Taiko. Part 125

But as soon as his retainers reached the top of the hill, they all shouted together.

"d.a.m.n!"

"I thought the enemy might have a plan to follow us. Prepare yourselves!"

Unable to wait for Hidetsugu's orders, all of them moved to take action, kicking up bits of gra.s.s and dust in their haste. The ground shook, the horses whinnied, officers and men shouted back and forth. In the moment it took to transform the rest period for a meal into readiness for battle, the commanders of the Tokugawa army had given the order for a wild fusillade of bullets and arrows directly into Hidetsugu's troops.

"Fire! Loose your arrows!"

"Strike into them!"

Observing the confusion of the enemy, the mounted men and spear corps suddenly charged.

"Don't let them get close to His Lords.h.i.+p!"

The shouts surrounding Hidetsugu were now only wild voices calling to protect his life.

Here, there, from among the trees and shrubs, from everywhere along the road, came swarms of enemy soldiers. The only force that was unable to open up an escape route was one made up of Hidetsugu and his retainers.

Hidetsugu had been slightly wounded in two or three places and labored furiously with his spear.

"Are you still here, my lord?"

"Hurry! Retreat! Move back!"

When his retainers saw him, they spoke almost as if they were scolding him. Every one of them died fighting. Kinos.h.i.+ta Kageyu saw that Hidetsugu had lost sight of his horse and was now on foot.

"Here! Take this one! Use the whip and get out of this place without looking back!"

Giving Hidetsugu his own horse, Kageyu planted his banner in the ground and cut his way through as many of the enemy soldiers as he could before he was finally killed as well. Hidetsugu put his hand on the horse, but before he could mount it, the animal was. .h.i.t by a bullet.

"Lend me your horse!"

Fleeing desperately through the midst of the fighting, Hidetsugu had spied a mounted warrior hurrying by close to him and had yelled out. Abruptly pulling the reins and turning around, the man looked down at Hidetsugu.

"What is it, my young lord?"

"Give me your horse."

"That's like asking for someone's umbrella on a rainy day, isn't it? No, I won't lend it to you, even if it is my lord's command."

"Why not?"

"Because you're retreating and I'm one of the soldiers still charging ahead."

Flatly refusing, the man dashed off. From his back, a single strand of bamboo gra.s.s whistled in the wind.

"d.a.m.n!" Hidetsugu swore as he watched him go. It seemed that in that man's eyes, he had been less than a leaf of bamboo gra.s.s along the roadside. Looking behind him, Hidetsugu could see a cloud of dust being raised by the enemy. But a group of routed soldiers from different corps carrying spears, firearms, and long swords saw Hidetsugu and shouted for him to stop.

"My lord! If you run that way, you'll meet up with yet another enemy unit!"

As they approached, they surrounded him and then pulled him away to escape toward the Kanare River.

On their way they picked up a runaway horse, and Hidetsugu was finally mounted. But when they took a short rest at a place called Hosogane, they were again attacked by the enemy and, suffering another defeat, fled in the direction of Inaba.

Thus the Fourth Corps was routed. The Third Corps, which was led by Hori Kyutaro, consisted of about three thousand men. A distance of one to one and a half leagues was maintained between the corps, and messengers had constantly kept communications open between the forces, so that if the First Corps took a rest, the advance of the other corps was naturally halted as well, one after another.

Kyutaro suddenly cupped his ear and listened. "That was gunfire, wasn't it?"

Just at that moment, one of Hidetsugu's retainers whipped his horse into the resting camp and tumbled forward.

"Our men have been completely routed. The main army has been annihilated by the Tokugawa forces, and even Lord Hidetsugu's safety is uncertain. Turn back immediately!" he wailed.

Kyutaro was taken by surprise, but his composed brow checked the impulse of the moment.

"Are you in the messenger corps?"

"Why are you asking me that now?"

"If you're not one of the messengers, why have you come running up so upset? Did you run away?"

"No! I came here to inform you of the situation. I don't know if it was cowardly or not, but this is an emergency, and I came as fast as I could to inform Lord Nagayos.h.i.+ and Lord Shonyu."

With that parting remark, the man whipped his horse and disappeared, continuing on to the next corps up ahead.

"Since a retainer came instead of a messenger, we can only surmise that our men at the rear have suffered a total defeat."

Suppressing the restlessness in his heart, Kyutaro remained seated on his camp stool for another moment.

