Brilliance of the Moon (28 page)

The sky gradually clouded over with a darker tinge on the
horizon. It was unnaturally still. We made camp that night outside a small town;
in the early hours of the morning it began to rain. By midday it was a
downpour, slowing our progress and dampening our spirits. Still, I kept telling
myself, there was no wind. We could cope with a little rain. Makoto was less
optimistic, fearing we would be held up at the Shirakawa, which was prone to
sudden flooding in this weather.

But we never got to the Shirakawa. As we neared the limits of the
Maruyama domain I sent scouts ahead. They returned in the late afternoon to say
they had spotted a medium-size force, perhaps twelve or fifteen hundred strong,
setting up camp on the plain ahead. The banners were Seishuu, but they had also
seen Lord Fujiwara’s crest.

“He has come out to meet us,” I said to Makoto. “He knew what my
reaction would be.”

“He almost certainly is not here in person,” Makoto replied. “But
he would be able to command any number of allies. As I feared, they have set a
trap for you. Your reaction would not be hard to guess.”

“We will attack them at dawn.” I was relieved the army was so
small. I was not at all intimidated by Fujiwara; what I feared was a
confrontation with Arai and some of the thirty thousand men he had under arms.
The last I’d heard of Arai was that he was at Inuyama, far away in the east of
the Three Countries. But I’d had no news of his activities all summer; he could
be back in Kumamoto for all I knew, less than a day’s journey from Shirakawa.

I questioned the scouts closely about the terrain. One of them, Sakai, knew the area well, having grown up there. He considered it to be a fair
battleground, or would be in better weather. It was a small plain, flanked to
the South and East by mountain ranges but open on the other sides. There was a
pass to the South, through which our enemies had presumably come, and a broad valley
led away to the North, eventually to the coast road. The road we had traveled
on from Maruyama joined this valley a couple of miles before the first rocky
outcrops of the plain.

There was little water in these uplands, which was why they were
uncultivated. Horses grazed on their wild grasses and were gathered together
once a year in the autumn. In early spring the grass was burned off. Sakai told me that Lady Maruyama used to come hawking here when she was younger, and we
saw several eagles hunting for food before the sun set.

The valley to our rear reassured me. If we should need it, it was
a way of retreat. I did not plan to retreat and I did not want to have to fall
back to the castle town. My aim was only to go forward, to crush whoever stood
in my way, regain my wife, and wipe out the terrible insult of her abduction.
However, I had been taught by Matsuda never to advance without knowing how I
would retreat, and for all my rage I was not going to sacrifice my men
unnecessarily.

No night ever seemed so long. The rain lessened a little, and by
dawn it was no more than a drizzle, raising my spirits. We rose in the dark and
began to march as soon as it was light, unfurling the Otori banners but not yet
sounding the conches.

Just before the end of the valley I ordered a halt. Taking Sakai with me, I went on foot, under cover of the trees, to the edge of the plain. It
stretched away to the Southeast in a series of small rounded hillocks covered
in long grass and wildflowers, broken by outcrops of strangely shaped
gray-white rocks, many of them splashed with yellow and orange lichen.

The rain had made the ground beneath our feet muddy and slippery,
and mist hung in swaths above the plain. It was hard to see more than a couple
of hundred paces; yet I could hear our enemy clearly: the neighing of horses,
the shouts of men, the creaking and jingling of harnesses.

“How far did you go last night?” I whispered to Sakai.

“Just over the first ridge; not much farther than this. Their
scouts were also about.”

“They must know we’re here. Why haven’t they attacked already?” I
would have expected them to ambush us at the head of the valley; the sounds I
heard were those of an army in readiness but not on the move.

“Perhaps they don’t want to give up the advantage of the slope,”
he suggested.

It was true that the slope was in their favor, but it was not
particularly steep and gave no huge advantage. The mist bothered me more, as it
was impossible to see exactly how many men we faced. I crouched in silence for
a few moments, listening. Beyond the drip of the rain and the sighing of the
trees I could hear both armies equally… or could I? From the enemy the noise
seemed to grow in volume like the surge of the sea.

“You saw fifteen hundred at the most?”

“Closer to twelve hundred,” Sakai replied. “I’d bet on it.”

I shook my head. Maybe the weather, sleeplessness, apprehension,
were causing me unnecessary alarm. Maybe my hearing was playing tricks on me.
However, when we returned to the main force, I called Makoto and the captains
and told them I feared we might be hopelessly outnumbered, in which case we
would immediately retreat on the signal from the conch shell.

“Do we pull back to Maruyama?” Makoto asked.

This had been one of my plans, but I needed an alternative. It
was what my enemies would expect me to do, and for all I knew they might have
already attacked the castle town, in which case I would find myself truly
trapped. I took Makoto aside and said, “If Arai has come out against us, too,
we cannot stand and fight. Our only hope is to retreat to the coast and get the
Terada to transport us to Oshima. If we start to retreat, I want you to ride
ahead and find Ryoma. He must arrange it with Terada Fumio.”

“They’ll say I was the first to flee,” he protested. “I would
prefer to stay by your side.”

“There is no one else I can send. You know Ryoma and you know the
way. Anyway, we will probably all be in flight.”

He looked at me curiously then. “Do you have a premonition about
this encounter? Is this the battle we lose?”

“Just in case it is, I want to preserve my men,” I replied. “I’ve
lost so much, I can’t afford to lose them too. After all, there are still two
to win.‘” He smiled; we clasped hands briefly. I rode back to the head of the
troops and gave the signal to advance.

The mounted bowmen rode forward, followed by the foot soldiers,
with warriors on horseback on either flank. As we came out from the valley, at
my signal, the bowmen split into two groups and moved to either side. I ordered
the foot soldiers to halt before they came into range of the opposing archers.

