His own worst enemy
He had always been good at making enemies.
It was something to do with his brashness and rashness and swagger, and his inability to exercise a better judgement when an enjoyably witty challenge had formed in his mouth.
If he had been possessed of a greater taste for introspection, he might have imagined the other officers remarking, out of his hearing, “he gets people’s backs up”, “no respect for authority”, “can’t leave well alone”, “suffers from an absence of discretion” and the like.
They would have been correct, of course. He’d admit that; but the enemies he’d made had never touched him, because he was strong and determined and an able fighter, and above all, - above all - lucky.
The rest of his temperament – the honesty, and fearlessness and little failings in the matter of bodily indulgence – attracted a fierce loyalty from his men, who would stand behind him like a wall of fire, to the death. His extravagant refusal to play the flattery game in the cause of his own preferment, even led his scrupulously upright supreme commander to favour him with the invisible protection of exercising fairness zealously against Kenren’s enemies. Goujun and Kenren were as different as a knife blade and a cushion, but they saw, and defended, in each other a shared hatred of injustice.
So, he had taken the knocks of his enemies, without ever seeing a reason to change his behaviour.
If they struck against him in person, he ignored the pain, fought back like a fiend, and his men always ended the attack and exacted whatever retribution Kenren permitted. If they tried to politic his downfall, Goujun would force their opposition into an open arena, where they were either too embarrassed to continue or roundly defeated, and in public. It had been almost enjoyable to have enemies.
But that was in the days before – before they could hurt him in the heart. What was the pain of his body, or the loss of his career and reputation, compared to this?
There could be only one purpose to living now, and, whether these enemies were men or demons or gods or machines, punishment of one hundredfold would be theirs for what they had done today - whoever they were.
Whoever they were, he knew their future. He had collected so many enemies, but, if he must take revenge against them all to be sure of taking revenge on the one who did this, then let them all prepare to face him in the morning.
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He had collected so many enemies, but, truly, the worst fault - his own worst enemy - proved to be himself, himself in his peculiar and disproportionate need for Tenpou.
Eccentric, disorderly, generous, life-loving, subtle, adaptable Tenpou with that mind like a wide sea, always moving in a tide of thought and knowledge and imagination – why Kenren needed to keep close to someone like this, just defeated him.
And that was part of the magic: it was impractical, frivolous, additional, should have been optional, should have been unnecessary, but it gave so much Something to Kenren’s life that having it had never felt like a choice.
For so long, he’d never recognized that the Something had been missing, but now he knew it to the centre of his being, and, with that knowledge, came the lonely fear of not knowing if its loss could be borne. No-one could help him with this, his last enemy – not his men, not Goujun, not – not even the Marshal any more.
He supposed he would never know how they had lured Tenpou to the training hall, though he was here often enough for sword practice, but always with Kenren’s men. This couldn’t have happened if they had been with him. In a way, it was better that it had happened here, in this functional, empty, smooth-floored vault, where the ink of his blood hadn’t sprayed its obscene graffiti over Tenpou’s beloved books.
Seeing that library staying tidy was going to hurt more than anything else; it would be better to burn everything than to look at the clutter of Tenpou’s favourites grieving in a state of alien neatness. Tenpou wouldn’t be angry at the destruction; hadn’t he once said that possessions were only a compensation for not having the luxury of needing to own nothing? Through the rigidity of his agonized mask, Kenren felt a smile stir – what a brilliantly convoluted mind the Marshal had.
Kenren’s eyes were still closed, not for fear of tears – for there were none, but because he couldn’t bear to see the battered thing in his arms, any more than he could bear to imagine what they had done to him. There were so many cuts and bruises on him and so many broken parts, and they had stripped him naked; it was too much even to know that. Certainly, Kenren couldn’t bear to turn him over.
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As Kenren sat in the void of the training hall and still felled by shock, what hurt most was knowing that they had deliberately kept Tenpou just the alive side of dead so that Kenren could find him in the heat of life, still with the blood pumping out of him.
They were highly accomplished – masterly - in malice. They understood that it would be far less painful for Kenren to mourn over his friend’s emptied corpse, than to hold him – warm and breathing - whilst he struggled to the end of his dying.
