Fudoki (39 page)

Fighting with arrows means that nearness is defined not by distance, but by lines of sight—the clearer, the closer. An arrow can come from anywhere, even (if one has been so unfortunate as to select an armor-lacing pattern that matches one of the enemy’s) from one’s own people.

But arrows run out, and the battle becomes too close. One draws one’s sword, strikes at anything, horse or man, near enough to hit, trying in turn not to be struck. The blade often fails to cut through armor, but it can knock a man from his horse, to be dealt with on the ground.

And there are the foot soldiers, as well. They mostly do not waste their time aiming for riders, but horses are easy game, their fragile legs within easy reach of a nine-foot
naginata
. The Abe’s foot soldiers and their shields are everywhere. An Osa Hitachi rider fights to keep his horse safe as well as himself: if your horse stumbles—or if, injured or unbalanced or hit, you fail to keep your seat—you fall among the foot soldiers. You may live awhile, but their pole-arms are longer than your sword. They will kill you.

It is no surprise to the Abe that the Osa Hitachi horsemen, outnumbered and unsupported by foot soldiers, retreat. The Osa Hitachi horses sidle back toward the shields. At some point a signal runs through the Osa Hitachi men. They appear to panic, spin their horses, and bolt to the south end of the plain, back to the shields.

The Abe men had thought that the shields, the apparently reluctant foot men, were perhaps a trap; but their blood howls in their ears. They ride and shoot, hunters now, prey scattering before them.

Takase’s horses dance through the zigzag paths between the shields. And at a shout from Takase, the foot soldiers behind the shields heave them up and sideways. The Abe horses see barriers where the paths used to be, and jig to the new-made gaps. Some stumble onto the deep-set
hoko
spears. They scream and fall, dumping their riders to the ground. The men just behind the leaders don’t see what’s happening and their horses do not have the time or room to react; they crash into the spears and the fallen shields and the struggling clots of horse and man. The Osa Hitachi foot soldiers stay out of range of desperate hooves, and slash anything they can reach with their spears and
naginata
. The lacings of everyone’s armor have loosened in battle, and there are a hundred gaps at neck and arm and breast and groin. It is easy work.

The muddy ground is too wet to absorb the blood, which runs along its surface in glossy dark streams. Takase and Kitsune and Kagaya-hime watch; but many of the Osa Hitachi horsemen do not and turn their heads away; or focus instead on shooting at the Abe horsemen who have managed to stop their horses before they become part of the tangle.

There is little the remaining Abe horsemen can do. They shoot at any Osa Hitachi they can see, but the foot soldiers are half-hidden behind the chaos, and the horsemen are well armed and shoot back. There is no headcount, not yet, but the Abe have lost a surprising number. Shocked and demoralized, they retreat. A few, trapped, wave their hat markers to show they surrender.

There is a lot of death this way. Norit
loses sixteen horsemen outright; twenty are caught or injured in the broken heap of men and horses, and beheaded by the Osa Hitachi men. This is a slaughter by the standards of war, for a thousand horsemen can fight all day and suffer only twenty deaths, despite hundreds of injuries.

As Norit
retreats, another twenty of his men flee like clouds, scatter like divining sticks, returning to their own homes. By the time he makes it to the
ki
-stockade to which he has evacuated his family, he has fewer than a hundred horsemen and their attendants—less than two-thirds of what he began with—by the village of
gen.

The battle changed nothing. Tomorrow it would begin again: the riding and the burning, and it would not end until there was more fighting, more injuries, more death. And even
then,
supposing the Osa Hitachi destroyed the Abe, there were many hundreds of weary miles riding or walking home again, and more fighting, injuries, death along the way. Tomorrow it would all start again. This would be cause enough for despair.

—Although this is what life is. In our most painful times—a brother dies, a lover leaves, the world is not what it was—we claw through our days and weep as we fall asleep, grateful to be done with the day. And then morning comes and we have it all to do again, breath by weary breath. There is a difference, in that my battles have always been within myself.

How can men do this? It is horrible enough to imagine, let alone to be there. We are willing to suffer unbearable things for those we love, or because we must; but how can a man (anyone, of course, though it is only men who do so) walk into a battle for no great reason beyond this, that someone he respects wishes him to do so?

Perhaps this respect is love, a man’s sort of love. D
mei spoke more warmly of the men he fought with than anyone else—than even, I suppose, me. After he was gone, I brooded long on this, trying to understand, and concluded that only men could understand this, or practice it. Now that I am old, I realize this is too simple an answer. I would walk into all the Buddha’s hells for Shigeko, not from courage but because I would not willingly leave her alone in such a circumstance. I love her more than I fear Hell.

—I find that insights grow more frequent as I have less time to take advantage of them.

After the attack, Kagaya-hime and Kitsune walked together, pulling arrows from the bodies. It was not easy work. Arrows often wound, seldom kill. An armed man with an arrow buried deep in one thigh does not give up the arrow unless his life goes first.
Hoko
spear in hand, Uona followed, collecting the arrows they retrieved.

The village of
gen wanted no part of the battle but suffered nevertheless, as a mouse does caught under the feet of a panicking horse. The same concerns that drove the war band to destroy the farms they passed burned
gen, as well. Some of Norit
’s men had thought to hide here, as well; to prevent retribution, Takase had ordered them ferreted out and killed. If village men died as well, it was regrettable but unavoidable.

“Gah,” Kitsune said. “This is making me sick.” They walked through a kitchen yard, blinking against the smoke that stung their eyes.

“Why?” Kagaya-hime asked. She had lost an arrow, one of the three she had fletched with the golden eagle feathers given to her by Kitsune’s sister Nakara: her first friend. She did not often miss; it must be
in
someone.

“It’s one thing when you’re caught up in the fight. But now—”

She said, “We are killing animals, even in this form. Perhaps it is our nature.” A dead man lay facedown, his blood a gelled puddle. He had been running. The arrow (not her eagle-feathered one) stood straight up from his back.

“No,” Kitsune said. He turned his face away when she pulled the arrow free with a wet grinding noise.

“Man
or
fox, it’s your nature,” she said absently. An injured man had crawled behind a tumbled cart, but she heard him cursing, and came around to where he lay on the ground, arms wrapped tight around the arrow sunk deep in his belly.