Winter Raven Read online

  Winter Raven

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Japan, 1532

  Map

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  Glossary

  Further Reading

  Copyright

  Winter Raven

  Adam Baker

  For Ed-san, Gareth-san

  And everyone at the dojo.

  ‘The way of the Samurai is found in death.’

  Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai – Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Japan

  1532

  Sengoku Jidai, Age of the Warring States

  Japan is riven by war.

  The Emperor, previously an all-powerful god-head venerated as The Son of Heaven, has been reduced to a ceremonial irrelevance. The young Emperor, Go-Nara, lives in genteel poverty rarely venturing beyond the high walls of the Imperial precincts. He is nominal ruler of Japan but spends his days composing poems while his ornate Kyoto palace succumbs to neglect and dereliction. It is a place of cobwebs and shadow. The gardens are overgrown. The paper screens are mottled with mildew. The ceilings drip rain. Courtiers are forced to sell palace furniture and porcelain to buy food.

  Within the Imperial compound Go-Nara is treated as a deity. Servants prostrate themselves in his presence and are forbidden to meet his gaze. He issues orders to his ministers regarding the governance of the realm unaware these edicts go nowhere. Each decree is solemnly transcribed then filed in a vast library where countless scrolls crumble to dust.

  Supreme military power should lie with the Shōgun, commander of Japan’s warrior caste. Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshiharu and his counsellors are based in a fortified compound a few streets away from the Imperial palace. Each morning Yoshiharu wakes in his spartan, unadorned chamber, kneels before a chart and contemplates the nation’s disparate provinces while a maid combs and ties his hair. To his great shame, Yoshiharu has failed to win the loyalty of regional warlords. The country has fractured and innumerable clan wars have broken out in rural provinces far from the capital as local Daimyō battle for territory. He plans to negotiate a series of strategic alliances and reassert control of the nation’s rival clans. It will be his life’s work. Until then, despite his martial training, despite his fierce ambition, the Shōgun remains as impotent as the Emperor himself.

  Meanwhile, in the cities and provinces beyond Kyoto, the old aristocratic order has been overthrown. Ambitious generals depose regional nobility and seize control of their lands, a phenomenon known as Gekokujō: low conquers high. These new lords make their own treaties, set their own laws. Many soldiers have lost their master. Some become bandits. Some become monks. Some walk town to town looking for a new sponsor willing to utilise their lethal skills. There will be no peace until an ascendant warlord subjugates his rivals and unifies the nation under his rule. Until then, anarchy reigns.

  It is a time of high culture, rigid honour codes and bloody civil strife.

  It is the age of the samurai.

  Two great samurai battled for control of the province of Etchū.

  General Akitane and General Motohide were twin brothers. Their military careers had followed parallel paths. When they were young they frequently found themselves training in the same dojo. They duelled with wooden swords. They competed on the archery range. They challenged each other to feats of horsemanship, each more daring than the last. Later, as they rose through the ranks, they supervised manoeuvres which became a battle of minds as the twins tried to out-think each other. They directed opposing troops on the agricultural plains of Etchū as if the battalions were counters on a giant game board.

  Akitane and Motohide loved and respected one another. They understood each other better than their respective wives. They were garrisoned on opposite sides of Sekino, the provincial capital, so rarely met. But they each knew at any given moment, whether they were eating, reading or practising sword-strikes against a bamboo mannequin, their twin would be mirroring their actions.

  They hoped, like any samurai, to die in battle but they were cursed to live in a time of peace. They were destined to maintain the army of the Daimyō at fighting strength and thus deter aggression from adjacent provinces. They had studied the works of Sun Tzu and understood the supreme art of war was to subdue an enemy without drawing a sword or firing a single arrow. Nevertheless, as men who had dedicated their lives to the perfection of martial skills they couldn’t help but feel diminished by the knowledge they would never see combat.

  But then, one morning the Daimyō died while kneeling at prayer. He had no son, no rightful heir. Akitane and Motohide understood this was their chance to seize power and carve their names into history. They each recruited talented commanders with promises of preferment, and mustered an army. Then the brothers went to war.

  Their armies fought a succession of skirmishes throughout the summer.

  General Akitane was a romantic. He had sworn an oath of loyalty to the Emperor. There was no strategic value in aligning himself with the Imperial House. He received no additional troops or funds. But he had read the ancient Heike Monogatari as a child and been captivated by tales of chivalric valour. He wanted Etchū to be a land of lords and heroes. He would make the province a bastion of honour and nobility in a corrupt world.

  General Motohide, on the other hand, was a pragmatist. He signed a treaty with the Shōgun. He wanted control of the northern harbours so he could collect tax revenue from trade with China. He wanted to set up checkpoints at bridges and major intersections and tax overland trade routes. He wanted power.

