The Harsh Cry of the Heron (63 page)

‘Stay with Gemba,’ he
said. ‘If defeat seems inevitable, he will take you to safety.’

‘I will take my own
life first,’ she retorted.

‘No, daughter, you
must live. If we lose, you must marry Saga, and preserve our country and people
as his wife.’

‘And if we win?’

‘Then you may marry
who you choose,’ he replied, his eyes crinkling as he glanced at Hiroshi.

‘I shall keep you to
your word, Father,’ she said lightly, as they both mounted their horses.

Takeo rode with
Hiroshi to the centre of the plain, where the horsemen were assembling, and she
followed Gemba to the northern flank, where footsoldiers, archers and men armed
with pikes and halberds were taking up positions.

There were several
thousand of them, the archers arranged in two ranks, for Kahei had drilled them
in the art of alternating shots so that the hail of arrows was almost
continuous. If it had not been wet they would have done the same with their
firearms.

‘Saga expects us to
concentrate only on fire power,’ Gemba said. ‘He does not expect us to be
equally formidable with bows. He was surprised at the dog contest, but he
learned nothing from it. He will be equally surprised now.

‘We are to remain
here,’ he added, ‘even when the troops move around and forwards. Your father
wants us to aim with care and take out their captains and other leaders. Make
every arrow count.’

Shigeko’s mouth was
dry. ‘Lord Gemba,’ she said. ‘How did it come to this? How did we fail to solve
things peacefully?’

‘When the balance is
lost and the male force dominates, war is inevitable,’ Gemba replied. ‘Some
wound has been dealt to the feminine force, but I don’t know what it is. It is
our fate to be here at this time, our fate to have to kill or be killed. We
must embrace it with all our resolve, wholeheartedly, knowing that we did not
desire it or seek it.’

She heard his words
but hardly took them in, her attention focussed on the scene before her as the
light strengthened: the scarlet and gold of armour and harness, the impatient
horses tossing their heads, the banners of Otori, Maruyama, Miyoshi and all the
other clans of the Three Countries, the cascading rain, the darkened trees of
the forest, the white splash of waterfalls against the mountain rocks.

Then, impossibly
numerous, like ants disturbed from their nest, the first wave of Saga’s army
came pouring through the pass.

The battle of
Takahara was fought over three days during severe thunderstorms. The fighting continued
from dawn to sunset: at night the combatants tended their wounded and scoured
the battlefield for spent arrows. Saga Hideki’s forces outnumbered Otori Takeo’s
army three to one, but the Emperor’s general was hampered by the narrow pass
that gave onto the plain, and by the Otori command of the vantage points. As
each wave of Saga’s men thrust into the plain, they were assailed by the arrows
from their right; those that survived the arrows were repelled by the main
Otori army, fighting first on horseback with swords, and then on foot.

It was by far the
most brutal battle Takeo had ever fought, the one he had done his utmost to
avoid. Saga’s troops were disciplined and superbly trained. They had already
subdued vast areas to the north; they hoped to be rewarded with the spoils of
the Three Countries; they fought with the blessing of the Emperor. On the other
hand, Takeo’s men were not only fighting for their lives, they were fighting
for their country, for their homes, their wives and children, their land.

Miyoshi Kahei had
been with the Otori army at the battle of Yaegahara when he was fourteen years
old, nearly thirty years earlier. The Otori had suffered a crushing defeat,
partly due to the treachery of their own vassals. Kahei never forgot the years
that followed: the humiliation of the warriors, the suffering of the people
under Iida Sadamu. He was determined not to live through such a defeat again.
His conviction that Saga would never prevail strengthened the will of his men.

Equally importantly,
his preparations had been meticulous and imaginative. He had been planning this
campaign since spring, and organizing the transport of supplies and weapons
from Inuyama. He had been impatient for months, wanting to deal decisively with
the threats to Takeo’s rule, chafing at the endless negotiations and delays.
Now the battle had finally begun, his mood was ebullient: the rain was
unfortunate, as he would have liked to have seen his troops use the firearms in
action, but there was something magnificent about the traditional weapons: bow
and sword, pike and halberd, spears.

