Category: Book Excerpt

From Leonidas to Alexander the Great to Wellington to Stonewall Jackson to Rommel, the very core of leadership has always been to set an example and let soldiers see that their leaders care about them, share the same risks and conditions. In the old [U.S.] Army horse [cavalry], the leader’s creed was: “Take care of the horses first, then your men, then yourself.” The best way to get this message across is by living as the troops do, leading them up front, and always, always setting the example: first up, last to eat and last to lie down.

— Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts, Chapter 5

Bruce Lee and I were having dim sum, a traditional Chinese breakfast of meat-filled pastries, in a downtown Los Angeles restaurant after a lesson. I seized on this opportunity to tell him that I was discouraged. At forty-five, I felt I was too old and my body too stiff to achieve any real ability in jeet-kune-do.

“You will never learn anything new unless you are ready to accept yourself with your limitations,” Bruce answered. “You must accept the fact that you are capable, in some directions and limited in others, and you must develop your capabilities.”

“But ten years ago I could easily kick over my head,” I said. “Now I need half an hour to limber up before I can do it.”

Bruce set his chopsticks down alongside his plate, clasped his hands lightly on his lap, and smiled at me. “That was ten years ago,” he said gently. “So you are older today and your body has changed. Everyone has physical limitations to overcome.”

“That’s all very well for you to say,” I replied. “If ever a man was born with natural ability as a martial artist, it is you.”

Bruce laughed. “I’m going to tell you something very few people know. I became a martial artist in spite of my limitations.”

I was shocked. In my view, Bruce was a perfect physical specimen and I said so.

“You probably are not aware of it,” he said, “but my right leg is almost one inch shorter than the left. That fact dictated the best stance for me—my left foot leading. Then I found that because the right leg was shorter, I had an advantage with certain types of kicks, since the uneven stomp gave me greater impetus.

“And I wear contact lenses. Since childhood I have been near-sighted, which meant that when I wasn’t wearing glasses, I had difficulty seeing an opponent when he wasn’t up close. I originally started to study wing-chun because it is an ideal technique for close-in fighting.

“I accepted my limitations for what they were and capitalized on them. And that’s what you must learn to do. You say you are unable to kick over your head without a long warm-up, but the real question is, is it really necessary to kick that high? The fact is that until recently, martial artists rarely kicked above knee height. Head-high kicks are mostly for show. So perfect your kicks at waist level and they will be so formidable you’ll never need to kick higher.

“Instead of trying to do everything well, do those things perfectly of which you are capable. Although most expert martial artists have spent years mastering hundreds of techniques and movements, in a bout, or kumite, a champion may actually use only four or five techniques over and over again. These are the techniques which he has perfected and which he knows he can depend on.“

I protested. “But the fact still remains that my real competition is the advancing years.”

“Stop comparing yourself at forty-five with the man you were at twenty or thirty,” Bruce answered. “The past is an illusion. You must learn to live in the present and accept yourself for what you are now. What you lack in flexibility and agility you must make up with knowledge and constant practice.”

For the next few months, instead of spending time trying to get limber enough to kick over my head, I worked on my waist-high kicks until they satisfied even Bruce.

Then one day late in 1965, he came by my house to say goodbye before leaving for Hong Kong where, he said, he intended to become the biggest star in films. “You remember our talk about limitations?” he asked. “Well, I’m limited by my size and difficulty in English and the fact that I’m Chinese, and there never has been a big Chinese star in American films. But I have spent the last three years studying movies, and I think the time is ripe for a good martial arts film—and I am the best qualified to star in it. My capabilities exceed my limitations.“

Bruce’s capabilities did in fact exceed his limitations and, until his youthful death, he was one of the biggest stars in films. His career was a perfect illustration of his teaching: As we discover and improve our strong points, they come to outweigh our weaknesses.

— Zen in the Martial Arts, Chapter6

Author’s emphases are in italics. Mine are in bold.

He found Master Ibrahim by the prickling of his nape, by the shifting of a shadow, by a whisper in the air. The magus sat in a room gone dim with evening, lamplit and quiet. He wore his wonted black, but he had laid aside his turban. A cap covered his shaven skull; a jewel glowed in his ear, a moonstone waxing with its mistress the moon.

Gerbert bowed as had become his custom, and sat at the mage’s feet. He had learned not to speak until Ibrahim gave him leave. He was allowed to fidget, judiciously.

Tonight he was not moved to. His head was full to bursting with names; he was tired. He did not know if, after all, he wanted to see magic. Had he not seen it already, just in coming here?

Effects only, Hatto would have said. Of causes he had seen nothing.

What use, if he could not do it himself?

He swallowed a yawn. Ibrahim seemed lost in contemplation. The lamp flickered. It globed them both in light; it made all the world without, a featureless darkness.

Gerbert did not know why he moved. He wanted to, that was all. He reached, and the light was in his hands. It was cool, like fishes’ breath. It rested pulsing in his palms. There was something that one could do with it, could will, could wish…

It quivered and went out.

Ibrahim’s voice came soft in the darkness. “Bring it back.”

“But I don’t—” Gerbert broke off, began again. “I don’t know how.”

