Taiko. Part 93

Aware that their lord had awakened, the pages quickened their steps toward the bathoom next to the kitchen. On their way, they heard a noise in the direction of the north corridor. It sounded like a window shutter being opened quickly.

Thinking that it might be n.o.bunaga, they stopped and peered back toward the blind corridor. The only person visible, however, was a woman wearing a cool, large-patterned kimono and a long outer coat patterned with pines and cherry blossoms. Her long black hair trailed behind her.

As the shutters were open, a morning sky the color of bellflowers appeared through the window, looking almost like a paper cutout. The breeze that wafted in rustled the woman's black hair and sent the fragrance of aloeswood all the way to the place where the pages were lingering.

"Ah, over there." The pages heard the sound of running water and ran off in the direction of the kitchen. The priests of the temple had not yet left their living quarters, so the windows and the huge main gate had not yet been opened. In the wide earthen-bored kitchen and on the elevated wooden platform, the humming of mosquitoes and the darkness of the night remained, but the steaminess of the summer morning could already be felt.

n.o.bunaga felt a unique dislike for that particular time of day. By the time the pages realized that he had left his sleeping quarters and had come running up, he had already finished rinsing his mouth and washing his hands. Walking over to the huge jar in which water flowed from a bamboo water pipe, he took a small pail and dipped it into a lacquered tub. Splattering water everywhere, just like a wagtail, he hastily washed his face.

"Ah, you're getting your sleeve wet, my lord."

"Let me change the water."

The pages were in dread. One of them fearfully lifted up n.o.bunaga's white sleeve from behind, while another dipped out fresh water. Still another held up a towel while kneeling at his feet. At the same time, the men in the samurai quarters left the night guardroom and began to open up the paneled doors in the court. Just at that moment, however, they became aware of an extraordinary noise coming from the direction of the outer main temple, and then of the reverberation of furious footsteps running toward the inner court.

n.o.bunaga turned around, his hair still dripping wet, and said impatiently, "Go see what it is, Bomaru." After giving the order, he continued vigorously rubbing his face with a cloth.

One of the pages said, "Maybe the guards at the outer temple have gotten into a fight or something."

n.o.bunaga did not acknowledge the remark. For a moment his eyes resembled the waters of an abyss, and sparkled as though he were searching for something, not in the outer world but within himself.

But only for a moment. It was not just outside the main temple. Here at the guest mansion, and from ridgepole to ridgepole of the ten or so monastery buildings, something as strong as an earthquake shaking the entire crust of the earth was being conveyed by an indefinable noise and a terrifying current of energy.

Any man, no matter how strong, is likely to feel confusion at such a moment. The blood retreated even from n.o.bunaga's face, and the pages attending him all turned pale. But they probably stood still for no more than a couple of breaths. Almost immediately,someone came running down the nearby corridor at great speed.

A man yelled, "My lord! My lord!"

The pages chorused, "Master Ranmaru! Master Ranmaru! Over here!" n.o.bunaga himself came out and called the man.

"Ranmaru! Where are you going?"

"Ah, you're here, my lord," Ranmaru said, almost falling down as he knelt. At a glance, n.o.bunaga could feel on the very surface of his flesh that what was happening was not just a simple matter of some samurai getting into a fight, or a row between the men at the stables.

"What's happened, Ranmaru? What's all the commotion?" he asked quickly, and Ranmaru was just as quick with his answer.

"The Akechi have committed an outrage. There are warriors outside, rioting and waving banners that are unmistakably emblazoned with the Akechi crest."

"What! The Akechi?" The words left his mouth in astonishment. His surprise demonstrated thoroughly that he had never expected-never even dreamed-that this would happen. But the singular physical shock and the emotional excitement he felt were halted at his lips. Speaking with nearly the same calm he always possessed, his next words sounded almost like a growl.

"The Akechi... it was inevitable."

Turning quickly aside, n.o.bunaga dashed back into his room. Ranmaru started to follow him, but after five or six steps he turned back and scolded the trembling pages. "Each one of you get to work quickly. I've just ordered Bomaru to tell everyone to shut all of the gates and doors. Block all of the doorways, and don't let the enemy even get close to His Lordship." Before he was able to finish his words, bullets and arrows began to strike the kitchen door and the nearby windows like a downpour of rain. Countless arrows pierced deeply through the wooden doors, and the bright steel of their sharp points clearly proclaimed the battle to the people inside.

From south of Rokkaku, noth of Nishikikoji, west of Toin, and east of Aburakoji, the four sides of the Honno Temple were engulfed in the armor of the Akechi forces and their battle cries. The tile-roofed walls could be easily seen, but, protected by the deep moat, they could not be so easily scaled.

The forest of spears, banners, guns, and halberds did nothing more than sway back and forth.

