Lord Oda's Revenge (48 page)

Trying to distract himself, he looked down at the scroll again, and for the dozenth time he read the abbot's story.

In the dark ages, in the cold ages, there was a ravine – and in that ravine was the most ancient kiri tree in Japan, a crooked-branched king in a kingdom of rock and wood. Its upper leaves were one
with the sky, trembling with the joy of their privilege as they conversed, at night, with the stars. Its roots plunged deep into the earth, around hard rocks, becoming confused in the blackness of the earth with the scales of the dragon that slept underneath.

One day a powerful wizard cut a branch from the tree – which would have resisted such an attempt by anyone less powerful than he – and made from it a remarkable harp, of which it was said that it shone in the day like the sun and glowed in the night like the moon. For many years, this harp was the most treasured possession of the emperor, but in vain did his musicians try to play it – no one could draw a melody from its strings. And if ever someone tried, all that would come from the harp were harsh, discordant noises, as if the instrument hated and disdained its player.

At last, the prince of musicians, Peiwoh, came to the imperial court. On being presented with the harp, he stroked it gently, as if taming a wolf, and drew from it a wondrous sound. He sang of nature and the seasons, of mountains and the sea, of soft-glowing stars and the soft earth. And as he sang, the memories of the tree from which the harp was made were awoken, and the people of the court were stunned to find themselves surrounded by the scents of spring, by the murmuring of a summer breeze, by the chirring of insects, the pattering of rain, the call of the cuckoo. Then Peiwoh switched key, and the room echoed with the sharp, clean sound of falling snow, the ringing stillness of ice, the beat of a swan's wings, and the rhythm of falling hail.

Peiwoh sang of love, causing the air in the room to grow sweet with expectation. Clouds scudded across the ceiling, white and beautiful against a summer sky – but trailing black shadows of despair across the floor. He sang of war, and everywhere resounded the clash of iron and the screams of dying men. The
dragon that slept under the tree flashed, quick and lithe, in the corners of the ceiling.

Enraptured, the emperor asked Peiwoh his secret.

Peiwoh said, ‘The others failed, Emperor, because they asked the harp to accompany them as they sang of themselves. I have let the harp choose its own songs, and I did not know as I played whether I was the harp, or the harp was me.'

Taro cursed, and threw the scroll off the parapet, to bounce on the grass below. He was starting to think that the abbot was having a joke at his expense.

‘Nothing?' said Jun, with a smile.

‘Nothing,' said Taro.

‘Well,' said Jun, ‘at least you have the Buddha ball. That's better than any sword.'

‘I hope so,' said Taro. And he did hope.

He looked down at the army again, to see if it had changed since he last looked. If anything, it seemed to have swelled, and then he saw why – Lord Tokugawa's flag was flying over a second enormous army, this one ranged on the other side of the stream that ran down the mountain, flinging itself over rocks in glittering waterfalls, before crashing into the plain as a meandering silver river, all its energy expended.

Oh, no
, he thought.
The message didn't make it
.

In all the excitement, he had forgotten that
two
armies were laying siege to the Hongan-ji, not one. Lord Tokugawa was still Lord Oda's ostensible ally, and now that Lord Oda had determined it was time to attack, Lord Tokugawa's generals, or Lord Tokugawa himself, must have agreed to stand by him.

Taro turned to the monks, saw the eagerness on their faces as they clutched their new and improved guns, forged in their own
subterranean workshops from the Portuguese pattern smuggled in by Shusaku. He didn't have the heart to tell them that their stand was threatened, that they faced not just the wrath of Lord Oda, but the wrath of Lord Tokugawa, too, which brought with it many more thousands of heavily armed men.

Below, a bugle sounded, and the army began to stream up the slope. Taro bit his lip, and the blood that flooded his mouth was delicious. His heart pounded in his chest as he watched death coming up the mountain towards him. But then he turned to his left and saw Hiro, a gun in his hands, and Hana to his right, also standing bravely in the face of the onslaught. He smiled. He was lucky, really. It was just a shame Shusaku wouldn't see the battle, hiding as he was below, so as not to be burned by the sunlight.

But if I live
, he thought,
I'll tell him about it
.

Then he noticed something curious. Lord Tokugawa's men were not joining the charge. Instead it looked like. . . yes. . . they were turning away, and departing over the plain, away from the river and from their allies.

They were abandoning the field of battle.

Taro turned back to the monks, a surge of joy flowing through him.

‘Today,' he said, and though he was speaking quietly, he had the sense they could all hear him, ‘we destroy Lord Oda.' It was all he needed to say.

A great cheer went up from the monks, as they took their positions along the wall, some standing behind to reload, or pass forward fresh weapons, because Taro had learned from that terrible night on Mount Hiei, and though he was still appalled by what Lord Oda's gunners had achieved, with their organized ranks, he wasn't so naive as to not adopt the practice for his own troops.

My troops?
he thought.
Since when do I think of them as my troops?
But then he looked again at the monks, and saw the way they regarded him, reverentially almost, their eyes on the ball in his hand, and he thought,
Yes. They are my troops
.

The samurai below were getting closer – he could hear their curses, the jangle of their armour. A bullet whined by overhead, disconcertingly close. The samurai were moving with discipline, as they had on Mount Hiei – the first rank had fired, and now the second rank stepped forward, guns already primed, and let loose their shots. The range was not ideal, though, and the Ikko-ikki were able to shelter. For now. Soon, though, Oda's army would be upon them – that incomprehensible horde, many times bigger than any group of men Taro had ever seen, even the army that had attacked the monastery, and that had seemed to Taro so bafflingly huge.
They will sweep over us
, he thought.
As if they were a tsunami, and we a seaside hut made of wood and straw
.