I can name every one of the Jinn, he wanted to say. I can recite the rolls of all the orders of angels. You never taught me to make a light that sleeps in my hands.

He did not say it. “You know how,” said Ibrahim.

How? With names? None of them seemed to fit, except for Lucifer, and Gerbert was not minded to invoke that one. Not quite yet.

With will? He strained until the sweat broke out on his brow. He willed until his ears buzzed and his eyes went dark. Nothing.

With words? Which ones? They ran through his head, all tangled, all useless.

He slumped, exhausted, growing angry. This was all nonsense, all of it. “Fiat,” he said, “damn it. Fiat lux.“

Inside him, something shifted. Something swelled; something bloomed. He stared dumbfounded at his fingertips. To every one clung a spark of light.

The moment he thought about them, they flickered. He pulled his mind away from them, and they flared up. They coalesced; they settled, round and cool and blinding-bright, in his trembling palm.

Master Ibrahim’s smile gleamed out of the night. Gerbert blinked at him, half dazzled, half bewildered. “Was that an incantation?”

Ibrahim laughed. “Hardly! And yet it served its purpose. Now do you see?”

“I see…” Gerbert found that he could close his fingers about the light, and it would shrink; then it would swell again, if he not quite willed it to. It was delicately improbable, like walking a tightrope with an egg balanced on one’s nose. “But if this is what it is, what are all the rites and rituals?“

“Guides,” the magus answered. “Protections. Defenses against the ignorant.“

Gerbert’s head had begun to ache. The light pulsed. It wanted to float free. He did not want to know what it would do if it escaped. He willed it to go out.

It only swelled larger.

His brows knit. “Words and will are simple. This is hard.”

“It is,” said Ibrahim.

Gerbert glared at the magic he had made. It had grown again. The ache in his head was fiercer. He had lost the way of it; he could not do it.

Half out of temper, half out of despair, he willed it to grow larger still. It quivered and sighed and dwindled to nothing.

Somehow Gerbert had lain down on the carpet. Perhaps he had fallen over. He was not interested, much. “I know children like that,” he said. “Contrary.“

“It is a child,” said Ibrahim, “but it will grow.” He seemed pleased; God knew why. He cradled Gerbert’s head with serene and physicianly competence, and poured into him something cool and bitter-sweet.

Gerbert was too far gone to be wary. He merely blinked at the magus and tried to decide whether he liked the taste. He thought that perhaps he did.

“Here is the secret,” Ibrahim said, “and the price. Magic is not wrought without consequence. The greater the working, the greater the cost.”

“This was great?”

“For you, yes. Were letters easy, when first you learned them?”

“Arabic isn’t,” Gerbert muttered.

“Surely,” said Ibrahim. “Now, sleep, and be content. You have power; you have it in you to master it. I shall take joy in teaching you.”

You haven’t till now? Gerbert would have asked. But his body was far away, and sleep was near, and sweet. He fell into its arms.

— Ars Magica, Chapter 4

Author’s emphases in italic. Mine are in bold.

After a brief ritual salutation, Marangan’s student came at me. He was using two sticks, wielding them in a series of complex patterns that made it difficult to judge potential angles of attack. I engaged my opponent cautiously, then backed out of range again and again as I assessed his skills.

Most times in the Japanese arts, you’re going up against a single weapon. They have a preference in Japan for the commitment this engenders. But, of course, it also tends to create a flaw in your training. After all, the old samurai carried a long and a short sword. What if an opponent used them both?

There are varieties of double-handed weapon systems in the Japanese arts. Miyamoto Musashi was famous for his nito style, using long and short blades simultaneously. And you occasionally run up against people in a kendo dojo who use it today. As a matter of fact, Yamashita would sometimes insist that I watch these people and train with them. Not to adopt their style—”the road to perfection is steep enough carrying one weapon, I think, Professor”—but to learn how to combat it.

And what had I learned? Basically that if you’ve got one weapon and the other person has two, you’re in for a rough ride. And the only way to beat them is to use an attack that is so precise, well timed, and focused that it cuts through the cloud of uncertainty that the opponent has created. And that’s not even it. You have to feel the opponent’s pattern in your gut and then when it happens—if it happens—your response snaps out like an electric spark, almost independent of your control.

You just have to hope you don’t get pounded to death while you’re waiting for the spark.

— Tengu, Chapter 15

But too much thought is a danger. The masters say that it makes the mind “stick”; it creates gaps in your defense. There is a time for thought and reflection, and the practiced feel of a wooden weapon in my hand let me know that this was not the time or the place.

— Tengu, Chapter 15

Marangan called out to his students. They flocked around him and he singled one out. Marangan draped a hand over the younger man’s shoulders and gave him some instructions. The student wore track pants and a black T-shirt with a red insignia on the chest. They told me later it was a fighting cock, a pretty popular martial image in the Philippines.

I sized him up. He was about my size, which was good. In combat, the length of an opponent’s arms and legs can be critical. Unfortunately, he was probably ten or fifteen years younger than I was. You hate to admit it, but over thirty your body doesn’t work as well as you’d like and is more subject to injury. In purely physical terms, he was probably my match. So I’d have to use some finesse. Cunning was a technique not well appreciated by the young.

