by Ronan Frost
Chapter Twenty
Enryaku-ji is twelve miles from Kyoto via the wide trade road, but I know the small hidden trails directly up the side of Mount Hiei slashing that distance by a quarter. Even at my fleetest it will take at least an hour, but as I start running my legs feel strangely leaden. I am gaunt, my starved reserves long since turned to ash.
My body has betrayed me.
The mountain rises up green and impossibly distant beyond the buildings of the city. I drop my head, watching my feet. My pace has slowed almost to a stop, the muscles in my legs protesting, my breath uneven, my guts in a wretched silent knot. Raising my head and relaxing my senses my gaze goes to infinity, and I hear deep within me the calling of the mountain, and everything is lighter. I start running, and suddenly it is easy. I realize it was not a physical but a mental block upon my body and the ease to overcome it is almost laughably simple. I find vast measures of satisfaction in the strength of my reawakened body as it moves once again in that long practiced stride: short and rapid, my toes kissing the ground beneath my center of balance, not extending too far forward, my ankles pivoting as weight rolls down the outside of my foot to the heel, where I push off with a flick against the ground.
The repetition is meditation.
The straw sandals upon my feet are near noiseless and I have no sense of the passage of time, only knowing that I do not stop or slacken my pace, even when the gradient turns upward. It is a time where my energy is seemingly limitless. I am aware of the forest that now surrounds me, the city has fallen away behind. I do not allow myself to think conscious thoughts, but simply let my mind rest, climbing through the narrow tracks faster than a horse could possibly gallop around via the trade route. I scramble up the steep trail now in the shade of the towering sugi trees, the foliage ripe and lush in the humid summer air. The air changes; it is full of birdsong and insect calls and the trickle of water were a stream falls over rocks.
And then I am there. Enryaku-ji.
As I work my way along the walkways I see faces that seem to fall silent as I pass, as if I am some splinter piercing the flesh of their brotherhood, but it can only be my imagination playing tricks upon me, for many here know my face, and they have no reason to distrust me.
It seems an age of wading through the armored monks until I at last I find Kan’emon. He is surrounded by his senior warrior monks, among them is Tomoe, her long jet-black hair tied back behind her head, as composed as ever. Kan’emon sees me and straightens, question in his eyes. The soldiers at his side bristle.
I stop before him and bow low from the waist, my hands pressed together.
“Kan’emon, I bring news. Yobutomo too must hear it.”
“What do I know or care where the yamabushi roam?” He must see something in my stricken visage, for he clears his throat and wipes the back of his hand across his nose. “He mentioned he was returning to Mount Haguro.”
I fought down the irrational feeling of desperation, that premonition that I would never see him again.
“Warlord Nobunaga is right now amassing his army to attack Mount Hiei and raze it to the ground. You must prepare for attack, or else flee.”
“Oh?”
“Please, believe me.”
“And how is it you came by this information?”
I swallow, and look up. My breathing is slow and even, despite the exertion of the extreme pace I have pushed running up the slopes.
“In Kyoto, I chanced upon my old master Masakage, the assassin, and intercepted a message.” I hand the tiny parchment to Kan’emon.The sweat from my fingers has smudged the characters and Kan’emon has to squint to read. I can see his face shift.
“He means to make an example of us,” he says.
“It will be soon.”
“Soon?”
“Today, tomorrow, I don’t know. I am sorry,” I say, bowing again, aware of how useless my words are now. “You were right, I shouldn’t have started the trials – I should have shown you the way to lead an attack on Miyamori castle and weaken Nobunaga’s flank. I was a weapon that should have been used.”
Kan’emon’s tone is brusque. “Too late, boy. It’s not use clenching your buttocks after a fart.”
He sits still a moment, as if turning matters over in his head. He reaches a decision.
“Tomoe, is our army ready?”
“A shortage of arrows, but they can be ready to fight within the hour,” she says. “I can’t say as much for the rest.”
“The arquebuses?”
“We are yet to fully test our copy of the southern barbarian designs. The workshop has produced only nine-hundred so far. It won’t be enough. Nobunaga and his army number over thirty thousand.”
“Every one of the warrior monks is worth a thousand ordinary men! We are an army that cares not if we meet god or devil!”
Kan’emon raises his voice and calls in several monks from the adjoining room.
“Busho, Hagami, send for those samurai of the Asai that remain, gather them in the central yard. Sakai, get the horns and the bell sounding, call everyone back. Hakozaki, pass word to the other leaders, give them this parchment, tell them we have little time to prepare, clean and load the guns and cover them in their oil skins. Call all women and children able to wield a weapon to take up arms, there will be no shelter here. Miura, send as many as you can find into the kitchens to collect all the crockery pots they can find, the larger, the better, and take them down to the river.”
He pauses, brows knitted. Like him, I have seen the signs: the ants gathering and swarming, that particular heaviness to the air that signals the coming of rain.
“We must hold Nobunaga’s advance long enough,” he says pensively. He glances at me and blinks, as if recalling to himself that I am here, and seems surprised at the look of helpless defeat in my eyes.
“We’ve fought armies before and won, boy,” he says with a scowl. “And we’ll do it again.”