The Harsh Cry of the Heron (64 page)

Mai said, ‘He is
going to die.’

‘No!’ Shigeko
replied. ‘How dare you say it?’

‘He needs looking
after properly. We can’t do that day and night. You should be fighting, and I’ve
got others to look after who’ve got more chance.’

‘How can we bring the
fighting to an end?’

‘Men love to fight,’
Mai said. ‘But even the fiercest of them tire of it, especially if they’re
hurt.’ She looked across Hiroshi at Shigeko. ‘Hurt this Saga, and he’ll lose
his appetite. Hurt him as bad as Lord Hiroshi is hurt and he’ll want to scurry
back to the doctors in Miyako.’

Shigeko said, ‘How do
I get to him? He does not appear on the battlefield, but directs his men from
afar.’

‘I’ll find him for
you,’ Mai said. ‘Put on some drab clothing and prepare your most powerful bow
and arrows. There’s not much you can do for Lord Hiroshi,’ she added when
Shigeko hesitated. ‘He’s in the hands of the gods now.’

Shigeko followed
these instructions, wrapping a length of cloth around her head and neck and
smearing mud across brow and cheeks so that she was unrecognizable. She took up
the bow she had been fighting with, restrung it and found ten new arrows,
iron-barbed with single points, fletched with eagle feathers. These she placed
in the quiver. While she waited for Mai to return she sat next to Hiroshi, and
between bathing his face and giving him water, for he was now burning again,
she tried to calm her thoughts as she had been taught at Terayama, by Hiroshi
and the other Masters.

Dear teacher, dear
friend, she called silently to him. Don’t leave me!

The battle had
resumed with even greater ferocity, bringing the noise of crazed shouts, the screams
of the wounded, the clash of steel, the pounding of horses’ hooves, but a kind
of silence had descended on the two of them, and she felt their souls entwine.

He will not leave me,
she thought, and on a sudden impulse went to her hut and unpacked the tiny bow
and the houou-feather-fletched arrows: she tucked these inside her jacket,
while she slung the larger bow on her left shoulder, the quiver of arrows on
her right.

When she went back to
the wounded, Mai had returned.

‘Where were you?’ the
girl said. ‘I thought you’d gone back to the fighting. Come on, let’s hurry.’

Shigeko wondered if
she should inform Gemba where she was going, but when she came over the top of
the slope and saw the battle scene, she realized she would never find him in
the confusion. Saga’s strategy now seemed to be to overwhelm the Otori
positions by ever greater force of numbers. His new troops were fresh and
rested; the Otori army had been fighting for two days.

How long can they
resist? she asked herself as she followed Mai around the southern side of the
plain, her feelings already dulled by the sight of so many dead. The Otori had
taken their dead and wounded behind the lines, but Saga’s men lay where they
had fallen, the corpses one more element in the horror and confusion. Wounded
horses tried to struggle to their feet; a small bunch of them trotted, halting
and lame, away to the south-west, their broken reins dangling in the mud.
Looking briefly after them, Shigeko saw them come to a halt just before the
Otori camp. They put their heads down and began to graze, as though they were
in a meadow, removed and distant from the battlefield. A little beyond them was
the kirin. She had hardly thought of it for two days: no one had had time to
build an enclosure for it; it was tethered by neck ropes to the horse lines. It
looked forlorn and diminished in the pouring rain. Could it survive this ordeal
and then the long journey back to the Middle Country? She felt a pang of
terrible pity for it, so alone and far from its home.

The two girls made
their way behind the rocks and crags that surrounded the plain. Here the noise
of battle abated a little. Around them in every direction rose the peaks of the
High Cloud Range, disappearing into the mist that hung like hanks of unspun
silk. The ground was stony and slippery; often they had to crawl on all fours
over huge rocks. Sometimes Mai went ahead, making a sign to Shigeko to wait for
her, and Shigeko crouched in the shelter of some dripping boulder for what
seemed like half her lifetime, wondering if she had not perhaps died in battle
and was now a ghost, hovering between the worlds.