— Tengu, Chapter 15

My opponent was whipcord thin with angry eyes, a younger version of his master. It’s funny how we all tend to become copies of our teachers. I know guys in New York who have developed Japanese accents. I’m not sure how I’ve come to resemble my own sensei. I’m taller and thinner and stamped with the genetic markers of County Mayo. But sometimes in the mirror, I catch a glimpse of the same flat mask Yamashita wears—the expression that seems so neutral but hides the fact that you’re watching everything, analyzing angles and distances, and, in fact, seeing the universe as a series of fluid scenarios of attack and defense.

I wonder, sometimes, what it is I have become.

— Tengu, Chapter 15

Firearms upset the balance between offense and defense. More mobile versions of the cannon that had proven their worth in France in the mid-1400s entered Italy with a bang in 1494 [C.E.]. Charles VIII of France swept down the length of the peninsula to Naples in a matter of weeks with an army of 18,000 and a horse-drawn siege train of 40 or more cannon. Fortresses that were expected to resist for months were taken in a matter of days. Strategic planning changed overnight. Everything now depended on stopping the enemy in battle before he reached the walls of the city.

— Firearms: A Global History to 1700, p. 62

Marangan led us out of the office and down the hall. Double doors were propped open to reveal a large, high-ceilinged place. There was a faded sign over the entrance that announced the Kapatiran Marangan Kali. I didn’t understand Tagalog, but I knew a training hall when I saw one.

These places are all different and all the same. Spaces empty of embellishment or ornamentation stripped down and filled with the smell of sweat and the lingering psychic charge of effort and adrenalin. A Japanese training hall may be matted or have a hardwood floor. There may be some weapon racks hugging a wall and a small Shinto shrine tucked into a corner. But those are the sorts of details only a novice focuses on. The real essence of these places is something more subtle.

Marangan’s training hall had a dingy floor and smudged gray walls. Wiry young men in black T-shirts and sneakers worked alone or together, some with rattan sticks, others using their hands and feet. The wooden floor thudded with their movements and the sticks filled the hall with clatter. If you listened, you could pick up the grunt of effort, the hiss of breath, the emotional give and take of attack and defense. It didn’t have the understated geometric precision of a Japanese dojo. But I knew this place….

— Tengu, Chapter 15

Emphasis mine.

“…Yamashita Sensei is a master of the sword and other arts,” [Ueda] began. But Marangan jumped in. If he were a cobra, his hood would have swelled out in excitement. “And you are his student,” he told me with a slight air of satisfaction. “Come to rescue your master.” He smiled then, and you saw that his teeth were crooked and stained and long like his face. “I honor you for the effort.” Marangan stood up. It was a smooth motion, like a spring uncoiling. “Perhaps you would be interested in my art as well.”

“We gotta waste time with this?” Micky hissed in my ear as we followed Marangan.

“Yeah,” I told him. “Shuddup.” I knew Marangan. I’ve spent most of my adult life with people like him. When he had described himself as a mandirigma—a warrior—it sounded a bit over the top. But people like him lose themselves in a world of their own making. It doesn’t matter whether the art deals with fists or feet or sticks or blades. The pursuit of the art takes hold of you if you do it long enough. It becomes in many ways a reality bigger than reality itself. Everything is judged in terms of it. Including people. Marangan would need to know how I fit in his world. It would tell him how far he could push me and how far I would push him back….

— Tengu, Chapter 15

Author’s emphases in italic. Mine are in bold.

The cavalry action was a technique of warfare seldom practised any more, except on some feudal or xenos worlds. It was a throwback to an antique age of conflict, when military superiority was weighed on a different scale.

But the technique had not disappeared entirely. It had evolved, and disguised its true nature under a veneer of modern technology.

That was what this was, the raw truth of it. A cavalry action. A charge. The simple rules had been laid down long ago, before man reached out to the stars.

The first: maintain formation. Start steady, and do not race ahead of your fellow riders.

The White Scars ran out of the ground smoke in a wide, blade-edge fan. A perfect formation. They came from the south-eastern end of the Colossi outworks, sweeping around north in an arc like the swing of an axe. Three hundred and thirty jetbikes, gunning together. The roar of them was like a scream. Slow smoke tumbled in their backwash, accelerated, whipped, tortured into streamers and whirls and even halos, as the White Scars punched through thicker banks. Crimson pennants bent and cracked from the red-and-white vehicles: Bullock-pattern, Scimitar-pattern, Shamshir-pattern, Hornet-pattern, Taiga-pattern.

Burr stared.

The second: put your spur to your steed only when the enemy is in range.

The formation, already moving, as it seemed to Burr, with dazzling speed, somehow accelerated. The agony-howl of the massed engines intensified. The enemy line, shield wall and extended storm-force had broken step and slowed. They had seen what was coming. Weapons drew up. The jolting gun-wagons began to turn, or stopped to traverse their pintle-mounts. Maintaining the arc line, the formation bore down on them, unfaltering, unyielding, low-level, a racing blur, like a pack of target-locked missiles. The stained light glinted off the blades of the ordu: lances, drawn tulwars, glaives. At the heart of the line rode the Khagan, the Khorchin Khan of Khans, astride his monstrous voidbike. His sabre rose.

