It was late at night, and as the fog settled in, the air became hot and humid. His retainers had finished packing and stood in ranks in front of the gate. The horses neighed under the low rain clouds in the sky.

"Has rain gear been prepared?" a retainer asked, looking inside the gate again.

"There's not a bit of starlight tonight, and if it starts to rain, the roads are going to become difficult. We'd better prepare a few extra torches," another yelled.

Every samurai's face was as gloomy as the night sky. Eyes were filled with anger, tears, bitterness, or sullen discontent. Very soon, Mitsuhide's voice could be heard as he rode away from the entrance with a group of mounted men.

"Sakamoto is almost within view," he said. "We should arrive there soon, even if it does rain."

Hearing the unusually cheerful voice of their lord, his retainers felt surprise more than anything else.

Earlier that evening, Mitsuhide had complained of a slight fever and had taken medicine, and now his attendants were anxious about the possibility of rain. He had responded to their concern in a voice purposefully loud enough for the men standing both inside and outside the gate to hear.

When Mitsuhide was announced, fire was passed from torch to torch until the number of lights seemed almost to multiply infinitely. Then, with flames held aloft, the retainers walked out one after another, following the vanguard.

After they had traveled about half a league, rain began to fall, the drops splashing the flames of the torches.

"It seems the guests in the castle still haven't gone to bed. Perhaps they're going to stay up all night."

Mitsuhide did not notice the rain. As he turned in his saddle and looked back toward the lake, the huge donjon of Azuchi Castle seemed to soar into a sky that was as black as ink. He imagined that the golden dolphins that adorned the roof sparkled brighter on this rainy night, glaring out into the darkness. Reflected in the lake, the sea of lights in the many-storied building seemed to shiver with cold.

"My lord, my lord! You shouldn't catch cold!" Fujita Dengo said with concern as he drew his horse up to Mitsuhide's and put a straw raincoat across his shoulders.

That morning the shore of Lake Biwa was once again lost in the mist, perhaps be­cause the sky had not yet settled from the early summer rains. With the lapping waves and the mist that was indistinguishable from rain, the world appeared to be pure white.

The road was extraordinarily muddy, and the horses were spattered all the way up to their ears. Silently defying the previous night's rain and the condition of the road, the en­tire army tramped desolately toward Sakamoto. To the right was the lakeshore, to the left, Mount Hiei. As the wind blew down the mountain, it. stiffened the straw raincoats the men were wearing and made them look like bristling hedgehogs.

"Ah, look over there, my lord. Lord Mitsuharu has come to greet you," Masataka said to Mitsuhide.

The castle on the lakeshore—Sakamoto Castle—was directly ahead. Mitsuhide nod­ded slightly, as though he had already noticed. Although Sakamoto was almost close enough to Azuchi for him to be able to turn around and see it, Mitsuhide looked as if he had walked a thousand leagues. As he stood in front of the castle commanded by his cousin, Akechi Mitsuharu, he felt exactly as though he had escaped from the tiger's den.

His attendants, however, were far more worried about Mitsuhide's periodic cough­ing than they were about what might have been on his mind, and they expressed their concern.

"You've been traveling all night in the rain with this cold, and you must be exhausted. Once you've gone inside the castle, you should waste no time in getting yourself warm and going to bed."

"Yes, I probably should."

Mitsuhide was truly a gentle lord. He listened intently to his retainers' advice and understood their anxiety. When they arrived at the pine grove in front of the gate, Dengo took the reins of Mitsuhide's horse and stood next to the saddle, ready to help his master dismount.

On the bridge across the moat, a line of Mitsuharu's retainers had drawn up. One of the retainers opened an umbrella and offered it deferentially. Masataka took the umbrella and held it over Mitsuhide's head.

Mitsuhide walked across the bridge. Looking down through the railing, he could see white water birds swimming around the pilings like scattered flowers over the blue-green water.

Mitsuharu, who had come out to welcome his cousin, now stepped out a few paces from the line of soldiers and bowed respectfully.

“We've been waiting for you since dawn," he said, leading Mitsuhide through the entrance. The ten or so principal retainers attached to Mitsuhide washed their muddy hands and feet, stacked their wet straw raincoats in a pile, and went into the citadel.

The other retainers stayed outside the moat, washing the horses and taking care of the baggage, while waiting to be told where their lodgings would be. The neighing of horses and the din of human voices could be heard far off in the distance.

Mitsuhide had changed out of his traveling clothes. He felt so relaxed in Mitsuharu's quarters that they could have been his own. He had a view of the lake and Mount Hiei from every room. The inner citadel was situated in an area that had once had the most picturesque scenery, but no one could appreciate that scenery now. Since Nobunaga had given the command for Mount Hiei to be destroyed by fire, the monasteries and temples had become mounds of ashes. The village houses at the foot of the mountain had only recently begun to be rebuilt.

The ruins of the castle at Mount Usa, where Mori Ranmaru's father had met his end, were also close by, as was the battlefield where the soldiers of the Asai and Asakura clans had grappled with the Oda, only to have their corpses piled high. When one thought about these ruins and past battles, one realized that the beauty of the scenery echoed with the wailing of ghosts. Mitsuhide sat listening to the sound of the early summer rains and remembering.

Meanwhile, Mitsuharu was in a small tearoom, watching the fire in the hearth and listening to the genial sound of the water boiling in a teakettle made by the master caster Yojiro. At that moment he was completely immersed in the art of tea.

From the time of Mitsuharu's adolescence, he and Mitsuhide had been brought up as brothers, sharing the suffering of the battlefield and the happiness of home life. And, rather than becoming estranged, as brothers tend to do after they grow up, their relationship continued to be a close one.

Their characters, however, would never be the same. So on this morning the two men quickly went to separate quarters in the castle, each assuming the lifestyle that his own heart dictated.

Well, I imagine he's already changed his clothes, Mitsuharu said to himself. He stood up from his place before the teakettle. Crossing the wet veranda, he went over the bridged corridor into the suite of rooms assigned to his cousin. He could hear Mitsuhide's close attendants in another room, but Mitsuhide was alone, sitting bolt upright and staring out over the lake.

"I'd like to offer you some tea," Mitsuharu said.

Mitsuhide turned toward his cousin and murmured, "Tea…" as though he were waking from a dream.

"A piece I had ordered from Yojiro in Kyoto has recently been delivered. It doesn't have the elegant patterns of an Ashiya kettle, but it has a rustic charm that pleases the eye. They say that new teakettles are no good, but as you'd expect of Yojiro, the water that comes from his kettles tastes just as good as the water that comes from the old ones. I had intended to serve you tea with it the next time you were here, and when I was informed this morning that you were suddenly returning from Azuchi, I immediately lit a fire in the hearth."