Death Before Dishonor Page 40

  “Freedom comes at a terrible cost, indeed: my brothers, my mother, my daughter, and many that I called friend—Oharu among them.”

  “How did our parents factor into this cost equation?” Terry asked, hanging his head but composed.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Kintake said, growing frustrated with the back and forth, “you are not the only victims here that lost parents. I told you that I lost my mother too.”

  “Kintake,” Terry said sternly, imploring him to answer the question.

  “How can one be free of a culture that murders its subjects for thinking differently? I couldn’t just walk away. Saburo Moroi and his confederates would have never allowed it. We were forced to march to his music. My mother took her life because of it; her grief over the loss of her two eldest sons dishonored her, and Saburo Moroi ordered seppuku. I, the new kōchō at the time, had to watch helplessly as my mother spilled her intestines on the ground. I could not give my mother back the lives of my brothers no more than I could return her guts to her stomach. At that point, I decided that I wanted to be free of Ninpo, but I could not just walk out of Togakure Ryu. Like any slave, I needed a plan if I were to leave alive. You two were the key to freedom, my own personal warriors, free of Togakure Ryu’s conditioning, that I would train to kill Saburo Moroi and aid me in a coup. He took you from me, though, just to spite me, to turn you against me.”

  Terry’s eyes found the ground. “None of this makes sense. Why would you train us to kill him and then banish us? Why would you kill Akiko? Why did you side with the Momochi? Why with the Yakuza?”

  “One plan wasn’t enough. A man like Saburo Moroi does not remain in power because he is not cunning. All plans before this one had failed. You were a failed plan and a liability. But you were no good to me dead if a case arose in which I needed you to fight. You two and Saki were some of the most gifted Shinobi ever, and I could not afford your death until I was ready.

  “As for my daughter, I tried to spare her life. But she gave me no other choice. She is a fierce fighter and an even fiercer enemy. She fought valiantly.”

  Kintake eyed the hallway that snaked to the door, looking for the flash of red and blue; he saw none yet. He was sure at least one patron had called the police, especially with Terry and Yuri brandishing weapons as they did. He just needed to keep their attention. Telling them lies, though, only threatened to force their hands early. He needed to keep his cool and stall them longer. “The Yakuza were my ticket out of Togakure Ryu. I had accrued tremendous credibility eliminating their enemies either by my own hand or by sending you two when you were teenagers.”

  “What?” Terry’s face was creased with perplexity.

  “I brokered the deal with the Shogun and Nishida. The Momochi had no investment in me save for Akiko’s mother, so they were happy to accept the power of being the only clan left in existence. The Shogun supported it because he intended to use the last surviving clan as a means to extort federal monies from the government when the heritage committee leaped to preserve the existence of a dying jewel of Japanese history.”

  “They massacred Togakure Ryu,” Terry said, emotion arcing in his voice.

  “And they would have murdered me if I had left.”

  If everything that had transpired over the years were a wound, Kintake’s words were salt.

  “You speak of us like objects,” said Terry. “Possessions you could just throw away when we had served our purpose.”

  “Kintake,” said Yuri, who was reluctantly strangling his aggression because his brother had asked him to, just wanted the old man to answer their real question: “Did our parents die in a plane crash? Yes or no?”

  Kintake looked hard at Yuri. He was tired of hearing them mewl over their parents after all these years. It was the same old story. He had always tried to spare their hearts. But if it were the truth that they really wanted, then he’d give them the truth. “They did not die in a plane crash.”

  Frankly, he’d hoped he could talk his way out of this, but he had resolved that they, like his daughter, didn’t share his sensibilities, his vision, and his conviction. Now he’d give them the merciless truth that they so desired. Then he’d fight his way out.

  “Oharu killed them after all, and you knew about it?” Terry asked. “You lied about it.”

  Kintake let out a mirthless laugh. “No—Oharu killed no one. No one of repute, anyway, that he didn’t shoot in the back. Oharu was an awful assassin. He proved to be a coward and a strain. So no, he didn’t kill your parents.” Kintake’s face darkened. “I did.” There, he’d said it.

  The boil began to spread from Terry’s chest to his arms.