Mai returned out of
the mist like a wraith herself, completely silent, and led the way onward
again. Finally they came to a huge rock, which they scaled, scrabbling like
monkeys up its southern side. Two stunted pine trees clung to its top, their
hooped, misshapen roots making a kind of natural railing.

‘Keep down,’ Mai
whispered; Shigeko wriggled into a position where she could see through the
roots across to the east, and the entrance to the pass. She gasped and
flattened herself against the rock. Saga was directly in front of them, perched
on a similar crag, from which he had a hawk’s eye view of the battlefield
beneath him. He sat beneath a large umbrella on an elegantly lacquered camp
stool, fully armed in black and gold, his helmet decorated with twin gold
peaks, like the mountains of his crest that fluttered beside him on black and
white banners. Several of his officers, all equally resplendent and clean despite
the rain, stood around him, along with a conch shell player and runners ready
to take messages. Just beyond him, a series of fallen boulders made natural
steps down to the pass. She saw agile men leap up and down them, reporting on
the progress of the battle; she could even hear Saga’s voice, noted its timbre
of fury; she peeped again and saw him stand, shouting and gesticulating with
the iron war fan in his hand. His officers took a step back from the force of
the rage, and several of them immediately rushed down the rocky stairway to
hurl themselves into the battle.

Mai breathed in her
ear, ‘Now, while he is standing. You will only have one chance.’

Shigeko took a deep
breath and thought through each movement. She would use the nearest pine tree
to pull herself to her feet. She would step beneath the trunks: the rock’s
surface would be slippery, so she would need to maintain her balance as she
pulled the bow from her shoulder and the arrow from the quiver. It was a move
she had practised a thousand times in the last two days, and had not missed her
target yet.

She took another look
and noted his vulnerable points. His face was exposed, his eyes fierce and
brilliant, and she could see clearly the whiter skin of his throat.

She stood: the bow
arched; the arrow thrummed; the rain splashed around her. Saga looked at her,
sat heavily; the man behind him clutched his chest as the arrow pierced his
armour. There were shouts of shock and surprise, and now they were shooting at
her; one arrow flew past her, striking the pine tree and splintering the bark
against her face; another struck the rock at her foot. She felt a sharp jab, as
if she had stumbled against a stick, but felt no pain.

‘Get down!’ Mai was
shouting, but Shigeko did not move, nor did Saga cease staring towards her. She
drew the smaller bow from her jacket and set one of the tiny arrows to it. The
houou feathers glinted dull gold. I am about to die, she thought, and let it
fly like a dart towards his gaze.

There was a dazzling
flash, as though lightning had struck, and the air between them seemed suddenly
full of the beating of wings. Around Saga his men dropped their bows and
covered their eyes; only Saga himself kept his eyes open, staring at the arrow
until it pierced his left eye, and his own blood blinded him.

All that morning
Kahei fought on the southern flank, where he had increased the number of his
men, fearing Saga’s forces might attempt to surround the camp from that side.
Despite his confident words to Takeo the previous night, he was more worried
now, wondering how long his sleep-deprived soldiers could withstand the
seemingly endless onslaught, cursing the rain for depriving them of their
superior weapons, recalling the last hours of Yaegahara, when the Otori army,
realizing their betrayal and inevitable defeat, had fought with a desperate,
mad ferocity, until hardly a man was left standing. His own father had been one
of the few survivors - was family history to repeat itself, was he too destined
to return to Hagi with news of a total defeat?

His fears only
fuelled his determination to achieve victory.

Takeo fought in the
centre, calling up everything he had ever been taught by warrior master and the
Tribe alike to dominate fatigue and pain, marvelling at the determination and
discipline of those around him. In a sudden lull, when Saga’s troops had been
driven back, he looked down at Tenba’s shoulder and saw the horse was bleeding from
a deep slash across the chest, the redness dissolving into the rain-soaked
hair. Now the fight had stopped momentarily, the horse seemed to become aware
of the wound, and began to shudder in shock. Takeo slipped from his back,
calling to one of the foot soldiers to take the horse back to the camp, and
prepared to face the next attack on foot.

