"Shut up! Don't listen to him! It's almost past the Hour of the Dog already!"

A couple of men let out war cries, and Mitsuhide and Mitsuharu were engulfed in the fangs of a wolfpack—halberds, spears, and swords on every side. The yelling of men and the clashing of weapons mingled with the roaring of the wind, and the scene was rapidly turned into the horrible maelstrom of war.

Swords broke and the pieces went flying. Spears chased fleeing sprays of blood. Hiyoshi thought it was too dangerous to be in the midst of this carnage, so he hurriedly climbed a tree. He had seen drawn swords before, but it was the first time he had been in a real battle. Would Inabayama be transformed into a sea of flames? Would there battle between Dosan and Yoshitatsu? When he understood that this was life or death, he became more excited than ever in his life.

It took only two or three dead bodies to prompt the Hachisuka men to flee into the woods.

Ya! They're running away! Hiyoshi thought, and just in case they came back, he prudently stayed put in his tree. It was probably a chestnut tree, because something pricked his hands and the back of his neck. A scattering of nuts and twigs fell to the ground, for the tree was being shaken by the storm. He despised the men of Hachisuka as a bunch of loudmouthed cowards who had been routed by only two men. He listened hard. "What’s that?" He became flustered. It was a rain of cinders like volcanic ash. He looked through the branches. The men of Hachisuka had set their fires as they fled. Two or three parts of the woods were beginning to burn fiercely, and several of the buildings behind the Jozaiji had caught fire.

Hiyoshi jumped down from the tree and started to run. If he lost even a moment, he would be burned to death in the wood. In a daze, he ran to the burning town. The sky was filled with sparks of flame—birds of fire, butterflies of fire. The white walls of Inabayama Castle, now shining red, looked closer than during the day. Red clouds of war were swirling around them.

"It's war!" Hiyoshi yelled as he ran on through the streets. "It's war! It's the end!

Sagiyama and Inabayama will fall! But in the burnt ruins, the grass will grow again. This time the grass will grow straight!"

He ran into people.

A riderless horse galloped by.

At a crossroads, refugees clustered together, shuddering in terror. Hiyoshi, carried away by the excitement, ran at full speed, screaming like a prophet of doom. Where to? He had no destination. He could not go back to Hachisuka village, that was for sure. In any event, he left without regret what he disliked most: a gloomy people, a dark lord, civil war, and a tainted culture, all within the rotting earth of a single province.

He spent the winter in his thin cotton clothes, selling needles under a cold sky, wandering wherever his feet took him. The next year, the twenty-second year of Temmon, when the peach blossoms were everywhere, he was still calling out, "Won't you buy needles? Needles from the capital! Sewing needles from the capital!"

He approached the outskirts of Hamamatsu, walking along as carefree as ever.

Another Master

Matsushita Kahei was a native of Enshu province. The son of a country samurai, he had become a retainer of the Imagawa clan, with a domain in Suruga and a stipend of three thousand kan. He was governor of the fortress at Zudayama and chief administrator of the relay station at Magome Bridge. In those days the Tenryu River was divided into Big and the Little Tenryu. The Matsushita residence was on the banks of the Big Tenryu, a few hundred yards east of Zudayama.

That day Kahei was returning from the neighboring Hikuma Castle, where he had been conferring with a fellow Imagawa retainer. The officials of the province met regularly to tighten their control over the people and to guard against invasion from neighboring clans: Tokugawa, Oda, and Takeda.

Kahei turned in his saddle and called one of his three attendants: "Nohachiro!"

The man who answered was bearded and carried a long spear. Taga Nohachiro ran up to his master's horse. They were traveling along the road between Hikumanawata and the Magome ferry. Trees lined the road, and there was a pleasant view of fields and rice paddies.

"He's not a farmer, and he doesn't look like a pilgrim," Kahei mumbled.

Nohachiro followed Kahei's line of sight. He took in the flaming yellow of the mustard flowers, the green of the barley, and the shallow water in the paddies, but did not anyone.

"Anything suspicious?"

"Over there, on the path next to that rice paddy, there's a man. Looks a little little like a heron. What do you suppose he's up to?"

Nohachiro took another look and saw that, sure enough, there was a man stooping over on the path by the paddy.

"Find out what he's doing."

Nohachiro ran off along a narrow path. It was the rule in all the provinces that anything that looked the least bit suspicious was to be investigated immediately. Provincial officials were particularly sensitive about their borders and the appearance of strangers.

Nohachiro came back and made his report: "He says he's a needle seller from Owari. He's wearing a stained white cotton smock. That's why from here he reminds you of a heron. He's a little fellow with a face like a monkey's."

"Ha, ha! Not a heron or a crow, but a monkey, eh?"

"And a talkative one, too. Likes to spit out big words. While I was questioning him, he tried to turn things around. He asked me who my master was, and when I told him who you were, he stood up and looked over this way very boldly."

"What was he doing, stooping over like that?"

"He told me he was putting up for the night at a lodging house in Magome, and he was collecting pond snails to eat this evening."

Kahei saw that Hiyoshi had gone up onto the road and was walking on ahead of diem.

He asked Nohachiro, "There was nothing suspicious about him, was there?"

"Nothing I could see."

Kahei took a fresh grip on the reins. "One shouldn't blame low-bred people for their bad manners." Then, motioning his men on with a nod of the head, he said, "Let's go." It did not take them long to catch up with Hiyoshi. Just as they passed him, Kahei looked around casually. Hiyoshi, of course, had moved off the road and was kneeling respectfully under a row of trees. Their eyes met.

"Just a minute." Kahei reined in his horse and, turning to his attendants, said, "Bring the needle seller over here." And, to no one in particular, he added with a note of wonder in his voice, "He's an unusual fellow… yes, there's something different about him."

Nohachiro decided that this was another of his master's whims and promptly ran off.

"Hey! Needle seller! My master would like a word with you. Follow me."

Kahei looked down at Hiyoshi. What was it about this short, unkempt youth in soiled clothes that he found so fascinating? It was not his resemblance to a monkey, which he had hardly taken in. He took a long, hard second look at Hiyoshi, but he could not put into words what he felt. Something that was at once complex and formless pulled at him—it was the boy's eyes! The eyes had been called the mirrors of the soul. He could see little else of value in this shriveled little creature, but the look in his eyes was so full of laughter that it was somehow fresh and seemed to contain… what? An indomitable will, or maybe a vision that knew no bounds?

He has magnetism, thought Kahei, and he decided he liked this strange-looking boy. If his assessment had been more thorough, he would have discovered, hidden beneath the traveler's black grime, ears as red as a rooster's comb. Nor did he see that, though Hiyoshi was still young, the great ability he would display in later years was already visible in the lines on his forehead, which made him look like an old man at first glance. Kahei's discernment simply did not go that far. He felt an unusual attachment toward Hiyoshi, mixed with some kind of expectation.