  Yuri’s grip on his ninjatō was so intense that his knuckles were white.

  “Why?” Yuri asked harshly.

  Kintake said, “An explanation won’t change your mind, Yuri.”

  Anger was transforming into outrage inside Yuri. Electricity shot through him, and his ears filled with fog. It was doubtful that he would have even heard Kintake’s explanation if he had given one. Now Yuri’s need for answers had reached its end. There was only one thing he wanted.

  “How can you be so impassioned about taking innocent lives?” asked Terry, his voice rising, belying his anger. “You destroyed our childhood and murdered our family! Have you no honor?”

  Yuri was practically salivating.

  “You are an assassin, Terry. As am I. Killing is our craft.”

  “I did it with honor!”

  “It disappoints me that you believe in your own legend,” Kintake said. “There is no honor. You murder, and you justify it with Ninpo. I figured your time away from Togakure Ryu would have opened your mind. Made you realize that Ninpo is a construct made to control you.”

  “We’re going to kill you, and we’re going to make sure it’s painful.”

  Kintake had tried to talk them down. The chance of success had been small, but it had been worth a try. At the very least, he’d managed to stall long enough for him to hold them off in a fight before the police arrived. Better to fight them for ten minutes than for twenty if he could help it. He couldn’t beat them both, but he could delay them. That was all he needed.

  He sighed deeply and drew his ninjatō into a high guard. He couldn’t stall them any longer.

  Terry weaved his naginata through the air before snapping it horizontal and holding it like a spear. Yuri skipped across the salon floor, on cue, and arced a meteoric overhead strike at Kintake’s forehead, venting anger with a roar. The blade shrieked through the air before finding the steel of Kintake’s weapon. The metal-on-metal clang as the blades locked was a thunderous metaphor for years of stewing anger and contempt.

  Yuri drove himself bodily into Kintake, the blades’ edges scraping maliciously until his was face to face with Kintake. The men locked eyes. Here they were, finally, after all these years, this one inevitable moment in which they knew the end was not far off. In Kintake’s eyes, Yuri could see frustration and desperation. In Yuri’s, Kintake could see the anger and the mania that had germinated over the years.

  Yuri exploded, letting out another roar as he drove Kintake back and plunged a killing stroke toward Kintake’s heart. Kintake directed it over his shoulder and responded, trying to slice Yuri’s head from his shoulders. Yuri channeled his momentum into a somersault, narrowly avoiding Kintake’s blade as it hummed over his head. Kintake wanted desperately to follow him and finish the job, but Terry was not far behind. Kintake turned just in the nick of time to react to the blade of Terry’s naginata stabbing for his head.

  Kintake jerked his head to the side and then whipped his ninjatō up at repeated angles, deflecting the repeated stabs that followed. Kintake tried not to give ground into Yuri—who was surely on his feet by then.

  Yuri launched another strike, this time at the back of Kintake’s head. Kintake disengaged a parry with Terry and slung his sword behind his head to intercept. The blades clashed, but Yuri didn’t relent—he pressed the attack,
slicing at angles, spinning, and launching kicks to fill their latency.

  Kintake etched polygons with his parries and blocks, looking for proper counters. Yuri wouldn’t give in, responding to Kintake’s unsuccessful counters with increased aggression. Kintake managed to time Yuri and slipped through his guard, forcing Yuri to give ground. Yuri, on the defense for the briefest of seconds, ducked Kintake’s slash, and Terry leap-frogged over him in an acrobatic display, attempting to impale Kintake from above.

  Kintake drove the naginata off target and countered by trying to bury his sword in Terry's ribs. Terry used his weapon like a staff and spun it to defend his trunk. He then turned the weapon’s momentum into an offense, repeatedly attacking with both ends. Kintake mounted a defense walking a half-circle trying to keep Yuri in view. Terry ramped up the speed, pirouetting two full revolutions through the air, the spear merging with his vertical axis. Kintake saw the blade of the naginata beginning to level through the last turn—the threat of the weapon’s length becoming realized—and launched a bone-shattering kick that purchased Terry’s gut and folded him like a half-filled sack with a muffled crunch. Terry hit the ground and rolled clear, trying to catch his breath with the stabbing pain of broken ribs. Kintake barely had time to settle both feet onto the ground before Yuri was on him again, pouring the aggression on by the liter.

