"Daybreak will be here soon."
They were in the area between Nyoigadake and the mountain range that delimitated the eastern edge of Kyoto. The edge of a mass of clouds was glittering a bright red.
When the men strained their eyes, they could see the city of Kyoto just barely visible in the dark of dawn. Behind them, toward Oinosaka or the border of the grassy province of Tamba, however, the stars were so clear and bright they might have been counted.
"A corpse!"
"There's another one over there too."
"Hey, and over here!"
The army was now approaching the eastern outskirts of Kyoto. With the exception of groves and thatched huts, there was only dew-covered farmland until one reached the pagoda of the Eastern Temple.
Dead bodies were strewn at the foot of the pines along the side of the road, in the middle of the road, and almost everywhere the soldiers looked. The dead all seemed to have been farmers from the area. Lying face down as though asleep in a field of eggplant flowers, a young girl lay dead, still clutching her basket, cut down by the single stroke of a sword.
It was apparent that the blood was still flowing, for it was fresher than the morning dew. Undoubtedly the troops of Amano Genemon that had set out before the main army saw these early-rising farmers in their fields, chased them down, and killed them. They may have felt pity for their innocence, but their orders were not to risk the success of the greater action to come.
Looking down at the fresh blood on the earth and up at the red clouds in the sky Mitsuhide stood up in his stirrups, abruptly raised his whip into the air, and shouted "On to the Honno Temple! Overrun it completely! My enemies are at the Honno Temple Go! Go! I'll cut down anyone who lags behind!"
Now was the time for battle, and the nine banners emblazoned with the blue bellflowers split into three companies of three banners each. Striking into the entrance to Seventh Street, they trampled through city gate after city gate, swarming into the capital all at once. The Akechi army burst in through the gates at Fifth, Fourth, and Third streets, and poured into the city.
The mist was still thick, but a bright red dawn had begun to permeate the sky over the mountains, and as usual, the wicket gates were being opened for the people going to and fro.
The men crowded through the gates, and spears and guns swarmed in confusion.
Only the banners were kept down as the soldiers crowded through.
"Don't push! Don't be flustered! The rear corps should wait outside the gate for a moment."
Seeing the confusion, one of the commanders did what he could to restrain the men. Slipping the bar out of the large door, he opened the gate wide.
"All right! Go through!" he yelled, goading them on.
The order had been to rush in silently, without raising a battle cry, to keep the banners down, and even to keep the horses from neighing. But as soon as they crashed through the gates and stormed into the city, the Akechi troops had already worked themselves into a near frenzy.
"On to the Honno Temple!"
Through the general turmoil, the sound of opening doors could be heard coming from houses here and there, but as soon as the residents looked outside, they pulled their heads in again and slammed the doors tight.
Among the many units that pushed in on the Honno Temple, the forces that approached it the quickest were those led by Akechi Mitsuharu and Saito Toshimitsu, who could be seen in the vanguard.
"It's difficult to see in these narrow streets filled with mist. Don't get lost trying to get there before the others. The honey locust tree of the Honno Temple grove should be your landmark! Aim for the big bamboo stand between the clouds of mist. There it is! That's the honey locust tree of the Honno Temple!"
Galloping ahead on horseback and waving his hands furiously as he gave out instructions, Toshimitsu seemed to have pledged his warrior's voice to that one morning of life.
The second army, led by Akechi Mitsutada, was also in motion. Those forces inundated the district around Third Street, passed through the inner section like smoke, and made a drive to encircle the Myokaku Temple in Nijo. This action was naturally coordinated with the forces attacking the Honno Temple and was calculated to finish off Nobunaga's son Nobutada.
It was no distance from this place to the Honno Temple. The armies were separated by the dark of predawn, but already at this point an indescribable noise was beginning to rise from the direction of the Honno Temple. The ringing sound of the conch shell and booming of the gongs and drums could be heard. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the sound shook heaven and earth and was not like anything ordinarily heard in this world. There was no one in the capital that morning who did not either jump up in surprise or leap out of bed in response to the screams of his family.
Clamorous noises and voices quickly arose even in the ordinarily peaceful area of the nobles’ mansions that surrounded the Imperial Palace. With all of this uproar and the echoing of the drumming horses' hooves, the sky of Kyoto itself seemed to be ringing.
The confusion of the city people, however, was only momentary, and as soon as the nobility and common people understood the situation, their homes were as quiet as they had been a while before, when they had been sleeping peacefully. No one ventured to go out into the streets.
It was still so dark the soldiers could not determine whose face was in front of them,
and on their way to the Myokaku Temple, the second army mistook some of its own men, who had taken a roundabout way through another narrow street, for the enemy. Even though their commander had strictly warned them not to fire until the order was given, when they came to the corner of the intersection, the excited soldiers suddenly began to fire blindly through the mist.
