Read Online Batman 5 - Batman Begins by Dennis O'Neil - Free Book Online
Authors: Dennis O'Neil
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foot and yanked. Ducard fell onto his back as Bruce scrambled to his feet and aimed his sword at Ducard’s bare throat. The point stopped only inches from Ducard’s flesh. Ducard lay still, his arms at his sides.
“Yield,” Bruce commanded.
“You haven’t beaten me,” Ducard replied. “You’ve sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke.”
Ducard tapped the ice beneath Bruce’s feet with the flat of his sword. There was a loud crack and the ice tilted and splintered and Bruce plunged into the freezing water.
Ducard watched Bruce flounder for almost a full minute, then reached down to help him up and out.
Later that evening, next to a blazing campfire near the glacier, Bruce shed his jacket and shirt and rubbed his arms, trying to control the violence of his shivering.
“Rub your chest,” Ducard told him. “Your arms will take care of themselves.”
Bruce began to rub his torso.
“You’re stronger than your father,” Ducard said.
“You didn’t know my father.”
“But I know the rage that drives you . . . that impossible anger strangling your grief until your loved ones’ memory is just poison in your veins. And one day you wish the person you loved had never existed so you’d be spared the pain.”
Bruce stopped what he was doing and looked at Ducard as though he had just found something amazing.
“I wasn’t always here in the mountains,” Ducard continued. “Once, I had a wife. My great love. She was taken from me. Like you, I was forced to learn that there are those without decency, who must be fought without pity or hesitation. Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you. As it almost did me.”
Bruce took his shirt from where it had been drying near the fire and slipped it on. “What stopped it?”
“Vengeance.”
“That’s no help to me.”
“Why not?”
FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL
I now know what my weapon must be. Men commit folly after folly because they are afraid. Fear was once mankind’s most powerful ally, giving enormous potency to the instinct for survival. Now, fear has become mankind’s greatest enemy, and such is the obtuseness of my race that its members do not realize it is the most powerful element of human existence. It is what drives them to embrace leaders who offer nothing more than false promises of security and doctrines that assure them that they are exempt from the inevitable consequences of being born, and to destroy the earth with insane consumption that does nothing more than distract them from their own mortality. They venerate charlatans and deny what is necessary to their own well-being because they are afraid. The situation is exacerbated by one of evolution’s cruelest jokes, the capability to deny to themselves what they are doing even as they are doing it.
I have long taught my followers that to overcome fear they must first face it. As the American psychologist Rogers observed, one cannot change until one has accepted oneself fully. Long ago I learned that embrace of any dread that dwells within is necessary to fulfill one’s potential. I have also instructed my minions in manipulating an enemy’s fear, in the use of fear as a tactical weapon. I am woefully late in realizing that fear can also be a strategic weapon and I can base my whole campaign upon it.
Fear is my weapon. I shall use fear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
B ruce was aware that the months of brute labor on ancient ships had physically changed him, coarsened his rich boy’s palms and thickened the muscles of his arms, chest, thighs. He had thought that by the time he was locked in the Chinese prison, the change was complete. But at Rā’s al Ghūl’s monastery, he realized that his months at sea had only begun his transformation. He learned a different kind of power, one that came from the knowledge and efficient use of his body’s parts, not just raw, untutored strength. His mind, too, was altering. He was coming to depend on a relaxed
“Yield,” Bruce commanded.
“You haven’t beaten me,” Ducard replied. “You’ve sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke.”
Ducard tapped the ice beneath Bruce’s feet with the flat of his sword. There was a loud crack and the ice tilted and splintered and Bruce plunged into the freezing water.
Ducard watched Bruce flounder for almost a full minute, then reached down to help him up and out.
Later that evening, next to a blazing campfire near the glacier, Bruce shed his jacket and shirt and rubbed his arms, trying to control the violence of his shivering.
“Rub your chest,” Ducard told him. “Your arms will take care of themselves.”
Bruce began to rub his torso.
“You’re stronger than your father,” Ducard said.
“You didn’t know my father.”
“But I know the rage that drives you . . . that impossible anger strangling your grief until your loved ones’ memory is just poison in your veins. And one day you wish the person you loved had never existed so you’d be spared the pain.”
Bruce stopped what he was doing and looked at Ducard as though he had just found something amazing.
“I wasn’t always here in the mountains,” Ducard continued. “Once, I had a wife. My great love. She was taken from me. Like you, I was forced to learn that there are those without decency, who must be fought without pity or hesitation. Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you. As it almost did me.”
Bruce took his shirt from where it had been drying near the fire and slipped it on. “What stopped it?”
“Vengeance.”
“That’s no help to me.”
“Why not?”
FROM THE JOURNALS OF RĀ’S AL GHŪL
I now know what my weapon must be. Men commit folly after folly because they are afraid. Fear was once mankind’s most powerful ally, giving enormous potency to the instinct for survival. Now, fear has become mankind’s greatest enemy, and such is the obtuseness of my race that its members do not realize it is the most powerful element of human existence. It is what drives them to embrace leaders who offer nothing more than false promises of security and doctrines that assure them that they are exempt from the inevitable consequences of being born, and to destroy the earth with insane consumption that does nothing more than distract them from their own mortality. They venerate charlatans and deny what is necessary to their own well-being because they are afraid. The situation is exacerbated by one of evolution’s cruelest jokes, the capability to deny to themselves what they are doing even as they are doing it.
I have long taught my followers that to overcome fear they must first face it. As the American psychologist Rogers observed, one cannot change until one has accepted oneself fully. Long ago I learned that embrace of any dread that dwells within is necessary to fulfill one’s potential. I have also instructed my minions in manipulating an enemy’s fear, in the use of fear as a tactical weapon. I am woefully late in realizing that fear can also be a strategic weapon and I can base my whole campaign upon it.
Fear is my weapon. I shall use fear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
B ruce was aware that the months of brute labor on ancient ships had physically changed him, coarsened his rich boy’s palms and thickened the muscles of his arms, chest, thighs. He had thought that by the time he was locked in the Chinese prison, the change was complete. But at Rā’s al Ghūl’s monastery, he realized that his months at sea had only begun his transformation. He learned a different kind of power, one that came from the knowledge and efficient use of his body’s parts, not just raw, untutored strength. His mind, too, was altering. He was coming to depend on a relaxed
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