Chapter twenty-one
The Princess’s SwordsmanTraditionally in Kazz-Jikaida whenever the Princess called on her Swordsman to fight for her the drums rolled. Black and white checkered tabards, black and white checkered drum cloths, all rippled and flowed as the drummers plied their drumsticks. The rataplan hammered out. Long thunderous rolls and flourishes, repeated and repeated, roared and boomed over the Jikaida board. And I walked forward, almost in a dream, feeling the blood in my head and the weight of the shield and the heft of the sword and the grip of the sand beneath my naked feet.
These were physical feelings. They bore in on me. They were tangible and real, like the sweat that beaded my forehead and trickled down my face from under the reed-laurium, like the taste of blood and swe
