‘I think you are the coward,’ O’Hara said.
Rage boiled up into Chameleon’s face. He stared at O’Hara with the eyes of a reptile, beads of hate framed by his chalk-white painted face, scarlet-slashed lips and black-shadowed eyelids. He tightened his grip on the leather hilt of the sword. The sound of skin and leather feathered O’Hara’s ears.
Chameleon stepped back six inches. He raised the sword over his head and then to the side. He was in a classic striking pose. One swipe could easily lop O’Hara’s head off.
O’Hara’s jaw muscles twitched. To permit Chameleon to provoke him into betraying his own honour was unthinkable.
Chameleon leaned slightly on his right foot. His arms were raised straight out from his shoulder, the sword tilted straight up. He shifted his weight and struck.
The shining blade sighed through the air and O’Hara saw it coming in slow motion, a blur of death.
He felt it nick his Adam’s apple.
Chameleon’s recovery was perfect. In a single move he returned to the strike position, the Position of the Ox.
O’Hara could feel the warmth of his blood trickling down his neck.
Chameleon shifted his weight to the right again. His eyes lost their expression. They became fixed. O’Hara knew the next swing would behead him.
It was now a matter of defense. Honour demanded that he respond.
He stepped away from Chameleon’s sword and bowed.
He picked up the other sword. Chameleon returned to the standing position and lowered his blade.
O’Hara checked the weight of the sword, hefting it first in his right hand, then his left, weighing it by feel. It was heavier than he was accustomed to, but weighted toward the blade rather than the hilt, which was good. The hilt was scarred and old, but the cutting edge of the blade twinkled like a razor.
He knew the kendo teacher would probably favour the same death blows as the stick fighters. He would go for the chin-shoulder strike, or perhaps the hip cut.
Chameleon backed across the room and stood with his sword at his side. He began a very low chant, his eyes focused somewhere outside the room. Memories tumbled from his subconscious, bits and pieces to be flushed from his mind, purifying planes and reflexes; smoke and fire and stinking flesh and howling boluses coughing steel, and the raven-croaked gospel of death; angry-voiced silhouettes on paper screens and a woman’s soft arms along dark streets; black, steam-spitting Goliath, chaotic pilgrims, earthquake tremor and volcano’s roar, the agony-cry of iron against iron, wheel against rail, and a city, far enough behind, evaporating in boiling dust that rises to the brink of heaven.
Nightmares, congregated on the rim of his mind. Purged, they fled.
He was ready.
O’Hara fixed on the tinkle of the wind chimes, letting the sound cleanse his mind. He felt propelled out of his body, viewing the room from high above. His ears became the ears of a wolf. He could hear the air moving in the room and feel Chameleon’s energy electrifying it. He became attuned to the space, could feel its currents, its molecules.
He faced Chameleon, spread his legs slightly, held his sword at arm’s length in front of him and lowered it slowly to the ground. The attitude of the challenge.
Chameleon made the first move, a slashing drive straight for him, so quick that the sword was a silver blur singing through the air. O’Hara jumped back and parried the blow, The steel blades clashed, rang out in the tiny room, and his wrists felt the power of the attack.
Chameleon moved like the wind and O’Hara moved with him, two men pirouetting with death to the clashing rhythm of their weapons. The room bristled with silver flashes, the shush of steel slicing the air, the harsh cry of steel on steel.
To have tried to watch Chameleon would have been fatal; the tattooed man was much too fast. O’Hara sensed rather than saw his moves, feeling the air currents move with him, sensoring Chameleon’s energy field. O’Hara’s moves were classic defense moves, triggered by Chameleon’s darts and twists. He heard the blade singing through the air with each of Chameleon’s thrusts. He stepped out of time, moved mentally into the seventh level and every move was as if in slow motion. He felt the gleaming edge of Chameleon’s blade slicing toward him from the left quadrant, centre quadrant, then left again, then low, -then thrust, and his own blade had time to parry, block, jab.
Chameleon, too, seemed possessed of an extra sense. His sword was like a spectre, swallowed in movement. It was a dangerous and lethal presence, heard. but not seen. Death sighed in the air of the small bedroom.
Chameleon was the ghost, silent and effortless. O’Hara was the dancer, his ears keened to each rustle of silk, each movement of air in the room, each whip of steel. His eyes seemed clouded over, almost transfixed, as he fought his defensive game against the tattooed man. He parried and countered, leaping this way and that, spinning, kicking, reacting instinctively to each of Chameleon’s moves, drawing on twelve years of learning, practice and discipline.
The Japanese man was more self-assured, more aggressive. The sword moved fluidly in his hands. He deftly caught the low table in his path on the corner of his foot, and without missing a step, sent it spinning out of his way, crashing against the wall.
Their blades clashed constantly as they circled the room, each a dervish target for the other. The room crackled with their energy. Then Chameleon made a kill thrust, a spinning move followed by a leap, a false thrust and a charge. O’Hara side-stepped the plunge, caught Chameleon’s sword near the hilt of his own as they spun past each other, and with a hard wrist reverse, he slashed Chameleon’s shoulder.
It was a graze rather than a cut. A thin red streak appeared from Chameleon’s shoulder to his collarbone. He stopped, poised, legs set perfectly, sweat-streaked muscles ridging his arms. The tattooed lizards on his chest seemed to move with each breath.
He stared at O’Hara, danger glittering in his irises.
O’Hara made a timid thrust, and another, and then, moving right to left to right, charged and slashed. Chameleon rolled sideways, dropped almost to his knee and then stood up and made his thrust. His samurai sword swept past O’Hara’s, inside his thrust, and in slow motion,, O’Hara saw the point of steel moving straight toward his eye. He moved his head slightly, felt its razor edge slice through his ear lobe, felt the harsh burn of the wound and dismissed it, and spun close to Chameleon, so close he could feel the heat of his body and once again, he tried a wrist reverse.
But the tattooed swordsman anticipated the move, twisting himself, regaining his balance, bringing the hilt of his weapon down and locking the two swords together for an instant, handle to handle, then twisting hard from the waist, feeling the surge of power up into his shoulders and down his arms into his wrists, twisting harder in that moment of contact.
O’Hara felt his sword wrench away and snap from his fingers, it soared out of his hand, and auguring the air, it slashed into the wall and stayed there, its hilt gleaming with sweat, six feet away.
Chameleon landed on the side of one foot, a fault that almost snapped his ankle. He lost balance for the blink of an eye and O’Hara leaped past Chameleon, landing on his shoulder and rolling to the wall, coming Out of the roll with his knees against his chest, surging up and yanking his weapon from its trap in time to catch Chameleon’s next thrust on the flat side of the blade, They smacked together, weapons V-eed between them, and hit the wall with a shattering impact. O’Hara thrust his leg between Chameleon’s, hooked it back and rolled away at the same time, flipping Chameleon’s leg out behind him. Chameleon, thrown momentarily off balance, twisted as he turned and fell on his side as O’Hara leaped back to his feet. But Chameleon had lost it only for an instant, arching his back and hopping back on his feet and recovering with another offensive move. This time it was Chameleon’s thrust, badly off mark, which O’Hara parried, twisting as he did. The move almost broke Chameleon’s wrist, but he did not lose the sword. He reversed his move, spun on the ball of one foot and made a wide, sweeping slash at O’Hara’s legs.