Category: Book Excerpt

Dojo is a word most martial arts students are familiar with, though many students erroneously associate it with the word school, as in high school or college. The dojo, however, is a place where only martial arts are taught and. strictly translated, it implies the instruction of only the “true Japanese martial arts” of Ken-Jutsu. Ju-Jutsu. and Kyu-Jutsu. It is more than a gymnasium or club; it is a cherished place of learning and brotherhood.

The Japanese use a broad interpretation of the word. To them, dojo is symbolic of the methodical, ideological, philosophical, and, most importantly, the spiritual aspects of the martial arts. Jujitsu involves more than physical techniques: it involves the molding of one’s character, the training of one’s mind, and—last, but not least—the developing of one’s body. The dojo’s foundation is based on the idea of virtue. Keep in mind that students of martial arts today are, in effect, the descendants of the samurai of yesteryear. Today’s students should work toward the propagation of the spirit of the Zen warrior, a spirit that encompasses more than an expert knowledge of lethal fighting techniques. It represents the attainment of a virtuous way of life where the main theme is the code of Bushido—The Way of the Warrior.

— Japan’s Ultimate Martial Art, Chapter 1

There is a major difference between a trick and a technique. A true technique involves the skillful execution of timing, balance, posture, coordination, and speed and will always work if properly executed. Its development and mastery depend entirely on your personal commitment to training. Jujitsu training requires practicing at the dojo at least twice—preferably three times—a week. But true training requires more than just practicing techniques at the dojo: it requires a change in one’s way of life. One must train oneself both physically and mentally. In Jujitsu, extreme mental discipline is both, a requirement and a result.

— Japan’s Ultimate Martial Art, Chapter 1

“I will free you,” Roland said. “However long it takes me, whatever it costs me. I will set you free.”

“You need not bind yourself to that,” said Merlin. “I earned this captivity; I had sins enough, when all was told.”

Roland tossed his head in refusal. “You did not! I will break the spell. That I swear to you. And if I fail, may the earth gape and swallow me, may the sky fall and crush me, may the sea rise up and devour my bones.“

Merlin flung up a hand. But it was too late—as it had been for Nimue. The great oath rolled out of that slender body, made all the more mighty by the strength of the boy’s magic. Magic that he had inherited in full measure from Merlin, and from Nimue, who was of the blood of the Grail: light and darkness melded in him, so strong and so fierce and so headlong that even Merlin could not stop or slow him.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Prelude

“Long, long ago,” said Merlin, “in the dawn of the world, when Egypt was young, when Ur of the Chaldees was a raw new city and Babylon but a cluster of huts beside a muddy river, there was a sorcerer, a great master of magic. At first he was a master of the light, but as he grew older and more aware of his own mortality, he turned little by little toward the dark. Then at last, in terror of death, he turned his back altogether on the light, and made a great pact with the Prince of Darkness—no less than that one who is called the Son of the Morning.”

“Sathanas,” Roland breathed. “The Great Evil.”

Merlin nodded. “Yes. That one himself. The sorcerer gave his soul in return for his body’s life. He gained much else, too: beauty, wealth, power. Oh, he was beautiful, like a dark angel, and men fell on their faces before him.

“But evil is never content. It was a condition of his pact that he be no king himself, but rule through the power of a king. And so he did, from generation to generation. But men’s lives are short and their memories treacherous. For each king who died, he must find another, corrupt him, raise him up, rule through him, watch him grow old, then have it all to do again.

“He grew greatly weary of this endless round. For a long while he withdrew from the world, built himself a fortress with strong spells, and set himself to master all magic that there was in the world. Yet he found he could not do that, for the magic of the light was now closed to him. And that, in its time, drove him nigh mad.

“Then in his stronghold, amid his armies of demons and spirits of the dark, he heard a rumor, a whisper, a tale brought in scattered fragments from the world’s heart. The Messiah had come to Jerusalem, or so it was said. He had come, and lived as the most mortal of men, and died as a criminal, hung on a cross.

“And that, said the messengers who brought this word to the world’s end, was preposterous; and yet it seemed to be true. For the light is incalculable, and its ways are not mortal ways, and it does as it pleases to do, beyond reason or sense or logic.

“The sorcerer would have regarded this as a curiosity, a fine tale for a long night, except for the rumor that came with it. It was even more fragmentary than the word of the Messiah—who after all was but the incarnation of a minor deity in a very small province of the Roman Empire. And Rome, as every seer knew, was about to destroy that province utterly, and scatter its people to the winds of the world.

“Still, the rumor was this: that before the god’s son died, he had celebrated a feast of sacrifice. He had offered up a cup of his own blood, blood of a god, in token of the life that would be given thereafter. And that, as any mage knew, was the greatest of sacrifices, the divine sacrifice, that could redeem or destroy the world.

“Others before him had done this. Osiris, Tammuz, the Green King—their blood bound the chains of earth and heaven, and strengthened the light in its long battle against the dark. But none of them had left behind a relic, a remembrance, a vessel that had held his blood. That vessel was in the hands of a man of Jerusalem, or so it was said; it was kept hidden, perhaps in ignorance of its power.