The banners of the
clan were streaked with moisture; the ground underfoot was quickly churned to
mud. Kahei watched from the slopes, his chestnut horse ready beside him.
Minoru, the scribe, sat near him under an umbrella, trying in vain to keep his
writing dry and to record the events. When the first attack from Saga’s men was
repulsed and driven back towards the pass, Kahei leaped on the horse’s back and
joined the pursuit, his sword hacking and slashing at the backs of the fleeing
men.

On the morning of the
second day, Saga’s horsemen came back through the pass before daylight, fanning
out to try to outflank the archers to their north and to come around the
southern side of Kahei’s main army. Takeo had not slept but had kept watch all
night, listening for the first sound of activity from the enemy. He heard the
pad of horses’ hooves, even though they were wrapped in straw, the creak and
jingle of harness and weaponry. The northern archers were shooting blind, and
the rain of arrows was less effective than the previous day. Everything was
soaked - food, weapons, clothes.

When day came the
battle was already an hour old, and the light dawned on its pitiful spectacle.
The easternmost of the archery divisions were locked in hand-to-hand combat
with Saga’s men. Takeo could not make out any individuals in the fray, though
the emblems of each group of foot soldiers could be seen dimly through the
rain. He saw immediately that his own right-hand side was equally under threat.
He himself rode at once to their aid, Jato in hand, Tenba quivering in
excitement but steady beneath him. He thought he had ceased to feel any
soul-searching or regret, that he had moved into the ruth-lessness of battle madness,
as all his old skills returned him. He noted half consciously the Okuda crest
close on his right-hand side, remembered Saga’s retainer who had come to meet
him in Sanda, sent Tenba sideways to evade a sword thrust to his leg, turned
the horse to face the attacker and looked down into the eyes of Okuda’s son,
Tadayoshi.

The boy had fallen
from his horse and lost his helmet, and surrounded as he was defended himself
bravely. He recognized Takeo and called out to him; Takeo heard him clearly
through the din of battle. ‘Lord Otori!’

He did not know if it
was a challenge or a call for help, and would never find out, for Jato had
already descended onto the skull and split it. Tadayoshi died at his feet.

Now Takeo heard a
scream of rage and grief, and saw the boy’s father riding towards him, sword in
both hands. Takeo was unsettled by Tadayoshi’s death, and unprepared. Tenba
stumbled at that moment, and Takeo slipped slightly in the saddle, falling
forwards, grasping for the mane with his damaged right hand. The stumble
deflected Okuda’s blow slightly, but Takeo still felt the impact as the tip of
the sword caught him on top of the arm and across the shoulder. Okuda’s horse
galloped on, giving Takeo and Tenba time to recover; he felt no pain and
thought he had escaped injury. Okuda turned his horse and came back towards
Takeo, his path impeded by the milling soldiers. He ignored them all, intent
only on Takeo. His rage ignited a reciprocal primitive fury in Takeo, and he
surrendered to it, for it obliterated regret; Jato responded, and found the
unprotected point in Okuda’s neck. The man’s own impetus took the sword deep
into his flesh and veins.

Later on the second
day, Hiroshi and his men were pushing Saga’s troops back towards the pass in a
counterattack; Kahei had initiated a pincer movement which would trap the
retreating men, already exhausted after hours of hand-to-hand fighting. Hiroshi’s
cousin Sakai Masaki was close behind him, and in sudden flashes of memory
Hiroshi recalled a mad journey, in rain like this, with Sakai, when he had been
a boy of ten. At that age battle was what he longed for, yet the path he had
followed had been one of peace, the Way of the Houou. Now he felt all the blood
of his ancestors rise in his veins. He threw off all other thoughts and
concentrated on fighting, on killing, on winning, for his whole future now
depended on victory. If the battle was lost, he would either die in it or kill
himself. He fought with a fury he did not know he possessed, inspiring the men
around him, driving the opposing forces back towards the pass, where they were
trapped in the bottleneck.

