by David Kirk
It had worked; the men of Ukita and the lords sworn to him had held like a cliff of stone, absorbed the fury of the Tokugawa charge stoically, and then they began to show the Easterners the quality of Bizen steel. Numbers had told, their skill had told, and they had begun the slow process of driving the thousands of the enemy back with spear and sword.
But that was half an hour ago; now Fushimi saw the treacherous horde of fresh Kobayakawa spearmen as they came, working their way methodically between and then replacing the tired Tokugawa troops. Ten ranks behind the main clash of spears, he turned to look for commands or reinforcements of their own, but neither the Lord Ukita nor any of his generals were anywhere to be seen.
None of the lords were. They had gone. Departed.
Fled?
The marshal could hear the ferociousness of the unwearied voices of the Kobayakawa as they began to engage, stabbing and slashing, and he felt a shudder of fear pass through even himself. He forced iron into his heart, clutched his sword tighter, and screamed until he thought his throat was tearing itself out.
His eyes caught sight of a spear falling, abandoned, and then someone worming away from the fight. He dashed across like a man seeing the ice crack beneath his feet, pointing at the samurai.
“You!” he barked with as much authority as he could. “Halt!”
The man showed no intention of doing so, and so the marshal stood in his path and put his hand on the man’s chest. The other samurai did not meet Fushimi’s eyes, and the marshal saw that the other’s body was shaking with short little breaths. He tried to wriggle past, but Fushimi grasped his breastplate.
“We do not retreat,” he said slowly and calmly over the din of the fighting. “Stand as one and we will not fall.”
“Let me go,” the man whimpered. “Please.”
“You will go nowhere until ordered,” said Fushimi.
“By who?” said the man. “Who’s going to order us? They’ve gone! They’ve gone and they’ve left us!”
“Our lords are still here!” said Fushimi, but of this he had no proof.
“You lie! Let me go!” said the man, and he tried to squirm past once more.
“By my orders, then,” growled Fushimi, and he moved his hand up to grab the man by the throat, trying to shock some wits back into him. “You will not—”
There was a sharp pain under his armpit, and then the man was pushing him back. Fushimi suddenly found he had no strength to resist, and then the man was withdrawing a bloody dagger from where he had stabbed the marshal beneath the armor of his outstretched arm.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s not my fault,” Fushimi heard him stammer, but he kept on going and did look back once as the marshal fell to the ground, no strength even to cry out.
Fushimi sat in the dirt with his legs splayed out before him, looking at the blood on his hands like a drunk counting out the last of his coins. The marshal felt a great and final hatred of the weakness of the world, and a bitter grin carved itself upon his face as around him the fading battle went on …
THE GREAT LORD Ukita had lost track of himself.
Oh, he knew exactly where he was, sitting at the edge of the forest stripped of all but the lightest armor on an unburdened and unremarkable horse, watching the battle unfold beneath him. He had no idea, however, where the man everyone else mistakenly presumed to be him had gotten to—the thrust and pull of combat had stolen his decoy from his sight.
When the Tokugawa spearmen had charged following the clash of champions, he and his retinue had slowly and calmly withdrawn to the rear of the fighting. There, among a carefully concealed huddle, the lord had dismounted and given one of his bodyguards his distinctive crested helmet and let the man take his horse. As the decoy had ridden off on the steed adorned so brazenly with the clan’s banners and livery, Ukita had gotten onto this plain mare and then covertly fallen back to where he was now. His fifty finest cavalrymen waited with him, their horses pawing the earth between the trunks of the great trees.
This was not cowardice. Deception was a valid strategy, a logical one.
The proof of this was looming over the right flank of the battlefield—the coming of the Kobayakawa host proper. The first, most eager troops had reached the battle, yes, but behind them the rest were converging and advancing like the wall of a temple slowly crashing down. They were wheeling and arranging themselves, taking the time to best plot their attack, swords and cannons and horses maneuvering around one another.
