Bob Lee Swagger #04 - The 47th Samurai by Stephen Hunter

Author:Stephen Hunter [Hunter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Action & Adventure, Murder, Tokyo (Japan), Swagger; Bob Lee (Fictitious Character), Swagger; Earl (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780743458009
Google: xVuZyDK-zmoC
Amazon: 0743458001
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2007-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

24

THE EIGHT CUTS

The compass no longer held four directions. There was no longer a left or a right. That up/down stuff? Gone totally. As for colors, numbers, signposts, any markers of a universe to be navigated rationally: vanished.

Instead, all reality consisted of the eight cuts.

There were only eight cuts.

Never more, never fewer.

Tsuki.

Migi yokogiri.

Hidari yokogiri.

Migi kesagiri.

Hidari kesagiri.

Migi kiriage.

Hidari kiriage.

Shinchokugiri.

Or thrust, side cut left to right, side cut right to left, diagonal cut right to left, diagonal cut left to right, rising diagonal cut from right to left, rising diagonal cut from left to right, and vertical downward, the head-splitter.

He stood, sweating, the very sharp blade in his hand so that his concentration wouldn’t wander. A mistake with a thing so sharp could cut him badly and he already bled in small quantities from a dozen brushes with the yakiba, the tempered edge, of the wicked thing. Doshu paid the blood no mind: the message was, if you work with live blades, you get cut. That’s all. No big thing. Get used to blood. It goes away or it needs stitches and there’s nothing in between.

“Migi yokogiri!” the bastard commanded, and Bob obligingly performed the downward right to left cut, not a slash, not a lunge, not a thrust: a cut.

“Kire! KIRE!” the man yelled at him.

Cut.

Bob realized there was magic to the Japanese in the word. It wasn’t like “cutting classes” or “cutting the rug” or “damn, I cut myself” or “don’t cut corners,” all those little metaphorical indulgences on the principle of the sharp thing encountering the soft thing, the sort of expressions a society might create that had never taken blades too seriously.

To the Japanese the word cut had special significance. You didn’t toss it about lightly; it was almost a religious term. With a sword, you cut. To cut was to kill, or to try to kill. The weapons were meant for that purpose only; they were dead-zero serious, no jokes, no jive, no sport, no fun. In their way, they were as meaningful, emotionally, as loaded guns and possibly more so because a gun could be unloaded but a sword never could.

“Left diagonal cut!”

“Right sideways cut!”

“Rising left diagonal!”

There were only eight of them. But everything depended upon those eight. If you could not master those eight, you had no chance.

“No, no. Angle all wrong! Angle bullshit. Angle must be perfect. Go slow!”

How long had this been going on? It felt like the crazed exercise at Parris Island, back when Parris Island meant something, where you were on a seventy-two-hour field exercise and nights bled into days, which bled into nights, until you were so aching you thought it would never end and your movements had gotten stupid with fatigue. What was your name? Where were you from?

But that’s what got Swagger through ’Nam three times, so as much as every second of it sucked hard and long, it was somehow worth it. You had to do it.

“Rising left diagonal! No, no, blade bent, no! Feel!”

The small man

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