  Yuri was relentless, hurling strike after strike and driving Kintake this way and that around the salon. Yuri’s assault seemed to gain more energy as time pressed on. Kintake had always known Yuri to be a kinetic fighter, but he was surprised to see that Yuri had been able to increase that energy over the years. He thought surely that Yuri would have begun to slow as he approached his third decade, but that was clearly not the case, and Kintake wasn’t sure how long he could keep up.

  Yuri struck high and low, drawing arcs, circles, and zig-zags with the tip of his blade. Kintake drew perpendicular velocities, breaking even each time. Yuri corkscrewed towards the floor, arcing a lightning slash at Kintake’s shin. At the last second, Kintake jerked his leg up and stomped down on the blade, grinding it to a halt. Yuri had time to look up and see Kintake’s fist barreling at his face before it careened into his cheekbone with a crack. Yuri, his sword, and some of his teeth hit the ground at the same time. Kintake was readying a killing strike when Terry, from across the room, buried his tanto deep into the meat between Kintake’s shoulder and chest.

  Kintake barely had time to register the pain radiating out from the epicenter of the knife, as Terry was a half-second behind it. He had scooped up Yuri’s ninjatō in a rearguard and spun and sliced fierce figure eights, attempting to lop off whatever unlucky appendage got into his line of fire. Kintake responded the same as he had done with Yuri, except that he had to will himself to be even faster—Terry was a better swordsman than Yuri. Terry was a busy swordfighter like his brother, but he had Saki’s speed and precision; Terry pressed his attacks craftily and with grace. Kintake was at a disadvantage for more reasons than just a knife jutting out of his body: Terry was, in fact, a better swordsman than Kintake himself. The only chance Kintake had was to crowd him; Terry didn’t handle crowding as well as Yuri.

  Speaking of Yuri…

  Kintake leaped clear of a sweeping slash from Yuri who was holding Terry’s naginata. The brothers advanced, alternating blows and corralling Kintake. Kintake redoubled his efforts the best he could; his entire left side felt like he had shattered glass in his veins from having to use his arm in spite of its injury. He was struggling to keep up, losing ground piece by piece. Terry arced a cleave over his head. Kintake’s block couldn’t drain the strike fully of its kinetic energy when they met, and the blade bit into his face, reopening his facial scar from forehead to chin and revealing white meat and bone; blood splattered onto a nearby wall. Just a second behind it, Yuri smashed the blunt end of the naginata into Kintake’s face, turning his nose to powder and spraying blood and mucous in a pink mist.

  Kintake crumpled, and Yuri leaped on him in a frenzy. Despite being tactically blind and racked with pain, Kintake drew and stabbed his tanto in the meat of Yuri’s thigh. Yuri howled, and Terry yanked his brother off Kintake by his shirt, preventing Kintake’s retaliatory slash from opening Yuri’s throat. It didn’t prevent a slash across Yuri’s chest. Lucky for him, he was wearing a flak vest beneath his shirt.

  Kintake was instantly back on his feet, his face an endless stream of blood. He drew the knife from his shoulder and slung it to the side. “I have had enough,” he said, spitting blood defiantly. “Ninpo took everything from me: my brothers, my mother, my daughter. You will not take what I have left.”

  Yuri gritted his teeth as he thumped the wound on his thigh with his fist.

  Terry pressed the attack again, slicing at Kintake in circles. Kintake backed away and sidestepped as quickly as he could. His vision was blurry, and his head was cloudy. Kintake snatched a staff from a nearby rack, planted his feet, and whirled it, blocking Terry’s strikes. Kintake was looking for a counter as Terry pounded his guard.

  Kintake fired a roundhouse, missing Terry but setting up for a sweeping attack with the staff. Terry sensed it and bounded backward, tossing Yuri’s sword over his shoulder. Yuri was airborne as if choreographed, seamlessly grasping the handle of the blade and bringing it crashing down on Kintake’s staff, the blade biting a huge angular chunk from the treated wood. Yuri followed with a second overhead strike, which split Kintake’s block in half. Right behind it, Yuri’s foot battered Kintake’s chest. He coughed and fell back.

