Child of Vengeance (47 page)

Ukita took this in impassively, and then turned his eye to the mass of his spearmen and archers and arquebusiers below. He saw men starting to peel away and toss down their weapons. How quickly it unraveled—at first it seemed only a handful, and then it was a dozen, and then threescore, and then almost instantly the great lord saw entire formations of his men begin to scatter like leaves blown in wind.

Some loyal men stayed to try to hold the enemy back, and other bands stationed behind the line of battle charged downward attempting to fill the gaps that were being left, killing those of their own side fleeing if they could reach them, but these were rare outcrops of flowers among weeds. To look at the broad scope of it was to see a rout beginning.

Ukita knew what needed to be done. Seventeen thousand men he had brought to the fight, and now these men had the honor of becoming seventeen thousand martyrs to his cause. To some that number of men was a dream, an empire—to him it was a third. More fool the other lords if they had gambled everything here.

The great lord gave the signal, and then he and his horsemen turned and vanished into the forest, silent and unnoticed. Behind them the Tokugawa and the Kobayakawa pushed onward, rolling the flank inward, enveloping, devouring …

K
azuteru wheeled in the saddle, sword in his hand and his horse skipping beneath him, trying to keep himself calm. Things had warped out of control, and it was hard to be a shield to his lord when the front of the battle was no longer clear. He had no idea what was happening—no one seemingly did—and all the while the young samurai had a dread sense of something closing around them.

“Hold here! Keep the banner high! Rally to us! Rally to us!” someone was shouting.

“We must leave! The lord must be saved!” yelled another bodyguard, and all were screaming and all their eyes were wide.

Where was the Lord Ukita, where were his generals, where were the Nakata, the Uemura, or the Akaza? Their noble assembly had fractured like a shattered gem with the twisting of the battle, and any hope of reorganizing some semblance of an army out of this chaos had gone with them. It had all collapsed, they were gone, and he could see other men were fleeing now too, and what could they do? What could they do?

Kazuteru turned to Lord Shinmen. He alone was still, holding the reins of his horse tight, taking in what was erupting around him stoically. Did he have a plan, or was he just stupefied by the way the day had turned? The lord sensed Kazuteru looking at him, and their eyes met. They were lit with a grim and strange calmness.

What it reminded Kazuteru of was Munisai’s expression as he had held before him the dagger he would thrust up into his belly.

It was a poor image to have in his head, a miserable memento of this harsh world. Kazuteru wanted to remember the kind smile of his mother, or the dignity of his long-dead father practicing the sword, or the hands of Fusako so soft and small and wonderful in his as they walked secretly beneath the Uji forests. But they were impossible to conjure. They did not belong here.

There came a swelling noise from behind them. They all turned to see an arrowhead of horsemen, fresh and unbloodied from battle, charging toward them. They wore the colors of the Kobayakawa, and the traitors came to claim the glorious prize of the head of a lord.

Kazuteru could see the faces of the leading men atop their mounts, the joy and the anger and the stillness in them. The foremost horseman seemed to hang in time. There was a savage glee in him;
bearded and scarred and carrying a huge two-handed sword that he had to stand in the saddle to wield, raising it above his head with deft and petrifying skill.

The man’s horse never slowed from its gallop, his eyes never left Kazuteru, and all the young samurai could see, all he could think of was the elegant curve of that great, gleaming sword as it drew closer and closer to him …

B
ennosuke did not know that others were fleeing until he saw men overtaking him on the slope heading back to the forest pathways. They were panicking, sprinting wide-eyed, some even wailing in terror as they passed the boy who ran steady and silent; theirs was the animal decision to survive, whereas he did not run out of fear.

He felt that he was thinking clearer than he had in years, the air purer in his lungs. His had been a firm, rational choice to be here no longer, and he would have simply vanished if he could. But he was mortal—oh, how he knew that now, he wanted to laugh—and what awaited him now was the long slog back up the slopes and out of the valley.

As he ran he glanced over his shoulder. Things were disintegrating, the army dispersing second by second. Horns were being blown, futile commands given to groups of men who no longer heeded them. A captain was spitting at Bennosuke as he ran past, calling him a coward in much the same tone as Kumagai had. The man did not see his own standard-bearer behind him toss his banner to the ground and also start to run.

Into the forest once more, the trees enclosing him and funneling up the sound from below. The ground was churned horribly, and his run became a scrambling hop, passing men who had stumbled and twisted their legs and who were pleading from the ground for someone to carry them.

