Fudoki (38 page)

I have read the war tales that float around court. Everything in a battle seems very orderly: the armies meet; there are envoys and arrows back and forth; one side or both decide to attack, and there is a scramble to be first in battle; men shout out their names and ranks, looking for suitably ranked foes; horsemen with their bows; the lower-ranked foot soldiers with their
hoko
spears and their
naginata
and their freestanding heavy shields to dodge behind.

But I am also familiar with the sorts of lies that are told for the sake of a story or to save face. I can imagine details the war tales do not bother (or choose) to mention. I can imagine a very different way of fighting.

gen stands at the edge of a small plain, no more than a mile long, half that across. They grow rye and buckwheat there, rice on the nearer slopes of the mountains all around. Outside the village (which is not large—twenty houses, no more), there are wells, storehouses, farmhouses of those who do not choose to live as close to their neighbors as a village demands. With all this, there is not much space for a war band of seventy horses and their riders, and one hundred fifty grooms and attendants taking up arms as foot soldiers; even less for a defending force of nearly two hundred horsemen, and two hundred fifty more foot soldiers. Still, they manage. The two armies (for what else can I call them? The war tales are full of armies of ten thousand and more, but it seems more reasonable that armies are small. Where would one collect ten thousand horsemen willing to fight for the same thing, and where could they do so?) stand on opposite ends, north and south, of the valley. Battle is set for the dragon’s hour, midmorning.

The members of Takase’s war band were awake before dawn. Fighting men claim they can sleep through anything, but some part of them remains alert, and will startle awake at certain sounds. D
mei did not sleep often in my company, but when he did he was oblivious to nearly everything—the laughter of my women and the men who visited them as they exchanged rude poetry on the verandas; shrill
sh
-pipes from a nearby garden; thunder and lightning. But he came wide awake at the tiny metallic scrape of my picking up a knife to cut my nails, or the chink of pottery cups against one another.

Few people sleep well before a battle. Many gave up with the sky’s first brightening, and called softly for their attendants to build up the fires and bring them food and drink. These muted noises woke more men, and most of the camp was awake by the time the sun lifted itself above the mountains. It had been a cool night, and mist hung above the fields, dissolving only when daylight struck it. Across the plain, members of the Abe forces came down in twos and tens, early to the field.

“Looks like a calm day,” Kitsune said to Takase. “The shields shouldn’t blow over.” Takase nodded absently, and tucked an arrow into his topknot, as northerners do.

An army’s shields are man-tall and very heavy, layers of hard wood pegged together to make what must look like a door to nowhere. On the back of each shield are legs that hold it upright at a slight slant. The foot soldiers of an army erect these shields and use them as cover, jumping out to jab or slash at the riders and their horses with the
hoko
spears and the
naginata,
then retreating to protect themselves from the horses—and the riders’ arrows, provided the horsemen bother to pay attention to groundlings.

It is traditional that the opposing armies plant their shields a hundred paces apart. I suppose shields might be portable in combat; but on a muddy, rain-soaked field like
gen, once positioned they will not move easily or far.

In any case, Takase had given other orders. Close to the southern entrance to the plain of
gen, the foot soldiers arranged the shields into three ranks, close but staggered. Norit
’s forces would see a wall of sorts, far behind the milling horsemen and foot soldiers: a waste of the shields, no doubt part of some feeble plot on the part of the meager band (or so the Abe might think). Or perhaps they meant to use them as a fortress of sorts, to protect the spare horses; though it kept the mounts too far from the action to be useful. Or perhaps there was a mutiny of sorts, and the foot soldiers refused to fight for some reason, and instead huddled away from the battle, trying to stay safe until they could slip home.

The Abe could not have seen the part of this that did matter: hidden behind each shield was a
hoko
spear, heel sunk as deep into the mud as the attendants could make it, set at an angle toward the Abe. Forty shields; forty
hoko
spears. It was not so much, but the plain was not wide here, and this wall separated it into two halves, north and south.
Sheathed claws,
Takase had said the night before. Lure them in and then gut them.

The horsemen of Takase’s war band did not much like their part in this; but the point of war is not to behave nobly or even well, or in such a way as to make it into the war tales of a future day. It is to win. You will seem noble enough once the chroniclers are done with you—but only providing you win.

I have read the war tales and manuals but despite this I know so little about what war is like. Battles on scrolls offer surprisingly little useful knowledge. Could Takase’s plan work? How close do horses like to be? Will the foot soldiers and horsemen perform their parts? Will the enemy perform
theirs
? I can only guess, as I might guess what it is like to die in fire or bear a child.

So: Takase and Kitsune, and many of their horsemen stood a quarter-mile in advance of the shields. Kagaya-hime rode beside Takase. (“How can I give her orders?” Takase said to Kitsune, when he asked where she was to be. “They will just be countermanded by the gods. Who will win that discussion?”)

Some (but not many) foot soldiers and standard-bearers accompanied them. I think that, without cover, this took more courage than anything else that day. Most of the servants and foot soldiers milled about their shield-wall south of the line; prowled the slopes just above the barrier—anything to conceal the spears.

Envoys passed back and forth—though, really, what would they have to say? I have never heard that they sought to stop the battle, and why would they? Both sides long to fight. Occasional arrows crossed the space between the groups, like insults or boasts. There was shouting, of course, though it was hard to hear the words over the noises of the river and the restless horses.

And then battle.

Everything fights to survive. A worm in a bird’s beak writhes. A rabbit struggles, even tries to kick and bite the cat that catches it. A fox in a snare gnaws her paw to the bone trying to get free. Battle may start with great goals, but I think it must always end up being a fight to survive, each man doing whatever he must to stay alive.

The arrows and shouts that flew between the Abe and the Osa Hitachi men came faster; the horses approached one another at a walk, then a trot and a canter; and at some point, the abstract
we ride to battle
changed to
I must survive this
. Horses everywhere, the enemy all around. A man lifts his bow and awaits his chance, circling his horse to get to the right angle to shoot while staying out of his enemy’s line of fire. And of course there are many foes, all circling, all looking for their chances: and one’s helmet makes it hard to see to the sides and impossible to turn one’s head. Arrows have a harsh sound in the air, harsher when they strike one’s armor: sick thuds when they sink into flesh. And there are shouts and the frightened horses’ neighing, and hooves and feet scrabbling in mud. Even the shouting is cacophony, men’s and gods’ names and wordless screams, jumbled into a sound like the million voices of the kami.

I must survive this
alternates with
How can I?
even in the bravest fighters. The killing rage can change to white-lipped panic and back within a breath. No one who is not mad wants to be the bravest man, not if this means all the enemies’ attentions are focused on one; but no one at all wishes to be the most cowardly. Terror and courage shift places as deftly as the horsemen struggle for clear (but safe) shots.