“For power it had, beyond any instrument of magic that had been in this world. It belonged to the light, but it was not necessarily of the light. In the hands of a master of the dark, it would be a great weapon, and a mighty force for destruction.

“The sorcerer wanted it. He wanted it as he had wanted nothing in all the long ages of his life—even more strongly than he had wanted to live forever. He wanted this thing, the cup of a god’s blood. He wanted it, and he set out to take it.

“And he could not win it. It was taken out of Jerusalem in its fall, when the Temple burned and Roman armies trampled the holy places. It was spirited away, hidden from him, taken to the far edge of the world, even to the isle of Britain. And there he found it, but he could not win it. It was too well protected.

“He wielded every sleight and wile and power at his disposal. He put on the semblance of mortal man: first a priest of the Romans, then a Druid of the Britons. But this cup, this Grail as it was called in Britain, was kept from him, and hidden away where he could not find it.

“Then at last he conceived a plan. He found a woman, a meek vessel as he thought her. He summoned a demon, a prince of his master’s court, to lie with her and get a child on her. For he could not do this himself, much as he might wish to: that was another price of his deathlessness, to forsake all pleasure of woman’s body, and all hope of getting children. But the demon whom he summoned put on his face, his semblance of supernal beauty, and so seduced the woman.

“In the passing of time she bore a son, a child without a father, a strange inhuman creature whose every breath was magic.”

“You,” said Roland. “That was you.”

“Yes,” said Merlin. “I was that child, wrought by a sorcerer to seize the Grail. But he had underestimated my mother. She was a princess of Gwynedd, a redoubtable woman even in her youth, and she was a Druid and the daughter of Druids. She raised me as she saw fit, and that was in the light; and when my creator came to claim me, I was already corrupted. My mother had warned me what to expect, and advised me to betray as little of myself as possible. Therefore I seemed a biddable young thing, and dull, so that the sorcerer decided in the end to leave me where I was—but aware of his presence, and ready to do as he bade me, whenever he should have need of me.

“Which in time he did. He used me to make a king as he had done so often before: to raise up Uther as king over Britain, and to seduce him with the lady of Cornwall, and thus to beget Arthur. Arthur was to be his puppet, his kingly servant.

“But I was my mother’s son, and from the very beginning I was Arthur’s man. I loved him, both the child he was and the king I foresaw. I swore a great oath before the gods, that I would keep him in the light, and never surrender him to the darkness.

“So did I betray my maker twice over. I was not the meek slave he had wrought me to be, nor was my Arthur the puppet king that he was to have been. We had defied him, and worse, succeeded—and made him our bitter enemy.

“It was he who sent the vision of the Grail into Arthur’s warband, and so broke the fellowship in its obsession with the quest. And it was he who seduced Nimue and set her to betray me; but she woke to the truth too late, and knew what she had done. She could not free me, but she could protect Arthur, and did, as much as she might. His kingdom fell, but his soul was saved; and his son, who was to have been the sorcerer’s puppet, was slain by Arthur’s own hand.

“As for the Grail, which was the cause of it all, it was indeed almost betrayed into the sorcerer’s hands. He found it in its hiding place in the kingdom of Montsalvat, in a fortress called Carbonek, protected by nine enchantresses and by a brotherhood of holy warriors ruled by a Druid king. The sorcerer corrupted the king’s son, maimed and nigh destroyed him. But when the Grail was all but in his grasp, one of Arthur’s own warband came bearing the power of the light, and so saved the prince and the fortress and the Grail. The sorcerer was cast down by the might of the Grail. His beauty was rent from him, and much of his strength. The Grail was saved. The light had conquered.

“But it was too late for me,” Merlin said, “or for Nimue, whom I still loved. Poor child, she was racked with guilt. She swore to guard me, and bound our daughter to it, too. I would not have permitted that, but she was careful to do it where I could not prevent her.

“For she was convinced that as greatly diminished as our old enemy was, he was not dead; and he would look for me, to destroy me if he could, for I had betrayed him in everything that I did. I had raised Arthur in the light, I had won over Nimue—and yes, I had taught that young warrior, too, the one called Parsifal, so that he came to Montsalvat and redeemed its prince, and saved the Grail. He had a fair store of magic, did Parsifal. His forefathers had brought the Grail out of Jerusalem before its fall; and Nimue was his mother’s child, his own sister.”

“You taught him deliberately, then,” said Roland. “You knew what he would be.”

“Ah,” said Merlin, lifting his shoulder in a shrug. “I take no credit for that. The gods—or God, if you will—had rather more to do with it than I did. But he was a good pupil. Not as good as his sister, or for that matter as you are, but good enough in the end. He nearly failed, you know. When he came to Montsalvat, his foresight abandoned him. He was silent when he should have spoken, and shrank back when he should have been bold. But for that, the sorcerer would never have found the Grail’s hiding place at all.”

“But because he did,” Roland said, “he was destroyed. Wasn’t it a good thing, then, that Parsifal did seem to fail?”

