It was a moment before his heavy breathing became peaceful.

Is this what it is to die?

He felt so peaceful that he doubted it himself. He was even aware of a desire to laugh.

So I slipped up too.

Even when he imagined Mitsuhide's shiny bald head, he felt no resentment at all. He is human, too, and had done this out of anger, Nobunaga supposed. His own negligence was the blunder of a lifetime, and he felt sorry that Mitsuhide's anger had been transformed into nothing more than foolish violence. Ah, Mitsuhide, will you not be fol­lowing me in a few days? he asked.

His left hand held the scabbard of his short sword. His right hand extricated the blade.

There is no need to hurry.

Thus Nobunaga instructed himself. The flames had started to spread to this room. He closed his eyes. As he did so, everything he could recall from his earliest youth right up to the present day flashed through his mind as though he were riding a galloping horse. When he opened his eyes, the gold dust and illustrations on the four walls radiated a bright red. The paintings of the peonies on the coffered ceiling proliferated in flames.  It truly took no longer than a single breath for him to die. At the moment of death, some extraordinary function inside his body seemed to be saying farewell to the ordinary reminiscences of the life he had led.

"No regrets!" Nobunaga said out loud.

Ranmaru heard Nobunaga's shout, and ran in. His master, wearing a white silk kimono, already lay facedown on the floor, embracing a flow of fresh blood. Ranmaru pulled the doors from the low closet and placed them over Nobunaga's corpse as though he were making a coffin. Closing the door peacefully once again, he stood back from the alcove. He grasped the short sword with which he, too, might commit seppuku, but his shining eyes settled on Nobunaga's corpse until the room was consumed in flames.

* *  *

On the first three days of the Sixth Month, the sky over Kyoto was clear and the sun beat down. The weather in the mountainous western provinces, however, alternated between clear skies and clouds. Heavy rainfall had continued until the end of the Fifth Month. Then, for two or three days at the beginning of the Sixth Month, a violent south-west wind blew the ragged clouds from south to north, and the sky continued to change back and forth from bright and clear to cloudy.

Most people, tired of the rain and mildew, hoped for an early end to the rainy season but Hideyoshi's army, which was conducting the long siege of Takamatsu Castle, prayed to the Eight Dragon Kings to send rain and more rain, which was their main weapon on that battlefield. The solitary castle was still completely isolated in the middle of the marshy lake. Sticking out here and there, like hair on someone with a scalp disease, were the trees of a few submerged forests and groves.

In the castle town, only the roofs of the common people's homes remained above the water; the farmhouses in the low-lying areas had already disappeared. Innumerable pieces of decomposing lumber swirled through the muddy current, or floated on the edges of the lake.

At a glance, the ripples of the muddy yellow water appeared to be standing still, but as the soldiers watched the edge of the shore, they could see that the water was invading the dry land inch by inch.

"There are some carefree fellows today! Look over there. They're as happy-go-lucky as you are."

Hideyoshi sat mounted on his horse, speaking to the pages behind him.

"Where?"

The pages all looked with inquisitive faces in the direction in which their master was pointing. Sure enough, playing on top of the driftwood, a number of snowy herons could be seen. The pages, still adolescents, shrugged their shoulders and chuckled. Listening to their childish talk, Hideyoshi lightly whipped his horse and returned to camp.

That was during the evening of the third day of the Sixth Month. There was still no way Hideyoshi could know about what had happened in Kyoto.

Hideyoshi rarely missed his daily rounds of the camp with a retinue of fifty to one hundred attendants. Occasionally pages accompanied the entourage. They carried a large, long-handled umbrella and paraded around with the brilliantly colored commander's standard. The soldiers who witnessed this "royal passage" looked up and thought, That's our Master going by. On the days they didn't see him, they somehow felt that something was missing.

As he rode by, Hideyoshi looked at the soldiers to the right and left, the sweaty and mud-caked troops who found great flavor in food that was barely edible, the soldiers who always had a laugh and hardly knew what boredom was.

Hideyoshi missed the days when he had been part of that exuberant cluster of youth. He had been given the command of the campaign a long five years ago. The battles and bitter fighting that had occurred at Kozuki Castle, Miki Castle, and other places had been gruelling beyond words. But beyond the hardship of battle, as a general he had also met with spiritual crises any number of times.

Nobunaga was a hard man to please, and it had not been easy to serve him at a distance and to keep his mind at ease. And of course, the generals surrounding Nobunaga were not exactly pleased with Hideyoshi's rise. Still, Hideyoshi was grateful, and in the mornings, when he prayed to the sun goddess, he gave thanks with an open heart for all the trials he had gone through in those five years.

A man would not have gone out in search of such ordeals. He himself thought that, no matter what heaven's intentions for him actually were, it had continued to send him difficulty after difficulty. There were days when he felt thankful for the hardships and reversals of his youth, because they had given him the will to survive his own physical weakness.

By this time the strategy for the water attack on Takamatsu Castle had been carried out, and Hideyoshi only waited for Nobunaga to come from the east. On Mount Hizashi, the thirty thousand Mori troops under the commands of Kikkawa and Kobayakawa waited to rescue the isolated castle. During periods of clear weather, Hideyoshi's umbrella and commanders' standard could be clearly seen by the enemy.

Just as Hideyoshi was returning to his quarters that evening, a messenger arrived by the Okayama Road and was immediately surrounded by guards. The road led to Hideyoshi's camp on Mount Ishii, but the traveler could also cross through Hibata and go on to Kobayakawa Takakage's camp at Mount Hizashi by the same route. Naturally, the road as heavily guarded.

The messenger, whipping his horse all the way, had been riding since the day before without stopping to eat or drink. By the time the guards got him back to the camp, he had lost consciousness.

It was the Hour of the Boar. Hideyoshi was still up. When Hikoemon returned, he,

Hideyoshi, and Hori Kyutaro went to the building that served as Hideyoshi's private quarters. There the three men sat together for a long time.

This conference was so secret even the pages had withdrawn. Only the poet Yuko was allowed to remain, and he sat behind the paper screen doors, whisking tea.

Just then, footsteps could be heard hurrying toward the buildings. A strict order had been given to keep the area clear of people, so when the footsteps approached the cedar door, they were met and intercepted with a quick reproach from the pages standing guard.

The pages sounded extremely excited, while the person they had challenged seermed to be impertinent and hot-blooded.

"Yuko, what's going on?" Hideyoshi asked.

"I'm not sure. Maybe it's a page and one of the men on guard duty."

"Take a look."

"Of course."

Yuko stood up and went out, leaving the tea utensils exactly as they were.

Looking outside, he found that—rather than the guard he expected—it was Asai Nagamasa who had been challenged by the pages.