Shogun (The Asian Saga Chronology) (84 page)

"Be patient!"

Now the attackers were dismounting.  The first warriors strode out from the defending ranks to show their valor.  An equal number began to measure up against them.  Then, suddenly, the ungainly mass of attackers rushed into five tight-disciplined phalanxes, each with four ranks of twenty-five men, three phalanxes ahead and two in reserve, forty paces back.  As one, they charged the enemy.  In range they shuddered to a stop on command and the front ranks fired an earshattering salvo in unison.  Screams and men dying.  Jozen and his men ducked reflexively, then watched appalled as the front ranks knelt and began to reload and the second ranks fired over them, with the third and fourth ranks following the same pattern.  At each salvo more defenders fell, and the valley was filled with shouts and screams and confusion.

"You're killing your own men!" Jozen shouted above the uproar.

"It's blank ammunition, not real.  They're all acting, but imagine it's a real attack with real bullets!  Watch!"

Now the defenders "recovered" from the initial shock.  They regrouped and whirled back to a frontal attack.  But by this time the front ranks had reloaded and, on command, fired another salvo from a kneeling position, then the second rank fired standing, immediately kneeling to reload, then the third and the fourth, as before, and though many musketeers were slow and the ranks ragged, it was easy to imagine the awful decimation trained men would cause.  The counterattack faltered, then broke apart, and the defenders retreated in pretended confusion, back up the rise to stop just below the observers.  Many "dead" littered the ground.

Jozen and his men were shaken.  "Those guns would break any line!"

"Wait.  The battle's not over!"

Again the defenders re-formed and now their commanders exhorted them to victory, committed the reserves, and ordered the final general attack.  The samurai rushed down the hill, emitting their terrible battle cries, to fall on the enemy.

"Now they'll be stamped into the ground," Jozen said, caught up like all of them in the realism of this mock battle.

And he was right.  The phalanxes did not hold their ground.  They broke and fled before the battle cries of the true samurai with their swords and spears, and Jozen and his men added their shouts of scorn as the regiments hurtled to the kill.  The musketeers were fleeing like the Garlic Eaters, a hundred paces, two hundred paces, three hundred, then suddenly, on command, the phalanxes regrouped, this time in a V formation.  Again the shattering salvos began.  The attack faltered.  Then stopped.  But the guns continued.  Then they, too, stopped.  The game ceased.  But all on the rise knew that under actual conditions the two thousand would have been slaughtered.

Now, in the silence, defenders and attackers began to sort themselves out.  The "bodies" got up, weapons were collected.  There was laughter and groaning.  Many men limped and a few were badly hurt.

"I congratulate you, Yabu-sama," Jozen said with great sincerity.  "Now I understand what all of you meant."

"The firing was ragged," Yabu said, inwardly delighted.  "It will take months to train them."

Jozen shook his head.  "I wouldn't like to attack them now.  Not if they had real ammunition.  No army could withstand that punch—no line.  The ranks could never stay closed.  And then you'd pour ordinary troops and cavalry through the gap and roll up the sides like an old scroll."  He thanked all
kami
that he'd had the sense to see one attack.  "It was terrible to watch.  For a moment I thought the battle was real."

"They were ordered to make it look real.  And now you may review my musketeers, if you wish."

"Thank you.  That would be an honor."

The defenders were streaming off to their camps that sat on the far hillside.  The five hundred musketeers waited below, near the path that went over the rise and slid down to the village.  They were forming into their companies, Omi and Naga in front of them, both wearing swords again.

"Yabu-sama?"

"Yes, Anjin-san?"

"Good, no?"

"Yes, good."

"Thank you, Yabu-sama.  I please."

Mariko corrected him automatically.  "I am pleased."

"Ah, so sorry.  I am pleased."

Jozen took Yabu aside.  "This is all out of the Anjin-san's head?"

"No," Yabu lied.  "But it's the way barbarians fight.  He's just training the men to load and to fire."

"Why not do as Naga-san advised?  You've the barbarian's knowledge now.  Why risk its spreading?  He is a plague.  Very dangerous, Yabu-sama.  Naga-san was right.  It's true—peasants
could
fight this way.  Easily.  Get rid of the barbarian now."

"If Lord Ishido wants his head, he has only to ask."

"I ask it.  Now."  Again the truculence.  "I speak with his voice."

"I'll consider it, Jozen-san."