“Some would call it blind luck,” Merlin said. “I call it the gods’ hand—and their humor, too, maybe.”

— Kingdom of the Grail, Prelude

The sky paled to silver and rose as [Sarissa] came down to the river. She bent to lave her face, to drink of the cold clean water. When she had had her fill, she knelt there for a while, breathing damp cool air, watching the sun spread light across the horizon.

The river caught the flame of it. She trailed her fingers in water as bright as fire. It was clear here, and filling with light. Fishes darted; weeds swayed in the current. Farther out, where the river was deeper, the water darkened to black beneath the sun’s brilliance.

Sarissa pulled off her boots and waded out into the icy river. The shock of the cold made her gasp, but she steeled herself to bear it. The current tugged at her. She rooted herself in the earth. The water flowed over her but could not move her. When it lapped her chin, she filled her lungs with every scrap of air that they could hold, and slipped into a strange dark-bright world.

She swam as a fish swims, supple and swift, down and down into that realm of dim green shapes and rippling weeds, lit with sudden flashes of light: sun rising, fish leaping. She passed out of the sun’s light, but there was light below her, a gleam in the river’s darkness.

Just as she knew that her breath must fail her, her outstretched hand touched the thing that lay on the river’s bottom. It was hard, colder than the water, and caught fast in a tangle of weeds and clay. She grasped the end of it and thrust against the current. Her lungs had begun to burn. But she would not let go.

The earth fought for the victory, but the water in its current caught Sarissa and swirled her suddenly upward. Blind, half-unconscious, lungs afire, she burst into the light.

She fell on the green bank with her prize caught beneath her. Out of the water it was a massive, icy-cold thing, but its heart was fire.

She lifted herself to her knees. A sword lay in the grass. It gleamed as if it had come new from the forge, grey rippled steel like the water that had begotten it. Its hilt was plain silver without adornment, but for a white stone set in the pommel.

As she knelt in front of it. Tarik flowed out of the river, licking cat-whiskers, flicking a fish’s tail that flowed and stretched and transmuted into a cat’s. He inspected the sword with approval. The water had done well, his glance said, and the sun’s fire, forging a blade for a champion’s hand. If indeed there was a champion in the world, and if, once chosen, he would do what he had been sought out to do.

Tarik, when he was a cat, had a cat’s irony. But it was a fine sword, as solid as earth, and as palpably real. Sarissa trusted that the same would be true of the man for whom it had been wrought.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Chapter 3

[Sarek, Vulcan Ambassador to Earth, had become close friends with Amanda Greyson during her work adding his language to the then-fledgling Universal Translator Project.]

…There came a time when the day seemed somehow incomplete if she had not called him and asked him about something, or told him what she was doing. There came a time when it seemed odd not to have dinner together at least one day of the weekend, if not both. There came a time when it seemed quite normal that he should visit her at her house, and have dinner with her, and stay late, talking about everything in the world. The worlds. Now there were truly more than one, and he felt as if he was living both of them. The word lists had started the process: it was the word lists that finally put the finishing touch to it.

“You have mistranslated this,” he said, sitting on her couch and tapping the printout. “I thought we had discussed this. Do you mean to tell me that this revision of the list went to the committee?”

She frowned at him. “I told you it was going to. What’s the problem?”

“This word.” He pointed at arie’mnu. “It does not mean elimination of emotion. That is not what we do, by and large.”

“But all the earlier—”

“If you will pay attention to all the earlier translations, you will perpetuate their mistakes! Nor, what is this, down here, nor is it ‘suppression.’ Control is wrong as well. Mastery, it is mastery. There is a difference!”

She shrugged and sighed. “It’s going to be hard to get it changed now. It’s just one word, we can catch it in the next translation—

“And leave everyone who hears the word for the next ten years thinking that we have no emotions? Do you think we have no emotions?”

“Do you have emotions?” she said, arching her eyebrows at him. He was being teased, and he knew it.

And instantly he knew something else, as well.

“You will have to judge,” he said…and drew her close.

And showed her that he did.

And found that she did, too.

— Spock’s World, Chapter 7

Author’s emphases.

On the material side the life of the feudal class was rough and uncomfortable. The castles were cold and drafty. If a castle was of wood, you had no fire, and if a stone castle allowed you to have one, you smothered in the smoke. Until the thirteenth century no one except a few great feudal princes had a castle providing more than two rooms. In the hall the lord did his business: received his officials and vassals, held his court, and entertained ordinary guests. There the family and retainers ate on trestle tables that at night served as beds for the servants and guests. The chamber was the private abode of the lord and his family. The lord and lady slept in a great bed, their children had smaller beds, and their personal servants slept on the floor. Distinguished visitors were entertained in the chamber. When the lord of the castle wanted a private talk with a guest, they sat on the bed. The lord and his family could have all the food they could eat, but it was limited in variety. Great platters of game, both birds and beasts, were the chief stand-by, reinforced with bread and vast quantities of wine. They also had plenty of clothing, but the quality was largely limited by the capacity of the servant girls who made it. In short, in the tenth and eleventh centuries the noble had two resources, land and labor. But the labor was magnificently inefficient and by our standards the land was badly tilled. Not until the revival of trade could the feudal class begin to live in anything approaching luxury.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 30-31