These men Bennosuke ignored, but eyes in the trees stopped him for a moment. He became aware of a gaggle of boys, perhaps two dozen of them peering furtively out from between the trunks.
The eldest could have been no more than ten, the youngest half that, and they must have been brought by proud fathers to watch the battle from what was thought a safe distance. But now the lot of them were standing in their little fine kimonos and their little swords, with their hair pulled up into childish tufts that must have delighted their mothers with the cuteness of it, and there was nothing but fear and uncertainty in their eyes.

Brought to bear witness, blooded before they knew any better—Bennosuke felt empathy for them lurch within himself. He looked the eldest squarely in the eye and told him: “Run.”

He meant to speak warmly, but his voice hissed out as a panting snarl. What the boys saw was a heaving giant with a face half coated in blood, and at that they shrank farther back into the undergrowth.

There was nothing he could do for them. He pushed onward once more. Running uphill, the distance seemed so much longer than this morning, but eventually the slope leveled off. He realized this must have been close to where he had watched the hawk at dawn. He allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, and he turned to look down upon the valley spread before him.

It was clear to see the Western army was doomed; the Patient Tiger was closing his jaws around the jugular of Japan. Kobayakawa’s army had swept across from the right, and his betrayal had sparked insidious inspiration in some of the other lords—or had at least put the desperate realization of defeat into them—and now the entire coalition was erupting into smaller battles as some lords tried to prove their worth to Tokugawa by smashing their former allies for him.

The honor of samurai. He wanted to laugh. Let them have it, let Tokugawa have his throne, and the crows and the flames can take those he crushed beneath him to fulfill his terrible ambition; Bennosuke no longer cared. He was leaving it all behind: the orders, the shame, the dogma, Ukita, Kumagai, the Nakata …

And yet, thinking that, Bennosuke found his eye drawn to burgundy amid the battlefield before him. One melee among dozens, a ring of banners slowly being driven inward by an overwhelming advance. The last stand of the Nakata, wrought so small at this distance. Little men flailing with little toy sticks, standards flapping like feathers on the smallest of birds. The nobles were there at the center,
the old lord and Hayato too, he supposed, huddled together looking outward, trapped as the wall of men between them and the enemy grew thinner by the moment.

Bennosuke found himself filled with sudden regret that he was not down there ending them himself, but he knew that he had waived any right to do so when he had decided to leave the battlefield. The child of vengeance was dead and the child of Amaterasu ruled now, he told himself. That was the choice he had made—to be bound by no quest but that which he chose for himself.

But still that ache within him remained unanswered. He watched the last banners fall as the men in burgundy were overwhelmed, vanished beneath a host that screamed their victory for but a moment before turning to find a fresh enemy, and he wondered if Munisai was watching, wherever his spirit was.

His eye was drawn elsewhere; Sekigahara was lost, and if Bennosuke knew it, then the lords of the enemy knew it too. Forces could be diverted. From within the midst of the Eastern army, a band of light cavalry armed with bows began to peel away. They formed into a long ribbon of men, looped around their rear, and then started to race at a full gallop, heading up the slope already notching arrows on their bows. They came for those fleeing—this was to be a total victory, and Tokugawa was in no mood for mercy.

The wind was already howling through his lungs, but Bennosuke knew he would have to run a lot farther yet.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

As the horsemen began to gallop up the slopes, Bennosuke thought for a moment about stripping his armor from himself. He felt anchored by it, and he needed to be lighter, more agile, less exhausted. But there was no time, and in any case he doubted it mattered to a horse whether a man was naked or carrying a load of stone. Cuirass and guards rattling still, he forced himself to run once more. There was a pain in his side almost immediately—he shouldn’t have stopped, he knew. To tease the body with the promise of respite only made it clamor for more, because flesh was ever weaker than the spirit.

Bennosuke breached the valleytop, and started to run downward. He was not alone, plenty of men before him. This side of the valley was not as heavily forested, yet the scattered outcrops of trees and wild bushes still funneled the panicked herd between them. It was chaos, dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds running blind, scrambling over brush and trampling long grass.

There was a cry of alarm from behind when the first of the arrows whipped down, fired blind from the other side of the ridge. Few were hit, but men cowered and yelped as the long shafts lanced out of the sky to impale the ground around them. Faster. Every man knew he had to be faster. They sucked air through gritted teeth, tried to put more earth beneath their feet.

Downhill, soft ground—this should have been an easy run. But other men staggered, and his own vision began to fade around the edges. Munisai’s words taunted him once more—how many minutes had he fought?

At what he hoped to be halfway down the slope Bennosuke turned
as he ran, and he saw the Tokugawa horsemen streaming down after them. They were far still, like little inked figures on a painted panorama, but even from here it was obvious how easy it was for them. A game almost, they were cantering, taking time to aim, and then an arrow lashed out straight and a man tumbled and fell. On they came, growing large, filling the space between the trees.