Kage (2 page)

Also by John Donohue…

Novels

Sensei

Deshi

Tengu

Nonfiction

The Overlook Martial Arts Reader

Complete Kendo

Herding the Ox: The Martial Arts as Moral

Metaphor

Warrior Dreams: The Martial Arts and the

American Imagination

The Human Condition in the Modern Age

The Forge of the Spirit: Structure, Motion, and

Meaning in the Japanese Martial Tradition

YMAA Publication Center

Wolfeboro, NH USA

John Donohue

YMAA Publication Center, Inc.

PO Box 480

Wolfeboro, NH 03894

1-800-669-8892 • www.ymaa.com • [email protected]

Paperback edition

Ebook edition

978-1-59439-210-8 978-1-59439-239-9

1-59439-210-2

1-59439-239-0

© 2011 by John Donohue

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in

any form.

Editor: Leslie Takao

Cover Design: Axie Breen

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

POD XXXX

Publisher’s Cataloging in Publication

Donohue, John J., 1956-

Kage : the shadow / John Donohue. -- Wolfeboro, NH : YMAA

Publication Center, c2011.

p. ; cm.

ISBN: 978-1-59439-210-8 (pbk.) ; 978-1-59439-239-9

(ebook)

“A Connor Burke martial arts thriller”--Cover.

1. Burke, Connor (Fictitious character) 2. Smuggling--

Arizona--Fiction. 3. Martial artists--Fiction. 4. Arizona--Fiction.

5. Martial arts fiction. 6. Suspense fiction. I. Title.

PS3604.O565 K34 2011

2011927806

813/.6--dc22

2011

Printed in Canada.

iv

Kage

To the Sweeney family

for welcoming me in.

v

Prologue

Dawn. I lay for a time coming back to the world: the

warmth of a blanket, the cool air of a day yet unborn touching

my face. The hitch of old injuries. The tug of memory.

A Tibetan monk once told me I walked a path as narrow

and dangerous as a razor’s edge. As in many situations, he could

see far and well. That monk wasn’t just concerned with peril in

the normal sense: life is, after all, suffering. He was worried,

instead, about things of the spirit.

I look across the room where I have slept alone: even in the

half light I can see a table against a wal . My swords rest there in

a wooden rack that I made by hand. The stand is nothing fancy;

merely the functional product of the whine of a saber saw, my

hands’ guidance, attached to the familiar aroma of cut wood.

The weapons had become so much a part of me that I felt they

deserved a holder that was equal y personal. I’ve read comments

about the cold steel of a blade, but they’re written by people who

are strangers to my art. The blade isn’t cold; it is warm, a thing

alive like the cycle of breath or the pulsing of blood.

The old adage is that the sword is the soul of the
samurai
. I

used to dismiss it as equal parts hyperbole and mystic mumbo-