Some of the men leaped rashly to the base of the roofed wall; others could not jump so far. Many of those who tried fell to the bottom of the moat. And because of their heavy armor, those who fell in were buried up to their waists in the foul-smelling, muddy swamp water, the color of black ink. Even if they had been able to get up and call, their companions above never looked down.

The Akechi troops at Nishikikoji demolished the tenements of the neighborhood, while women with infants, old people, and children fled from underneath the wreckage, like hermit crabs scuttling away from empty sh.e.l.ls. In this way the soldiers filled the moat ith doors and roof planking.

Immediately, everyone scrambled to swarm over the wall. The gunners lined up their firearms and, aiming from the top of the wall down into the compound, fired off the first volley.

By then the buildings inside the temple compound were uncannily still. All of the doors in the front main temple were closed, and it was difficult to tell whether or not there was an enemy inside to shoot at. Flames and smoke began to rise from Sewer Street. The heat of the fire beneath the ruined houses immediately began to smolder and easily ignited one structure after the next. Soon all the poor people on the block stampeded out as though they would trample each other to death. Crying and screaming, they spilled into the dry riverbed of the Kamo River and into the center of town, carrying nothing with them at all.

Viewed from the area of the main gate on the opposite side of the temple, it must have seemed as though the men who had already broken through the rear gate had begun to set fire to the kitchen. The main force that thronged at the front gate was in no mood be bested by their comrades. In a rage, the rank and file yelled out to a wavering group officers who seemed to be doing nothing more than wasting time in the area of the drawbridge.

"Smash on in!"

"Push on through! What are you doing?"

One of the officers faced the guard inside the gate.

"We are the Akechi forces on our way to the western provinces. We have come here in full array in order to respectfully salute Lord Oda n.o.bunaga."

It was a poor attempt to trick the defenders into opening the main gate, and it only delayed matters even more. The guard was naturally suspicious, and he had no reason to open the gate on his own, without asking for n.o.bunaga's orders.

He told them to wait. The ensuing silence inside the gate meant that the emergency was being reported to the main temple and that there would be an instantaneous rush to man defenses.

The warriors jostling behind were becoming impatient at having to use a stratagem to cross this little bit of moat and they began to push the lines in front of them.

"Attack! Attack! What are we waiting for?"

"Take the walls!"

Recklessly competing to take the entrance first, they pushed those who were wavering to the side and even knocked them down.

A number of men in the front were pushed into the moat, and battle cries were raised both by those on top and by those who had fallen in. Then, apparently on purpose, groups even farther behind began to push. More men fell into the moat. In an instant one section of the moat was filled with mud-covered warriors.

One young warrior stepped over the ma.s.s of human beings and leaped for the base of the roofed wall. Another man followed his example.

"We're going over!"

Screaming and thrusting with their spears, the men crossed over and quickly clung to the top of the roofed wall. The jumble of warriors in the moat jostled and shoved like mudfish trying to jump out of a pond. The warriors above them trampled the backs, shoulders, and heads of their own comrades. One man after another was sacrificed wretchedly to the horrific, muddy rush. Because of their unseen distinguished service, however, voices soon yelled with pride from the top of the walls of the Honno Temple.

"I'm the first!"

So quickly did the others reach the wall that it was difficult to distinguish who was first and who second.

Inside the walls, the Oda samurai who were already running from the guard station inside the gate and the area around the stables seized any weapon they could and tried to stem the flood of this rushing river. It was, however, the same as trying to support a broken dam with nothing more than one's hands. Ignoring the swords and spears of the defenders, the Akechi vanguard quickly bounded through, stepping over the corpses of men who had engaged in the battle and were dyed in the flowing blood of their enemies.

As if to say that all they wanted was to visit the residence of Lord n.o.bunaga, they ran straight toward the main temple and the guest house. They were met, however by a hum of arrows like a roaring wind from the wide veranda of the main temple and from the bal.u.s.trade of the guest house. The distance was advantageous for bowshot, but many of the arrows did not hit the advancing warriors, and instead dug harmlessly into the earth. Many others skipped along the ground or rebounded from the faraway walls.

Among the defenders, a number of brave men dressed only in sleeping attire, half-naked or even unarmed, grappled with the armored enemy. The guards who had received time off from duty had slept comfortably through the heat of the summer night. Now, perhaps ashamed to enter the fight late, they ran out to restrain the Akechi warriors-if ony a little-with nothing more than the fierceness of their bodies and their own desperate efforts.

But the billowing waves of armor were not to be stopped and were already surging under the eaves of the temple. Darting back inside his room, n.o.bunaga had put on breeches over a garment of white silk and was fastening the cords as he gnashed his teeth.

"A bow! Bring me a bow!" he shouted.

After he'd yelled this order two or three times, someone finally knelt down and held a bow in front of him. s.n.a.t.c.hing it away, he bounded outside through the paneled doors, shouting back, "Let the women escape. Nothing is wrong with their getting away. Just don't let them become an enc.u.mbrance."