Time slowed down, as time always seems to do when something terrible is about to happen. The enemy columns started shooting frantically. The Great Khan’s sabre swung down.

The White Scars began to fire.

Bike-mounted bolters, heavy bolters, some in pairs; rotary guns housed in the nostrils or chins of their snarling steeds; plasma and lascannons; volkite culverins. A raking hurricane of destruction. Contrails and streamers of grey and black weapons-exhaust dragged out behind the bikes like banners. The discharge of it was heart-stopping, the continuation of it numbing. The roar, a frenzied drumming of heavy bolters, sounded, to Burr, like the thunder of hooves, the stables of a god unslipped at full gallop.

There was no ranging fire. The White Scars already had their targets. The first gun-wagons exploded. Others lurched, hammered, buckling. Fireballs lit off across the extended enemy mass from east to west. The storm troop lines began to fracture. Some broke. Some ran. Some tried to retreat towards the sally gaps in the shield line. Whole echelons were mown down where they stood, bodies twisting and lifting, and disintegrating in clouds of churned earth and stitching impacts. A few, unscathed, tried to fire back.

Rule three: shock is the action’s best weapon.

The White Scars ripped in, never for a second breaking formation, despite the gunfire that clipped at them and tore at their armour. One jetbike cartwheeled, gushing flame, rider lost. No one looked back. The bikes crossed the line of the already-dead, the blackened bodies littering the ground, and their anti-gravitic down-force bent, tossed and flipped the slain as they rushed over, their kills jerking and dancing.

Impact. The first ordu riders reached the standing lines. Their guns were still reaping the enemy formations down. They punched through the breaking ranks, crushing through upright men, running over them, smashing them into the sky. Broken forms were thrown up and back, spinning slack and disjointed. Others burst against speeding armoured prows, washing the white ground-smoke red with puffs of aerosolised gore. Lances impaled, glaives scythed. Swords flashed, hooked, slashed. Burr saw one White Scar streak across an overturned gun-wagon. A traitor on its flank aimed a volkite pistol. The White Scar’s back-extended tulwar met his fist before he could fire, splitting the pistol end to end, the hand at the thumb, and the entire extended arm lengthways to the shoulder, where the blade-tip dissected the man’s head too. A kill from the saddle. All in one forward rush. The jetbike was past and on, even as the man spun and fell, sliced through, the cell of his pistol detonating like a flash grenade.

They reached the shield line, slaughter in their wakes. At close range, the bike guns fractured and crumpled the thick sheets of storm-plate, but they could not break them. They broke formation instead, rushing in through the wall gaps or over the shield line, entirely.

Then they fell upon the vast host sheltering behind.

The fourth rule: if you break the enemy line, you are in the heart of them, and war becomes the melee of hand to hand.

From Emplacement 12, Burr could no longer see the White Scars. The shield wall and the smoke screened off the havoc that followed. It was, perhaps, a blessing he was spared the sight. It becomes hard to trust as brothers, those you have seen capable of unbridled savagery.

For the White Scars, the rapacious V Legion, the far side of the wall was another world. Speed, shock and rate of fire had swept them to the shield line with devastating effect. But crossing the wall line had robbed them of speed and line discipline, and the odds were reversed. They were inside the choking enemy mass. Each rider, in a second, had passed from the bright smoke of the open field into a vast back-line of standing infantry. The rain seemed heavier, a curtain unfogged by the blanket of smoke. The assault host was immense: thousands of storm pikes, dripping with rain, ranked for assault; hundreds of thousands of traitor infantry; ready lines of armour, engines revving; monstrous formations of the Death Guard.

The Death Guard. Of all the Traitor Legions, the Death Guard was the one most despised by the White Scars ordu, and the feeling was mutual. The war between the XIV and the V had become a blood feud that would never be cooled. Hatred was too small a word. Even on this precipice of history, the White Scars were known as wild hunters, carefree killers, warriors who laughed in the heat of action, delighting in the fire of war.

There was no laughter now.

Nor were the Great Khan and his warriors fazed. They had done this before. Indeed, they had all known, from the moment they committed to the charge, that this was the goal. Unless enemy fire brought them down in the charging line, this was the highest purpose of a charge action: to reach the enemy, to meet his main strength, to engage, to be in his midst. They knew what to do. Physical momentum had been lost, but a momentum of mind took over.

They broke into individual actions, maintaining as much speed as they were able, preserving what collective forward movement they could. They thrust through the waiting ranks, or dropped into them. The bikes themselves were weapons: their armoured prows, their mass and motion, the crushing downward force of their repeller systems. The traitor host, far larger than even the Great Khan had been expecting to find, was war-ready, but it was not prepared. They were drawn up in deep, pre-battle cohorts. Their sight lines generally blocked by the shield wall, they had no idea what was coming at them. Only the roar of guns and the scream of engines had suggested that anything was.

The White Scars riders slammed down into them. Many came nose up, rearing, allowing their lift-systems to hammer the first rows off their feet. Their guns cycled, chewing into the bountiful, waiting lines of targets. Some shots passed through two or three lines of bodies. This was greedy killing. They were spoiled for targets, because they were vastly unnumbered, surrounded on all sides by armed, but as-yet undeployed enemy combatants. There was a kill to be made in every direction.