Their forces loomed out of the mist. I sent one of the Otori
warriors forward. He bellowed in a huge voice, “Lord Otori Takeo is moving
through this country! Allow him to pass or be prepared to die!”

One of their men shouted back, “We are commanded by Lord Fujiwara
to punish the so-called Otori! We’ll have his head and yours before noon!”

We must have seemed a pitiful force to them. Their foot soldiers,
overconfident, began to stream down the slope with their spears held ready. At
once our bowmen let fly and the enemy ran into a hail of arrows. Their bowmen
retaliated but we were still beyond their range, and our horsemen swept up
through the foot soldiers and against the archers before they could set arrow
to cord again.

Then our foot soldiers surged forward and drove them back up the
slope. I knew my men were well trained, but their ferocity surprised even me.
They seemed unstoppable as they rushed forward. The enemy began to pull back,
faster than I’d expected, and we raced after them, swords drawn, slashing and
cutting at the retreating men.

Makoto was on my right side, the conch shell blower on my left as
we crested the hill. The plain continued its undulating roll toward the distant
range in the East. But instead of a small army in retreat, we were faced with a
far more daunting sight. In the dip between the small hills was another army, a
huge one, Arai’s western army, its banners flying, its men prepared.

“Blow the conch!” I shouted to the man alongside me. I should have
believed my own ears all along. He placed the shell to his lips and the
mournful sound rang across the plain, echoing back from the hills.

“Go!” I yelled to Makoto, and he turned his horse with difficulty
and urged it into a gallop. It fought the bit, not wanting to leave its
fellows, and Shun whinnied to it. But in a few moments we had all turned and
were racing after Makoto back to the valley.

I’d been proud of my men’s attack, but I was even prouder of them
at that moment in the misty autumn dawn when they obeyed the orders instantly
and began to retreat.

The swiftness of our turnaround took our enemy by surprise. They
had counted on us tearing down the slope after them, where they and Arai’s men
would cut us to pieces. In the first encounter we had inflicted greater
casualties, and for a while their advance was hampered by the fallen dead and
by the confusion surrounding both armies. About this time the rain began to
fall more heavily again, turning the ground underfoot to slippery mud, which
favored us, as we were nearly into the valley with its rockier floor.

I was in the rear, urging the men forward and from time to time
turning to fight off our closest pursuers. Where the valley narrowed I left two
hundred of my best warriors with orders to hold out as long as they could,
buying time for the main force to get away.

We rode all that day, and by the time night fell we had
outstripped our pursuers, but with casualties and the rear guard we had left
behind, we were barely half the number we had been. I let the men rest for a
couple of hours, but the weather was worsening, and as I’d feared, the wind was
picking up. So we continued through the night and the next day, hardly eating,
hardly resting, occasionally fighting off small bands of horsemen who caught up
with us, pushing desperately on toward the coast.

That night we were in striking distance of Maruyama, and I sent Sakai on ahead to see what the situation was in the town. Because of the worsening weather
he was of the opinion that we should retreat there, but I was still reluctant
to commit myself to a long siege, and still uncertain as to whom the town would
side with. We halted for a while, ate a little, and rested the horses. I was
beyond exhaustion, and my memories of that time are cloudy. I knew I was facing
total defeat—had already been defeated. Part of me regretted not dying in
battle in my desperate attempt to rescue Kaede; part of me clung to the
prophecy, believing it would still be fulfilled; and part of me simply wondered
what I was doing, sitting like a ghost in the temple where we had taken
shelter, my eyelids aching and my whole body craving sleep.

Gusts of wind howled round the pillars, and every now and then
the roof shook and lifted as if about to fly away. No one spoke much; an air of
resigned defiance hung over everyone: We had not quite crossed over to the land
of the dead, but we were on our way there. The men slept, apart from the
guards, but I did not. I would not sleep until I had brought them to safety. I
knew we should be moving on soon—should march again most of the night—but I was
reluctant to rouse them before they were rested.

I kept saying to myself, “Just a few more minutes, just until
Sakai returns,” and then finally I heard the sound of hooves through the wind
and the downpour: not one horse, I thought, but two.

I went to the veranda to peer out into the dark and the rain and
saw Sakai, and behind him Hiroshi sliding from the back of an old, bony horse.

Sakai called, “I met him on the road just outside the town. He
was riding out to find you! In this weather!” They were cousins of some sort,
and I could hear the note of pride in his voice.

“Hiroshi!” I said, and he ran to the veranda, undoing his sopping
sandals and dropping to his knees.

“Lord Otori.”

I pulled him inside out of the rain, gazing at him in
astonishment.

“My uncle is dead, and the town has surrendered to Aral’s men,”
he said in fury. “I can’t believe it! Almost as soon as you’d left, the elders
decided. My uncle took his own life rather than agree. Arai’s men arrived early
this morning, and the elders caved in at once.”

Even though I’d half expected this news, the blow was still
bitter, and made worse by the death of Sugita, who had supported Kaede so
loyally. Yet I was relieved I had followed my instincts and still had my
retreat route to the coast. But now we had to move at once. I called to the
guards to rouse the men.

“Did you ride all this way to tell me?” I said to Hiroshi.

“Even if all Maruyama desert you, I will not,” he said. “I
promised you I’d come; I even chose the oldest horse in the stable!”

“You would have done better to stay at home. My future is looking
dark now.”

Sakai
said in a low voice, “I am
ashamed too. I thought they would stand by you.”

“I can’t blame them,” I said. “Arai is vastly more powerful, and
we have always known Maruyama cannot sustain a long siege. Better to surrender
right away, spare the people, and save the harvest.”

“They expect you to retreat to the town,” Hiroshi said. “Most of
Arai’s men are waiting for you at the Asagawa.”