We rode lightly to allow both man and beast some small respite. I believe that the riders were more tired than their mounts for the intensity of combat saps one’s strength like little else and that unexpected skirmish occurred long before we had the chance to do any real riding or maneuvering.
There was a gentle incline as we rode away from the water and the small wood and as we reached the top of the gentle rise Sugenoya-tono lifted his yari horizontally above his head, signaling a stop, then he led us slowly forward. At this point I – along with many of the younger soldiers – was toward the middle of the formation but I’d be damned before I let myself fall to the rear of it, and so it was a few moments before I could see what had caused this stop: on the next set of hills the entire Imagawa army was arrayed. Thousands of proud banners were lined up on the steep hillside; thousands of spearpoints glinted menacingly in the sun.
Suddenly, to our left the we heard the gun regiments opening fire, and we could begin to see the accompanying smoke wafting up over the land. Either this was the signal Sugenoya-tono was waiting for or it simply spurred him into action, for the order was passed down to ready bows and advance!
“Look!” I called to my companions, “the Imagawa are already reforming to face us!”
And they were: several yari-shu were bending back from the Imagawa force’s left flank, bending back such that the main line faced our army, and these men now faced us. “They must have seen their cavalry pulling back with their tails between their legs,” Hiraoka answered with a grin. But his smile quickly slipped into a grimace: “We’ll never break through that, there must be a thousand men facing us, maybe more.”
“Maybe we don’t have to,” I murmured; Goda was already peering intently at the line of spearmen as we approached it, seeking his targets. “A thousand men here means a thousand less to face the main army. In the infantry fight,” I grunted as I hauled back on the bowstring,
SNAP! and the arrow was away! “…we might even have the advantage in numbers now,” I finished, reaching for another arrow. The first had, as usual, been an abysmal miss.
Hiraoka nodded at this and our company continued to launch arrows at the Imagawa infantry. We managed several more flights before we received any return arrow-fire, but by then our gunners and theirs were locked in their own duels and the roaring clash of infantry lines could be heard as well.
Sugenoya-tono paused as if tasting the air – I watched him out of the corner of my eye – and he seemed to decide something that pleased him for he nodded ever so slightly to himself.
THWACK!
I was brought back to reality by an arrow shattering on my breastplate. I frowned, then giggled to myself as I launched another shaft at our foes. A hit! Granted, I had been aiming at the spearmen at the base of the hill and not the archers behind them who were now down a man, but still… maybe that was why they still let me have a bow? I glanced over and saw Goda looking quizzically at me between shots. I shrugged, explaining, “I was almost disappointed in how long it took them to hit us,” indicating the scratch left by the Imagawa arrow that had struck me. “They must be panicking.”
He nodded, content with that answer and content to keep raining death on the enemy. “Give me your quiver,” he said, and I obliged: I had hit one foeman and truth be told was unlikely to strike another target. The remainder of my shots would likely be wasted and now I would be free to really take in the sights and sounds of the battle.
The bowmen opposite us must have been green. Their shots came in fits and bursts, and most of their shots flew well high or well short of us. We had lost a few men here and there and a few mounts had bolted after taking hits, but that was to be expected when facing several hundred archers. The gunfire from closer to us was also sounding more ragged, while the more distant volleys were well disciplined and kept rolling in with the relentless regularity of the pounding sea. “They’re about to break,” I said to no one in particular.
“Surely not,” Hiraoka said, frowning at an arrow snagged in his baggy pants.
“I hope not,” Goda said as he again hauled back his bowstring.
Then our horns were blaring, and the cacophony of the infantry melee seemed to be reaching a crescendo. Mifune-sama waved his yari in a broad circle above his head, then jabbed it ahead and left three times. That was our signal to follow him at a brisk trot while the more heavily armed and armored men followed Sugenoya-tono to the right towards the enemy’s rear.
We quickly moved out of the depression we had been skirmishing from, and ahead of us we could now see the two bodies of infantry staining at each other at the base of the hills. Another jab from Mifune-sama and we broke into a gallop, now shouting our warcries. Did it matter that we were exhausted? No, for the Imagawa infantry seemed to break as soon as they heard us! Was it the thundering of our horses’ hooves, or our shouted challenges? It mattered not for where before there were formations of spears held by the men who had humbled the mighty Go-Hojo, now there were only fleeing men presenting their vulnerable backs to us.
I whooped as we pressed on, didn’t even strike at any of these runners, merely bowling them over as we ploughed through the remnants of the Imagawa left flank into the next body of footsoldiers. Here we lay about left and right with our tachis and yari, and our unexpected assault here too rapidly broke these men’s resolve.
Again we trampled through these men leaving the infantry to hack them down from behind, and again the next formation before us broke. Hiraoka was baring a skeleton’s lipless smile at our foes, thin-lipped and all teeth, and I was drenched now in blood. Goda was delivering methodical chops with the enormous strength of his large frame behind them.
And with that, the Imagawa lines were gone. A sea of fleeing men was now making their way back west to our right, and the only resistance left to us were a small body of troops on the Imagawa right sheltered by a small ravine and anchored on two small hills.
Hiraoka Sadakata reigned in his horse beside me, matching my gaze at these Imagawa bushi standing resolutely on their hill. As we watched the gunners delivered a final parting volley, then withdrew in good order, shadowed all the while by two companies of horsemen that somewhat matched our two hundred-odd men. Then they kicked their horses about and left. “Those banners belong to Sessai Taigen,” Hiraoka told me with a jerk of his head toward the departing Imagawa troops.
“Oh?”
“He’s a monk who serves Yoshimoto, military adviser.”
“Why do you know this?” I asked
“He is a wise man who knows his enemies,” Hiraoka replied.
I shrugged and punched his shoulder-guard. “Well, I know that the majority of the enemy is those fleeing men, and we’re not going to be fighting Sessai Whoever-Monk’s men, so lets go take some heads!”
Hiraoka shook his head with a smile and a snort, then followed me as I waded into the bloodbath that was the route. That would show them for invading Hitachi.