Ukita took this in impassively, and then turned his eye to the mass of his spearmen and archers and arquebusiers below. He saw men starting to peel away and toss down their weapons. How quickly it unraveled—at first it seemed only a handful, and then it was a dozen, and then threescore, and then almost instantly the great lord saw entire formations of his men begin to scatter like leaves blown in wind.
Some loyal men stayed to try to hold the enemy back, and other bands stationed behind the line of battle charged downward attempting to fill the gaps that were being left, killing those of their own side fleeing if they could reach them, but these were rare outcrops of flowers among weeds. To look at the broad scope of it was to see a rout beginning.
Ukita knew what needed to be done. Seventeen thousand men he had brought to the fight, and now these men had the honor of becoming seventeen thousand martyrs to his cause. To some that number of men was a dream, an empire—to him it was a third. More fool the other lords if they had gambled everything here.
The great lord gave the signal, and then he and his horsemen turned and vanished into the forest, silent and unnoticed. Behind them the Tokugawa and the Kobayakawa pushed onward, rolling the flank inward, enveloping, devouring …
Kazuteru wheeled in the saddle, sword in his hand and his horse skipping beneath him, trying to keep himself calm. Things had warped out of control, and it was hard to be a shield to his lord when the front of the battle was no longer clear. He had no idea what was happening—no one seemingly did—and all the while the young samurai had a dread sense of something closing around them.
“Hold here! Keep the banner high! Rally to us! Rally to us!” someone was shouting.
“We must leave! The lord must be saved!” yelled another bodyguard, and all were screaming and all their eyes were wide.
Where was the Lord Ukita, where were his generals, where were the Nakata, the Uemura, or the Akaza? Their noble assembly had fractured like a shattered gem with the twisting of the battle, and any hope of reorganizing some semblance of an army out of this chaos had gone with them. It had all collapsed, they were gone, and he could see other men were fleeing now too, and what could they do? What could they do?
Kazuteru turned to Lord Shinmen. He alone was still, holding the reins of his horse tight, taking in what was erupting around him stoically. Did he have a plan, or was he just stupefied by the way the day had turned? The lord sensed Kazuteru looking at him, and their eyes met. They were lit with a grim and strange calmness.
What it reminded Kazuteru of was Munisai’s expression as he had held before him the dagger he would thrust up into his belly.
It was a poor image to have in his head, a miserable memento of this harsh world. Kazuteru wanted to remember the kind smile of his mother, or the dignity of his long-dead father practicing the sword, or the hands of Fusako so soft and small and wonderful in his as they walked secretly beneath the Uji forests. But they were impossible to conjure. They did not belong here.
There came a swelling noise from behind them. They all turned to see an arrowhead of horsemen, fresh and unbloodied from battle, charging toward them. They wore the colors of the Kobayakawa, and the traitors came to claim the glorious prize of the head of a lord.
Kazuteru could see the faces of the leading men atop their mounts, the joy and the anger and the stillness in them. The foremost horseman seemed to hang in time. There was a savage glee in him; bearded and scarred and carrying a huge two-handed sword that he had to stand in the saddle to
wield, raising it above his head with deft and petrifying skill.
The man’s horse never slowed from its gallop, his eyes never left Kazuteru, and all the young samurai could see, all he could think of was the elegant curve of that great, gleaming sword as it drew closer and closer to him …
Bennosuke did not know that others were fleeing until he saw men overtaking him on the slope heading back to the forest pathways. They were panicking, sprinting wide-eyed, some even wailing in terror as they passed the boy who ran steady and silent; theirs was the animal decision to survive, whereas he did not run out of fear.
He felt that he was thinking clearer than he had in years, the air purer in his lungs. His had been a firm, rational choice to be here no longer, and he would have simply vanished if he could. But he was mortal—oh, how he knew that now, he wanted to laugh—and what awaited him now was the long slog back up the slopes and out of the valley.
