Tag: killing

There is another detail that recurs on many stones, almost the only exception to the otherwise crude depiction of the heroes’ bodies. Time and again, the fingers of the warrior-hero’s hands are shown outstretched, explicit and bigger than-life-size. His hands seem to matter more than any other part of his body, perhaps because they were the part of him with which he imposed his power on the world around him. The hand is the agent of the burning warrior self, the essential instrument of the weapon-wielding man. That is also the role played by hands in the Homeric epics. Both Hector and Achilles have "manslaughtering hands," and it is Odysseus’s hands that are steeped in blood as he exacts his final revenge on the suitors. It is as if the hands had concentrated in them all the destructive power of the warrior-hero. And when, in the Iliad‘s culminating scene of mutual accommodation, Priam, the king of Troy, comes to Achilles in the Greek camp, it is through the hands that the drama is played out: "Great Priam entered in and, coming close, clasped Achilles’s knees in his hands and kissed his hands, the terrible man-slaughtering hands that had slaughtered his many sons."

— Why Homer Matters, pp. 138-39

Toda Hiro-matsu, overlord of the provinces of Sagami and Kozuké, Toranaga’s most trusted general and adviser, commander-in-chief of all his armies, strode down the gangplank onto the wharf alone. He was tall for a Japanese, just under six feet, a bull-like man with heavy jowls, who carried his sixty-seven years with strength. His military kimono was brown silk, stark but for the five small Toranaga crests—three interlocked bamboo sprays. He wore a burnished breastplate and steel arm protectors. Only the short sword was in his belt. The other, the killing sword, he carried loose in his hand. He was ready to unsheathe it instantly and to kill instantly to protect his liege lord. This had been his custom ever since he was fifteen.

No one, not even the Taikō, had been able to change him.

A year ago, when the Taikō died, Hiro-matsu had become Toranaga’s vassal. Toranaga had given him Sagami and Kozuké, two of his eight provinces, to overlord, five hundred thousand koku yearly, and had also left him to his custom. Hiro-matsu was very good at killing.

— Shōgun, Chapter 7

This character was my inspiration for Grimblade.

J.B. Books:

It isn’t always being fast or even accurate that counts. It’s being willing. I found out early that most men, regardless of cause or need, aren’t willing. They blink an eye or draw a breath before they pull the trigger. I won’t.

— “The Shootist” (1976)