The Wanderer
Jiguro finally returned from having his spear repaired. He brought the spear's point very close to Balsa's face, surprising her. Balsa blinked, but she didn't flinch or step back. She crossed her spear with Jiguro's, putting her full weight into the strike. Jiguro's repaired weapon felt solid. The new point didn't wobble in the slightest.
It was just past dawn, and the first red light of the sun shone off the points of their spears onto their faces. Balsa smelled the distinctive scent of newly work ed metal.
"Again," Jiguro commanded inflexibly in the same tone as a cracking whip.
Balsa gritted her teeth and braced herself for Jiguro's next blow. Sparks flew as metal struck metal. His spear had slid along her grip partway as it landed, which likely wasn't intentional. Perhaps the weight of the new spear point was different from the old one.
Balsa managed to hold her ground. Jiguro's spear started sliding and kept moving, rebuffed by Balsa's strong defense.
I did it! she thought. She had stopped Jiguro's spear successfully, but Jiguro didn't allow her so much as a single moment of complacency. The pressure of the spear pushing against hers vanished. Jiguro reversed his grip and attacked from an unexpected angle.
Balsa blocked, but she lost her footing and went toppling backwards. Her body felt slow, like it was moving through water.
Jiguro aimed the point of his spear at Balsa's chest. She felt it stop just shy of piercing her skin. Balsa twisted, folding her arms, and caught the tip of the spear on her metal wrist guards. The clang of the spear's point against her armguards was shrill enough to hurt her ears.
The spear hadn't cut her, but catching the blow on her arms sent a shock wave running through Balsa's entire body. Though her arms were occupied, Balsa had remembered to hold on to her own spear with her left hand. She glanced to the left and side-stepped around Jiguro to put herself in a better defensive position. She grunted as she moved, gathering strength in her arms, and took another leaping step to the left.
Balsa slipped when she landed. The shaft of Jiguro's spear came down hard in the gap between her neck and shoulder. Balsa collapsed to one knee, gasping.
"How many times have I told you: protect your head!" Jiguro thundered at her from above. "Your footing won't matter if the enemy slits your throat!"
Balsa got her breathing under control and stared up at Jiguro. She stood up slowly.
Jiguro had first crossed spears with Balsa near the well outside the tavern. She'd thought that she had plenty of space to move between the tavern and the well, but she'd forgotten about all the buckets and ropes in the way. She'd lost her footing after landing from her leap because she'd tripped over a bucket. In a real battle, even a small stone on the field could make a warrior trip and fall, leading to their deaths.
"Catch!" Jiguro called out, startling Balsa. He launched her own spear at her, which had fallen at the same time she had. She caught her spear just in time to duck under Jiguro's next high strike to her head. Jiguro faced her squarely, so that she had to use both hands on her spear and bend her knees to prevent the strength of his blows from knocking her down.
Her spear shook from the strength of Jiguro's hits, vibrating in her hands. The next strike came from above, then below, then from the side…Balsa caught each one on her spear before it could land on her, but her hands were going numb and her arms felt like rubber.
At long last, Jiguro stopped attacking. Balsa let herself fall to the ground, completely exhausted. She tried to get up, but her knees shook too violently. Her legs wouldn't support her own weight.
Jiguro approached her, and his manner was still threatening. She'd hoped for a break from training, now that she was too weak to stand, but it seemed that Jiguro wasn't done with her yet.
"You became unbalanced when you let go of the spear with your right hand and relied only on your left side to protect yourself," Jiguro said.
Balsa nodded, but did not trust herself to speak. She felt like the earth was spinning slowly around her.
Jiguro walked away from her, toward the well. Balsa heard him call out to someone in greeting. Azuno was outside, standing under the eaves of the tavern near a barrel of wine. She came closer to Balsa, waving.
"Seems like you've been busy," Azuno said. She picked up Balsa's spear, but she nearly dropped it before she could get a proper grip on it. "It's so heavy!" Azuno said. "From the way you swung it around, I thought it was much lighter."
Azuno passed the spear to Balsa, who used it to support herself so that she could sit up.
"Do you do this every morning?" Azuno asked.
Balsa nodded. Azuno appeared shocked. "I'm impressed," Azuno said. "At your bravery, and his ferocity. I hope he only puts you through such training for a good reason."
Balsa was only thirteen. Receiving martial training of the kind that Balsa did every day was rare for anyone her age, male or female. But Azuno seemed less surprised by the training itself and more surprised by the ferocity of it.
After passing Balsa her spear, Azuno turned around and went back inside the tavern.
