556 - (FREE TO READ) Vunak of Antares #13: Shields Of the Voidspan - Jean Jacques Dessalines VS Musashibo Saito Benkai
James Lafond and Jeth's novel serialisation: Paul Vunak of Antares continues!
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A Casting Darts Publishing Original
Written by James LaFond & Jeth Randolph
Martial arts maestro Paul Vunak leads “The Dirty Dozen you always wanted” against an opposing team lead by non other than Bruce Lee!
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Click to read Chapter one: “Like Water”
Click to read Chapter two: “Stardust Express”
Click to read Chapter three, part one: “The Galactic Fix is In”
Click to read Chapter three, part two: “Charon’s Song”
Click to read Chapter three, part three: “Best and the Blessed”
Click to read Chapter four: “The Dawning Of A New Sun”
Click to read Chapter five, Part one: “Upon the Scales of Right”
Click to read Chapter 5 (Part 2): “Where’s Charlie?”
Click to read Chapter 6: “自由”
Click to read Chapter 7: “Knives Of Scorpio”
Click to read Chapter 8: “Flags Of Scorpio”
Click to read Chapter 9: “Champions Of Scorpio”
Click to read Chapter 10: “Bloody Scorpio”
Click to read Chapter 11: “Fists Of Scorpio”
Click to read Chapter 12: “Naked Fray”
Shields Of the Voidspan / Vunak Of Antares #13
Afternoon: Jean Jacques Dessalines meets Musashibo Saito Benkai in a battle of sword and shield…
Burton turned from the other men and reported to Vunak, the hide bag of lots in his hand.
“All the men bar Dessalines, who refuses, have drawn lots Mr Vunak, and only the Blue digit is left still undrawn”
“Well that’s ‘Emperor JJ’ stepping out for us in the sword and shield bout then. He’s over there, Rich can you call him? You know the lingo and ‘His Majesty’ doesn’t seem to respond too well to the pecking order here…”
“Of course. Perchance some sustenance for the ego may be needed?” sighed Burton, and turned to the Haitian man who sat separate, upright and aloof at the back of the waiting area.
Approaching cautiously, Burton began his preamble;
"Your Imperial Majesty, Emperor Jacques, Sovereign of Haiti, I humbly present myself before your exalted personage to beseech your gracious attention..."
Dessalines’ gaze snapped sharply onto the Englishman who stood before him. Burton continued;
“It has been decreed by fate’s curious design that your matchless prowess should be displayed in a contest of arms—a duel of sabre and shield—against a lesser rival, one scarce worthy of your noble shadow. This trial, though beneath the grandeur of your renown, offers yet another stage upon which your indomitable might may shine before the eyes of all."
“Hhmmn!”
The Haitian Tiger stood abruptly with a look of disdain, his hands reaching out without a glance for his shield, of a crusader design that had been selected as befitting the ego of an Emperor. Its wood and steel form was bedecked in red and black bands with a centre piece design of a phoenix rising from flames surrounded by five-pointed stars. (0)
The West Country assistant stepped forward with the sabre, which Dessalines snatched impatiently from him, pausing only to admire the golden basket that formed the guard.
Wetzel, Liver Eater and Teach glanced at each other, the latter not attempting to hide the rolling of his eyes as the haughty figure passed.
The gate began it’s ascent, and the glare of the sands filled the eyes of all present.
Dessalines strode outward, upright, his head high;
“Now dem a go feel an’ face di steel of di Emperor, yuh hear!‘
The crowd roared as one; a cacophony of lower rank screaming, and a fluttering of insect wings from up high as the lone figure made his way around the sands, performing a lap of honour to absorb the love of the mob before finally taking his place at his mark.
Charon, his huge teeth chattering together, cleared his throat, raised his sceptre and all fell silent, save for the boom of his voice that issued forth in perfect Patois from the neck pipes, like the chorus from some unholy church organ;
"Be that it pleasin’ our mighty Lords on high, Ladies an’ gen’lemen, steady yuhself fuh a whirlwind comin’ fierce ‘n rough!
