Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight! Read online

  But Honma did not kneel on the pillow now. Instead he reached around the stone to the back, and Nameless heard a loud noise of stone grinding on stone.

  The entire shrine slid back toward the wall. Under it was a yawning dark space, just large enough for a single man to fit through the opening.

  Honma turned to him and said simply, “Follow.”

  Then the blind man slipped into the hole, making his way down the tunnel until the top of his head was gone from sight.

  Nameless moved forward and peered into the hole, but it was pitch black, and he could no longer see the old man.

  He debated for just a second, then plunged into the darkness.

  The tunnel was absolutely dark, but Nameless understood that—what need would the old man have for light? It was a long straight tunnel, no doubt only feet under the surface. It ran as straight as an arrow, and Nameless followed the smooth walls with his hands, as he trailed after the old man’s voice.

  “These are dark times. The world is on the brink of another war. You would think by 1939, people on this planet would have learned better—especially after the last time. The Emperor is hell-bent on a nationalistic path that will lead Japan to glory…or more likely, to naked conflict with all the great powers of the world. The things happening in Europe sound dire to these old ears. I have been to Europe, you know. I advised many British soldiers in the Great War. I counseled the French, too. Ah, the smells in France…the bread…the cheese.” Honma’s voice tapered off as he became lost in recollection.

  “Were you a general, Honma-san?” Nameless asked, quietly, attempting to gently nudge the man on with his tale.

  “Not a general, no. Not even a soldier. Instead, I had a talent that was prized in the first war, and which has now led to me even being classified as an ‘Imperial Cultural Asset’. A treasure of Japan, if you can believe that.” Honma’s voice scoffed at the notion.

  Gradually, nameless could discern the temperature in the tunnel was growing warmer. They walked for a long time through the smooth-walled tunnel. The floor felt like dirt under his feet, but the walls were a worn stone.

  “I met the creatures from another world, that you describe,” the old man paused, allowing his nameless follower to digest the startling information. “I was in France, and I was approached by some who sympathized with the German cause. They led me to a meeting with some Germans who wanted me to create specialized tools for these creatures. I could not see them, of course, but I asked about them and was informed that they were benevolent creatures from beyond the stars, who were assisting and advising the German chancellor, a small and quite noxious man. I understood that if I was unwilling to make weapons for these men, they would likely kill me. I professed extreme enthusiasm for their cause, and convinced them of the process I use to make the weapons. I explained that I would need to return to Japan to gain the appropriate materials necessary for my craft. Luckily, they permitted me to return.”

  The man lapsed into silence, and Nameless followed him down the warming tunnel. A light was growing in the distance—more of an orange glow than a beam of direct light, and he wondered what it might be.

  “Upon my return to Tokyo, I discovered that the Emperor himself had arranged for my clandestine meeting with the Germans and the aliens. He was very eager to align himself with them. I promised to return to work immediately.”

  They came to the end of the tunnel, and Nameless saw that the glow was in fact from a fire of some sort. The heat had increased exponentially, and now he was sweating in long rivulets down his disfigured face. The glow of the light danced and hopped on the walls at the end of the tunnel as only light from fire can do. There was a short ramp leading up into a building of some kind. Nameless followed the old man into what appeared to be a huge forge.

  The room was wide and held a clay oven, with flames bursting and popping from it. Fine, silvery sand was heaped in a mound nearby, with several shovels inserted into the pile. One the other side of the kiln was a massive mound of coal, with half a dozen straw baskets scooped on one end, lying on the heap. The temperature in the room was blazing already in the Spring warmth.

  “Don’t mind the fire,” Honma said. “I’m really just giving the oven a good cleaning. We won’t use it for what we need until the winter sets in. Come upstairs.”

  He led Nameless to a far wall of the room, to a stairwell, and up. As they moved to the second and then the third stories, the heat dissipated somewhat. The windows of the structure had been left open, so the cool Spring breeze flitted through each empty room.

  On the fourth floor, which was also empty, Nameless followed Honma to a set of windows and a door. Honma walked out onto a balcony and grabbed a railing. Nameless stepped onto the balcony and took in the serene view. They were on the fourth floor of a tall, wooden pagoda. He could see that there was at least one more floor above them. The immediate area around the building was a natural meadow, but the land looked as if it had been allowed to follow its own course for many years, without the tending hand of a gardener or groundskeeper. To the front of them on the ground was a torri gate, its paint long since faded from a red to a mottled gray and pink. It leant more credence to his theory that this area had long been abandoned. Behind them was a steep mountain face, rising well above the pagoda, and casting its shadow on the scene. Beyond these immediate features were only endless trees and hills.

  Nameless had traveled widely in the forests as he hunted and lived on the land for the last years, but he had never caught even a glimpse of this tall, traditional building in the middle of nowhere. He scanned the surroundings and quickly saw how easily the little valley might be concealed by the surrounding hills.