Although the process is obscure, the result is quite clear. By 987 [C.E.] the soldiers of the West Frankish state were arranged in a feudal hierarchy bound together by oaths of vassalage. The king was at the top of the feudal pyramid: the suzerain of the land. A few dukes and counts were his direct vassals. They in turn had their vassals, rear vassals, and rear rear vassals. At the bottom of the pyramid was the simple knight with just enough land and peasant labor to support him, his family, and his horses. Now this structure was not all embracing by 987; in fact, it never was. As late as the latter part of the twelfth century the count of Dreux surrendered large allodial holdings to the count of Champagne and received them back as fiefs. A recent study has shown that large allodial estates persisted throughout the Middle Ages in the region around Bordeaux. But in comparison with the total area of the country these exceptions were of slight importance, and the principle beloved by feudal lawyers—no land without a lord—became essentially true. Thus all land was someone’s fief and every landholder except the king was someone’s vassal. The soldiers, the knights, held the land of France, and they were bound together by the feudal system.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 16-17

The origins of feudal institutions may be found in both Roman and German life. According to Tacitus, when a German war chief planned a campaign, he gathered about him a group of picked warriors which was called his comitatus. These men swore absolute fidelity and obedience to the chief in return for arms, food, clothing, and a share in the plunder. The German chieftains who set themselves up as kings in the Roman Empire had similar bands of sworn followers. The Frankish kings called the comitatus a truste and its members antrustiones. The Saxon kings were surrounded by bands of thanes. Thus the practice of a warrior binding himself by an oath to follow a chief in war was well established among the Germanic peoples. The Romans had a somewhat similar institution, the clientela. When a Roman freed a slave, the freedman usually remained a dependent of his former master, a cliens. Poor freemen might seek the protection of a senator by becoming his clients. In the latter years of the Roman Empire in the West the comitatus and the clientele tended to become merged into one institution. The great Roman nobles hired bands of German warriors to serve as their bodyguards. These warriors were known as bucellarii. Now the Roman senator may well have thought of his bucellarii as soldier-clients, but the Germans were more likely to consider themselves members of a comitatus. The bucellarii played an extremely important part in the wars of the fifth century [C.E.]: a large part of Belisarius‘ army was composed of his bucellarii. It seems clear that we have in these various Roman, German, and Romano-German institutions the prototype of the relationship between lord and vassal.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 12-13

The great limitation on the equipment of the Army of Flanders in the sixteenth century [C.E.] was financial: a pike and body-armour (the corselete) cost 30 florins in the 1590s, a musket cost 10 florins, a 24-pounder cannon cost 1,000 florins. With prices like this, there was never enough money to arm all of the soldiers all of the time. There was only limited concern about this: sixteenth-century strategists believed that wars should be fought with men, not material…and faced with a choice between feeding their men or equipping them, they always chose food. Eight hundred men could be fed for a month with the money required to cast one cannon; a pike-man could be given bread for two years with the price of his corselet.

Only gradually did the Army systematize the supply of weapons to its men, deducting the cost of arms, powder and shot by [installments] from their future wages….

Arms and armour were…provided on credit to the troops by contractors engaged by the government. This was essential since few men could afford to purchase their own firearms (a musket cost 10 florins in the 1590s, more than a musketeer’s wage for a month), but it was perhaps shortsighted to charge the powder and shot used by each man against his account—it was hardly an encouragement for a marksman to use his weapon! In their defence the government argued that the musketeers and arquebusiers already drew a slightly higher wage to cover the cost of using their guns, but of course this was only effective when wages were actually paid….

— The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659, pp. 48-49, 165

[The protagonist is a trained swordsman staying in a city far from home. His sensei arranges for him to train at a local dojo. This is his first time there. As a “new student”, he is given a white belt to wear.]

…When the class was called to order, I made sure I sat at the end with the beginners. Everything in a traditional Japanese training hall is related to issues of rank: it conditions whom you bow to and how, the roles of people in paired exercises, and how you’re supposed to behave in general. Even the room is divided into spheres of higher and lower status. Higher ranks line up closest to the place of honor where the scroll hung. As sensei, Hasegawa would sit at that end. The line would stretch away from him, across the room, and as individual rank decreased, so your place in the line grew farther and farther away from the teacher.

I sat near the door, with the kids….

…The Hasegawa school was rooted in the traditions of judo and aikido. The advanced students worked with wooden swords and the short staff known as a jo. They handed me one of the staffs, which were made from white oak.

We moved through some basics, practicing movement and strikes in isolation. Then we progressed to paired techniques….

“Kata,” [the sensei] called. Kata are the formal practice routines of the old arts, choreographed actions developed from traditions where the slightest error with a weapon could maim your opponent. Some martial artists disdain kata. When done right, true kata practice can make the sweat stream off you and your hair stand on end.