"Everyone come here!" Already aware of the situation, his retainers and officers gathered-around, their faces pale. "The Tokugawa forces are about to attack us. Don't waste bullets. Wait until the enemy has come to within sixty feet before firing." After instructing them in the disposition of troops, he made one concluding remark. "I will give one hundred bushels for every dead enemy warrior."

What he antic.i.p.ated was not off the mark. The Tokugawa force that had struck Hidetsugu's corps with an obliterating blow was now descending on his own corps fiercely. The Tokugawa commanders were themselves frightened by the unrelenting force of their troops' spirit.

Froth covered the horses' mouths, the men's faces were tense with determination, and the armor that was coming in waves was covered with blood and dust. As the Tokugawa forces pressed closer and closer into firing range, Kyutaro watched carefully and then gave the command.

"Fire!"

At that instant, gunfire created a dreadful roar and a wall of smoke. With matchlock firearms, the time it took to load and fire was a period of perhaps five or six breaths, even for well-practiced men. Because of that, a system of alternating volleys was used. Thus, after each fusillade, another fell upon the enemy in rapid succession. The a.s.saulting army fell helter-skelter before this defense. Their vast numbers could be seen on the ground between the clouds of gunpowder smoke.

"They're prepared!"

"Stop! Fall back!"

The Tokugawa commanders yelled orders to fall back, but their charging soldiers not be so easily stopped.

Kyutaro saw that the moment had come and shouted to the troops to counterattack. The victory was now clear, both psychologically and physically, without anyone having to wait for the actual result. The corps of warriors that had been so brilliantly victorious now received themselves what they had given to Hidetsugu only moments before.

Throughout Hideyos.h.i.+'s army Hori Kyutaro's spear corps was famed for its great efficiency. The corpses of men who had been pierced by the points of those spears now deterred the horses carrying the commanders who were trying to flee. The Tokugawa generals escaped, swinging their long swords behind them as they fled the pursuing points of the spears.

Master Stroke The plain of Nagakute was covered with a thin veil of gunpowder smoke and filled with the stink of corpses and blood. With the morning sun, it smoldered with all the colors of the rainbow.

Peace had already returned there, but the soldiers who had brought carnage with them were now heading for Yazako, like the clouds of an evening shower. Flight simply provoked more flight, endless flight and destruction.

Kyutaro did not lose his head as he pursued the Tokugawa troops. "The rear guard should not follow us. Take the roundabout way toward Inokois.h.i.+ and pursue them along two roads."

One unit broke away and followed a different road, while Kyutaro led six hundred men against the retreating enemy. The dead and wounded abandoned along the road by the Tokugawa could not have numbered less than five hundred men, but Kyutaro's soldiers also grew fewer and fewer as they continued.

Although the main corps had advanced far ahead, two men still breathing among the corpses now crossed spears, then abandoned them as too c.u.mbersome and drew their swords. Grappling, then breaking loose, they fell down, stood up again, and fought interminably in their own private battle. Finally one took the other's head. Yelling almost insanely, the victor chased after his companions in the main corps, disappeared once again into the miasma of smoke and blood, and, struck by a stray bullet, fell dead before he catch up with his comrades.

Kyutaro was yelling himself hoa.r.s.e. "It's useless to chase after them for too long. Genza! Momoemon! Stop the troops! Tell them to fall back!"

Several of his retainers rode forward and, with difficulty, restrained their troops.

"Fall back!"

"Draw up beneath the commander's standard!"

Hori Kyutaro dismounted and walked from the road onto the promontory of a bluff. From where he stood, his field of vision was un.o.bstructed. He stared steadily out into the distance.

"Ah, he has come so quickly," he muttered.

The expression on his face showed that he had become completely sobered. Turning to his attendants, he invited them to take a look.

In the west, in an elevated area just opposite the morning sun, something was glittering on Mount Fujigane.

Was it not Ieyasu's emblem-the commander's standard with the golden fan? Kyutaro raised his voice in grief. "It's a sad thing to say, but we have no strategy for dealing with such a great foe. Our work here is finished."

Collecting his troops, Kyutaro quickly began to retreat. But at that point, four messengers from the First and Second Corps came together from the direction of Nagakute looking for him.

"The order is for you to turn back and join forces with the vanguard. This comes directly from Lord Shonyu."

Kyutaro flatly refused. "Absolutely not. We're retreating."

The messengers could hardly believe their ears. "The battle is starting now! Please turn back and join our lords' forces immediately!" they repeated, raising their voices.

