Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) 📕

Moko’s voice came faintly. Jebu had to strain to hear him above the shriek of the storm. “Indeed you do, your lordship. If we don’t get this ship moving it’s going to sink with all of us on board. And then what was the point of coming out here to rescue you?”

“Can you tell us what to do, Moko?” said Jebu.

“Yes, shik��. Sakagura, get as many men as the tiller will hold to keep the rudder steady. Set the rest to bending every scrap of sail you can find to the masts. The ship is sideways to the wind now. It’s a wonder we haven’t turned over already. Put sail on and get the wind behind us. Let it blow us right into shore. With a tai-phun pushing it, this ship will end up inland as a fine castle for all of us.” He tried to laugh, and gasped in pain.

“Run her aground?” Sakagura stared at his father, momentarily startled out of his grief.

“Of course. We don’t want to save this ship. We only want to save ourselves. And in your haste don’t forget to raise the anchors. There are two of them, one at the stern and one at the bow, and each is raised by a windlass. Now do it.” Jebu thought, Moko won’t live to see Red Tiger make the shore. Sakagura ran outside to shout orders to his men as another enormous wave swamped the ship and threw everyone against the port side of the cabin.

“I’m so glad you’re still alive, shik��,” Moko said. “What of the Mongol?”

“Dead.” Jebu told Moko how the hua pao had fallen on Arghun and carried him beneath the waves.

” ‘The mighty are destroyed at the last, they are but as the dust before the wind,’ ” said Moko, quoting a popular poem. “So are we all,” he added, “but it pleases me to know I have outlived Arghun Baghadur. And that you will outlive him, shik��, is wondrous joy.”

Jebu fell to his knees, weeping. He took Moko’s almost-lifeless hand and pressed it against his face, letting his tears run over the broad, hard fingers.

“I owe you so much, I can find no words. Moko, Moko, my friend. I wish I might die and you live. Only you can help me now. Tell me what I can do for you.”

“You have already done everything for me, shik��. You appeared on the Tokaido and gave me a marvellous life. You gave me China, ships, the War of the Dragons, a family name. Because of you my sons are samurai. Because of you I know the beautiful Lady Taniko. Salute her for me now, shik��. Tell her I apologize for not being able to bid her farewell in person. And if you wish to do me any other last favour, look after my foolish son.”

“What I owe you cannot even be calculated,” said Jebu. “If I spent my whole life caring for your family it would not be enough.”

Moko smiled. “If you feel such an obligation to me, remember who I am. Remember what your father taught us before he went into oblivion. Remember who I really am. Do you want to return to me what good I have done for you? Then be true to the Self.”

The terrible rolling motion of the ship had stopped. It felt, there in the cabin, as if the ship had righted itself and was plunging forward, like a whale, through the waves. Jebu looked out the open cabin door. There was nothing but blackness ahead and rain was spraying in through the door in sheets. Jebu started to shut the door when Sakagura appeared in the doorway. He came into the cabin and Jebu slid the door shut behind him.

“Oh, Eather,” Sakagura cried. “Are you alive?”

“Sakagura-chan,” Moko whispered. “Come to me.”

Weeping and groaning, Sakagura knelt at Moko’s head. “I have disgraced our family, Eather,” he wept. “Dishonoured the family name you founded.”

“Listen to me, Sakagura.” Moko’s voice was stronger, firmer now. “You will not commit harakiri.”

“But, Eather-”

“This is your father’s dying command. You must live.” Amazed, Jebu remembered how, so many years ago, his mother, Nyosan, had said almost the same thing to him. Live, Jebu. “You will live in order to carry on the family name,” Moko went on. “See that the proper observances are performed for your father. Bring glory to our family.”

“I have brothers,” said Sakagura brokenly.

“Your brothers were too young to fight in this war. Only your deeds can bring glory to our family name. You must stay alive to see that they are remembered.”

Sametono said, “Uncle Moko, your son bears no shame. I ordered him to take me out in the kobaya with him.” Sametono turned anguished eyes to Jebu. “This is all my fault. If Sakagura commits harakiri, I must, too.”

“Then it is settled,” said Moko with a peaceful smile. “Neither of you will kill himself. Shik�� Jebu, I have gone through life fearing death, and now at last I know how foolish I was. I feel no pain and no fear. I wish I had always had the wisdom to contemplate death with a smile, as your father, the holy abbot, did. Surely, today’s exploit is the greatest of my life. What better day to end my life?”

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. Sakagura held one hand and Jebu held the other. They watched Moko’s breathing slow, grow fainter. Then it stopped altogether. He was lying on the cushions with his eyes closed and a look of bliss on his face, not breathing at all. And Jebu knew that he would never look into those crossed eyes again.