The enemy mass collectively flinched from the points of attack, the host rippling like a pool of oil as it recoiled. Men fell against, and into, other men as they scrambled away from the killers entering their positions.

But the White Scars were truly outnumbered. Traitors mobbed them from all sides, blasting weapons point-blank, heedless of their own kin, striking and battering with whatever blades and mauls were in their hands. Riders and bikes became mired in scrums of attackers, fighting from the saddle in the driving rain, lopping off every hand and head and pole-blade that came at them. Thickets of pikes speared two of them from their steeds, punctured in a dozen places. Gunfire destroyed the engine of a running jetbike, and its rider leapt clear, allowing the burning, tumbling machine to power into the enemy files, killing a score with its shredding mass, and then another score with its detonation. But the rider, Kherta Kal, was on foot, alone, encircled and rushed.

The Death Guard surged forwards, fighting through their own dazed foot troops to meet the White Scars. They were driven by transhuman reaction, sheer outrage at the audacity of the assault, and, more than anything, hatred. The desire to close with and punish their arch-foes, who had been fools enough to ride in among them. The brute horror of the Death Guard was plainly visible, a spasm of sadness to the heart of every rider. They beheld their once-brothers, pitifully transformed: massive armoured thugs, their grey-green plate greased with rain, streaked with rust and seeping fluid, rank and diseased, their armour swollen as though expanded by infected bloat within, jet and ebon-iron visors formed like howling beasts and wild-wood predators.

Legionary met legionary, dots of gleaming white engulfed by tides of mottled verdigris. Tulwars and sabres slashed down from saddle height, splitting dark plate like rotten squash and pumpkin, spraying ginger and yellow gouts of pestilential matter. Filthy spears, black as charcoal, plunged into burnished white ceramite, squirting scarlet into the rain, unseating riders, carrying them down under weight of numbers, some White Scars taking eight or ten fatal blows before they hit the mud.

The ground beneath was a deep mire, a liquid black morass, thrashed up by the shield tractors and the advancing host. It spattered and clung to the boots and legs of the churning Death Guard, and splashed the flanks of the wallowing jetbikes.

Wild chaos. The deepest and most intense melee. No rules, no order. A frenzy. An overwhelming din of blows and impacts, bolter blasts, shrieking engines. A tulwar splitting a houndskull helm and the skull inside. A dirt-crusted warhammer breaking chestplate, bone and muscle, pulverising heart and organs. A White Scar lifting clean from the saddle, impaled on a dark serrated lance. A Death Guard squad leader mangling against the snout of a surging bike, knocked down, shredding in the repulsor field. Flying flakes of armour. A spinning visor, torn off. Dismembered limbs, spinning aside, some still clutching weapons or parts of weapons. Gore splashing up to meet the hellish rain.

In the heart of it, the Great Khan. Almost unassailable in his might, but the greatest focus of the traitor wrath. He had dared to come among them, to enter their heart. He had wounded them savagely, broken the day’s assault, but it would cost him. His was the trophy-head they most desired, the unthinkable kill they suddenly craved. A chance, an opportunity no traitor heart had dared imagine.

They swarmed.

But to take their prize, they had to kill him, and Jaghatai Khan was not in the mood to meet death. The vast and feral melee in the traitor back-lines was not a dismal misadventure to end a glorious cavalry action. It was just the far-point of the rush, the true price demanded of the enemy when the charge began.

Rule five: if you have driven through the enemy mass, turn and charge them again from the rear.

The Khan swung his dao, cutting through armour like fat. The war-calls of Chogoris bellowed from his lips, drowned out by the impossible deluge of the battle.

Yet they were heard.

Jetbikes gunned. Engines rose at the sound of other engines shrieking. Bikes turned, ramming through bodies, swinging sideways to fell others with deliberate and brutal sideswipes of the flanks and rear ends.

The White Scars broke back. One by one at first, following the Khan’s lead, then en masse, breaking free, accelerating, retracing their rush back to the wall. They turned high to break out, but then swept low again, prow-rams, chattering gun mounts and raking blades slaughtering any who had survived their outward run, or any who had been foolish enough to try and surge in at their backs.

Almost as many traitors fell to the rear-charge as had died during the in-rush.

The White Scars raced towards the rear of the shield wall. Kharash riders split sideways as they approached the shields, running the length of it, tossing saddle charges into the unprotected backs of the massive field tractors.

None had been set with more than a cursory fuse. The mines began to detonate, some only seconds after the Kharash rider had sped past. Tractor mounts blew up, shearing apart in searing clouds of flame, bodywork splaying, stanchions fracturing, frames collapsing, engines bursting, splintered axles spinning clear from each inferno.

Shield sections fell. They remained, true to their construction, for the most part intact. But, torn from their supporting frames, they toppled forward flat into the mud, a wall no longer.

Eight tractors died. The advancing rampart was broken, like a broad smile with teeth missing, black smoke swilling from the gaps. The White Scars burned through the heavy smoke, taking full advantage of the clear passage provided by the annihilated sections. Some Kharash paused as they turned out of their breaking action, halting to haul fallen or wounded brothers up onto the bikes beside them. Yetto of the Kharash found Kherta Kal still alive, drenched in gore, standing alone with enemy dead heaped around him. He pulled him onto the flank of his steed, and bore him out of hell.