The noise of doors and screens being kicked in could be heard everywhere, and the screams of the women intensified the unnerving atmosphere under the shaking roof tiles. The women fled in confusion from room to room, running down the corridors and jumping over the handrails. Their ruffled trains and sleeves cut through the gloom like flying flames of white, red, and purple. But the bullets and arrows flew everywhere-into the shutters, the pillars, and the handrails. n.o.bunaga had already stepped out onto a corner of the veranda and was firing his arrows at the enemy. Around him were stuck the arrows that had been concentrated on his own figure.

Watching the fearful way he fought, even the women, who had lost all control of themselves, were unable to leave his side. All they could do was scream.

"Fifty years a human being under heaven." That line was from the play n.o.bunaga had loved so much, and it had characterized his view of life during his youth. He did not think of what was happening as a world-shaking event. He was certainly not dispirited by the thought that it might be the end.

Rather, he fought with a fierce, burning spirit that would not simply give up and die. The ideal that he held in his breast as the great work of his life had not yet been even half-finished. It would be too mortifying to be defeated in the middle of the journey. There was just too much to be regretted if he died this morning. So he took another arrow and notched it to the string. He listened to the string hum again and again, seeming to loose his anger with each arrow. Finally the string became frayed and the bow was ready to break.

"Arrows! I don't have any arrows! Bring me more!"

Continuing to call out behind him, he even picked up and shot the enemy's arrows that had missed him and fallen to the corridor. Just then, a woman wearing a red silk headband and gallantly trussing up one sleeve of her kimono carried in an armful of arrows and raised one to his hand. n.o.bunaga looked down at the woman.

"Ano? What you've done here is enough. Now try to escape."

He motioned her off emphatically with his chin, but the court lady, Ano, kept pa.s.sing arrow after arrow to n.o.bunaga's right hand and would not leave, no matter how he upbraided her.

He shot with n.o.bility and grace more than with skill, more with spirit than with great strength. The magnificent hum of his arrows seemed to say that the arrows themselv were too good for these menials, that the arrowheads were gifts from the man who would rule the nation. The arrows that Ano brought, however, were quickly spent..

Here and there in the temple garden the enemy lay, felled by his arrows. But, braving his fire, a number of the armored soldiers yelled out and pressed desperately in under the bal.u.s.trade, and finally began to climb onto the bridged corridor.

"We can see you, Lord n.o.bunaga! You can't escape now! Give up your head like a man!

The enemy were as thick as the crows on the honey locust tree in the morning and evening. Personal attendants and pages positioned themselves around n.o.bunaga in the rear and side corridors in a protective stance, their swords shining with a fire born of desperation. They were not going to let the enemy get close. The Mori brothers were among them. A number of these men who had refused to leave their lord at the very end and had fought to protect him now lay on top of their enemies exactly as they had grappled with them, both seeming to have died by the other's hands.

The guard corps at the outer temple had made the main temple their battleground and now fought a fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y fight to keep the enemy from approaching the court. But because the enemy forces seemed about to take the entrance to the bridged corridor that led to the court, the entire corps, which consisted of less than twenty men, formed a single unit and dashed together toward the interior.

Thus the Akechi warriors who had scrambled up to the bridged corridor were caught on both sides. Stabbed and cut, their corpses fell on top of one another. When the men from the outer temple saw that n.o.bunaga was still safe, they cried out in elation, "Now there's time! Now! Retreat as quickly as possible!"

"Idiots!" n.o.bunaga spat, tossing his bow away. It had broken and he was out of arrows. "This is no time to retreat! Lend me your spear!"

Upbraiding them, he grabbed a retainer's weapon and ran down the corridor like a lion. Finding an enemy warrior with his hand on the bal.u.s.trade and about to climb over he drove his spear straight down into the man.

Just then, an Akechi warrior drew back his small bow from the shade of a Chinese black pine. The arrow struck n.o.bunaga's elbow. Staggering back, n.o.bunaga leaned heavily against the shutter behind him.

At that very moment, some minor action was occurring outside the western wall. A force of retainers and foot soldiers under the command of Murai Nagato and his son had sallied out from the governor's mansion, which was located in the neighborhood of the Honno Temple. Striking at the encircling Akechi forces from behind, they attempted to enter the compound from the main gate.

The night before, Nagato and his son had stayed up late into the night talking with n.o.bunaga and n.o.butada, returning to their mansion to sleep at about the time of the third watch. That, one could say, was the reason Nagato had been sleeping so soundly and had been caught off guard. As part of his duties, he should have known-at the very least-about the situation the moment the Akechi forces stepped inside the capital precincts. And then he should have immediately sent a warning to the nearby Honno Temple, even if it had been just moments before the arrival of the hostile troops.