Azuno was a guest of honor at this particular tavern. Whenever she visited for susutto competitions, she stayed in a lavishly appointed room on the first floor. Gambling was her profession, so she usually awoke at sunset, worked all night and went to sleep at dawn. She usually got up to eat something at lunch, then took another nap until it was time for her to work.
The tavern's workers took care of things like cooking, cleaning, and drawing water. When they finished their morning chores, they had lunch and took naps, too, in preparation for the evening shift. Mana and the other waitresses woke up long before Azuno to make themselves presentable, doing up their hair and powdering their faces.
Balsa had no interest in makeup or cosmetics of any kind. She often spent the wee hours of the morning in Azuno's room, watching her play susutto against herself. Azuno never minded the company. She invited Balsa to sit down at a low table next to her and watch.
Sometimes, Azuno played against Balsa, though they never played for money. Azuno taught Balsa how to manipulate the die so that it would land how she wanted.
Azuno's hands were ancient, wrinkled, thin, and covered in age spots. The movements of her fingers were not obviously deft or quick, but she knew the way to curl her fingertips around a die and exert the perfect amount of pressure before she released it. She always held the die between two fingers, for greater stability, before letting it go. Her movements were as varied as practice patterns with the spear. Balsa was fascinated by them and became obsessed with copying her until she got a move exactly right.
"Excellent! You're a natural!" Azuno always praised Balsa effusively when she mastered a new technique. "Now, try it with two at once. Here."
Azuno passed Balsa another die. Balsa rolled both at once, using the technique she'd just learned to make them fall the way she wanted. One die landed correctly, but the other die landed on a different number than she'd expected.
Azuno smiled gently. "Every die is not the same. They vary by weight and shape. Even if they look exactly the same, there will usually be some small difference. You must learn a die's characteristics by touch, and do it quickly, if you expect to win."
Balsa nodded in understanding. "Did you ever lose that way? By not understanding a die?"
"I have," Azuno said, "and I do. I've even lost here, once, in this very tavern."
"What did you do then?" Balsa asked. "I've never heard about you losing before, so you can't have lost very much, right?"
Azuno reached for a small, sweet chiku fruit that was sitting on a tray at her side. "I suppose that's true," she said. She popped the fruit in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "I have lost before—small sums of money, here and there—but I've heard people say that Lahura never loses."
"It's not true, though," Balsa said.
"No," Azuno said. "But it is useful. My reputation precedes me. People assume that I can't lose, and so, I rarely do. If you had a reputation like that, wouldn't you use it to your best advantage?" She smiled. "If you can't lie at least a little, you can't gamble. There's no real trick to playing. All you need is experience at it. The more experience you have, the more natural winning looks, until people start to think that you can't lose."
Azuno picked up another chiku fruit. She spat the seed of the first one she'd eaten into a napkin, then returned her attention to Balsa. "Shall I teach you to be like Lahura? The gambler that never loses?"
Balsa nodded rapidly. "Please teach me."
Azuno leaned close to Balsa and whispered, "There's only one thing you really need to know to be a successful gambler: how to run away."
Balsa frowned. "So...what? Never be too comfortable in your seat? Always be ready to get up and move in case you lose?"
Azuno's smile was patient. "You're thinking of 'run away' in a literal sense. That's not what I mean." She leaned back a little, lost in thought. She wasn't smiling anymore. "I'm not sure you can learn it. Fleeing from danger doesn't suit your personality. Maybe you'll understand better when you get to be my age."
Early morning sunlight danced through the window near them, warming their faces. The tavern was so quiet and still around them that it was hard to believe that anyone worked there. The floor had been wiped clean of footprints and the hallways and tables were immaculately clean. Balsa had never felt the tavern's emptiness in quite the same way before.
Sometimes, Azuno talked to herself while she was playing susutto, especially long susutto. She kept a tally log on parchment and kept score against herself. It was like she was trying enter the minds of other, imagined competitors. The game had gone on for so long that she needed several sheets of parchment to tally it all up. She went back through her tally log one day and realized that more than fifty years had passed since she'd started this particular game.
"Have you played against yourself for all this time?" Balsa asked, looking at the logs over Azuno's shoulder.
Azuno lifted her face from the parchment in surprise. She'd almost forgotten that Balsa was there.
Azuno shook her head. "I began it when I was by myself, but I had opponents here—and here—and here." Her fingers trailed over the old parchment, pointing out losses and wins. Her lips twitched upward in a wistful smile.
"How long have you played this game?" Balsa asked.