  Honma breathed the fresh air deeply. “This place is my own. No one knows about it. I retreated to this remote spot, which my ancestors had once owned, and I have stayed here or at the house, ever since. I refused to make the weapons the Emperor wanted, and I refused to help the Germans or their strange inhuman allies. You understand that those creatures were the same ones you knew, yes? Your smell is not the same as theirs, but you have bits of it in you. When I first detected you in the tree, I thought you were their assassin, sent to kill me for not complying with the Emperor’s request.”

  “No, Honma-san. I am no assassin.”

  “I know this now. You have lived through much hardship, and you have a polite manner. When you told me that you did not feel worthy of a name, I understood that you were different from those other war-mongering creatures.”

  Honma faced the nameless hybrid. “I am old now. I will only live a few years more, I think. It is time for me to pass what I know on to a disciple. Come up to the top floor, and tell me if you wish to learn.”

  Honma turned and navigated back to the stairs, heading up once again.

  The nameless man was curious about what exactly Honma had to teach. He ascended the stairs into a wonderland of beauty. Set between the windows of the top floor, which were all closed and shuttered, were rack after rack of cherry wood handles, all holding a brilliant and bewildering variety of Samurai swords. Katanas, he had heard them called.

  The man with the hideous face walked around the room slowly, peering intently at each sword. Some were black, and others had scabbards the shade of tangerines and mangoes. Some were blood red, and some had elaborate cotton rope twined around them. Some had jewels embedded in the handles. The only thing the blades shared was that each was different from the next. The room must have held over a hundred of the amazing weapons, each sheathed and presenting beauty and artistic panache, far more than menace.

  He became aware that Honma was looking at him and waiting patiently. “You made these works of art, Honma-san?”

  “I did. They are the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of work. Each blade takes perhaps a month, or perhaps ten. They are like children to me. Do you understand?”

  “Each is unique, with love and attention given to its creation, and its caretaking—just like with a child,” the
nameless man said.

  “Yes. I thought you would understand.”

  Honma fell silent, still watching Nameless, waiting, apparently, for a comment.

  The homeless, nameless, abandoned man could think of only one thing to say.

  “I would be deeply honored and forever grateful, if you would teach me, Honma-Sensei.”

  Snow had been falling, and they had not slept for three days. The fire needed constant tending, and although they could have taken turns sleeping, Honma explained that he would remain awake for the full three days. Nameless kept him company for those days. Neither man spoke during this time. Nameless helped to tend the fire when he was not needed to prepare meals for them of fetch water for his teacher.

  It was close to the end of the winter, and they were making the Tamahagane, or Jewel Steel, now, because the fierce icy weather outside helped to reduce the blazing temperature inside the forge.

  Nameless had spent every day under Honma’s tutelage since that first day in the room with the katanas at the top of the tower. He had been like a sponge for months, never asking for a day off, and never wanting to rest. Each day ended similarly, when Honma would wearily exclaim, “I am tired. I think we should end for the night.” Nameless would always respond the same way, “As you wish, Honma-Sensei.”

  They had trained in the ways of holding a sword, of pulling it from its scabbard, and of resheathing it. They had begun combat with wooden swords, practicing in the overgrown meadow outside the five-story tower. After lunch they would switch to a seated instruction, with Honma lecturing on the great sword craft traditions of centuries past. Nameless paid rapt attention, memorizing the names of each part of the sword, and listening intently to the stories describing the different techniques associated with sword craft.

  Once a week the men had walked back through the forest to the tree where they had met. On these walks, they would discuss the actual process of creating the Tamahagane, and the forging of the blade. Nameless rarely asked questions about the process. When he did, Honma praised him for asking the correct question for the issue at hand. When they reached the tree, they had parted ways, Nameless journeying into the forest to hunt, and Honma walking into the nearest village as he had always done, to obtain food and small supplies. He had maintained his weekly trip to keep up appearances with the shopkeepers, and Nameless had been left behind because of his looks. Still, the meat he had provided for them was well appreciated.

  The summer had flown, with the compliments coming more frequently from Honma on Nameless’s stances, gait, and bearing. His speed and agility were excellent, and the old man, who was himself lightning quick with a blade, and who had awarded his pupil his first opportunity to touch a real blade just a month after they had begun, finally granted his student the right to use a true blade in their practice combat, at the onset of Autumn. This was a privilege not often extended to pupils before years had passed, but Nameless grasped every concept and excelled at it rapidly.

  By mid-winter, Honma’s teachings had decreased each day until there was less and less new material for Nameless to learn, and more and more revision of what he had already learned. Although Honma had not said so, Nameless felt that the old man had begun to see him less as a student and more as an assistant by that point.

  Now, deep into February, they had finally embarked on the process of tending the kiln for three straight days, maintaining perfect temperature in the clay oven, so that the steel they were creating stayed just shy of molten. Honma could tell the temperature of the fire from its sound and the heat on his body, but he instructed Nameless verbally on what the sighted younger man might look for with his eyes as tell-tale signs that the steel was where it should be.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Honma addressed Nameless. “Listen to the oven. Is it time to break up the furnace?”