Here step Jean-Jacques Dessalines, di untamed Haitian lion— ‘The Black Spartacus,’ ‘The Terror of the Whites,’ an’ ‘The Iron Hand’—sabre shinin’ in ‘im grip, crusader shield hard by ‘im side.
Born a slave in di revolution’s blaze, dis man smash French, Spanish, an’ British wid wicked might, a dread name from fights lak Vertières in 1803.
From slave chain to emperor throne, “The Terror of di Whites,” ‘im rise an’ spill blood, massacreein’ fortee thousan’ French colonists—man, woman ‘n chile too—wid no heart fuh mercy in 1804, hollerin’, ‘Leave nothin’ white behin’, yuh hear!’
Dis yah warrior, fierce an’ unbowed, stride in di arena lak a gladiator fi glory an’ gore— tremble fuh Jean-Jacques Dessalines, di storm ‘imself!"
The bloated, pink impregnated Grays swooned with delight at the arrogant figure far below their third tier vantage point. Their mouths salivating at the thought of feasting on the liquidised loins of an emperor, they set to an eerie ululating that pierced the ears as it cut through the general roar of the seething masses about them and then stopped as the Master Of Ceremonies began again;
"Know this, ye most dread lords, ladies, and gathered souls: before you stands Saito Musashibo Benkei, a monk of mountain-breaking will, his form a tower wrought in the forge of Japan’s ancient strife.
With naginata in hand he claimed 999 blades at Gojo Bridge, each stroke a storm, each foe a shadow undone—until Yoshitsune, sharp as the wind’s edge, turned his strength to loyalty’s path.
In the Genpei War, he felled hosts as a tree topples in a gale; at Koromo-gawa, he met death standing, arrows piercing flesh yet not spirit, his frame a stele of defiance, refusing to fall even in death!
Now he grasps a katana, its steel hungering for the cut, and bears a shield, hewn from the door of ‘The Wrecking Bar,’ fashioned to fit his vast might—a slab of oak, worn yet resolute, like the heart within. Face him, this sōhei (1) tempest, and reckon the way of the warrior unleashed."
At the mention of her establishment and at the sight of her very own robust beauty in the great screens above, The Wrecking Bar Land Lady barged her diminutive husband out of the way, knocking him into a group of men. She bellowed her guttural laugh as she waved wide-eyed to the mob, the tattooed flesh of her upper arms, flapping like wings as her spouse found himself now embroiled in a fist fight that saw him propelled over the seats in front as, oblivious, his huge wife’s chest rippled as she stamped her booted feet with delight at the priceless advertising the repurposed vandalism of the Blue Team had brought them.
So enraptured was she in visualising the returns at the bar that she completely missed the countdown and command to fight and only rejoined the present with the roar of the crowd. Her mohawked head and surprised eyes turning just in time to see the sands rise up around the figures.
A vortex appeared beneath the feet of the huge Japanese man and the ground rose up, lifting him slowly into the air as the sands writhed and formed the structure of the Gojo Bridge, a graceful arched structure without hand rails, complete with whirling waters beneath, the crystalline intelligence beneath them, hissing slightly as it formed an imitation of long grasses, floating lily pads and dragon flies.
At the crest of the bridge’s arc, Saito waited as Dessalines slowly approached, the hesitant Emperor placing a careful left foot on the initial step, seeing that the structure was sound and then advancing towards the waiting leviathan, his eyes blazing and his face taught with aggression.
Dessalines lunged with his shield high as he simultaneously dropped low to attack the exposed foot of the giant with a descending stab. Saito dropped his huge door-shield down, and the edge clipped the Haitian’s sword as it’s point found it’s target with stinging pain, knocking it sideways and lacerating through Saito’s left woven straw sandal, carving deeply into his foot, severing the big toe in half on it’s path inwards.