His negligence had been total and absolute. But the fault lay not with Nagato alone. Certainly, negligence could be attributed to all of those who were staying in the capital or had had mansions there.

"It seems there's some trouble outside," Nagato was told when he was first awakened. He had no idea of the magnitude of the trouble.

"Maybe it's a brawl or something. Go take a look," he told a retainer. Then, while he leisurely got out of bed, he heard one of his attendants calling out from the roof of the mud-walled gate.

"Smoke's coming up from Nishikikoji!"

Nagato clicked his tongue and muttered, "Probably some fire on Sewer Street again."

He was that mistaken about how much at peace the world was, and had completely forgotten that this was truly just one more day in the civil war.

"What! Akechi forces?" His astonishment lasted no more than a moment. "d.a.m.n!" and he leaped out of the mansion with almost nothing more than the clothes on his back. As soon as he saw the dense crowds of armored, mounted men, bristling with swords and spears in the dark morning mist, he hurried back inside the mansion, put on his armor, and grabbed his sword.

With a force of only thirty or forty men, he hastened off to fight at n.o.bunaga's side. The various Akechi corps had blocked off all the streets leading to the Honno Temple. The encounter with Nagato's force started at a corner of the compound's western wall and developed into fierce hand-to-hand fighting. Breaking through one small patrol, Nagato's little party pressed fairly close to the main gate; but once a detachment of the Akechi forces turned and witnessed this impertinent action, they readied their spears and charged. Nagato's tiny force was hardly a match for them, and both he and his son were wounded. With their numbers reduced by half, they were forced to retreat.

"Try to get to the Myokaku Temple! We will join Lord n.o.butada!"

Above the huge roof of the Honno Temple, jet black smoke could be seen billowing like thunderclouds. Was it the attacking Akechi forces, n.o.bunaga's retainers, or n.o.bunaga himself who had set fire inside the temple? The situation was so chaotic that no one could tell.

The smoke began to billow out from the outer temple, from a room in the court, and fromm the kitchen almost all at the same time.

A page and two other men were fighting in the kitchen like demons. It seemed that the monks from the temple kitchen had risen early-though not one of them was to be seen-because beneath the huge cauldrons the firewood had been kindled.

The page stood in the door of the kitchen and stabbed at least two of the Akechi men who had broken in. His spear finally taken from him and facing too many of the enemy, he jumped up to the wooden floor and kept the men at bay by throwing kitchen implements and anything else he could lay his hands on.

A tea master and another man who were also there brandished their swords and fought bravely alongside the page. And though the enemy felt scorn for these three lightly armed opponents, a group of samurai was unable to step up onto the wooden floor because of them.

"What's taking so long?"

A warrior who seemed to be the commander looked in, grabbed a firebrand from an oven, and threw it into the faces of the three men. He then threw a firebrand into the store room and one up toward the ceiling.

"Inside!"

"He must be inside!"

Their objective was n.o.bunaga.

In that instant they pushed their way inside, kicking the burning firewood around with their warriors' straw sandals as they split up inside the building. Flames quickly crawled up the sliding doors and pillars like red-leafed ivy. The figures of the page and the tea master were motionless as the flames enveloped them, too.

The stables were in a complete uproar. Ten or more horses had panicked and were kicking the walls of their stalls, knocking out the boards. Two of them finally broke the crossbars and bucked violently outside. Running wild, they galloped into the center of the Akechi forces while the other horses whinnied more and more violently as they saw the flames. The samurai at the stables left their post and went to defend the steps of the court where n.o.bunaga had last been seen. Making this their last stand, they were all struck down and fell together.

Even the stableboys, who could have escaped, stayed behind and fought until they were all killed. These men were ordinarily completely inconspicuous, but on this day they silently demonstrated with the sacrifice of their lives that they were not inferior to men who had large stipends or a high rank.

Carrying his blood-soaked spear, an Akechi warrior running from room to room stopped when he saw a comrade through the smoke.

"Minoura?"

"Hey!"

"Have you accomplished anything yet?"

"No, not yet."

Together they searched for n.o.bunaga-or, more accurately, they competed in finding him. Soon they separated, making their way through the smoke.

The fire seemed to have spread beneath the roof, and the inside of the temple was crackling. Even the leather and metal fittings on the warriors' armor felt hot to the touch. In an instant, the only human forms to be seen were either corpses or the warriors of the Akechi, and even a number of the Akechi ran outside as the fire crept along the roofs.

Of the men inside who still stood their ground, some were choking from the smoke while others were covered with ashes. The doors and sliding panels had been kicked out in the hall, and now the flaming gold brocade and pieces of ignited wood swirled thick and fast, burning as brightly as a field on fire. But inside the small rooms and recesses it was dark, and forms were indistinct. Thick with smoke, the various corridors could not even be distinguished.