In the paired exercises focusing on jo, the attacker uses a wooden sword and the defender wields a jo. There are twelve kata for jo, and they grow subtly more complex as you progress through them. As a junior ranked person in this school, I got to defend with the jo. I was looking about for a partner, when [Hasegawa sensei] slipped into place in front of me carrying a wooden sword. He grinned slightly as we bowed.

But when we came together, he was all business—focused, smooth, and lethal. We started with the kata called tsukizue. Hasegawa was holding back a bit, getting a feel for my skill level. As we advanced through each form, his movements grew crisper, harder, and faster. His eyes tightened in concentration as my response kept pace with the increasing intensity of his actions.

By the time we had finished the final kata called Ranai, we were both sweaty. We brought our weapons down and bowed formally to each other. The smile was back on his face. I glanced around me and noticed that the rest of the class had sat down to watch. Thinking back, I remember the fleeting impression that most other activity had stopped some time ago.

“Thank you, Sensei,” I said. “That was the sort of thing I needed.”

“My pleasure, Dr. Burke,” he said, and sounded like he meant it. He called the class to order and we began to line up for the formal bow that would end the session. I started to move down to the end of the line, but Hasegawa laid a gentle hand upon my arm.

“Oh, no.” He gestured beside him in the special spot reserved for teachers. “You sit beside me here….”

— Kage, Chapter 6

He looked back down and saw the warrior standing before him, tall and clad in golden armour, each plate wrought with the same skill and love as had been lavished upon his vessel. The warrior wore no helm and was fitted with no visible breathing augmetics, yet seemed untroubled by the chemical-laden air of Mars.

Verticorda found his gaze dwelling on the warrior’s face, beautiful and perfect as though able to see beyond the armoured exterior of Ares Lictor and into Verticorda’s soul. In his eyes, his so very ancient eyes, Verticorda saw the wisdom of all the ages and the burden of all the knowledge contained within them.

A crimson mantle flapped in the wind behind the giant warrior and he carried an eagle-topped sceptre clutched in one mighty gauntlet. The golden giant’s eyes scrutinised the blue-armoured form of Verticorda’s mount, from its conical glacis to the aventailed shoulder plates upon which the wheel and lightning bolt symbol of the Knights of Taranis was emblazoned.

The warrior reached out towards him. “Your machine is damaged, Taymon Verticorda,” he said, his voice heavy and yet musical, like the most perfect sound imaginable. “May I?”

Verticorda found himself unable to form a reply, knowing that anything he might say would be trite in the face of such perfection. It didn’t occur to him to wonder how the sublime warrior knew his name. Without waiting for a reply, the warrior reached out, and Verticorda felt his touch upon the joints of Ares Lictor‘s knee.

“Machine, heal thyself,” said the warrior, the purpose and self-belief in his voice passing into Verticorda as though infusing every molecule of his hybrid existence of flesh and steel with new-found purpose and vitality. He felt the warmth of the warrior’s touch through the shell of his mount, and gasped as trembling vibrations spread through its armoured frame of plasteel and ceramite. He took an involuntary step back, feeling the movements of his mount flow as smoothly as ever they had. With one step, he could feel Ares Lictor move as though it had just come off the assembly lines, its stubborn knee joint flexing like new.

“Who are you?” he gasped, his voice sounding grating and pathetic next to the mighty timbre of the golden warrior’s voice.

“I am the Emperor,” said the warrior….

— Mechanicum, Chapter 0.01

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

[The enigmatic Bagger Vance and young Hardy Graves are walking the Krewe Island golf course the night before the exhibition match when they are joined by O. B. Keeler, friend of the legendary Bobby Jones. The historical fiction story is a recollection by Hardy in later life.]

“Let’s see you take a cut.” Bagger Vance held out Junah’s driver to me.

“You mean hit one?”

“Just give us a few swings.”

They had apparently been discussing some theory, and I was to be their guinea pig. I didn’t mind. I took the big deep-faced driver that Junah called Schenectady Slim, planted my feet and gave it a wail from my soles. Once more, Bagger Vance requested. I swung again. When I looked up, he and Keeler were both chuckling merrily.

I felt like a fool, half ready to slam the club down and storm off, when Bagger Vance again caught my shoulder with that warm strong hand. “We’re not laughing at you, Hardy,” he said.

“No,” Keeler followed, “more at our own poor selves, I fear.” Keeler explained, “We chuckled out of envy, envy of youth and fearlessness.” He declared that if he had torqued his spine through half the turn I had just taken, it would put him in the hospital for a week.

He spoke thoughtfully for a few moments about a boy’s natural swing, any boy’s. The big raw pivot, enormous arc, the natural sense of balance, release and turn.

“May I take it, sir,” Bagger Vance said when Keeler had finished, “that you believe there is such a thing as the Authentic Swing?”

You could see Keeler cover his astonishment. Apparently Bagger Vance had hit on something Keeler had thought about, and was deeply interested in. “The Authentic Swing, did you say? Yes, I do.”

He looked at Bagger Vance deeply, solemnly, still more than a little amazed to be addressed so seriously and with such intelligence by this odd, mysterious man.

