshi landed on his feet and the dead daimyo plummeted off his horse. Yoshi vanished amid the flames. The samurai screamed and jerked out their katanas. “Lord!” they screamed. They screamed, “No! Lord!” “What’s happening?” they screamed. Suddenly the horse that pulled the wagon screamed and sprang upward and two samurai at either side of it were thrown into the fire. They seemed to dematerialize in the flames. The entire wagon lunged into the air and slammed to the ground and burst to pieces, the contents scattering everywhere, burning, one wagon wheel spinning fast. The blade of the naginata swept from out of the flames. Yoshi appeared, disappeared, appeared again. The blade of the naginata reflected the fire. It spun fast around. Two samurai fell dead with severe chest wounds. Their tormented figures fell silhouetted against the flames and the wind blew and the flames shifted. Yoshi re-disappeared. All seemed blood and fire. Fire and blood. The naginata spun fast around. Three samurai fell dead. Yoshi let go of the spinning pole with one hand. He slashed fast to the right. The samurai’s right arm fell off at the elbow and his stomach began to pulse out. Yoshi turned around and slashed to the left. The samurai sprayed arterial blood from the horizontal cut that went from his neck to his forehead. The flames danced. Yoshi spun the naginata over his head, turned around, and held it still at his side. The smoke was black in the air. The metal of the naginata gleamed in the fire. This was the Kanjo assault. From Komei’s Art of War. Frontal assault by fire. Cut off the retreat, let none escape, enter the flames and kill everyone. The heart of Bushido. Suddenly Yoshi rushed into the midst of the samurai left alive and in their midst he killed them. He spun and leapt up, the naginata wheeled, and his lower body seemed to manifest out of the flame itself, as if he had no origin in the world other than fire, the phoenix itself. The samurai were cut apart into blood and meat and Yoshi disappeared into the flames once again. Outside the circle of fire, the silhouette of a man within the flames was decapitated. The field beyond the fire was tranquil. Then from out of the flames the upper body of a horse reared and galloped forward like some ancient beast of hell. Yoshi swept out of the flames horseback and he clutched the naginata and the lower legs of the horse kicked free of the fire, and the back of Yoshi’s kimono was on fire and burned and smoked. The naginata stabbed into the earth. Yoshi plummeted burning and smoking from off the horse and rolled and rolled on the grass. The fire on his kimono became a smolder and still he rolled and the fire extinguished, and then he stood, smoking, in the field. He took up the naginata again and looked to the tower of flames. “Kanjo!” he shouted. He said, “A beautiful word. All but lost. Yet nothing is more important to Bushido, the heart of the samurai!”
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 01:05:01 +0000
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