Burr saw the first riders punch out of the seething smoke. He started to cry out, a whoop of joy and shock, but it died in his throat. There could only be a few of them. The glory of the charge had gone into the darkest pit of the enemy. Precious little could return from that.

But more appeared. Then more still. Not all, but a startling number. Dozens. Hundreds. Their return ride, harried by parting shots from a wounded enemy mass, had little of the original discipline in its formation, but formal discipline no longer mattered. Some riders were wounded. Others, running more slowly, carried wounded men with them, clinging to the sides, or even held limp across the hulls in front of the saddles.

“I’m dreaming, surely,” Burr murmured. He looked at Raldoron. “How could any of them have survived? Not just any, but so many?”

“Are you awake, Konas?” Raldoron asked. He had removed his helm, and was staring out at the ruined enemy line and the returning riders. There was no expression on his face.

“I am, lord,” said Burr. “I’m sure I am.”

“Then know, you have seen the White Scars do what the White Scars do,” said Raldoron. “It is rare for any to witness it. I confess, I have relished it every time I’ve been lucky enough to watch it happen.”

“It’s not…” Burr began. “This isn’t a game! A…display!”

“No,” Raldoron agreed. “It never is. And certainly not here, in this time of darkness. What you just saw, Konas, was fortune favouring us for the day. But you should still enjoy it for what it was. Great art must be appreciated, no matter the situation.”

The first riders were approaching the outworks.

The entire cavalry action had lasted six minutes.

— Saturnine, Chapter 4

Emphases mine.

The most important initiation teachings concerned the way the spirit worlds are experienced after death. This was not because a candidate would have doubted there is life after death—such a thought would have been unthinkable then—but because they feared what their own experience would turn out to be. In the first instance they feared that demons, which they had evaded in their lifetime, were lying in wait. Initiation showed candidates how to navigate the after-death journey safely.

— The Secret History of the World, Chapter 10

The miraculously lifelike statues for which Greece is famous emerged from the Mystery schools. Their original function was…to help bring the gods to earth, to materialize. We know from the earlier use of statues in Egypt and Sumeria that it was intended that the gods occupy them, live in them as their physical bodies and make them come alive. If you stood in front of the statue of Artemis in Ephesus, the Mother Earth loomed over you like a great tree. You had a sensation of being absorbed into the vegetable matrix of the cosmos, the great ocean of weaving waves of light, and of being at one with it.

The statues would breathe, seem to move. It was said that sometimes they would speak to you.

— The Secret History of the World, Chapter 14

“As I feed these synchrotron pulsors through the system,” Spock was saying, “confirm connectivity with the graphics on the scanner above.”

“Aye, sir. Go ahead.” One by one, we fed and confirmed each patch in, trying to cram a week’s repairs into a few minutes. The end result would be power for just a few photon shots, but those were better than nothing. Small talk kept trying to squeeze out of me, and I kept mashing it down. All I needed now was to be asking Spock a gaggle of stupid questions. My nerves were whining like the Keeler‘s rigging. My hands were cold, and I had to use the head—oh no! Not now. Please, not now. Heroes never go to the bathroom! Horatio Hornblower didn’t, Superman didn’t, Cyrus Centauri didn’t—but I did. Which proved who was a hero and who wasn’t. As Spock worked under the console, I finally asked, “Uh, sir? Permission to step updeck?”

He paused, then resumed working. “Certainly.”

I dashed into the bridge head, and by the time I dashed out again, the Romulans had arrived.

Yep, there they were. I knew I should never have gone to the head.

— Battlestations!, Chapter 11

There is a head on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. 😄

I stood in the middle of a circle of soldiers and I could smell the antagonism in the air. They eyed me stonily. I sighed. Teaching people is difficult enough. Teaching them when they don’t want to learn from you is even harder.

They were all sergeants of one type or another. Fit and hard. I knew from the briefing material I had gone over last night that they had all been through a prototype advanced unarmed combat course. They’d done Airborne and Ranger and Special Forces training. Some were just back from a tour in Iraq. Their body language clearly indicated that they didn’t think I had anything to tell them.

[Colonel] Ashby introduced me as Dr. Burke and started to give a quick synopsis of my expertise. It was standard stuff, the Ph.D. and books, the blackbelts I had earned. It was a miracle no one snickered out loud. I waved Ashby off and stood in the circle.

“I’m Connor Burke,” I said to them. I looked around the circle, taking in their faces, reading their stances and the different body shapes. “I think you’ve all done things I haven’t and have that knowledge I don’t.” You could see they liked that. We all want respect. “But,” I continued, “that cuts both ways. You guys work with a range of weapons. I work with blades and sticks and bare hands. For you, close combat is anything under three hundred meters. In all my fights, you can smell the opponent’s spit. So I can probably teach you some things as well.” But their eyes told me that they were still skeptical.