As he ran he glanced over his shoulder. Things were disintegrating, the army dispersing second by second. Horns were being blown, futile commands given to groups of men who no longer heeded them. A captain was spitting at Bennosuke as he ran past, calling him a coward in much the same tone as Kumagai had. The man did not see his own standard-bearer behind him toss his banner to the ground and also start to run.
Into the forest once more, the trees enclosing him and funneling up the sound from below. The ground was churned horribly, and his run became a scrambling hop, passing men who had stumbled and twisted their legs and who were pleading from the ground for someone to carry them.
These men Bennosuke ignored, but eyes in the trees stopped him for a moment. He became aware of a gaggle of boys, perhaps two dozen of them peering furtively out from between the trunks. The eldest could have been no more than ten, the youngest half that, and they must have been brought by proud fathers to watch the battle from what was thought a safe distance. But now the lot of them were standing in their little fine kimonos and their little swords, with their hair pulled up into childish tufts that must have delighted their mothers with the cuteness of it, and there was nothing but fear and uncertainty in their eyes.
Brought to bear witness, blooded before they knew any better—Bennosuke felt empathy for them lurch within himself. He looked the eldest squarely in the eye and told him: “Run.”
He meant to speak warmly, but his voice hissed out as a panting snarl. What the boys saw was a heaving giant with a face half coated in blood, and at that they shrank farther back into the undergrowth.
There was nothing he could do for them. He pushed onward once more. Running uphill, the distance seemed so much longer than this morning, but eventually the slope leveled off. He realized this must have been close to where he had watched the hawk at dawn. He allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, and he turned to look down upon the valley spread before him.
It was clear to see the Western army was doomed; the Patient Tiger was closing his jaws around the jugular of Japan. Kobayakawa’s army had swept across from the right, and his betrayal had sparked insidious inspiration in some of the other lords—or had at least put the desperate realization of defeat into them—and now the entire coalition was erupting into smaller battles as some lords tried to prove their worth to Tokugawa by smashing their former allies for him.
The honor of samurai. He wanted to laugh. Let them have it, let Tokugawa have his throne, and the crows and the flames can take those he crushed beneath him to fulfill his terrible ambition; Bennosuke no longer cared. He was leaving it all behind: the orders, the shame, the dogma, Ukita, Kumagai, the Nakata …
And yet, thinking that, Bennosuke found his eye drawn to burgundy amid the battlefield before him. One melee among dozens, a ring of banners slowly being driven inward by an overwhelming advance. The last stand of the Nakata, wrought so small at this distance. Little men flailing with little toy sticks, standards flapping like feathers on the smallest of birds. The nobles were there at the center, the old lord and Hayato too, he supposed, huddled together looking outward, trapped as the wall of men between them and the enemy grew thinner by the moment.
Bennosuke found himself filled with sudden regret that he was not down there ending them himself, but he knew that he had waived any right to do so when he had decided to leave the battlefield. The child of vengeance was dead and the child of Amaterasu ruled now, he told himself. That was the choice he had made—to be bound by no quest but that which he chose for himself.
But still that ache within him remained unanswered. He watched the last banners fall as the men in burgundy were overwhelmed, vanished beneath a host that screamed their victory for but a moment before turning to find a fresh enemy, and he wondered if Munisai was watching, wherever his spirit was.
His eye was drawn elsewhere; Sekigahara was lost, and if Bennosuke knew it, then the lords of the enemy knew it too. Forces could be diverted. From within the midst of the Eastern army, a band of light cavalry armed with bows began to peel away. They formed into a long ribbon of men, looped around their rear, and then started to race at a full gallop, heading up the slope already notching arrows on their bows. They came for those fleeing—this was to be a total victory, and Tokugawa was in no mood for mercy.