With nowhere to go,
Saga’s men defended themselves more desperately. In one of their counter surges
Keri went down, blood spurting from his neck and shoulder. Hiroshi found
himself fighting two unhorsed warriors. He lost his footing in the mud and fell
to one knee, turned as the sword came on him and thrust upward, parrying it.
The second sword descended towards him: he saw Sakai throw himself beneath the
blow; blood, his own or Sakai’s, was blinding him. The weight of Sakai’s body
held him down in the mud as the fray trampled across them. For a moment he felt
only disbelief that this was how it was to end, and then pain washed over him,
drowning him.

Gemba found him at
nightfall, near death from loss of blood from slashes to head and legs, the
wounds already suppurating in the dirt and humidity. Gemba staunched and
cleaned them as best he could, then carried Hiroshi back behind the lines to
join the rest of the wounded. Takeo was among them, his shoulder and arm cut
deeply but not dangerously, already washed and wrapped in paper bandages.

Shigeko was unhurt,
pale with exhaustion.

Gemba said, ‘I found
him. He is alive, but barely. Sakai lay dead on top of him. He must have saved
his life.’

He laid the wounded
man down. Lamps had been lit, but they smoked and smouldered in the rain. Takeo
knelt beside Hiroshi, taking his hand and calling to him. ‘Hiroshi! Dear
friend! Do not leave us. Fight! Fight!’

Hiroshi’s eyes
flickered. His breath came in shallow panting; his skin held a damp sheen of sweat
and rain.

Shigeko knelt next to
her father. ‘He cannot be dying! He must not die!’

‘He has survived this
far,’ Gemba said. ‘You can see how strong he is.’

‘If he makes it
through tonight, there is hope,’ Takeo agreed. ‘Don’t despair yet.’

‘How terrible it all
is,’ Shigeko whispered. ‘What an unforgivable thing it is to kill a man.’

‘It is the way of the
warrior,’ Gemba said. ‘Warriors fight and they die.’

Shigeko did not
reply, but tears dripped steadily from her eyes.

‘How much more of
this can Saga take?’ Kahei said to Takeo later that night, before they snatched
a short respite of sleep. ‘It is madness. He is sacrificing his men to no
purpose.’

‘He is a man of
immense pride,’ Takeo replied. ‘He has never been defeated. He will not
acknowledge the idea of it.’

‘How can we persuade
him? We can resist him indefinitely -1 hope you are impressed by your soldiers;
they are superb in my opinion - but we cannot avoid huge loss of life. The
sooner we can put an end to the fighting, the more chance we have to save the
wounded.

‘Like poor Sugita,’
he added. ‘And yourself, of course. Wound fever is inevitable in these vile
conditions, with no sunlight to dry and heal. You should rest tomorrow; stay
out of the fray.’

‘It’s not serious,’
Takeo replied, though the pain had been increasing steadily all day. ‘Luckily,
I am accustomed to using my left hand now. I have no intention of staying out
of the fight - not until Saga is dead, or in flight back to the capital!’

Shigeko stayed with
Hiroshi all night, bathing him with cold water to try to reduce the fever. He
was still alive in the morning, but shivering violently, and she could find
nothing dry with which to warm him. She brewed tea and tried to get him to
drink: she was torn between staying with him and returning to her position
alongside Gemba to counter Saga’s next onslaught. The bark shelters that had
been erected for the wounded dripped constantly; the ground beneath them was
saturated. Mai had spent day and night here, and Shigeko called to her.

‘What should I do?’

Mai squatted beside
Hiroshi and felt his brow. ‘Ah, he’s freezing,’ she said. ‘This is how we warm
the sick in the Tribe.’ She lay down alongside him, pressing her body gently
against him. ‘Lie down on the other side,’ she instructed Shigeko, and Shigeko
did so, feeling her warmth spread into him. The girls held him between them
without speaking until his temperature began to rise again.

‘And this is how we
heal wounds,’ Mai said quietly, and moving aside Gemba’s bandages licked the
raw edges of cut flesh with her tongue and spat saliva onto them. Shigeko
copied her, tasting the man’s blood, giving him moisture from her mouth as if
exchanging kisses.