As if impaled by a spear, Jebu groaned and fell, face forward, beside Moko. He lay howling with grief. After a moment he felt strong hands helping him to his feet. He opened his eyes and blurrily saw Sametono, who draped one of Jebu’s arms over his shoulders. Yes, thought Jebu, I want to get out of this cabin. Together Sametono and Kagyo dragged Jebu out into the rain and wind and darkness, leaving Sakagura lying beside his father’s body. The three men huddled against the carved and painted wall of the captain’s cabin. The air and spray stinging Jebu’s face helped clear his head. He looked forward, trying to see the shore. The curtains of rain were almost opaque. A lightning flash revealed a stretch of beach, stripped of buildings and life, some distance away. They were travelling towards it with incredible speed. The masts and sails screamed protest against the force of the wind pushing them along. The speed of such wind was inconceivable.

“He was my oldest friend,” Jebu wept.

“I know,” Sametono said into his ear.

“He had so much to live for. So much yet to do. He was learning. He had his work. His family.” The pain of losing Yukio had been terrible, Jebu remembered. But he himself had expected to die shortly. And Yukio knew he was finished, that he had no future in the Sacred Islands, that even his wife and children would not be allowed to live. Yukio’s life had ended in hopelessness and helplessness, and Jebu had been glad that his suffering was over. Moko had had many good years ahead of him.

Kagyo put his head close to Jebu’s and said, “Do not sorrow for a man whose life is cut off in fullness. Such a man has made the most of life.”

Of course, Jebu thought. That is why we Zinja never mourn for one another. The image of the cherry blossom came to him. The samurai are right.

The black waves rushed past. Those waves were Arghun’s tomb. Arghun had haunted him all his life. He could not remember when

Taitaro first told him of the man who killed his father. And Arghun’s last act had been to kill Moko. Jebu felt no satisfaction in the tarkhan’s death. He had not killed him, it was Arghun’s own weapon that killed him, in the end. Moko learned and built. Arghun brought only death and destruction wherever he went. Moko’s death was a calamity, but Arghun’s whole life was a calamity. Moko sacrificed his life for mine, Jebu thought. To repay him for that sacrifice, for the extra years he has given me, I must try to fulfil more truly the purpose of the Zinja.

Be true to the Self Jebu knew what his future must be as surely as he knew that this ship was about to wreck itself on the shore of Hakata Bay. It was clear what the Self, acting through him, intended for him. Only the Order offered hope. In a flash of lightning, the tai-phun-driven waves before Red Tiger seemed to turn crimson as he saw all the blood that had been and would be spilled in all humanity’s murders and robberies, oppressions and wars. An ocean of blood, the blood of millions of men, women and children. It was unbearable. He screamed aloud.

Then in another lightning flash he saw a great tree rising before the ship, its roots sunk deep in the blood, but living things appearing in its branches. A tree that shone with the brilliance of an eternal lightning bolt and shed, in the midst of the cold ocean, the warmth of the sun. It glowed with a pure, white light above the red sea. The Tree of Life. I’m seeing it without the help of the Jewel, he thought. Taitaro was right. The magic is in my mind. And just as all living things were part of that great tree, so all consciousness was part of the one Self, and no one was ever lost. Not Moko, not Taitaro, not even Arghun. There were many branches and leaves, but the Tree was one.

A wave avalanched on the ship’s stern. Jebu heard screams and shouts from the bridge. He scrambled up the ladder, followed by Sametono and Kagyo. Of the four men, who had been holding the great bar that controlled the rudder, two had been swept overboard, one lay unconscious and one clung frantically to the tiller, which swung back and forth unaffected by his weight, scraping his legs bloody on the deck. Jebu and Kagyo threw themselves against the tiller. Sametono carried the unconscious man below. The ship had already started to swing athwart the waves, and the creakings of the masts were louder than the screaming of all damned souls. The tiller fought the three men like some giant animal.

Sametono was back moments later with Sakagura and two other men and a length of rope. Lightning flashed, and Jebu was able to make out the rocky shore between Hakata and Hakozaki dead ahead. The Red Tiger was making its final run. It would crash them into the rocks or it would sink here in the deep water and take them all with it. The six men tied themselves to the tiller. The junk was riding lower in the water than it had been. There were holes belowdecks blown by the exploding black powder. Actually, the water down there had acted as ballast, steadying the ship against the gusts of wind and the waves that battered it from every side, giving it extra mass to hold it on course.

There were moments when the junk was balanced on the crest of a wave, both stern and bow out of the water, the rudder cutting uselessly through empty air. Jebu tried to imagine the size of a wave that could lift an enormous vessel like this out of the water. He had never heard of waves of such size or winds of such force as these. Eor good reason, he thought. No one has ever experienced them and lived to tell about it. Water