Lone Wolf and Cub Volume 23: Tears of Ice

There are five volumes following "Tears of Ice," Volume 23 in the Lone Wolf & Cub series, so the epic sword fight between Ogami Itto and Retsudo Yagyu can not be the climatic battle between the two bitter foes. But that does not take away from the drama of the drawn out encounter, which finds the pair returned to the swords they left standing in the ground when they went off to save the city of Edo from complete destruction from flooding. "Tears of Ice" contains five episode of the epic manga saga, three of which are devoted to the sword fight:(112) "Frozen Edo" actually goes back in time a few minutes to recover the end of the previous episode from the perspective of the Shogun as we again see the destruction of the mountainside when Ogami Itto and Retsudo Yagyu used Daigoro's totekirai. The result is that both foes, along with Daigoro and Abe-No-Kaii, are swept into the flood. The resulting enishi (a fateful, chance connection between two people) finds Lone Wolf rescuing the master poisoner's "corpse" and Retsudo saving Daigoro. Both of these acts will have implications throughout this volume. (113) "Tears of Ice" finds Daigoro realizing he is in the household of his father's enemy and Retsudo explains to the boy the momentary truce that exists. Meanwhile, on their battlefield, Ogami Itto is burying the Yagyu dead. The symmetry of the two foes "helping" the other constitutes the final quiet before the coming storm. The fateful day of meeting is established for continuing the battle, but that night Abe-No-Kaii finds the two swords standing in the ground and comes up with yet another "final" plan to win the die for himself.(114) "The Day of Meeting" begins the epic swordfight between Ogami Itto and Retsudo Yagyu, with only Daigoro and Abe-No-Kaii observing the action. Koike and Kojima make it clear that this is going to be a long sword-fight, with pages devoted to the posture and positioning of each samurai before the actual crossing of swords.(115) "Death in the Moonlight" takes the duel into the night, as each swordsman tries every trick they know to win the battle. Meanwhile, neither knows that Abe-No-Kaii has poisoned their blades, which means a mere scratch could end the battle.(116) "Silent Snow" adds the element of weather to the sword fight as it begins to snow. The two evenly matched foes struggle on, but Daigoro has reached the limits of his endurance. The long struggle, their wounds, and the poison on their blades, finally take their toll of the two warriors.By this point reading through the Dark Horse publications of this great Japanese comic book I am atuned to the sense of pacing Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima are employing in their epic. Early volumes offered a variety of episodes, where we would periodically enjoy a Daigoro story or one in which Lone Wolf and Cub were periphery characters to the events. But now things have changed and the focus is almost entirely on four characters as the tension continues to build