Kyutaro raised his voice as well. "If I said I'm retreating, I'm retreating! We have to make sure that Lord Hidetsugu is safe. Besides, more than half of this section of the army has sustained wounds, and if our men come up against a fresh enemy, it will be a disaster. I, for one, am not going to fight a battle that I know I'll lose. You can tell that to Lore Shonyu and to Lord Nagayos.h.i.+ as well!"

With those parting words, he rode off at a gallop.

Hori Kyutaro's corps ran into Hidetsugu and his surviving troops in the vicinity of Inaba. Then, setting fire to the farmhouses along the way, they defended themselves time and again from the pursuing Tokugawa troops and finally returned to Hideyos.h.i.+'s main camp at Gakuden before sunset.

The messengers who had come seeking Kyutaro's aid were outraged.

"What kind of cowardice is it to run away to the main camp without even looking back at your allies' desperate situation?"

"He's clearly lost his nerve."

"Today Hori Kyutaro showed us his true character. We'll despise him if we return alive."

They now turned toward their own isolated corps, led by Shonyu, and whipped their horses' flanks in fits of rage.

Indeed, the two corps under the command of Shonyu and Nagayos.h.i.+ were now only fodder for Ieyasu. The two men were as different as their abilities. The battle between Hideyos.h.i.+ and Ieyasu at this time was like a grand champions.h.i.+p match in sumo, and each man understood his opponent well. Both Hideyos.h.i.+ and Ieyasu had realized early on that the situation would reach the present pa.s.s, and each knew through his own circ.u.mspection that his enemy was not a man who could be brought down by a cheap trick orshowmans.h.i.+p. But pity the brave and ferocious soldier who acts with a warrior's pride alone. Burning with nothing but his own will, he knows neither the enemy nor his own capacities.

Having had his camp stool set up on Mount Rokubo, Shonyu inspected the more than two hundred enemy heads that had been taken at Iwasaki Castle.

It was morning, just about the first half of the Hour of the Dragon. Shonyu still had not the slightest idea of the disaster that had occurred at his rear. Looking only at the smoking ruins of the enemy castle in front of him, he was drunk on the small pleasure that the warrior falls into so easily.

After the inspection of the heads and the recording of the meritorious deeds of the troops, breakfast was eaten. As the soldiers chewed their food, they occasionally looked toward the northwest. Suddenly something in that direction caught Shonyu's attention as well.

"Tango, what's that in the sky over there?" Shonyu asked.

The generals around Shonyu all turned to the northwest.

"Could it be an insurrection?" one suggested.

But as they continued to eat what was left of their rations, they suddenly heard some confused shouting at the foot of the hill.

As hey were wondering what it was about, a messenger from Nagayos.h.i.+ ran up to them. "We've been taken off guard! They've come up behind us!" the man shouted as he prostrated himself in front of Shonyu's camp stool.

The generals felt as if a chill wind had blown clear through their armor.

"What do you mean, they've come up behind us?" Shonyu asked.

"An enemy force followed Lord Hidetsugu's rear guard."

"The rear guard?"

"They made a sudden attack from both flanks."

Shonyu stood up abruptly, just as a second messenger arrived from Nagayos.h.i.+.

"There's no time to lose, my lord. Lord Hidetsugu's rear guard has been completely routed."

There was a sudden stir of motion on the hill, and following that, the noise of short tempered commands and the sounds of soldiers flowing down the road to the bottom of the hill.

From the shady side of Mount Fujigane, the commander's standard of the golden fan shone brilliantly above the Tokugawa army. There was something almost bewitching about the symbol, and it sent a s.h.i.+ver through the soul of every warrior of the western army on the plain.

There is a great psychological difference between the spirit of an advancing army and of an army that has turned back. Nagayos.h.i.+, who was now encouraging his men from horseback, looked like a man who was antic.i.p.ating his own death. His armor was made of black leather with dark blue threading, and his coat was gold brocade on a white background. Deer horns adorned his helmet, which he wore thrown back on his shoulders. His head was still wrapped down to his cheeks in the white bandage that covered his wounds.

The Second Corps had been resting at Ous.h.i.+gahara, but as soon as he heard about the Tokugawa forces' pursuit, Nagayos.h.i.+ roused his men and glared at the golden fan on Mount Fujigane.

"This man is a worthy opponent," he said. "The failure at Haguro that I wash away today won't be just for me. I'll show them that I'll wipe away my father-in-law's disgrace as well."

Today he intended to vindicate his honor. Nagayos.h.i.+ was a handsome man, and the death attire that he wore today seemed all too desolate for him.

"Did you deliver the report to the vanguard?"

The messenger, who had returned, brought his horse up next to his lord's, adjusted himself to his lord's pace, and made his report.