The wind was already howling through his lungs, but Bennosuke knew he would have to run a lot farther yet.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As the horsemen began to gallop up the slopes, Bennosuke thought for a moment about stripping his armor from himself. He felt anchored by it, and he needed to be lighter, more agile, less exhausted. But there was no time, and in any case he doubted it mattered to a horse whether a man was naked or carrying a load of stone. Cuirass and guards rattling still, he forced himself to run once more. There was a pain in his side almost immediately—he shouldn’t have stopped, he knew. To tease the body with the promise of respite only made it clamor for more, because flesh was ever weaker than the spirit.
Bennosuke breached the valleytop, and started to run downward. He was not alone, plenty of men before him. This side of the valley was not as heavily forested, yet the scattered outcrops of trees and wild bushes still funneled the panicked herd between them. It was chaos, dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds running blind, scrambling over brush and trampling long grass.
There was a cry of alarm from behind when the first of the arrows whipped down, fired blind from the other side of the ridge. Few were hit, but men cowered and yelped as the long shafts lanced out of the sky to impale the ground around them. Faster. Every man knew he had to be faster. They sucked air through gritted teeth, tried to put more earth beneath their feet.
Downhill, soft ground—this should have been an easy run. But other men staggered, and his own vision began to fade around the edges. Munisai’s words taunted him once more—how many minutes had he fought?
At what he hoped to be halfway down the slope Bennosuke turned as he ran, and he saw the Tokugawa horsemen streaming down after them. They were far still, like little inked figures on a painted panorama, but even from here it was obvious how easy it was for them. A game almost, they were cantering, taking time to aim, and then an arrow lashed out straight and a man tumbled and fell. On they came, growing large, filling the space between the trees.
They could not enter those trees, though, and in them Bennosuke saw his escape. In the broad landscape before them was a mass of short, steep hills like the backs of great turtles in water, and when they reached the bottom of the valley they would have to find their way around or over these. To the right, heading inland to the mountains, the forest became much thicker, and in that cover he knew he could ghost away from the body of the men and go wherever it was that the forest led, safe from horsemen and whoever else might follow him.
But first he had to get there, and the distance shrank so very slowly. His body truly aching now, his ankles numb and bleeding from the chafing of his greaves, he felt phantom arrows pierce his back again and again, but none materialized and slowly the outcrops grew larger and larger and th
e safety of the forest proper grew closer.
It took his senses from him the closer he got, tantalizing him. He dreamed of finding a stream within that forest, his mouth dry and his throat raw from his skull to his sternum. He saw the trees, straight trunks that stood the height of fifteen men bare of foliage until the very top, no more than an arm’s width between each of them, and they called to him, forty paces, thirty, twenty …
Passing a copse, the trees revealed to him a lone Tokugawa horseman. The man was a scout perhaps, a single outrider ahead of the main body of men, and the rider was wheeling his steed around a body run through with one of his arrows. There were two other men cowering on their asses in front of him, and as they looked at Bennosuke’s sudden arrival the horseman too turned his head.
There was a moment of shock that both he and Bennosuke shared, and in that moment the boy realized that he was entirely exposed. No tree or bush to throw himself behind, he was at the mercy entirely of the bow in the rider’s hand. There was no arrow notched to that bow, though, and those next instants as the rider reached to his quiver were everything.
Bennosuke moved for his weapons too. He drew his shortsword, took a staggering run, and then hurled the blade at the rider with such force that he almost tumbled over. But he was exhausted and the target was at a distance, and Bennosuke knew it was a bad throw as soon as it left his hand. The boy despaired as the wildly spinning sword veered hopelessly toward the ground.
The rider drew the string of his weapon back, and Bennosuke’s eyes locked upon the rising arrowhead, body freezing with dread of the blow to come. He barely saw the sword bouncing off the turf. Wild though the throw had been, such was the strength behind it that it rebounded and shot upward, whipping around twice as ferociously. Caught in a fresh, chaotic arc, it rose to smash the rider’s horse in the mouth. The beast screamed and began to buck and kick and the rider swore as his arrow loosed into the ground, and then the man was grabbing at the reins and fighting to regain control.