"A very, very long time." Azuno answered Balsa without looking up from the parchment. "I never played for money: not with this game. So many tricks...such unexpected kindness...there are different ways to win and lose, too." She sighed. "My parents died when I was twelve years old. My uncle Lahura took me in after that, but he died when I was only sixteen. I decided that I would live as Lahura from that point on...living the life that he should have had himself. I started playing this game with him. It's the last susutto game he ever got to play. As long as it never ends, it's like some part of him is still alive."
The last recorded date on the parchment she read was from two years before. "It's about time that I continued this game, don't you think?" she asked. "I thought I'd finish it before, you know, but my opponents either got ill and retired—or died—or they had to move away. Maybe I'll finally finish it, this time."
Azuno's strategy in the game was somewhat unusual. Balsa knew from watching Azuno in other games that her play style typically resembled the way she lived: she used the game's cavalry forces, including the king and queen's horses, to keep her pieces mobile and swift on the battlefield.
But that was Azuno's usual strategy. Her strategy in this decades-long game of susutto was much more straightforward and clear-cut. She used her king to carry out many moves instead of her soldiers or generals, which was customary. It was like she wanted to win honorably, or not at all.
"Try to imagine what you'd do if the die fell this way," Azuno said. "Or like this. Sometimes, it's best to defend, and wait for your opening to attack." Azuno spoke quietly, demonstrating possible outcomes with the die without actually making any moves herself. To Balsa, listening to her speak was more like hearing a story than learning how to play a game.
The territory of Rota where Balsa and Jiguro were staying was governed by a northern clan lord named Radam. A messenger of Lord Radam's chief supporter, Takanu, came to the tavern about three weeks after Azuno had first arrived there.
The messenger looked like a warrior: he was tall, broad-shouldered, and moved with exaggerated care indoors, like he was afraid to break something on accident. He was an older man, though it was difficult to tell how old. He recognized Azuno almost immediately and greeted her with a broad smile.
"Is that Azuno I see? You never age at all!"
Azuno rose from her seat and bowed deeply. "You never change, either, Yazam. You're looking well. How is Lord Takanu?"
"He was ill a little while back, but he's recovered. His leg still gives him trouble at times."
"Still?" Azuno looked somewhat concerned. Lord Takanu had fallen from a horse many years before, and his leg hadn't been quite right since.
"Yes. Sadly, though he suffered the injury in his youth, he has never recovered. He may well have to live with it for the rest of his life. He can no longer walk around outside, which vexes him. He heard that you were in town and sent me to you immediately."
"Really?" Azuno bowed her head. "He is considerate. Please thank him for always treating me with such warmth and kindness."
Yazam grinned. "You're selling yourself short as always, Lahura. You're an extraordinary player—haven't you been playing a game of long susutto for more than fifty years? I've never heard of anyone else trying that. Lord Takanu will be at his residence tonight. Will you consider making a visit?"
"Of course I will," Azuno said.
Balsa approached the table where Yazam and Azuno were sitting, carrying a tray of chilled fruit juice. She was helping the tavern owner and the waitresses with their work today. She placed the tray on their table, bowed, and started walking away.
Azuno called Balsa back. "Balsa, can you stay here with me for a moment?"
Balsa walked back to the table and stood next to Azuno. Azuno placed her hand on Balsa's shoulder, then said, "Yazam, I would like to bring this girl with me tonight. She has quite a knack for games of chance, and I believe that watching me play would be both beneficial and enjoyable for her."
Yazam gave Balsa a once-over, but he didn't seem at all opposed to letting her accompany Azuno. "Do as you like," Yazam said. "She will be welcome, along with you."
"Thank you very much," Azuno said. She bowed her head to Yazam again, then faced Balsa. "I'd like you to see this. I'll be continuing my game of long susutto tonight."
"But—doesn't he serve a clan lord?" Balsa asked, looking toward Yazam. "Are you really going to play against someone like that, Azuno?" Balsa wasn't sure what to make of Yazam. He spoke politely enough, but she could easily tell that he was a warrior at first glance. And Azuno had never received visits from Rotan clan lords or their retainers before.
Azuno nodded gravely. Her game of long susutto had continued in an unbroken line for more than fifty years. Of course Balsa wanted to see her continue it. She was so excited that it didn't seem real, but like a scene in a story.
Then Balsa remembered that she wasn't free to go anywhere that night. "I'm sorry. I can't go," she said. "It's a workday today, and I—"
Azuno and Yazam exchanged smiles.
"This is a rare opportunity to observe Lord Takanu and Lahura play long susutto," Yazam said in a resonant tone. "Ask the tavern keeper. I'm sure he would give you a night off."
No comments:
Post a Comment