  The decisive battle between the two men took place on the banks of the Kurobe River as the weather turned cold and the rains began.

  General Motohide’s forces had been routed from a stronghold in the hills and a quarter of his remaining men had been struck down by typhoid. He was losing the war. He was a better tactician than Akitane, but it seemed the gods were against him. Attrition had left him leader of four thousand demoralised troops. He was outnumbered three-to-one. But then scouts brought word his rival had made camp in a wooded valley by the banks of the Kurobe. Akitane had, in a moment of hubris, forgotten the advice of Sun Tzu’s Art of War and every other treatise on gener
alship. He had boxed his troops, positioned them with no avenue of retreat. Motohide understood this might be his only chance to turn the course of the campaign. If he couldn’t exploit Akitane’s error in the coming hours, he deserved to lose.

  Motohide had his men circle the enemy camp using dense pine trees for cover. They crept, careful not to frighten birds from the branches. Then, as night fell, they beat war drums and loosed a hail of humming-bulb arrows which screamed out of the undergrowth and set Akitane’s men in a panic.

  Motohide positioned his headquarters in a clearing a quarter of a mile away. Once the order to attack had been given he sat outside his tent in full armour alongside his lieutenants and waited for messengers to relay news of the battle. He couldn’t see the action. There were too many trees. But he could hear conch blasts trumpet the alarm, the shouts of terrified men and the screams of stampeding horses.

  His cavalry were dispatched with the ritual command: For glory.

  There was nothing he could do but wait for the gods to decide his fate.

  His men rode headlong through dense undergrowth with sashimono pennants fluttering behind them. The horses thrashed through bamboo thickets as their riders bellowed a murderous war cry. They were each anxious to be first to engage the enemy, knowing a moment of conspicuous heroism on the field of battle could win them some kind of preferment, perhaps even a fiefdom.

  Akitane’s forces were unable to rally. They tried to build a shield-wall and fend off incoming cavalry with naginatas but they were hit from all sides, cut down by arrow strikes. Motohide’s riders staged a series of lightning assaults. The mounted archers repeatedly struck in waves of five and ten, retreated into the treeline, then attacked once more from a different direction. Akitane’s men had no time to regroup.

  The terrified men were herded towards the river. They tried to ford the Kurobe en masse. They waded chest deep in fast-flowing water. They got half way across the river, holding on to each other as they fought the undertow, then archers hidden on the opposite bank started to pick them off.

  Some of the soldiers had the presence of mind to draw knives, cut their armour lose and swim downstream. They escaped the mêlée and survived. Most were killed when close-range arrows pierced leather armour and punctured their hearts and lungs. The air was filled with spluttering screams as injured, flailing troops submerged. The water was clouded by blood and frothed by the throes of drowning men. In days to come their bloated bodies would wash up downstream. Fisherfolk who worked the alluvial plains would retrieve weapons and armour. They would wonder what savage battle had taken place in the hills, what upheaval had occurred in the affairs of great men, and how it would affect their own circumscribed lives.

  * * *

  Next morning the sun rose over the banks of the Kurobe. The churned mud was littered with bodies, broken spears, collapsed tents and ripped battle standards. Crows pecked at blade wounds and tore strips of carrion. The stink of shit and blood hung over the carnage. Maimed men called for a mercy stroke. They longed for a swift coup de grâce, a needle-knife driven into the back of the neck.

  Motohide’s infantry used bear-claw rakes to drag the bodies from the field and mound them high ready for incineration. Monks prayed for the dead before setting them alight.

  * * *

  Motohide despatched Commander Raku, his trusted aide, to retrieve Akitane.

  Raku found the vanquished general sitting on a footstool outside his tent. He wore blue armour and held a war fan in his hand. The crescent of vacant stools around him were testament to the dozen lieutenants who chose to die in battle rather than be taken alive.

  The game was lost. Victory had slipped from his grasp but Akitane looked calm. He looked like he’d found dark humour in his recent reversal of fortune. He got to his feet and gave Raku a curt nod of greeting.

  The general had a sword tucked in his obi. Raku could have ordered the man disarmed but felt there was no need for the discourtesy. He led the general from his tent and marched him across the battlefield under guard.

  Akitane strode across the killing ground with no regard for the carnage around him. He paid no attention to the broken bodies and disembowelled horses. He gave no thought to the hundreds of men that died to serve his vaulting ambition. Some men were born to lead and some were born to be led. It was the natural order of the world.

  Raku led him through successive clearings. They marched past the ranked tents of General Motohide’s troops. Soldiers bound their wounds and convalesced after the previous day’s desperate conflict. Cavalrymen used upturned helmets to bring water to their horses.

  The troops watched Akitane pass. They had fought the man for a full year but this was the first time they had seen him in the flesh. As he walked through the forest he moved from life into legend: each man added their brief glimpse of the defeated general to the war stories they would tell their children when they returned home.

