Thirst always wins. The training is unrelenting. We learn to fight and fall and get up and fight again. We learn to go for hours, stealing motion from movement itself so our movements are economical. We learn so much… like forgetting hunger and ignoring pain.

Thirst always kills. We learn that to. We can ignore it. Forget it. Put it in a prison deep in our minds from which it will never get out. And like a monster from within it gnaws at us. Saps our moves and dulls our minds until the power of our blades fails.

There is only one way to fight when you’re dying of thirst. You have to believe that you cannot die. More than that. You have to feel… those who fear us believe that we go into battle with a death stare in our eyes. Already dead in our minds we cannot feel the fear that slows down limbs and makes minds quaver.

Those who fear us are wrong. We never go into battle anything more than totally alive. Musashi taught us to forget. Thirst was the tool he used to make us feel alive. We trained and trained in heated rooms. Attendants hurrying us from all sides. Welts and blisters and bruises crowding at the edge of our awareness. Hunger and fatigue and the heat… always the heat.

“Die dogs!” the Retained would yell and crack his whip from on high. And the flames in the floor beneath our feet would rise ever higher and burn ever hotter until the floor itself became unbearable to step upon in bare feet. And they kept coming at us.

In waves. They would outnumber us, come from all sides. We would beat them back, our wooden swords bruising flesh and smacking bone. And they would leave and rest and drink and get ready and in the meantime the next wave would come and the next and the next. Each one unrelenting.

In the crowded area of the Great Hall we would jump and scheme and cry out and try to outsmart them on the run. Those who could no longer get up the Retainer would mark and they would be dragged away, until all those left, beleaguered and outnumbered, outfought and cornered, would be forced to give up.

The only way out was collapse. Collapse was a failure. It was a failure to give up. Thirst held us fast.

There is only one way to fight. You leave the blackness inside you behind. You let your soul rise so high, so fast that all you can feel is the bright blue sky and your limbs feel free and your veins full of fire. That’s what it is really like. Appearing resigned to death in battle we felt free and vibrant.

Thirst, forgotten. We drunk on life. Only one way out of this. On a day when we started out with forty we were down to six. There was no sweat left to shed. The feel of the other man’s back as we formed a six-pointed death star was the only thing that kept us upright.

“Do we wait for them to come to us?” Alatan asked and behind cloth masks stiffened by dried sweat, saliva and smeared blood we felt cracked lips smile.

“We attack them first, you’re right,” it was funny.

It struck me then. Why wait? There is a response. In our training we were taught: Know, Be, Do. It was our rock. “Do you want to fail?” I asked and there was the stillness of surprise. I could feel the backs stiffen where they were pressed against me. “We know. We are.” I left the rest unsaid.

To break out of the Great Hall would be to break with tradition but there was no rule. Never. Why stay? “Yame?” a question.

“We strike. When they come. Use their momentum, confuse them to get out. Where it’s cold.”

We had no time to plan. The next wave was upon us. Bodies falling at us from the top balcony, trying to jump as far as they could so the distance between us upon landing was small. We were on the move. Wooden swords clicking as we fended off blows, sought to break through the attack and meet flesh.

Spinning. Turning so that we were really like a death star. Whirling to confuse them. Feeling the sky and the freedom of the cloud-driven breeze. And we were through and beyond, whirling under the banister and through the door before it could close, tripping the last ones in, bokken doing their task as we tapped them hard on cheekbones and thighs.

“Cut the dogs down!” the Retained screaming from the top as he realised too late what we had done. The drumming of heavy feet as the top guard rushed to stop us but too late we were outside. Snow on the ground cooling us fast and limbs suddenly feeling faster than ever.

“Make them bleed!” the Retainer screamed. Too late. We now would give them a fight like they had never seen.

“Stop!” The Master’s voice. It arrested our limbs as well as those attacking us. He stood there, on the snow, facing us, taking it all in. “You took too long,” he said at us. We pressed closer still against each other. Now was a truly unknown fate ahead for us.

“Stop the fight,” he said to the Retainer. “They won.” He turned his back and left us there. The sky had turned a paler grey and snow started to fall from above. We stood still. Limbs frozen by fatigue, breathing in cool air that helped drive our thirst back a little.

“You curs,” the Retained stood before us, the tip of his whip waving menacingly. “You really want to die? Take them to the bathhouse,” he instructed over his shoulder and those who formerly were our enemies, rushed forward to assist us. “Water them slowly, they are almost dead.”

I cannot remember how we go to the bathhouse but I remember thinking the Retainer was wrong. So wrong. I do not know how the others had been feeling. I cannot be really sure. But there, that moment, I felt the most alive I had ever felt.

I knew. I was. I was doing.