"And also, in his name, I
ask
that all guns be withdrawn from those troops at once."

Yabu frowned, then turned his attention to the companies.  They were approaching up the hill, their straight, disciplined ranks faintly ludicrous as always, only because such order was unusual.  Fifty paces away they halted.  Omi and Naga came on alone and saluted.

"It was all right for a first exercise," Yabu said.

"Thank you, Sire," Omi replied.  He was limping slightly and his face was dirty, bruised, and powder marked.

Jozen said, "Your troops would have to carry swords in a real battle, Yabu-sama,
neh?
  A samurai must carry swords—eventually they'd run out of ammunition,
neh?
"

"Swords will be in their way, in charge and retreat.  Oh, they'll wear them as usual to maintain surprise, but just before the first charge they'll get rid of them."

"Samurai will always need swords.  In a real battle.  Even so, I'm glad you'll never have to use this attack force, or—"  Jozen was going to add, "or this filthy, treacherous method of war."  Instead he said, "Or we'll all have to give our swords away."

"Perhaps we will, Jozen-san, when we go to war."

"You'd give up your Murasama blade?  Or even Toranaga's gift?"

"To win a battle, yes.  Otherwise no."

"Then you might have to run very fast to save your fruit when your musket jammed or your powder got wet."  Jozen laughed at his own sally.  Yabu did not.

"Omi-san!  Show him!" he ordered.

At once Omi gave an order.  His men slipped out the short sheathed bayonet sword that hung almost unnoticed from the back of their belts and snapped it into a socket on the muzzle of their muskets.

"
Charge!
"

Instantly the samurai charged with their battle cry, "
Kasigiiiiiii!
"

The forest of naked steel stopped a pace away from them.  Jozen and his men were laughing nervously from the sudden, unexpected ferocity.  "Good, very good," Jozen said.  He reached out and touched one of the bayonets.  It was extremely sharp.  "Perhaps you're right, Yabu-sama.  Let's hope it's never put to the test."

"Omi-san!" Yabu called.  "Form them up.  Jozen-san's going to review them.  Then go back to camp.  Mariko-san, Anjin-san, you follow me!"  He strode down the rise through the ranks, his aides, Blackthorne, and Mariko following.

"Form up at the path.  Replace bayonets!"

Half the men obeyed at once, turned about, and walked down the slope again.  Naga and his two hundred and fifty samurai remained where they were, bayonets still threatening.

Jozen bristled.  "What's going on?"

"I consider your insults intolerable," Naga said venomously.

"That's nonsense.  I haven't insulted you, or anyone!  Your bayonets insult my position!  Yabu-sama!"

Yabu turned back.  Now he was on the other side of the Toranaga contingent.  "Naga-san," he called out coldly.  "What's the meaning of this?"

"I cannot forgive this man's insults to my father—or to me."

"He's protected.  You cannot touch him now!  He's under the cipher of the Regents!"

"Your pardon, Yabu-sama, but this is between Jozen-san and myself."

"No.  You are under my orders.  I order you to tell your men to return to camp."

Not a man moved.  The rain began.

"Your pardon, Yabu-san, please forgive me, but this is between him and me and whatever happens I absolve you of responsibility for my action and those of my men."

Behind Naga, one of Jozen's men drew his sword and lunged for Naga's unprotected back.  A volley of twenty muskets blew off his head at once.  These twenty men knelt and began to reload.  The second rank readied.

"Who ordered live ammunition?" Yabu demanded.

"I did.  I, Yoshi Naga-noh-Toranaga!"

"Naga-san!  I order you to let Nebara Jozen and his men go free.  You are ordered to your quarters until I can consult Lord Toranaga about your insubordination!"

"Of course you will inform Lord Toranaga and
karma
is
karma.
  But I regret, Lord Yabu, that first this man must die.  All of them must die.  Today!"

Jozen shrieked, "I'm protected by the Regents!  You'll gain nothing by killing me."

"I regain my honor,
neh?
" Naga said.  "I repay your sneers at my father and your insults to me.  But you would have had to die anyway. 
Neh?
  I could not have been more clear last night.  Now you've seen an attack.  I cannot risk Ishido learning all this"—his hand waved at the battlefield—" this horror!"

"He already knows!" Jozen blurted out, blessing his foresight of the previous evening.  "He knows already!  I sent a message by pigeon secretly at dawn!  You gain nothing by killing me, Naga-san!"