A group of horsemen came
galloping from the pass, the horses leaping in the air in their efforts not to
step on the fallen. The swords flashed, cutting down the foot soldiers, who
retreated to the barriers they had erected while the archers on the northern
side let fly a volley of arrows. Many found their mark, but Takeo could not
help noticing that there were far fewer than the day before, and that the
attrition of battle was eroding his forces. Like Kahei, his confidence
faltered. How many more men did Saga have? The supply seemed endless, and they
were all fresh and rested . . .

Like the horsemen who
were now nearly upon him. With a dull shock he recognized their leader as Kono.
He saw the Maruyama horse, his gift now used against him, and felt the pure
singe of fury. This man’s father had nearly wrecked his life; the son had
intrigued against him, had lied to him, had dared to suggest admiration while
plotting his downfall. He took Jato more firmly in his grip, ignoring the
building shaft of pain that ran from elbow to shoulder blade, and leapt nimbly
sideways so the nobleman would meet him on his left side.

His first swift
stroke upwards caught the nobleman’s foot and almost severed it: Kono gave a
cry, turned the horse and came back; now Takeo was on his right-hand side. He
ducked under the flailing sword, and would have cut upwards again, aiming for
the wrist, but heard the next horseman’s sword descend towards his back, split
himself and rolled away from it, trying not to cut himself with his own sword.
Now the horses’ hooves were trampling around him. He struggled to find his
footing in the mud. His own foot soldiers had rushed forward with spears and
pikes; a horse came down heavily next to him, its rider pitching head first,
already dead, into the mire.

There was a sudden
flash of lightning directly overhead, and the rain fell even more heavily.
Through its relentless drumming, Takeo heard another sound, a thin and ghostly
music that echoed across the plain. For a moment he could not comprehend what
it meant. Then the crush around him thinned. He stood, wiping the rain and the
mud from his eyes with his right hand.

The Maruyama horse
passed him, Kono clinging to its mane with both hands; his leg was still
spurting blood. He did not seem to notice Takeo; his eyes were fixed on the
safety of the pass.

They are retreating,
Takeo thought in disbelief, as the sound of the conch shell was drowned by a
roar of triumph and the men around him surged forward to pursue the fleeing
enemy.

The former outcastes,
from their village in Maruyama, moved across the battlefield to deal with the
injured horses and bury the dead. When the corpses of the fallen were laid out
in rows, Kahei, Gemba and Takeo walked along them, identifying all those they
could, while Minoru recorded their names. As for Saga’s men, there were too
many to identify; they were buried quickly in one huge pit in the centre of the
plain. The taking of heads had been forbidden. The soil was stony: the graves
were shallow. Crows were already gathering, looming through the rain on huge
black wings and cawing to each other from the crags. At night foxes prowled,
and Takeo knew once the humans had departed they would be joined by the shyer
wolves, who would feast all summer.

The stakes of the
palisades were pulled out and litters constructed from some of them to carry
the wounded back to Inuyama. The rest were used to erect a barrier across the
pass, and Sonoda Mitsuru and two hundred of his men remained to guard it. By
the evening of the following day, when the dead were buried, the defences were
in place and there had been no sign of Saga returning, it seemed as if the
battle was truly over. Kahei gave the order to rest; men took off their armour,
laid down their weapons, and fell instantly asleep.

The rain had
slackened to a drizzle after the sudden downpour at the moment when Saga Hideki
had been wounded and had ordered the retreat. Takeo walked among the sleeping
men as he had walked earlier among the dead, hearing the soft hiss of the drops
on leaves and rocks, the distant splash of the waterfall, the evening
bird-song, feeling the moisture bead his face and hair. The entire right side
of his body from shoulder to heel ached fiercely, and relief at victory was
tempered by sorrow at its cost. He also knew that the exhausted soldiers could
sleep only till dawn, and must then be mustered for the march back to Inuyama,
and then on into the Middle Country to prevent Zenko rising in the West. He
himself was deeply anxious to return as soon as possible; Gemba’s warning of
some unknown event that had upset the harmony of his rule now returned to
torment him. It could only mean something had happened to Kaede . . .