‘It's time,' said Hiro.

‘Yes,' said Taro. He looked away from the terrifying hugeness of Oda's army and took the arrow at his feet, lowered it into the brazier beside him. The oil cloths wrapped around the end of the shaft caught light, and he nocked the arrow, then drew.

‘Now!'
he shouted. Other arrows flared beside him, and when he loosed his, a flock of burning birds followed it, arcing towards Oda's army. The arrows were few, though, and the samurai kept coming.

And then—

Boom
. Taro's arrow had found its target, and a flower of flame bloomed in the middle of Oda's men, flinging bodies and armour into the air. The fireball was enormous, a sun in the darkness, and Taro narrowed his eyes, seeing the devastation it caused through a narrow pane of vision. Two more explosions followed,
ripping through the great army of samurai, as the Ikko-ikki too hit the right spots, though several of the fire arrows simply disappeared into the dark mass of the advancing army.

Yet it was enough – Taro saw panic seize the samurai, as they witnessed the carnage wrought by the landing fire arrows. Bodies littered the ground, the ground itself torn into terrible petalled craters, black soot and earth still raining down where rain itself would soon fall. They had buried the barrels under cover of darkness, a thin layer of torn grass on top to hide them from eyes that would be fixed on the monastery above, not the ground below.

That was the thing about the Ikko-ikki. They might not be many, but they had plenty of guns. And plenty of gunpowder.

Taro leaned down and picked up another arrow. He lit it, then nodded to the archers near him, before sending it into the air. It flared as it flew, and some of the samurai scattered, all discipline lost. There were only a couple of barrels left, Taro knew, but Oda's men had no idea of that – they just saw fire arrows streaking towards them, and the bodies of their comrades beside them, where the earth had surged up in fiery explosion, or worse still the places Taro could see, close to the barrels, where there had been men and now was nothing but mangled armour and scorched earth.

Boom. Boom
.

Two more barrels went up, and again samurai were hurled through the air, or dismembered where they stood, or simply wiped from the earth as drawings from sand. Taro looked to the Ikko-ikki, and he saw excitement in their eyes now, defiance. Lord Oda's army was not broken – there were many thousands behind the front ranks, who had suffered the worst of the gunpowder trick, but they were no longer advancing in such
confident, perfect formation. Some of those who had turned to run had been impaled on the swords of their companions, and now Taro saw anger and fear in the men attacking this little mountain stronghold.

And yet, even now, the main bulk of the army continued to advance.

Boom
.

And despite the hole torn in their ranks by the latest explosion, they continued to come, and now the fusiliers were arranging themselves in a row, lowering their guns to fire, and they were still as numerous as the pebbles on a beach.

‘That's the last,' said Hiro. ‘Time for the ball. Now, Taro. They're getting ready to fire. . .'

‘I know,' said Taro. He turned to Hana, took her hand in his. ‘I love you,' he said.

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘I love you, too.'

Then he looked down into the ball and the mountainside was no longer important, or even
there
, in any real sense. He was both on it and above it, floating over the turrets and the walkways and the towers and the courtyards. He reached with his mind into the air before him, pulling water from the sea behind the mountain, massing it into clouds.

He took a deep breath, and he made it rain.

 

O
DA
,
LIKE
K
ENJI
Kira, had arranged his arquebusiers in rows of three, so that they could maintain a constant barrage of fire. As they alternated, they moved up the hill, the men at the back loading their rifles as they walked.

At least, that was the theory.

In fact, the men were not loading, they were not firing, and they were not moving, for the most part. Their guns were useless in the heavy rain, the water extinguishing the fuses that made them fire, and the matches that made the fuses burn. First the ground had exploded beneath their feet; now their rifles were useless as sticks in their hands.

Some had turned to run, only there were samurai with swords behind them, and some ran onto the swords while some were just cut down for their cowardice. Chaos reigned among Oda's troops. The arquebusiers, panicking, turned from their own samurai and attempted to run up the hill, only to be caught in a terrible squall of bullets, fired by the monks with their waterproof guns. The balls tore through their ranks, dropping them in the mud.

Rain fell heavily, blanketing the battlefield so that it seemed to Taro he was viewing it through a shoji window, imperfect and
shifting. The ground, churned by boots and water, was a sucking bog.

Taro stumbled down the hillside, Hiro beside him. He had told Hana to stay on the battlements, and though usually she would have objected to being left out, to being treated like a girl, she had only nodded. She understood what he was doing – he was going to try to kill her father, and she might not stop him, but that didn't mean she would want to watch.

Ahead of Taro, the main line of the Ikko-ikki stretched across the top of the plain. Like the army below, they had formed into disciplined lines – but unlike the army below, their guns worked. They kept up a relentless pace, reloading and firing so that the volley of bullets was constant and inescapable. Even so, they had not had time to make more than a hundred guns, and the vastness of Oda's army was such that samurai were breaking through, running screaming up the hill, swords in their hands, cutting down some of the gunmen. Taro saw a wedge of armoured men crash through the line, the Ikko-ikki stumbling and turning in confusion to try to shoot the attackers.

He flicked his eyes to the ball – he was its master now, could control it with the merest inflections of his thoughts. He drew the energy out of a dark cloud above, massed it into a pulsing orb, then sent it down to the ground as a searing bolt of lightning. It tore into the ground, raising a furrow of splattering mud, flinging the bodies of the samurai up and outward in a geyser of death. Hiro gasped.