When he had received the message that the Marshal wished to see him in the training hall, he had gone with a light step, assuming that this was a summons to watch some particularly effective piece of sword choreography or even to try the amusement of a new weapon from Down Below. It had never come into his mind that the meeting was for anything other than enjoyment.
But then the corridor to the hall had been silent and deserted. He had begun to suspect a bit of a prank – oh, Tenpou could put Kenren’s men up to it, sure enough! - he had heightened his sense of awareness to be on his guard – and had turned the corner into the doorway, had seen smudges of blood on the floor, pieces of broken blade, stained shreds of clothing, twisted spectacle frames and Tenpou’s scabbard smashed –
Kenren had not remembered to breathe during the vividness of this recollection and now gasped in air painfully, almost trying to stop the vision, the re-vision, of his eyes finding the red mess that lay in isolation on the floor and dragged into the shadow of one side, not even granted the concession of a central position in its setting of execution.
There had been no feelings.
Kenren’s legs had leapt him to the place, had folded under him, and his eyes had shown un-meaning pictures of a face swollen almost square with beating and shattered arms and fingers, a chest stove in and cut through – there was nowhere to touch which was not damaged.
Despite the logic of not touching, his arms went under the wet torso and lifted the upper body into his clasp. Perhaps, then, it was the added pain of being moved which had revived Tenpou’s consciousness. Bending over him as close as he dared, Kenren heard the blind, broken words, “Where – where were you?” and a whispered sob of indrawn breath, before the final “Oh, Kenren – where. Were you?”
And then it was over.
And his enemies’ victory was planted like a flag of sovereignty in the soil of Kenren’s mind, forever.
Perhaps not even death would free him from the scars of knowing that the Marshal had gone down under all those uncountable blows and kicks and cuts, - no doubt bravely, no doubt without fear, no doubt without reproach at Kenren for his carelessness in making enemies, - but, still, utterly, utterly alone.
In those last minutes, Tenpou couldn’t have known who had moved him; his eyes were punched shut and Kenren’s identity had been too suspended to say anything and, in any case, the Marshal’s state of consciousness had been too tenuous to take anything in. It was a horrible totality of victory: Tenpou had met his end separated from Kenren, for all that the General had been forced to feel him surrender, beaten, from life to death.
These enemies were truly the best; there was nothing further left for their torture.
Kenren vowed everlasting anger against them. He forced his eyes open and laid what had been Tenpou down on the ground. Then he stood up and bowed to the Marshal, proffering an indelible shame. “Forgive me. I was in the wrong place. You know that anywhere that was not with you was, always, the wrong place.”
Kenren understood, perfectly, that the reason for the Marshal’s last words – that desperate question, “Where were you?” – was not because it was Kenren who was really to blame for the attack and certainly not because Tenpou was afraid to face his assassins single-handedly; the reason was simply that Kenren should have been there, because they ought to have been together.
Slowly, he let his black leather coat fall down from his shoulders and, bending on one knee, gently covered over the Marshal’s wounds and nakedness.
Kenren bent lower still and gave the injured lips which had asked, so weakly, “Where were you?” the light pressure of a kiss, confirming the answer which both of them sought, “I am here, with you, Tenpou – where I belong.”
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General Kenren was coldly ordered in his grief; his mind functioned with the bitterness of ice and the inhumanity of pure method.
He would call a guard of honour to stand, four each side of Tenpou, whilst he decided what to do in the matter of ceremonials. Goujun must be informed immediately and, when the rituals of decency had provided a more composed farewell than that of which he, personally, was capable, he would train his anger, relentless and unlimited, on the punishment of his enemies.
It was a task on which he would embark willingly. With Tenpou’s murder, his own worst enemy had been rendered powerless, so why should he fear any other? If the fighting brought Kenren to his death, he could not be sorry to leave a life which was missing the Marshal.
Even if he survived the exercise of his vengeance, there was yet one last enemy to be defeated: the misery of living with his own loss. And, if he could overcome that, he would be surprised.
Yes, he would try – for Tenpou’s sake, he would try, and for the sake of his own men, who would be embarrassed to have supported, with such unswerving loyalty, a General whose will to live was defeated by a single death.
Yes, he would try but, for the first time ever, his heart would not be in the battle.
His heart had already been given away on the training hall floor, and had been taken on into a future which belonged to someone else.