  Nameless listened intently to the ever-present crackle. He got down on his knees and guided metal pokers through the holes at the base of the oven, into the mix. He peered into the holes at the colors of the flaming ore.

  “The time has arrived,” he said reverently.

  They used long poles with flat edges to pull and tug on the clay oven, pulling it apart in chunks, Nameless always sweeping the debris clear. Eventually they were able to pull the ingot from the oven with a chain. Once it finally cooled, Honma began breaking parts of it into smaller chunks. They separated the smaller bits into two piles—those that broke easily and those that required more effort. The easier pieces would yield a more brittle steel. Those parts that were more difficult to break would be tougher, but both types would be needed for the process of forging.

  When they had finished with the tamahagane, the old man smiled with relief. “This is good steel. We will make a fine blade with this.”

  He showed Nameless how the different pieces of raw steel weighed and described their appearance, and which pieces would be stronger and why. Nameless had heard about the process of sorting the steel for months, and now that he finally held the pieces in his three-fingered hands, he understood the process, and found it easy to determine which pieces would be the most useful.

  They treated the pieces to keep them from rusting, then headed back through the tunnel to the house.

  “Next comes the exciting part,” Honma said. “But first we will take a day of rest, to enjoy the cold air and the last tangs of winter.”

  The heating of the steel allowed it to soften, so they could combine many pieces into one. Nameless hammered, while Honma tended to heat and turning the metal. Each time the nameless man’s muscles rippled as he swung the hammer, the hammer would slam into the steel, sending a shower of sparks flying away from the metal. These sparks contained impurities in the metal—slag—that they needed to remove.

  A stray spark shot up and hit the nameless man in the corner of his eye, singing the skin there.

  “Are you alright?” Honma asked with concern.

  “Yes, Sensei. I can continue.”

  The old man walked across the room to the far side of the forge, where he opened a massive steamer trunk. Inside he pulled out a thick leather jacket and a something that flopped like rubber.

  As he brought the items forward, the nameless man could see them more clearly. The jacket was a double-breasted leather style, like a military officer’s jacket. The other item was a full head gas mask, with glass lenses and a thick filter extending from where the mouth would be.

  “Keepsakes from my travels in Europe. I thought the mask would be especially useful for protection from flying sparks, but I found I sweated too much in it. Maybe you will find more use from these things.”

  Nameless pulled on the leather jacket. It fit him perfectly. He pulled the mask on over his face and found breathing in it quite easy. Visibility was fine through the glass lenses. His hearing was diminished slightly by the rubber, but he would make do. He returned to hammering, with Honma twisting the long metal.

  “A significant improvement,” Nameless said through the mask. “Thank you.”

  Nameless continued to pound the steel flat, then hammering it over the edge of the anvil until the steel was shaped in a right angle. Then he would move and hit the bent edge from the other side, folding the metal over on itself until it was flat again, blending the two layers into one, and removing more impurities, mixing carbon and iron until the two were in perfect harmony.

  Honma returned the sword to the fire, heating it up and healing any defects, making the blade pliable again, so that Nameless might smash and fold it yet again.

  They repeated this process sixteen times.

  As they worked, Honma began discussing his youth. He spoke of the development of his apolitical allegiance, first to those that could appreciate his work, and eventually to anyone who might pay for his beautiful swords. Then, after traveling to Europe and offering his services to advise factories in the sword-making and soldiers on their use of those weapons in war, he grew weary of violence.

  “It is an irony that a man
who dedicated his life to making swords would yearn to turn to the ploughshare. But I never began making swords for the blood they would one day shed. Rather, they were a technical challenge and an opportunity to create a thing of beauty with sweat and effort.”

  “I understand,” the nameless man said while hammering, his voice altered slightly by the filter of the gas mask.

  “I know that you do, my friend.”

  It was the first time since they had begun, that Honma had referred to the nameless man as anything other than Nameless, and the moment was not lost on the pupil.

  They hammered the different types of steel into long pieces, and then came the critical joining of the two. The nameless man pounded the harder steel flat, and then folded it into a U shape. The tougher steel was heated until it glowed like the sun, and then he inserted into the U-shaped channel in the other. Now the harder steel, which could be sharpened to a fine edge, was on the outside, and the core was comprised of the tougher steel, which was flexible enough to absorb the impacts of multiple strikes.

  Finally, working in perfect tandem with hardly a word shared between them, as if the men had known each other for lifetimes, the blind man and the man with no name painted the sides of the blade with a mixture of clay and charcoal powder. This action would allow some parts of the different metals to meld with more tenacity than others. Then, they together heat-forged the melded qualities of steel in a raging furnace, before quickly quenching the heated metal in a large stone tub filled with icy cold water.

  The operation was precise and delicate. If the air in the furnace was too hot, the steel would shatter in the tub. If the blade was too cool in the fire, the joining of the metals would simply not hold.

  “One out of every three blades is lost at this critical juncture,” Honma said as he dipped the blazing blade into the tub. A jet of steam rose from the surface of the water. Then he slowly lifted the blade into the air. “Describe it for me.”