  The brothers changed tactics. Terry—his naginata back in hand—fought linear, stabbing and spearing straight ahead and chopping overhead, using both ends to defend. Yuri rushed in at angles, zipping in from the flanks, slashing and kicking, never staying still long enough for Kintake to get a fix on him. The tactic effectively neutralized Kintake’s counters and his deathlike patience. He was forced to fight at their pace, blocking and striking with the two halves of his defunct staff, having no choice but to fight Terry at a distance he preferred and Yuri with the energy he craved.

  Terry drove forward with the naginata, trying first to impale Kintake’s chest, his stomach, his face, and his groin before attempting to chop a bowl-shape from his skull. Kintake parried and dodged, keeping his guard close for when Yuri leaped in.

  Like clockwork, Yuri charged in from the flank like an angry rhino. He slashed twice and then did an aerial cartwheel over Kintake’s horizontal counter. Yuri landed on his feet and continued into a somersault to outpace Kintake’s second response, who then turned to answer Terry’s renewed volleys. When Yuri was on his feet again, he snatched a small nearby table and bashed it against Kintake’s kidneys, staggering him, but he managed to stay on his feet and parry and dodge the strikes from both brothers.

  The old man was a hell of a fighter, to say the least.

  The three men gave it their all in spite of bumps, bruises, broken ribs, lacerations, stab wounds, and blood. They were a ball of whirling and clashing steel and wood, controlled chaos, a light-speed game of chess, a game of poker with the highest possible stakes. The pain and the fatigue were intensifying, so was the desperation on both sides of the fight. Kintake was losing; he couldn’t keep this up anymore—he had to escape if he was going to survive. It was the only chance he had.

  Just then, he saw red and blue light reflecting off the walls in the hallway.

  Kintake caught Yuri and staggered him with a backbreaking elbow counter that split his eyebrow open. The strike tactically placed Yuri in between Kintake and Terry. Kintake jumped back, grabbed hold of a heavy shelf near the doorway, and pulled it over. Yuri and Terry leaped clear as they watched Kintake disappear through the door. They hurtled the shelf and sprinted after Kintake. They hit the door just in time to see the sand-colored service uniforms of the Dubai police moving towards the door amid red and blue flashing lights. Both men ducked back inside.

  “Fuck!” Yuri hissed.

  “There’s a back do
or,” said Terry, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. “Come on.”

  “You go,” Yuri said, wiping the blood that dripped down his face with the back of his hand. “I’m going to hold here.”

  Terry shot him a look. “What?”

  Yuri pulled a Katana from the wall near a painting. He had his ninjatō in one hand and the Katana in the other. “I’ll keep them busy.”

  Terry’s face was painted with mild confusion, then disappointment, and then resignation.

  “C’mon, Ter—it’ll be fun. Ninpo and all that jazz.” Yuri gave Terry a weak smile, wiping more blood from his face. His eyes had that look that said I’m going to do something stupid just to say I did. Then he rapped the wound on his thigh again.

  Terry searched his brother one last time, the bloodied, bruised constant in his life. Terry didn’t know what to say. Yuri didn’t either; he just looked at the door and readied himself. Terry pushed back into the salon, hurtled the shelf, and ran for the back door.

  ***

  Yuri waited by the door with one sword raised and the other held low like a pair of opened scissors. Once the first officer came through the door, Yuri sliced a half-moon with the high sword that severed the officer’s gun hand. The officer shrieked and recoiled. Yuri caught the next officer unawares while he watched blood squirt from his partner’s freshly cleaved wrist. Yuri popped out, jabbed the low sword in and out of the man’s chest, leaving two growing read ovals on either side of the uniform, and withdrew back inside the door.

  Then there were gunshots and screaming.

  Yuri stayed low in the small hallway as bullets punched holes in the stucco all around him. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they surely were going to come in after him. The longer he kept them here, the more time Terry had.

  Yuri retreated into the atrium and stood to the side of the doorway separating it and the hallway. He waited for the police to make their move.