A Thin Dangerous Line
Alexander of Tirragon enters the Chamber of the Ordeal in the Midwinter of his 18th year. As the door closes, leaving him in complete and utter blackness, he feels the familiar wary anticipation settle in his stomach that comes before fencing with an unknown and potentially worthy opponent. The Chamber will make or break him before it lets him leave: it's said to confront a would-be knight with his very worst fears.
Alex wonders with detached curiosity what they might be.
For a time, only nothingness. A long time. Alex closes his eyes, useless in the dark, and breathes steadily in and out, senses alert for any change. A sudden burst of light against his closed eyelids and the movement of air against his cheek are his warning. He opens his eyes to a great hall lit by torchlight and filled with people. It seems to be the evening meal of a Tortallan noble and his people, presided over by the lord and lady of the castle. It takes Alex a moment to identify what is wrong; the scene is completely silent where it should be full of the roar of overlapping conversations, clanking cutlery, boisterous laughter and shouting servants. The effect is eerie.
A servant carrying a platter loaded with a soup tureen higher than his head almost tramples him before he jumps out of the way. The servant doesn't even notice, and continues sweating his way to the tables. Alex realizes that not a single person in the room has noticed his abrupt appearance. Apparently he is not really here.
Alex, puzzled and edgy, waits for the fear to start: giant snakes, double-axe-wielding renegade knights, a killer plague, a murderous wizard, a bolt of divine retribution from the gods striking the room in two… any of the many ways this Ordeal could play out have yet to appear. The people feast on, unaware of any impending doom.
Feeling let down, he makes his way up the centre of the hall towards the dais-raised table at the end where the noble family sits. Disappointingly normal, they could be any of the wealthier aristocrats that sit in their drafty provincial castles, squeezing tithes out of the peasants who work their lands. The lord is a middle-aged and greying man of once-good physique. His wine-cup is never far from of his hand, as his spreading gut and dark-pouched eyes attest to. His lady is plumply blond and benign, smiling and nodding over the conversation of her large brood of grown and half-grown children. Wondering if these nobles are familiar to him, Alex looks over at the lord, whose half-glazed eyes look out of a fleshy face reddened by drink.
His stomach drops sickeningly. He stumbles back on numb legs, biting down ferociously inside a cheek to keeping from making a sound during the Ordeal, but in his head is a single, overpowering scream of denial.
The aging lord is him.
Alexander of Tirragon leaves the Chamber of the Ordeal white and shaking, soaked in a freezing sweat. Blood trails down his chin from the cheek he has bitten through. It will take weeks before the memories, and the clawed fingers that rip through his stomach every time he remembers, begin to fade.
Alex has always known he is different. He has heard the comments: aloof, secretive, overly prideful.
The truth is, Alex finds spoken words a waste. Most of what passes between people is meaningless—talk for the sake of talking, with no purpose and little rational thought. He makes perfect sense to himself, so it always puzzles him that most people misunderstand him. But if they don't understand him, that doesn't bother Alex. He's not interested in explaining himself to anyone. It's never worth the effort.
Sir Myles is valiantly attempting to impart some intelligence into the minds of the future leaders of Tortall yet again. Today's lecture is on the warriors of the Yamani Islands. The future leaders of Tortall shift restlessly in their seats, aching from the morning's bruises gathered in the practice courts, hungrier for the midday meal than Sir Myles's gems of wisdom.
"Can't we hear about defeating the Scanrans instead?" asks Douglass of Veldine.
The young pages and squires display enthusiasm.
"Yes!"
"We chased those Scanran curs back to their dens with their tails between their legs!"
"My father was there. He said they're miserable cowards. The murdering scum tried to beg for their lives but he sent every last one to the Black God."
Sir Myles clears his throat sharply before the boys get too excited. Irony is wasted on this lot, so instead of making the point that Tortallans have been raiding the Scanran side of the border for just as many years, he gets back to his lecture plan.
"We discussed the Scanrans last week. This week we discuss the Yamani Isles."
"Sir Myles, where's the relevance?" Thanks to his Prime Minister father, Gary of Naxen at least has a vocabulary of more than a hundred words. He's also well into a sarcastic stage that he'll never entirely outgrow. "All of us will kill Scanrans in our lifetime, but these Yamanis never leave their sacred Isles. They don't have the ambition or the stomach for war."