I thought about my brother Micky and the discussions we’d had over the years. Micky is a pragmatist. He’s suspicious of the exotic. It’s only in the last few years that he’s grudgingly admitted that Yamashita’s training isn’t an exercise in delusion. And I had to have the same sort of conversation with these people around me now, only it all had to be compressed into a few days.

“Look,” I continued, “I don’t break boards or claim I can levitate. I work in an old tradition that has much the same goal as yours.“

“What’s that?” a compact, swarthy soldier asked.

I smiled. “To locate, close with, and destroy the enemy.“

The soldier made a grimace that I think was a smile. “Fuckin’ A,” he said, and heads nodded. But they were still wary.

“The bottom line is that you’re professionals,” I continued. “It’s your responsibility to learn every possible thing that can help you in getting the job done and maybe help you stay alive. I’m here to see what I can contribute to your mission readiness.” The reading last night had come in handy. “Okay?” A few heads nodded. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” I told them, and the workout began.

I spent two whole days watching them move. All systems tend to emphasize a finite range of actions and techniques. It’s what creates stylistic patterns. Individual capacity and talent introduces minor quirks and variations as well. So I observed the training to see what areas were emphasized and what additional things they could benefit from.

No style is complete—the range of possible attack/response scenarios is infinite. And this sort of training was only part of what these soldiers were expected to do. They had focused on a general range of techniques and emphasized specific skills in hand to hand work. It made sense, in a way. Yamashita would have said that they were neglecting “basics,” but he’s also someone who believes it takes three years to teach students the correct way to grip the floor with their toes.

— Tengu, Chapter 9

Emphases mine.

“Yabu-san, what do you know about the Amida Tong?”

“Only what most people know: that it’s a secret society of ten—units of ten—a leader and never more than nine acolytes in any one area, women and men. They are sworn by the most sacred and secret oaths of the Lord Buddha Amida, the Dispenser of Eternal Love, to obedience, chastity, and death; to spend their lives training to become a perfect weapon for one kill; to kill only at the order of the leader, and if they fail to kill the person chosen, be it a man, woman, or child, to take their own life at once. They’re religious fanatics who are certain they’ll go directly from this life to Buddhahood. Not one of them has ever been caught alive.” Yabu knew about the attempt on Toranaga’s life. All Osaka knew by now and knew also that [Toranaga]…had locked himself safely inside hoops of steel. “They kill rarely, their secrecy is complete. There’s no chance of revenge on them because no one knows who they are, where they live, or where they train.”

“If you wanted to employ them, how would you go about it?”

“I would whisper it in three places—in the Heinan Monastery, at the gates of the Amida shrine, and in the Johji Monastery. Within ten days, if you are considered an acceptable employer, you will be approached through intermediaries. It is all so secret and devious that, even if you wished to betray them or catch them, it would never be possible. On the tenth day they ask for a sum of money, in silver, the amount depending on the person to be assassinated. There is no bargaining, you pay what they ask beforehand. They guarantee only that one of their members will attempt the kill within ten days. Legend has it that if the kill is successful, the assassin goes back to their temple and then, with great ceremony, commits ritual suicide.”

“Then you think we could never find out who paid for the attack today?”

“No.”

“Do you think there will be another?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. They contract for one attempt at one time, neh? But you’d be wise to improve your security—among your samurai, and also among your women. The Amida women are trained in poison, as well as knife and garrote, so they say.”

“Have you ever employed them?”

“No.”

“But your father did?”

“I don’t know, not for certain….”

— Shōgun, Chapter 18

Sarissa left her tent in the early morning, just as the first grey light touched the reeds along the river’s edge. This country was so rich, so wet—water welling out of the ground and flowing in great slow rivers, pooling in lakes or sinking into marshes. Here where the Frankish king was building his city—did he know what power was in this place? Tenscore springs bubbled from the mountain’s foot, feeding a river that fed a greater river.

Water in its softness could wear away stone. Water was great magic. Evil could not cross it. Dark things were washed clean in it.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Chapter 3

“…What can we do for you?” Ghastek said.

Here we go. “My father intends to attack the Keep at the beginning of the next magic wave. I intend to defend Atlanta against this invasion. I’d like you to join me.”

“You expect us to fight?” Constance asked.

“Yes.”

“Against your father?” Ryan Kelly asked. Even his purple Mohawk seemed incredulous.

“Yes.”

Toakase shook her head.

Ghastek raised his hand. “No.”

“Think about it,” Curran said. “It will make sense to you.”

Ghastek’s eyes narrowed. He was running through possible scenarios in his head trying to figure out what he’d missed. Maybe we’d get lucky and he would talk himself into it. Reach deep inside and sacrifice. I wish I knew what the hell she was talking about, because it would sure help right about now.

Pillman checked his watch. “This is ridiculous. After this morning’s phone call, we’re under no obligation to humor her any longer. Just throw her and her has-been shapeshifter out.”

Erra tore into existence in front of Pillman and backhanded him. The Master of the Dead flew back and fell on his ass.

“Bow, worm!” My aunt’s magic raged. “Bow before my niece. You’re not fit to lick her boots.”

The Masters of the Dead froze, horrified. Rowena’s face turned completely white. Next to me Adora unsheathed her katana. Blood-red wings snapped out of Christopher’s back.