“Tell me, sir, if you wouldn’t mind,” Keeler said, “what are your thoughts on it?”

“Have you ever seen identical twins take up golf? Their swings from the very first are radically different. Isn’t that odd?”

Keeler absorbed this from Vance, nodding thoughtfully. Yes, he had seen twins swing. Yes, how interesting that their motions were so different….

“Or,” Bagger Vance continued, “have you ever watched a boy pick up a club for the first time and swing? I mean his first swing ever. And then seen him years later as an accomplished player? Isn’t his mature swing virtually identical to the one he took the first time he picked up a club?”

“That is so,” Keeler agreed enthusiastically. “Please continue.”

“Or consider a professional instructor trying to alter a student’s swing to fit some preconception of the proper motion. It’s virtually impossible, is it not?”

Keeler agreed. “I see you’re driving at a point, sir.”

Vance paused. Keeler stood, absolutely attentive. “I believe that each of us possesses, inside ourselves,” Bagger Vance began, “one true Authentic Swing that is ours alone. It is folly to try to teach us another, or mold us to some ideal version of the perfect swing. Each player possesses only that one swing that he was born with, that swing which existed within him before he ever picked up a club. Like the statue of David, our Authentic Swing already exists, concealed within the stone, so to speak.”

Keeler broke in with excitement. “Then our task as golfers, according to this line of thought …”

“…is simply to chip away all that is inauthentic, allowing our Authentic Swing to emerge in its purity.”

We had reached the sixteenth green. Keeler paced beside Vance as he strode the putting surface, examining its slope and grain. “That’s why a boyhood swing like your young friend’s here is so fascinating. We marvel at its raw purity and unselfcon-sciousness. It’s why we laughed involuntarily when we saw it. It shamed us, in a way.”

“Think of a swing like Hagen‘s,” Bagger Vance resumed. “That lurching slashing motion, could you teach that to anyone else? Could anyone other than Hagen even make contact with the ball? And yet for him, it’s perfect. It is authentic. It is he. The swing he was born with, the swing that is the true expression of his existence.

“Have you noticed, Mr. Keeler, the endless praise and even adulation that is heaped upon your friend Mr. Jones’ swing? To watch it evokes emotion, does it not? One might even say love; and do you know why? Is it not because we, in some deep intuitive part of ourselves, recognize Jones’ swing as Authentic? The pure expression of his being, his inner grace and nobility, his power, his concentration and even his flaws and imperfections? Jones’ swing embodies every aspect of his being like a perfect poem or symphony, and, if I may guess, has embodied it from the start.”

Keeler assented emphatically. “I believe you’re on to something, sir! I’ve known Bobby since he was thirteen and, do you know, his swing today is virtually identical to the one he possessed then and, I’ll wager, to the swing he had at ten and eight and even six. Probably the first swing Bobby ever took would be recognizable to us, had we film of it.”

“And before that,” Bagger Vance declared. “Before he ever picked up a club. Before he was even born.”

Vance paused, realizing that Keeler had a notepad in his hand. “Do you mind if I take some of this down?” Keeler asked. Bagger Vance hesitated, but continued.

“Consider the swing itself,” he said. “Its existence metaphysically, I mean. It has no objective reality of its own, no existence at all save when our bodies create it, and yet who can deny that it exists, independently of our bodies, as if on another plane of reality.”

“Am I hearing you right, sir?” Keeler asked. “Are you equating the swing with the soul, the Authentic Soul?”

“I prefer the word Self,” Bagger Vance said. “The Authentic Self. I believe this is the reason for the endless fascination of golf. The game is a metaphor for the soul’s search for its true ground and identity.“

“Self-realization, you mean?”

“If you like. We enter onto this material plane, as Wordsworth said, ‘not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.’ In other words, already possessing a highly refined and individuated soul. Our job here is to recall that soul and become it. To form a union with it, a yoga as they say in India.”

“You’ve been to India, sir?”

“Many times,” Bagger Vance replied. “In the East, men are not embarrassed to speak openly of the Self. But here in the West, such piety makes people uncomfortable. That is where golf comes in.”

“The search for the Authentic Swing is a parallel to the search for the Self. We as golfers pursue that elusive essence our entire lives. What hooks us about the game is that it gives us glimpses. Glimpses of our Authentic Swing, like a mystic being granted a vision of the face of God. All we need is to experience it once—one mid-iron screaming like a bullet toward the flag, one driver flushed down the middle—and we’re enslaved forever. We feel with absolute certainty that if we could only swing like that all the time, we would be our best selves, our true selves, our Authentic Selves. That’s why we lionize men like Hagen and Jones and treat them like gods. They are gods in that sense, the sense that they have found their Authentic Selves, at least within the realm of golf.”

Keeler was now utterly in Vance’s thrall. We had passed off the sixteenth green and were climbing the rise to the seventeenth tee. Ahead we could see the ballroom lights and hear the orchestra music, faint scraps of it corning to us on the air. “Tell me, Mr. Vance. How does one find, if that’s the correct word…how does one find his own Authentic Swing?”