Sir Myles begs Mithros silently for patience, and has one of those unfortunate moments that afflict all teachers with a real desire to broaden their student's minds. He pulls open a scroll with a "snap" that the aging vellum doesn't deserve and starts to declaim.
"We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one's aim IS a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling."
Having succeeded in silencing the room completely, Sir Myles pauses dramatically before the big finish:
"Those who cling to life die, and those who defy death live."
Pleased with the general air of mystification he has wrought, Sir Myles proceeds to expound upon his subject.
"This is an example of the bushido, the ethos of the elite warrior class of the Yamanis known as the samurai. They have been renowned as the fiercest warriors in the Eastern and Southern Lands for centuries, even if it has been four hundred years since they last left their isles to attack Tortall." He shoots a sharp glance at Gary the Younger. "Mithros be praised for his mercy. The samurai are ferocious and fearless fighters. They are masters of the curved sword, horse-mounted archery, and various styles of unarmed hand-to-hand combat. They spend their entire lives studying the art of warfare and set enormous store by personal honour. Rather than accept defeat at the hands of an opponent, they will commit a very painful ritual suicide known as seppuku, where they disembowel themselves with a short sword before their "second" administers the death stroke by partially severing their head."
There are horrified faces and gulps. The air is now half awed and half appalled.
"Well," says Sir Myles briskly, "what did you make of the words I read?" Having made his point, he now gets to ask the kind of questions that teachers of the sadistic sort adore. "What does the code of honour as shown in the bushido have to do with the samurai view of death?"
Raoul of Goldenlake has a furrow the middle of his large forehead; he looks as though he's got a headache coming on. Gary is sharp, interested enough to drop the superior pose. Prince Jonathan has a smug look on his face, glancing surreptitiously around to make sure the others boys are aware that he isn't at a loss. Alan…. Alan of Trebond looks as though he isn't quite sure of what he's heard, but that it is disagreeing with him violently. The smaller boy is turning an unbecoming shade of red that clashes in an unfortunate way with his orangey hair, and sure enough he explodes.
"How can anyone who calls themselves a warrior just give up like that? How can they kill themselves in such a disgusting way! It's dishonourable and cowardly, and no amount of pain is going to make it any better!"
The other boys sit back, grinning. Alan is frequently passionate in matters of chivalry, and his redhead's temper means that words often leave his mouth without the dubious benefit of forethought.
Sir Myles leads the lecture/discussion along its merry way, while Alex sits expressionless in the back corner. He is silent; but then he's always silent in class unless called upon.
Alex hasn't breathed since Sir Myles started reading aloud.
He's never heard anything that has made more sense in his life. The words have slipped inside his head to expand softly against his skull so that there is a fissure in time around the moment of hearing: a definitive before and after. It's as though he has just heard something he's always known subconsciously yet could never have put into words. It makes sense to him in the way that swordplay does, where it's often as though his body is merely re-learning what it used to know but has forgotten. It makes sense to him in the way that mathematics does, where numbers dip back and forth in a logical dance between question and answer in a pure and finite universe.
"—would you say Alex? Alex. Attend please. Attendance in my class is obligatory, not optional." A few snickers from those in the room able to catch the wordplay.
Alex draws in a sudden breath and stares at Sir Myles. The other boys look on, vastly amused.
"I don't think it's so strange."
A silence. Alex thinks he's done, but apparently it's not enough.
"What's not strange?" Sir Myles isn't going to let him off so easily.
"The samurai committing suicide."
"Yes Alex?" encourages Sir Myles. "Why not?"
"It's as you read. There's a "thin and dangerous line" between life and death; dishonour and freedom."
The other pages and squires look baffled. Sir Myles' eyes narrow slightly with a flash of alarm. When he speaks however his tone is light enough.
"Alex, I think you'd better see me today after third bell for another talk about chivalry."
"Yes, Sir Myles."
Alex doesn't care. After another pointless chat with Sir Myles and serving duty at dinner, he escapes to the Library. Until the bell for lights out, and that of the following night, and for many nights after, he reads everything he can find about the Yamani warriors.
He reads about bushido, seppuku, daimyo, and katana. He devours tales of centuries-dead heroes, long-ago battles, treachery, dishonour and atonement.
