Ieyasu was certainly not unworthy as an enemy. But in this next battle the entire forces of the Takeda would be up against the entire forces of the Tokugawa. They would strike at one another in a battle that would decide the outcome of the war.

Anticipation of the fight only heightened the spirits of the men of Kai. That was the kind of composure they had. Shingen moved his main camp to Edaijima and had his son, Katsuyori, and Anayama Baisetsu move their forces against Futamata Castle, with strict orders not to delay.

In response, Ieyasu quickly sent reinforcements, saying "Futama Castle is an impor­tant line of defense. If the enemy captures it, they'll have an advantageous place from which to make their attack."

Ieyasu himself gave orders to his rear guard, but the ever-changing Takeda army quickly went through yet another transformation and began pressing in on all sides. It seemed that if he made a false move now, he would be cut off from his headquarters in Hamamatsu.

Futamata Castle's water supply—its weakest point—was cut by the enemy. On one side the castle abutted the Tenryu River, and the water that sustained the lives of the sol­diers inside had to be lifted into the castle with a bucket lowered from a tower. To put an end to this, the Takeda forces launched rafts from upstream and undermined the base of the tower. From that day on, the soldiers in the castle were afflicted by a lack of water, even though the river flowed right in front of their walls.

On the evening of the nineteenth, the garrison surrendered. When Shingen learned that the castle had capitulated, he gave new orders: "Nobumori will occupy the castle. Sano, Toyoda, and Iwata will maintain communications and get ready along the enemy's road of retreat."

Like a go master watching each move of the stones, Shingen was cautious with his army's formation and advance. The twenty-seven thousand soldiers of Kai moved slowly but surely, like black clouds across the land, as the beat of the drums resounded up to heaven. After that, Shingen's main force crossed Iidani Plain and started to move into eastern Mikawa.

It was midday on the twenty-first, and the cold was sharp enough to slice off a man's nose and ears. A red dust rose in Mikatagahara, mocking the weak winter sun. There had been no rain for days; the air was parched.

"On to Iidani!" came the order. It caused a divergence of opinion among Shingen's generals.

"If we're going to Iidani, he must have decided to surround Hamamatsu Castle. Wouldn't that be a mistake?"

Some had misgivings because the Oda troops had been arriving at Hamamatsu, and no one knew for sure how many soldiers might be there now. Such was the secret intelligence that had been trickling in since the morning. No matter how much they pressed the enemy, his real situation could not be calculated. The reports were always the same: there was some truth to the rumors that were circulating in the villages along the road— which probably contained a good many of the enemy's own false reports—that a large Oda force was heading south to join Ieyasu's troops at Hamamatsu.

Shingen's generals offered their opinions:

"If Nobunaga arrives with a great army acting as a rear guard for Hamamatsu, you should probably give the matter careful thought right here, my lord."

"If the attack on Hamamatsu Castle takes us into the New Year, our men will have to winter in the field. With constant surprise attacks from the enemy, our supplies will run out and the troops will fall victim to disease. In any case, the men will suffer."

"On the other hand, I fear that they may cut off our retreat along the coast and elsewhere."

"When reinforcements are added to the Oda rear guard, our men will be trapped on a narrow strip of enemy territory—a situation that will not easily be reversed. If this hap­pens, Your Lordship's dream of marching into Kyoto will be frustrated, and we will have to open up a bloody path to retreat. Since we're mobilized at this point, why not go on with your foremost objective and march on the capital instead of attacking Hamamatsu Castle?"

Shingen sat on a camp stool in the middle of his generals, his eyes narrow slits, like needles. He nodded at each of their opinions, then said deliberately, "All your opinions are extremely reasonable. But I am certain that the Oda reinforcements will amount to no more than a small force of three or four thousand men. If the greater part of the Oda army was to turn toward Hamamatsu, the Asai and Asakura, whom I have already con­tacted, would strike Nobunaga from the rear. Furthermore, the shogun in Kyoto would send messages to the warrior-monks and their allies, urging them on. The Oda are not a major worry for us."

He stopped for a moment and then went on calmly, "Entering Kyoto has been my fervent desire from the very beginning. But if we just bypassed Ieyasu now, when we got to Gifu, Ieyasu would come to the aid of the Oda by obstructing our rear. Isn't the best policy to smash Ieyasu at Hamamatsu Castle, before the Oda can send him suffi­cient reinforcements?"

There was nothing the generals could do but accept his decision, not just because he was their lord but because they had faith in him as a superior tactician.

As they returned to their regiments, however, there was one among them, Yamagata Masakage, who thought as he looked up at the cold, pale winter sun, This man lives for war, and he has an uncommon genius as a general, but this time…

It was the night of the twenty-first when the report of the sudden change in direc­tion of the Kai army arrived at Hamamatsu Castle. Just three thousand men under Takigawa Kazumasu and Sakuma Nobumori had arrived at the castle as reinforcements from Nobunaga.

"A miserably small number," a Tokugawa retainer said, disappointed, but Ieyasu displayed neither joy nor dissatisfaction. And as the reports came in one after another, a war council began, at which many of the castles generals and the Oda commanders prudently recommended a temporary retreat to Okazaki.

Ieyasu alone did not move from his former position of holding out for battle. "Are we going to retreat and not let one arrow fly in reprisal while the enemy insults my province?"

There was an elevated plain north of Hamamatsu, more than two leagues in breadth and three leagues in length—Mikatagahara.

In the early dawn of the twenty-second, Ieyasu's army left Hamamatsu and took a position north of an escarpment. There they waited for the approach of the Takeda forces. The sun rose, then the sky clouded over. The silhouette of a single bird peacefully crossed the wide sky above the dry, wilted plain. From time to time the scouts of both armies, looking like the shadows of birds, crawled through the dry grass and then hurried back to their lines. That morning Shingen's army, which had previously camped on the plain, crossed the Tenryu River, continued marching, and arrived at Saigadani a little after noon.

An order went out to the entire army to halt. Oyamada Nobushige and the other generals collected at Shingen's side to ascertain the positions of the enemy that would soon be directly in front of them. After a momentary deliberation, Shingen ordered one company to be left behind as a rear guard, while the main army continued as planned across the plain of Mikatagahara.

Nearby was the village of Iwaibe. The vanguard of the army had already entered the village. The men at the head of this serpentine procession of well over twenty thousand men could not see the men at the rear of it, even if they stood in their stirrups.

Shingen turned and said to the retainers around him, "Something's going on at the rear!"

The men stared hard, trying to pierce the yellow dust rising in the distance. It seemed that the rear guard was under enemy attack. "They must have been surrounded."