"Donahue, John - Sensei" - читать интересную книгу автора (Donahue John)

Did the jagged end of the staff stay buried in Ikagi's guts, or did the
attacker yank it out right away? It's hard to tell. Eventually, the
loss of blood slowed the master down. The floor was growing slick. And
then the attacker finished it.

He plunged that spike into the old man, perforating the abdomen
repeatedly. There was massive trauma there. It went beyond
functionality. Did the attacker enjoy it? The gasp each time as he
drove the point home? The growing sense of domination? Did he smile
even as Ikagi's lips were yanked back in a rictus of pain?

These are questions for the shrinks. That morning, it didn't matter.
It was over. Ikagi lay there, agony dulled only by a lifetime of
discipline. He attempted to reach the phone, slid in the fluids
pouring out of him, and faded away. As he slipped out of this life,
his athlete's heart pumped faithfully away, the pulse growing faster
and threadier as shock set in and he died.

The killer paused long enough to leave a clue as to what he had become.
And a warning. He dipped his finger in the blood and wrote in Japanese
on the wall. The photo of it was mixed in with all the others, and
even with the morbid fascination of Ikagi's death captured from all
angles, the calligraphy was crude yet effective, demanding attention.

"Ronin." The characters read. "Wave Man."

A master less samurai.

TWO

Heiho

You could usually hear a pin drop in that room. The slanting rays of
the sun came in through the high windows. The angle was acute enough
so that you never had to worry about being blinded (an important thing
in a place where people hacked at each other with oak swords), but it
showed the dust motes dancing around. Less wary students had been
distracted by them. We had all been with Yamashita Sensei for a while,
however, and that morning when he strode onto the floor, all eyes were
riveted on him.

Yamashita was a small person: in street clothes he probably would have
seemed surprisingly nondescript. In the martial arts dojo, his
presence was palpable. It wasn't just the way he was dressed. Most of
us had been banging around the martial arts world for years and so were
pretty much used to the exotic uniforms. Yamashita was usually dressed
like any other senior instructor in some of the more traditional arts:
a heavy quilted top like the ones judo players wore and the pleated
split skirt pants known as ha kama The wide legs of his uniform