He finds words set down by the samurai themselves; he finds poetry.
The years pass into the Ordeal of Knighthood and beyond, with very few people ever really knowing who Alex is. Sir Myles was one who suspected, with his failed efforts to spear Alex on the rusty lance of chivalry.
Duke Gareth of Naxen, who tutored him privately in advanced fencing, was another. He remarked numerous times over the years in his astringent way, that if Alex were to expend as much effort on the rest of his studies as swordplay, he would doubtless be the finest squire in Tortall.
The honour of that went to Alan of Trebond. Alan, who despite his undoubted skill with a sword was too blinded by his idealism and dreams of heroics to ever see swordsmanship as an art; to see it as something beautiful and perfect in itself without the need of anything external to give it a reason for being.
Really, the only one who understood him was Roger. Roger, his former Knight-Master. Roger, Duke of Conte, next in line to his younger cousin Jonathan for the throne, and eventual traitor killed by Alan/Alanna of Trebond.
Roger, who to his great relief, understood him without needing any explanations. Who found him amusing in the way that he could afford to be amused by a man as driven as he, but by a force diametrically opposed to his own. Who teased him that he should have been born a younger son so that he could have become a monk rather than a knight, as suited as he was to the ascetic life. If not for the perfectly good reasons he already possessed, Alex could have killed Alan/Alanna just for what she and her male twin between them had done to a brilliant and subtle man. One had sent him into a half-death; the other had pulled him back into a half-life for the courtiers to belittle and gape at the way you would a caged lion, despising it even more for its pathetic state because it had once terrified you. It was all the more terrible because Roger knew what he had been reduced to and was half-mad with the knowledge. Alex didn't care what crime Roger had committed; no man deserved that kind of punishment.
So in the end it comes to this: swords striking sharply, rapid blows sending off sparks, the Lioness's cold eyes a furious glare, desperate from the demands this day and her god-driven destiny have laid on her. Alex knocks the sword from her hand and moves in for the kill. To his surprise his body is slammed with enough force to make his entire torso go numb, then burst with a terrible pain that only increases as the Lioness kicks him again, smashing in his ribcage. He reels back against the wall which holds him up so that she can smash her fist into his nose and up, pushing the bone into his brain, and Alex still has a fraction of a moment before his eyes stop seeing and he slumps inelegantly down the wall to the floor to wonder if maybe after all he has been wrong all along.
The first quote was from the Hagakure, Pg. 1-2, a book from the 18th century.
The second quote was from the samurai Uesugi Kenshin, just before his death (Zen and Japanese Culture pg. 78).
Here's a couple poems Alex found in the Library that got him started on the deep, dark road to perdition. Poetry is the stuff of the devil :)
Shiaku Nyûdo 3
d.13333d.1333
Holding forth this sword
I cut vacuity in twain;
In the midst of the great fire,
a stream of refreshing breeze!
Uesugi Kenshin 4
1530-1578
Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake;
A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream;
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.
3. Suzuki Zen and Japanese Culture pg. 84
4. Suzuki Zen and Japanese Culture pg. 82
The first poem is from a samurai who wrote it before committing seppuku. The second one is from one of the most legendary samurai, Uesugi Kenshin, a Buddhist ascetic and a model of the type.
Both quotes and poems were taken from the website (stick www on beginning & html on end for it to work), (Sections: Death, and Death Poems respectively). I looked at several websites for information on samurai and their culture, and this was by far the best one I found. If you're interested, I also found the other websites below useful for basic knowledge about the samurai code of honour/lifestyle and some Japanese history. It turned out I was mostly looking for the poetry.
Imogen
(Same goes for sticking www on start and .html on end). general site. History of the samurai. (stick .HTM on these two)
Informative site detailing the creation of the samurai, and bushido, respectively. (this is also .htm)
Generaloverview of samurai ethos. (no www on start, .shtml on end)
A site not to be taken seriously. I liked the quote below however.
"Live briefly but gloriously, One's evanescent life is but a preparation for death. The fall of the blossom is as moving as its beauty on the limb and the final moment, as ceremonialized in the ritual of seppuku, is indeed the moment of truth" (From Jack Seward's "Hara-Kiri"- TUT 1968)