He told himself that his weakness during the summers was the result of having spent the greater part of the past three years at his post in the northern provinces. But the undeniable truth was that the older he got, the weaker he seemed to become. Katsutoshi rubbed harder, as he had been told, until he drew fatty red blood from Katsuie's skin.

Two messengers arrived. One was Hideyoshi's retainer, the other a retainer of Nobutaka. Each carried a letter from his lord, and together they presented their letters to Katsuie.

Hideyoshi and Nobutaka, both whom were encamped at the Mii Temple in Otsu,

had written their letters personally. Both were dated from the fourteenth of the month. Hideyoshi's letter said:

I have today inspected the head of the rebel general, Akechi Mitsuhide. With this, the requiem for our late lord has ended with appropriate results. We wished to announce this quickly to all the Oda retainers residing in the northern provinces and to send a summary immediately. Needless to say, while His Lordship's passing was the cause of unbearable grief for all of us, the rebel general's head has been exposed and the rebel troops exterminated to the last man, all within eleven days of his death. We do not take pride in this, but believe that it will placate our lord's soul in the underworld, if only a little.

Hideyoshi had concluded in his letter that the outcome of the tragedy should be a matter for great rejoicing, but Katsuie did not rejoice in the least. On the contrary, the very opposite emotion appeared on his face even before he had finished reading. In his answer, however, he naturally wrote that nothing could have made him happier than Hideyoshi's news. He also emphasized the fact that his own army had gotten as far as Yanagase.

Contemplating what he knew now from both the reports of the messengers and the contents of the letters, Katsuie felt unsure about what to do next. When the messengers left, he selected a number of young men with stout legs and sent them from Otsu to Kyoto to investigate the real conditions of the area. He seemed to be resolved to stay camped where he was until he knew the full story.

"Is there any reason to think this might be a false report?" Katsuie asked. He was even more surprised than he had been when he received the tragic report about Nobunaga some days before.

If someone were to have faced Mitsuhide's army in a "requiem battle" ahead of Ka­tsuie himself, it should surely have been Nobutaka or Niwa Nagahide, or even one of the Oda retainers in the capital who might have joined forces with Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was, after all, in Sakai at the time. And, in that case, the victory would not have been won in one day and one night. No one in the Oda clan was of a higher rank than Katsuie, and he knew quite well that if he had been there, everyone would have had to look up to him as commander-in-chief in the battle against the Akechi. That would have been a matter of course.

Katsuie never considered Hideyoshi to be as insignificant as he appeared. On the contrary, he knew Hideyoshi quite well and had never made light of his abilities. Nevertheless, it was a mystery to Katsuie how Hideyoshi had been able to leave the western provinces so quickly.

Katsuie's camp was fortified the following day. Roadblocks were set up, and travelers from the capital were stopped by sentries and questioned thoroughly.

Any information was immediately relayed from the various officers to headquarters in the main camp. From the talk that was gathered from the streets, one could no longer doubt both the complete destruction of the Akechi and the fall of Sakamoto Castle. Moreover, according to some travelers, flames and black smoke had been rising in the

Area of Azuchi that day and the day before, and someone reported that Lord Hideyoshi had led a section of his army toward Nagahama.

The next day Katsuie's mind was no more at peace than before. He was still having trouble deciding what he should do next. He was distraught by shame. He had brought his army from the north this far, and he could not bear to stand aside while Hideyoshi into action.

What was to be done? The natural responsibility of the senior retainer of the Oda would have been to attack the Akechi, but that work had been finished by Hideyoshi. Under the present conditions, then, what would be his greatest and most urgent business? And what strategy would he use in the face of Hideyoshi's present upper hand?

Katsuie was obsessed by Hideyoshi. Moreover, his thoughts were strongly dominated by a dislike that bordered on outright hatred. Summoning his senior advisers, he deliberated on the subject until the late hours of the night. On the following day, couriers and secret messengers hurried out in all directions from the staff headquarters. At the same time Katsuie himself addressed a particularly friendly letter directly to Takigawa Kazumasu.

Athough he had already sent the messenger from Nobutaka back to his master carrying a special response, he now wrote and sent yet another letter to Nobunaga's son. He selected a senior retainer as the envoy and sent two more clever retainers along with him, indicating the importance of their mission.

As for contacting the other close retainers, two scribes took down Katsuie's words and then spent half a day writing out more than twenty letters. The gist of the letters was that first day of the Seventh Month they were to meet in Kiyosu to discuss such important problems as who would be the successor to Nobunaga, and how the former domain of the Akechi was to be divided.

As the initiator of the conference, Katsuie would recover some of his dignity as senior retainer. Certainly it was fully acknowledged that without him such important problems could not be resolved. With this leverage as his "key," Katsuie changed direction and turned toward Kiyosu Castle in Owari.

On the way, from what he heard and from the reports of his scouts, he discovered that many of the surviving Oda retainers had been heading toward Kiyosu before his letters had even been delivered. Samboshi, the son of Nobunaga's heir, Nobutada, was already there, and naturally the common view was that the center of the Oda clan would be there too. Katsuie, however, suspected that Hideyoshi had taken a presumptuous lead and had orchestrated this as well.

*  *  *

Every day Kiyosu Castle presented the extraordinary spectacle of magnificent processions of mounted men going up the hill to the castle gate.

The land from which Nobunaga had begun his life's work was now regarded as the conference ground where the settlement of the clan's affairs would be discussed.

On the surface, the surviving Oda retainers who had gathered claimed that they had come to pay their respects to Samboshi. No one mentioned that he had received Shibata Katsuie's letters or that he had come at Hideyoshi's invitation.

But everyone knew that a conference would soon begin in the castle. The subject of the conference was also common knowledge. Only the public notice of the day and time needed to be posted. Once the retainers had payed their respects to Samboshi, not one of them would be returning to his home province. Each had a good number of soldiers waiting at their lodgings in the castle town.

The population of the castle town had swollen tremendously, and that, combined with the midsummer heat and the town's small size, created an atmosphere of extraordi­nary confusion and noise. With horses running furiously through the streets, fights among servants, and frequent outbreaks of fire, there was no time for boredom.

Toward the end of the month Nobunaga's two surviving sons, Nobutaka and Nobuo, and his former generals, including Katsuie and Hideyoshi, arrived.

Only Takigawa Kazumasu had not yet made an appearance. Because of his absence, he was the object of frank and unfavorable criticism in the streets.