“I will answer that, Mr. Keeler. But before I begin, let me make an important distinction. The wild fearless cut we saw young Hardy take a few holes ago, that was not the Authentic Swing. It is a precursor, a foreshadowing. To reach the Authentic Swing, a player must pass through three distinct stages.

“First the pure state of unconsciousness, or preconsciousness. Pre-self-consciousness. This is the state in which our youthful companion resides now. He doesn’t think about what he’s doing, he simply picks up the club and swings. This demonstrates deep wisdom, because it expresses faith in the existence of the Swing, it launches itself fearlessly into the Void. Unfortunately this pure state, like youth itself, cannot last. It must by Nature’s law pass on to the next stage.”

“Self-awareness”—Keeler strode step-for-step beside Bagger Vance up the rise—”self-consciousness.”

“Exactly,” Vance acknowledged. “In this stage, we realize that we possess an Authentic Swing, but we can’t repeat it. Some days we can’t find it at all. Our frustration mounts. We begin to study, to seek instruction, to strive by dint of effort to mold and control our motion. This as every golfer knows leads only to despair. We cannot overcome golf by force of will.”

Vance stopped at the pinnacle of the teeing ground for the seventeenth. He looked out pensively over the dark duneland that stretched for a thousand yards along the night shore. His focus seemed to have wandered, to have left Keeler and traveled to some distant shore in his mind.

“You said there was a third stage,” Keeler prompted. “A stage, one assumes, beyond self-awareness.”

“Few reach that level, as we well know.” Bagger Vance smiled, returning from whatever inner land he had journeyed to. “And then only briefly. It is as elusive as Enlightenment. Merely to realize we possess it makes it fly from us. And yet paradoxically it is always there, nearest of the near, closer to us than our own skin.”

“But how,” Keeler pressed, “how do we get to it?”

“It gets to us,” Bagger Vance said. “Surrendering to it at last, we allow it to possess us.”

“The Self, you mean?”

“And then we can play.”

A soft chiming sound interrupted us. Keeler tugged a silver railroadman’s watch from his vest pocket. It chimed its last sweet beat. “My goodness, it’s four A.M. I must get at least an hour of sleep.” He was torn, you could see, wanting to stay up and listen to Vance all night.

“Sir, could you briefly, as we walk in, expound on this subject just a little more? Is there a path, a Way, that leads us to the Authentic Swing?”

“There are three,” Bagger Vance said.

Unfortunately I missed most of what he said, for he had me pacing yardages on these two last and most important holes. I scooted out quickly, with Vance shouting after me not to rush but to keep my strides uniform, then scurried back as fast as I could while still being true to the yardage…. I caught what I could of the instruction Vance gave to Mr. Keeler.

The first path, I heard him say, was that of Discipline. It had something to do with beating balls, with endless practice, an utter relentless commitment to achieving physical mastery of the game.

Second was the path of Wisdom. I heard practically nothing of what Vance said here (I was checking yardage to three separate bunkers off the eighteenth) except, I believe, that the process was largely mental—a study of the swing much like a scientist might undertake: analysis, dissection, and so on.

Third (and this I heard most of) was the path of Love.

On this path, Vance said, we learn the Swing the way a child acquires its native tongue. We absorb it through pure love of the game. This is how boys and girls learn, intuitively, through their pores, by total devotion and immersion. Without technically “studying” the swing, they imbibe it by osmosis, from watching accomplished players and from sensing it within their own bones.

“All three of these paths embody one unifying principle,” Vance said. We were now approaching the eighteenth green. “That of surrender. Surrender of the Little Mind to the Big Mind, surrender of the personal ego to the greater wisdom of the Self.

“The path of beating balls defeats the player, as it must, until he surrenders at last and allows his swing to swing itself. The path of study and dissection leads only to paralysis, until the player likewise surrenders and allows his overloaded brain to set down its burden, till in empty purity it remembers how to swing.

“In other words, the first and second ways both lead to the third. Love is the greatest of these ways. For in the end, grace comes from God, from the Authentic Self. But to plumb this mystery would take us far more than a night and, I’m sorry to see, we have reached the final green. You must be very tired, Mr. Keeler.”

On the contrary Keeler was energized, electric. “I won’t sleep a wink after this,” he said, “but I suppose I must try….”

— The Legend of Bagger Vance, Chapters 10-11

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

Death: the Iliad is ever mindful that war is about men killing or men killed. In the entire epic, no warrior, whether hero or obscure man of the ranks, dies happily or well. No reward awaits the soldier’s valor; no heaven will receive him. The Iliad‘s words and phrases for the process of death make clear that this is something baneful: dark night covers the dying warrior, hateful darkness claims him; he is robbed of sweet life, his soul goes down to Hades bewailing its fate. Again and again, relentlessly, the Iliad hammers this fact: The death of any warrior is tragic and full of horror. Even in war, death is regrettable.