A sharp calculation was taking place in Ghastek’s eyes. Above us vampires sprinted as he pulled them to him. Julie was a full twenty feet from me. This was about to turn bloody.

Now. I had to do it now.

Show them that you love them above all others.

I did love this land. I loved the city and the people within it. That’s why I fought so hard to protect it. I couldn’t ask it to give its magic, but I could give up a little of my own. I reached deep inside me and took the magic the same way I had taken it from the land, except now it came from within my soul.

It hurt.

“There is no need to shout.” I stepped toward Pillman, and my aunt moved out of my way. The Master of the Dead stared at me. His pupils widened. I reached for him. My hand almost glowed, as if dusted with gold. “Are you hurt?”

He reached out, hesitant, and touched my hand. I grasped his fingers. “Rise.”

“You.” Pillman stood up, his face stunned.

“Behold In-Shinar,” Julie intoned. “Daughter of the Builder of Towers, niece of the City Eater, Guardian of Atlanta.”

Burning my own magic hurt so much. I couldn’t let them see the pain.

“Don’t be afraid,” I told Pillman. “I’m not my father. He doesn’t value you. I do. He is far, unreachable, and distant. But I am here.”

He swallowed, his fingers fastened on my hand. I motioned toward the others. Pillman took one hesitant step back. Then another. That seemed to be as far from me as he was willing to go.

“My father doesn’t recognize your talents.” I looked straight at Ghastek. “I do. I know what you’re capable of.”

Their faces looked torn between hope and fear, caught in some weird emotion I couldn’t pin down. The technology was up and I stood among them, emanating magic. And each second I did cost me more than they would ever know. It was that or the city would fall.

They recognized this magic. Some of them had seen it before, because I saw the excitement and fear in their eyes. They were drawn to it like moths to a flame. It was the magic of my blood, the one that made the vampires possible, except now it was directed at them. They wanted my approval. I sensed it. Beyond them journeymen stood unmoving, shocked.

I finally pinned down their expressions. Awe.

Rowena knelt. Filipa was praying, her voice an urgent whisper.

Ghastek walked toward me and went down on one knee, looking up at me.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

“Saving all of us from being drowned in our blood and my father’s fire,” I whispered. “He’s going to throw you and your vampires at the Keep. You will be decimated. Your vampires will be gone; your position within Atlanta will be eliminated. If you survive, you will have to start from scratch, Ghastek.”

His face told me he didn’t want to start from scratch.

“You’re outside the inner circle. It will take you years to climb higher. Even if you become his Legatus, your life will be short. He will never care about you, Ghastek. I care. You are my friend. You are the best there is at what you do. This is your chance. Don’t do it because of what’s happening now. Do it because it makes sense.”

“You know my price,” Ghastek whispered.

“I know.” The irony was that he already had what he was asking for. He was my friend. I already cared about him. I would already do whatever I could to keep him breathing.

“Swear it,” Ghastek said.

I smiled at him. My voice rang. “Rise, Legatus of my Legion. Work with me, advise me, be my friend, and you will live forever.”

— Magic Binds, Chapter 15

Author’s emphases.

“You swear it?”

“I swear it.”

Slowly, she turned look at me. Her eyes were still bright with hurt. “Swear it on your secrets,” she said.

“What?”

“Do it the Glavian way. Swear it on your secrets.” I remembered this now. The Glavian custom. They considered an oath most binding if it was sworn against private, personal secrets. In the old days, I suppose, that meant one Glavian pilot swearing to exchange valuable technical or navigational secrets with another as an act of faith and honour. Midas had made me do it once, years before. He’d made me swear to a three-month sabbatical at a time when I was working too hard. It hadn’t been possible, because of one case or another, and I’d ended up having to tell him that I adored Alizebeth and wished with every scrap of my being that we could be together.

That was the deepest, darkest secret I had been carrying at the time. How things change.

“I swear it on my secrets,” I told her.

“On your gravest secret.”

“On my gravest secret.”

She spat on the ground and then quickly licked her palm and held out her hand. I mirrored her gestures and clasped her hand.

— Hereticus, Chapter 3

In about 3250 [B.C.E.], Sumerian civilization arose in the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates [rivers]. In the early cities of Sumeria, statues to ancestors and lesser gods stood in family homes. A skull was sometimes kept as a ‘house’ that a minor spirit could inhabit. Meanwhile, the much greater spirit who protected the interests of the city was held to live in the ‘god house’, a building at the centre of the temple complex.

As these cities grew, so too did the god houses, until they became ziggurats, great stepped pyramids, built out of mud bricks. In the centre of each ziggurat was a large chamber in which the statue of the god resided, inlaid with precious metals and jewels, and wrapped in dazzling clothes.

According to the cuneiform texts, the Sumerian gods liked eating, drinking, music and dancing. Food would be put on tables, then the gods left alone to enjoy it. After a time the priests would come in and eat what was left. The gods also needed beds to sleep in and for enjoying sex with other gods. They had to be washed for this and dressed and anointed with perfumes.

As with the grave goods in Egypt, the aim of these practices was to try to tempt gods to inhabit the material plane, by reminding them of the sensual pleasures denied them in the spirit worlds.

— The Secret History of the World, Chapter 11