  ‘… Yes, I saw General Akitane after The Battle of Kurobe River. He walked past me, close enough I could reach out and touch his armour. He seemed proud. Resolute. Ready to meet his end like a true warrior …’

  ‘… Next morning they marched Akitane across the battlefield. They marched him past my tent. I saw him. Saw him with my own eyes. He was a broken man. His shoulders were slumped, his head hung low. I swear, as the gods are my witness, tears ran down his cheeks …’

  Raku and Akitane walked along an avenue of severed heads set on poles. The heads were trophies claimed by Motohide’s cavalrymen. The jaws of each decapitated head had been pulled open to show teeth blackened with gallnut dye: the mark of a samurai.

  Motohide’s tented enclosure was surrounded by a high curtain of canvas supported by wooden stakes. A nobori standard flew over the temporary compound bearing the general’s black sun heraldic device.

  Raku conferred with sentries guarding the bivouac.

  Akitane stood straight-backed, head held high. He was prisoner in an enemy camp but refused to show fear.

  Raku pulled back the tent flap. He instinctively bowed as Akitane walked past.

  The antechamber was lit by oil lamps. The floor was carpeted with tatami mats. Motohide’s private quarters were hidden behind a curtained partition.

  There was a small table in the centre of the room with a bowl of water, soap and towels.

  Akitane nodded grimly to himself. He was, as befitted his status, to be granted seppuku. He suppressed a brief flutter of fear almost before it began.

  An adjutant helped lift his helmet clear and unlace his cuirass.

  Akitane looked at Raku.

  ‘See that my son receives my sword and armour.’ He spoke loud and clear. He didn’t want there to be the slightest hesitancy, the slightest edge of apprehension in his voice.

  ‘Your body and effects will be returned to your family.’

  Akitane washed, then wrapped himself in a crisp white robe. He stepped into zōri.

  The toiletries were replaced by a writing table. A blank sheet of paper and a calligraphy box had been placed at the centre. A jug of water had been set to the left, and a tantō in a black lacquered sheath to the right.

  He knelt at the table. He poured a cup of water and drank. He prayed for the courage to rip open his abdomen with a clean stroke and the strength not to cry out in pain.

  He ground the inkstone and wet the powder. He dipped his brush and began to write.

  * * *

  Motohide was still agitated from battle, still euphoric from victory. He understood the war for Etchū had been little more than the prelude to the true struggle: the fight to retain his territory in the face of incursions from rival Daimyō. As his father once counselled him: When the battle is over, the real battle begins. The Shōgun would be little help. He would see Motohide’s struggle to consolidate his rule as a test of strength. If the general couldn’t subjugate Etchū, the Shōgun would have him replaced.

  Motohide was still dressed in armour. He wore a carapace of black lacquered plates lace
d with silk braid. His cloak was the glossy black pelt of a bear. His helmet and jaw-guard formed a snarling bear’s head and framed his eyes with iron teeth.

  The armour was ceremonial garb. He hadn’t led the charge. His horse had remained tethered to a tree throughout the battle while he remained in his tented enclosure tormented by inaction as the conflict played out behind a screen of trees. He had planned the strategy, set it in motion, but the battle raged out of sight. They saw no signal flags, received no coherent reports from the field. There was no way to tell who won the day until a messenger brought news of victory or defeat.

  His hands trembled with adrenalin as he unbuckled his helmet and handed it to an adjutant.

  He called for his priest, a Zen monk seconded from the temple at Daitoku-ji.

  Prior to the battle, Motohide had prayed to Hachiman, the Shinto divinity of war, protector of warriors. He asked the god to speed his horsemen and guide arrows to their target. But now the slaughter had ended he felt a need to pray to Buddha and be absolved of the blood spilled in his name.

  The elderly monk bowed. He stood and discreetly studied his master’s face as Motohide was stripped of his armour. He was attuned to his master’s moods and could read them like the weather. He knew without being told that Motohide needed to be soothed.

  They knelt side by side facing the Amida Buddha, closed their eyes and the monk began to chant. He sang The Mantra of Light pitching his voice low and smooth like a lullaby.

  On abokya beiroshanō makabodara mani handoma jimbara harabaritaya un.

  Motohide focused his breathing and blotted all thought but slow inhale/exhale. Gradually his galloping pulse began to subside and he slowly re-established his equilibrium. His clenched muscles slowly relaxed.

  Praise be to the perfect, all-pervading illumination of the great mudra. Grant me the jewel, the lotus and radiant light.

  Motohide reminded himself that life is over in an instant. We are all dust. Our triumphs and defeats are a cosmic joke.

  He should have joined a monastery. Spent secluded days exploring the texture of consciousness rather than riding to war to please his ambitious wife.