LITMIR.BIZ

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face was slick with sweat. The path dipped down into a dark place. A small rocky streambed glinted with ice. He hurried across a small stone bridge, looking down to keep his footing. He slipped and fell anyway, righted himself and then hurried across the icy place, casting another terrified look behind him.

      He ran headlong into the trap.

      The old man emerged from the trees along the path, his robes one of many archaic shades living in the hollow of the hills. He stared at Higashi with a fire that halted the younger man in his tracks.

      “Who are you?” the old voice hissed.

      “Sumimasen,” Higashi apologized, ducking his head and spinning around to flee.

      “Yame!” the old voice ordered. Higashi felt powerless to withstand the command. Like a man caught in a nightmare, Higashi turned to face the old master. He trembled in fear and cold.

      “I must know,” the old one croaked, and removed a weapon from under his robes. It was a suruchin, a fine chain with a small weight at either end. He held the loops of the chain in his left hand and spun a short length in a tight circle with his right. The chain made a deep whirring sound in the cold air. Higashi was shocked into movement by the sound of the chain. He jerked forward in despair, hands held out like claws.

      The chain whipped out, and the weight smashed into the ridge of bone where the nose met the brow. Higashi grunted and sunk to his knees, stunned and bleeding. The old man rewound the chain and watched Higashi impassively. Then the chain snicked out again, smashing into the younger man’s cheek. Higashi could taste the blood in his mouth. He spit out a fragment of tooth. In shock, all he could think was how cold and hard was the ground on which he knelt, as cold as the old eyes that bore into him.

      He cried out involuntarily as the old man swarmed toward him, but his cry was mixed in with the echo of the kiai, the shouts of the karate trainees in the courtyard. Higashi held up his hands defensively. They were beaten away. He tried to rise, but was slammed into the ground and had the wind knocked out of him. He lay stunned and disbelieving, his eyes wide, retreating into innocence. He regretted coming. He yearned for the safety of his cubicle, the ordered ranks of files under his control. He closed his eyes in the hope that, when he opened them, the old man would be gone. Like a bad dream.

      When the fine chain looped around Higashi’s neck, his eyes jerked open. He was dragged into the woods. He kicked feebly and tried to choke out a protest against the relentless and irresistible force. But no one heard.

      Higashi recognized this man in an elemental way. He had the same hard eyes as those judoka from so long ago, the sheer physical presence of his father. It sparked a brief flare of resentment and resistance. Higashi knew what the old one was up to: his contacts abroad and the skills he was selling.

      By the time he was finished with the interrogation, the old one knew what he wanted. He worked the nerve points with a casual brutality, his short, hard fingers jabbing, grinding, bringing fire to the last moments of Higashi’s life. The analyst gasped and burned, largely powerless to resist the heat of questioning. But even then, Higashi’s mind whirred with a fading spurt of dispassionate analysis. His last coherent thought was that he was glad he had made a complete copy of the file and mailed it to his father. As if to say, here, this is what I’ve done, finally.

      It was the one secret he was able to keep from his murderer. One final triumph on the rocky slope that Higashi’s failing senses confused with a judo mat.

      In the end, the old one simply snapped Higashi’s neck, backing away with an odd fastidiousness as Higashi’s muscles spasmed and then relaxed, a stain of urine spreading under the corpse.

      The old man melted into the trees, his compact form moving silently through the gloom. In the distance, the karateka called together. Their voices echoed in the twilight, bouncing in cadence around the hills, strong, united, and purposeful. Alone in the forest, Higashi’s body steamed slightly in the cold air, his eyes open to the sky. The trees creaked in the wind, branches rubbing together and making small noises like hurt animals. Far away, a crow called in distant protest of the coming dark.

2 ZANSHIN

      Rain whipped against the high windows of the training hall—hard pellets cast by an angry hand. Inside, students knelt along the hardwood floor of the dojo. The room was silent except for the distant noise of wind and weather and the dry rasp of Yamashita’s feet as he moved to the place of honor at the head of the room.

      He moved with a fluid certainty, settling down into the formal sitting posture known as seiza with the soft inevitability of snowfall. Yamashita Rinsuke had been my sensei, my teacher, for twelve years, and I had seen him do remarkable things, but the simple spectacle of everyday actions was enough to show me that I was in the presence of a master.

      In the martial arts, the really good teachers cultivate in their students an acute sensitivity to various stimuli. Your nerve endings are teased and jolted, your reflex actions made more subtle, and, for some of us, the result is a change in the ways we see the world and exist within it. The true masters are both brutal and refined, compassionate torturers, and guides who lead you to places where you will stand alone, confronting age-old fears that snarl in the abyss.

      Once you’ve gone into that void and come through to the other side, it changes you. You glimpse it sometimes in people who’ve had a similar experience. I see it in my teacher’s face in his rare unguarded moments. And I see it in the mirror. It doesn’t make us better than other people, just different.

      This day for a fleeting second, as he knelt, I saw something else in Yamashita’s expression. It puzzled me. I knew he was displeased with the progress of the afternoon’s class, but I didn’t think that was what I had detected. My teacher wore a mask during class time—his shaved head swiveled on a thick neck and his eyes were dark holes in a face that regarded his students with silent comment. I’ve come to be the same way. This afternoon I thought I saw something unusual behind his eyes. It lasted a micro-second, almost like a gap in concentration—what they call tsuki in the martial arts—an elusive scent wafted away on a breeze, forever out of reach. Maybe I was imagining things; I know from experience that Yamashita’s focus is impeccable. I let the thought go and settled myself, ready for whatever came next.

      Lately, Yamashita let me guide the classes. Senior students often do this in the martial arts, but this was a new development for my teacher. His dojo was an exclusive one—you didn’t get past the door without already having earned a few different black belts and carrying some strong recommendations from people Yamashita knew and trusted. He demanded a great deal from his pupils and they asked for a great deal back, so having his senior student lead the training had not been the practice in the past.

      But things change. Some time ago, I had knelt before my teacher and received the ceremonial tokens of my status as menkyo-kaiden. It’s the highest level of rank Yamashita awards and I’m the only one of his students who has lasted long enough to get it. And it was not just that I had endured the training. I had been tested. I had faced the fear of a fight to the death and had survived. I mean that literally. As I had bent to bow to him during the ceremony, an old wound burned down my back, the reminder of a slashing sword cut and an experience that had taught me that true commitment—to the art, to life—came with a price. Sometimes I wonder whether it was a challenge I could meet again.

      Now as I teach, he watches the students as they move through their exercises. He watches me, as well. His gaze is hard and he misses nothing. I watch too, working to correct and guide, but my ability pales besides that of my sensei. It’s not that I’m not good, just that he is so much better.

      I was working with a new group of students, trying to get them to grasp the subtle difference between what we do in Yamashita’s dojo and what they had been used to in other schools. They were only half listening, and I thought I knew why. I don’t look the part of a sensei. For one thing, students seem much more willing to believe in an Asian instructor. There’s a type of reverse discrimination going

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