Naga motioned to one of his men, an old samurai, who came forward and threw the strangled pigeon at Jozen's feet.  Then a man's severed head was also cast upon the ground—the head of the samurai, Masumoto, sent yesterday by Jozen with the scroll.  The eyes were still open, the lips drawn back in a hate-filled grimace.  The head began to roll.  It tumbled through the ranks until it came to rest against a rock.

A moan broke from Jozen's lips.  Naga and all his men laughed.  Even Yabu smiled.  Another of Jozen's samurai leaped for Naga.  Twenty muskets blasted him, and the man next to him, who had not moved, also fell in agony, mortally wounded.

The laughter ceased.

Omi said, "Shall I order my men to attack, Sire?"  It had been so easy to maneuver Naga.

Yabu wiped the rain off his face.  "No, that would achieve nothing.  Jozen-san and his men are already dead, whatever I do.  That's his
karma,
as Naga-san has his.  Naga-san!" he called out.  "For the last time, I order you to let them all go!"

"Please excuse me but I must refuse."

"Very well.  When it is finished, report to me."

"Yes.  There should be an official witness, Yabu-sama.  For Lord Toranaga and for Lord Ishido."

"Omi-san, you will stay.  You will sign the death certification and make out the dispatch.  Naga-san and I will countersign it."

Naga pointed at Blackthorne.  "Let him stay too.  Also as witness.  He's responsible for their deaths.  He should witness them."

"Anjin-san, go up there!  To Naga-san!  Do you understand?"

"Yes, Yabu-san.  I understand, but why, please?"

"To be a witness."

"Sorry, don't understand."

"Mariko-san, explain 'witness' to him, that he's to witness what's going to happen—then you follow me."  Hiding his vast satisfaction, Yabu turned and left.

Jozen shrieked, "Yabu-sama!  Please!  Yabuuuuu-samaaaa!"

Blackthorne watched.  When it was finished he went home.  There was silence in his house and a pall over the village.  A bath did not make him feel clean.  Saké did not take away the foulness from his mouth.  Incense did not unclog the stench from his nostrils.

Later Yabu sent for him.  The attack was dissected, moment by moment.  Omi and Naga were there with Mariko—Naga as always cold, listening, rarely commenting, still second-in-command.  None of them seemed touched by what had happened.

They worked till after sunset.  Yabu ordered the tempo of training stepped up.  A second five hundred was to be formed at once.  In one week another.

Blackthorne walked home alone, and ate alone, beset by his ghastly discovery: 
that they had no sense of sin, they were all conscienceless—even Mariko.

That night he couldn't sleep.  He left the house, the wind tugging at him.  Gusts were frothing the waves.  A stronger squall sent debris clattering against a village hovel.  Dogs howled at the sky and foraged.  The rice-thatched roofs moved like living things.  Shutters were banging and men and women, silent wraiths, fought them closed and barred them.  The tide came in heavily.  All the fishing boats had been hauled to safety much farther up the beach than usual.  Everything was battened down.

He walked the shore then returned to his house, leaning against the press of the wind.  He had met no one.  Rain squalled and he was soon drenched.

Fujiko waited for him on the veranda, the wind ripping at her, guttering the shielded oil lamp.  Everyone was awake.  Servants carried valuables to the squat adobe and stone storage building in the back of the garden.

The gale was not menacing yet.

A roof tile twisted loose as the wind squeezed under an eave and the whole roof shuddered.  The tile fell and shattered loudly.  Servants hurried about, some readying buckets of water, others trying to repair the roof.  The old gardener, Ueki-ya, helped by children, was lashing the tender bushes and trees to bamboo stakes.

Another gust rocked the house.

"It's going to blow down, Mariko-san."

She said nothing, the wind clawing at her and Fujiko, wind tears in the corners of their eyes.  He looked at the village.  Now debris was blowing everywhere.  Then the wind poured through a rip in the paper shoji of one dwelling and the whole wall vanished, leaving only a latticed skeleton.  The opposite wall crumbled and the roof collapsed.

Blackthorne turned helplessly as the shoji of his room blew out.  That wall vanished and so did the opposite one.  Soon all the walls were in shreds.  He could see throughout the house.  But the roof supports held and the tiled roof did not shift.  Bedding and lanterns and mats skittered away, servants chasing them.