— The War That Killed Achilles, Chapter 4

The culmination of selective breeding was the destrier, the “great horse” or warhorse which by the late Middle Ages could reach eighteen hands in size and astonishing prices. The warhorse was suited for combat and was the symbol of the aristocracy; its value and rarity meant that not too many soldiers could afford one. Most soldiers seem to have ridden more humble animals, or rounceys. The use of a different horse may have been dictated by other reasons. For instance, the favorite English horse in the chevauchées in France during the Hundred Years War was the courser, which combined stamina and mobility. In reality every heavy cavalryman would need several horses: the warhorse, which the knight’s squire would lead with his right hand, a more modest horse for the squire himself, and a horse to carry the knight’s armor to the battlefield. It was only when confrontation became inevitable that the knight would wear his armor and ride his warhorse into battle.

— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 132

Emphasis mine.

Morwen Eledhwen remained in Hithlum, silent in grief. Her son Túrin was only in his ninth year, and she was again with child. Her days were evil. The Easterlings came into the land in great numbers and they dealt cruelly with the people of Hador, and robbed them of all that they possessed and enslaved them. All the people of Húrin’s homelands that could work or serve any purpose they took away, even young girls and boys, and the old they killed or drove out to starve. But they dared not yet lay hands on the Lady of Dor-lómin, or thrust her from her house; for the word ran among them that she was perilous, and a witch who had dealings with the white-fiends: for so they named the Elves, hating them, but fearing them more….

— The Children of Hurin, Chapter 4

When Dardalion joined him Waylander blinked in mock disbelief. A white horse-hair plumed helmet was buckled at the chin, and the leather-trimmed cloak lay over a shimmering breastplate embossed with a flying eagle. A leather kilt, studded with silver, protected Dardalion’s thighs, while silver greaves were buckled to his calves. By his side hung a cavalry sabre, and on his left hip a long, curved knife sat in a jewelled scabbard.

“You look ridiculous,” said Waylander.

“Most probably. But will it serve?”

“It will serve to draw the Vagrians to you like flies to a cowpat.”

“I do feel rather foolish.”

“Then take it off and find yourself something less garish.”

“No. I can’t explain why, but this is right.”

“Then keep away from me, priest. I want to stay alive!”

“Will you not get yourself some armour?”

“I have my mail shirt. I don’t intend to stand in one place long enough to be cut.”

“I would appreciate some advice on swordsmanship,” said Dardalion.

“Gods of Mercy!” snapped Waylander. “It takes years to learn and you have an hour, maybe two. There’s nothing I can teach you—just remember throat and groin. Protect your own, slice theirs!”

— Waylander, Chapter 7

…The Islamic geographer and scholar Yaqut (d. 1229 [C.E.]) tells a distinctly uncharming story of life in [the Mongolian] steppe lands.

If a man begets a son, he would bring him up and provide for him and take care of him until he reaches puberty. Then he would hand him a bow and arrows and drive him from the family home crying, ‘Go fend for yourself!‘ Henceforward he would treat him both as a stranger and a foreigner. There are also among these people those who will sell their sons and daughters.

There are always harsh customs in hard lands…. Surplus children were an encumbrance to the survival of the family unit and the boys might become a possible challenge to the authority of the paterfamilias. Indeed, one way of reading Yaqut’s passage is that if you are prepared to kick your adolescent son out of your home and never acknowledge his existence thereafter, you may as well receive some profit from his departure and from your investment in his young life….

— Knights of Islam, Chapter 1

All the Mayhews’ guards were down now, but so were many of the assassins, and Honor and [her treecat] Nimitz were in among the others. She knew there were too many of them, yet she and Nimitz were all that was left, and they had to keep them bottled up in the entry alcove, away from the Protector and his family, as long as they could.

The killers had known she’d be here, but she was “only” a woman. They were totally unprepared for her size and strength—and training—or the mad whirl of violence that wasn’t a bit like it was on HD. Real martial arts aren’t like that. The first accurate strike to get through unblocked almost always ends in either death or disablement, and when Honor Harrington hit a man, that man went down.

— Honor of the Queen, Chapter 20

The [Mamluk] trooper was protected by a knee-length chain-mail shirt that extended up to the neck as a coif; Saladin was once saved from an Assassin’s knife stroke by his coif as he sat watching a siege near Aleppo. The hazagand, a jerkin of leather and mail that was commonly worn by Islamic troops in Syria is definitely not light in terms of the protection it affords but it is light in terms of the Syrian summer. It was taken up by the Latins of Outremer and spread to Europe as the [hauberk jazerant]. Turkish and Islamic armour was designed this way for mobility and because of the climate in which men fought. There was, however, another reason why the armour of the East never moved toward the total body coverage with plate that was a feature of the Western knight in the later medieval age—the technology and techniques of Islamic metalworking. Ibn Sina (d. 1037) describes three types of iron being produced within the Islamic lands but al-Biruni (d. 1048 [C.E.]) tells us that the crucible steel or ‘wootz’ used to create weapons was imported from India. This steel was perfect for blades but it could not be formed into plates any larger than twenty-five centimetres, which meant that even into the Ottoman age Islamic troops would have been wearing lamellar armour….

— The Knights of Islam, Chapter 3