When they smelled the gunpowder smoke, their spirits became all the more excited in spite of themselves. Even soldiers who had been in battles before might go through a situation like this before they achieved complete self-control.
"Hey! You can hear conch-shell horns and gongs over there. It's started over at the Honno Temple."
"They're fighting!"
"The attack is on!"
They couldn't tell if their feet were hitting the ground or not. Running forward, they still could not determine whose voices they heard, though there was no resistance in front of them. Still, the pores all over their bodies began to swell, and they were even unaware of the cold mist striking their goose-fleshed faces and hands. They shook with such feeling that all they could do was yell.
And so they raised their battle cry even before they saw the roofed walls of the Myokaku Temple. Unexpectedly, a cry rose up in the direction of the front of the unit, and the gongs and drums began to ring out impatiently as well.
Mitsuhide was with the third army. It would be proper to say that headquarters were located wherever he happened to be, and this time he had stopped at Horikawa. He was surrounded by members of his clan, and a camp stool had been set up for him, but he did not sit down even for a moment. His entire being was focused on the voices of the clouds and the shrieks of the mist, and he looked uninterruptedly into the sky in the direction of Nijo. From time to time his eyes overflowed with the red of the morning clouds, but still no flames or smoke reached skyward.
Nobunaga woke up with a start, but not for any particular reason. After a good night's sleep, he naturally woke up in the morning on his own. Since his youth he had always risen at dawn, no matter how late he had gone to bed. He awoke, or rather—while he was not yet fully conscious and his head was still on the pillow—he experienced a particular phenomenon. It was a transition from dreaming to wakefulness that lasted only a fraction of a second, but in that infinitesimal space, a number of thoughts would pass through his head with the speed of a flash of lightning.
They were memories of experiences that had occurred between the time of his youth and the present, or reflections on his present life, or goals for the future. Whatever they were, these thoughts would pass through his brain in that moment between dream and reality.
This experience was, perhaps, less a habit than an innate ability. As a child, he had already been an extraordinary dreamer. The brambles and thorns of reality, however—especially given his birth and breeding—would not permit him to live only in a world of dreams. The real world had added difficulties on top of difficulties and had taught him the pleasure of cutting his way through them.
During this period of growth, when he was tested and returned victorious, and was tested again, he ultimately learned that he was not satisfied with the difficulties given to him. The highest pleasure of life, he found, lay in seeking out difficulties, plunging right into them, and then turning back to see them behind him. His convictions had been strengthened by the self-confidence he had gained from such experiences and had put him into a frame of mind far beyond the common sense one of ordinary men. After Azuchi , the idea of the impossible did not exist within his boundaries or in the world of his conceptions. That was because the works he had accomplished up to that point had not been done by following the path of ordinary men's common sense; rather, he had taken the path of making possible the impossible.
And that morning, on the border between the world of dreams and his mortal body, where the intoxication of the night before was perhaps still running fragrantly through his veins, pictures were being drawn in his brain: convoys of huge ships going to the southern islands, to the coast of Korea, and even to the great country of the Ming. He himself stood in the tower of a ship along with Sotan and Soshitsu. One more person would have to accompany him, he thought—Hideyoshi. He felt that the day he could make this into a reality was not far off.
In his mind, a small accomplishment like the domination of the western provinces and Kyushu was not enough to fill an entire lifetime.
It's dawn, he muttered to himself, and he rose and left his bedroom.
The heavy cedar door that opened to the corridor had been exquisitely fashioned so that when it was pulled open or closed, the sill naturally made a noise almost as if it were calling out. When the pages heard this sound in their faraway room, they jumped up with a start. The flickering light of the paper lantern was reflected by the thick pillars and planks of the veranda, which gleamed as if they had been polished with oil.
Aware that their lord had awakened, the pages quickened their steps toward the bathoom next to the kitchen. On their way, they heard a noise in the direction of the north corridor. It sounded like a window shutter being opened quickly.
Thinking that it might be Nobunaga, they stopped and peered back toward the blind corridor. The only person visible, however, was a woman wearing a cool, large-patterned kimono and a long outer coat patterned with pines and cherry blossoms. Her long black hair trailed behind her.
As the shutters were open, a morning sky the color of bellflowers appeared through the window, looking almost like a paper cutout. The breeze that wafted in rustled the woman's black hair and sent the fragrance of aloeswood all the way to the place where the pages were lingering.
"Ah, over there." The pages heard the sound of running water and ran off in the direction of the kitchen. The priests of the temple had not yet left their living quarters, so the windows and the huge main gate had not yet been opened. In the wide earthen-bored kitchen and on the elevated wooden platform, the humming of mosquitoes and the darkness of the night remained, but the steaminess of the summer morning could already be felt.
Nobunaga felt a unique dislike for that particular time of day. By the time the pages