Through the electric pain of the wound and above the huge shield, Saito thrust at the wrapped grip of the gleaming katana, and it’s length hissed against the metal top side of the door held in his massive left arm, as it’s cruel tip sought the flesh of his nemesis, but entering forward, found only air.
Dessalines supinated his grip on his sabre and drove upward from his crouched position directing its point towards the groin of the Japanese giant, but was knocked off course by the huge door. Without a pause he exhaled and returned a desperate back hand neck slash from left to right that arced wildly away from his adversary, again with no effect.
From the Red Gate, Musashi saw the possibility of this moment as the Haitian’s left foot was now precariously positioned at the edge of the bridge at the very moment of driving a glancing blow up into Saito’s right armpit
In a Kansai cadence as swift as his blade, he called out across the sands to Saito:
"Oi, koitsu o mizu ni butsukero ya!"
“Ram him to the water!” mimicked the giant Charon with added dramatic emphasis and a look of feigned emotion.
Hearing his teammate’s words, Saito attempted to step left and engulf the agile foe with his shield, and propel him over the edge to the water-like sands that eagerly awaited. The pain from his foot was intense and he stumbled, the sandal was crimson soaked and his footing slipped precariously over the edge of the boards as the oily slick of his blood betrayed him, just part of his left heel now digging in to the edge of the bridge as he attempted to right himself.
Dessalines now seized his moment to turn Saito’s plan against him by stamping at the huge left heel to send it out into the nothingness that it fought to resist.
At the second strike he drove it off, and for a moment he was filled with hateful elation as the giant slid over to his left. But this victory was to be over in the same instant as the huge right arm enveloped him, and they both tumbled from the arching bridge to the illusion of the water below , lapping with a dead sound as it seemed to reach up and take hold of them as they entered with a muted splash.
The Haitian's shield was thrown free in an attempt to clear his arm to swim, the rising phoenix emblem caught his frenzied glance briefly as it slid below the surface.
Saito had released his grip on the huge repurposed door, but the remaining arm strap betrayed him and the shield clung to him in unison with the predatory living water.
He seized Dessalines stabbing at him while the sands invaded his eyes, tearing at them as the grains entered. He felt his blade hit home somehow and the muffled cry of a wounded man, struggling to express agony through a mouth that was filled with crystalline death, and in unison, their ears both heard the thrashing of their limbs, the roar of the crowd fading to the roar of the voracious invasion of the living sand as it entered their lungs and surged through their bodies for a final possessing feast before their soon to be corpses would be fed to the owners of the hungry eyes that glared from above.
The enormous neck-piped creature that narrated their mutual demise now broke into song;
“Like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down!!!!” The mob singing with him as the scorpion tail etched the names of the fallen, sunken, and now retrieved - the sands having obediently ebbed back down leaving no trace of the scene that had provided such spectacle just moments before, and the slaves ran to the combat space to fetch the remains of the two warriors for the immanent feast.
“Emperor Jaques I - Risen from ashes, fallen to the sands”.
“Musashibo Saito Benkai -Sakura no tsubasa wa isshun, tatakai no houe no naka de, sono na wa eien ni hibiku”
(The cherry's fleeting bloom, in battle's roar, his name resounds eternal.)
Continued next week!
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Notes:
0 - The first emperor of Haiti, Jacques I (Jean-Jacques Dessalines), adopted a new flag with black and red vertical bands. The black colour symbolised death, and the red color symbolized freedom. This flag was later used by Henri Christophe in the Northern Kingdom of Haiti.
The coat of arms during Jacques I's reign featured the motto "Je renais de mes cendres" (I will rise from my ashes) and was inscribed on a ribbon outlining the shield. Two royally crowned lions supported the shield, and the motto "Dieu ma cause et mon épée" (God, my cause, and my sword) was placed on another ribbon at the bottom.
1 - Sōhei: A Japanese term for warrior monks, a class of armed Buddhist monks in medieval Japan who often engaged in combat to protect their monasteries or assert political power. Saito, as a historical and legendary figure, was a sōhei, known for his martial prowess and imposing presence.