Chapter 1672: Too Late

That towering structure loomed before Higashigō Shigekata like a mountain, pressing down on the hearts of every man who had fought his way into this castle. They had been sent into this place to battle the enemy in brutal, bloody combat. No one knew how much suffering and death they had endured, no one knew how great a price they had already paid — all for the sake of fighting their way there and seizing it.

Higashigō Shigekata stared at the blurred silhouette of that building and suddenly felt it was like the moon — seemingly right before his eyes, yet as distant as ten thousand miles away.

He quickly lowered his head, abandoning such pointless thoughts, and dragged his mind back to reality.

The hunger in his belly seemed to have grown fiercer now; his entire abdomen burned as if on fire, and even his throat scorched with thirst. The feeling was simply unbearable.

He turned his head slightly, glancing left and right, hoping to find something nearby to fill his stomach and ease this hunger. But apart from broken walls, raging flames, and smoke swirling everywhere, he could make out nothing at all.

He looked at the men behind him. Most of them were wounded too, and their faces had been blackened by soot and dust, making them look almost comical.

"Do any of you… still have food on you?" he asked in a low voice. "Bring it all out."

At his command, the men around him silently exchanged glances, and then a few of them rustled and fumbled in their clothes, pulling out some food.

It was the dry flatbread commonly used as rations by the Great Han army — issued in large quantities because it was easy to carry and eat. After the Great Han army began its advance toward the Kinki region, these rations had been shipped by sea from Goryeo to Honshu Island and then distributed as supplies to Japanese auxiliaries like them serving alongside the Great Han forces.

Though this stuff was filling enough, Higashigō Shigekata could not bring himself to praise its taste; he still longed for the white rice of home. But now he could not afford to be particular. He just wanted to fill his stomach.

He gathered all the food together, then carefully divided it into a dozen or so portions and distributed them evenly to every man. This, it seemed, would be their last meal before the rations ran out entirely.

Will I ever taste the white rice of home again? The thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

Then, ignoring the dust caked thickly on the flatbread, Higashigō Shigekata shoved it straight into his mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed. The moment the food dropped into his stomach, he suddenly felt as if the flames in his belly had abruptly died down, and his limbs, sore and weak moments before, seemed to regain their strength.

Along with the blood surging upward, a strange sense of well-being rose from his abdomen. Everything around him fell away; the unceasing sounds of slaughter and the roar of gunfire all around seemed to come from another world, utterly unreal.

But this sense of well-being quickly faded. The burning in his throat grew worse. He wanted water.

Higashigō Shigekata felt for the waterskin at his waist and found it completely empty. The others seemed to be in much the same state — all were out of water. His throat felt as if it were about to crack open, and he had lost even the will and strength to issue orders to his men.

His vision was already a blur, his whole mind filled with the sound of running water, but what little reason remained told him there could be no water nearby.

In his haze, he recalled the pond he had come upon just after fighting his way into the castle. On the path across that pond, he and his men had met fierce resistance from the enemy. Many had been killed, and quite a few had fallen into the pond and drowned. There was certainly no one to recover their bodies now; they were probably still lying at the bottom of the pond, quietly swelling in the water.

Yet now, that pond, stained red with blood, appeared so dear and alluring in Higashigō Shigekata's mind. It called to him as if it were some paradise.

There is water there. There is water…

As if possessed, he unconsciously shifted his feet — but this time, not forward, but backward.

Not one of his men asked what he meant to do. They simply followed behind him in a daze.

Just then, the sound of dense footsteps came from ahead. Higashigō Shigekata stopped at once and gripped the hilt of his sword tightly, his whole body coiled and ready to strike, just as before. But compared to earlier, he was now far weaker.

Fortunately, when he made out who was approaching, Higashigō Shigekata finally breathed a sigh of relief. From the insignia on their clothes, they were soldiers of the Imperial Court.

Since the Heian period, the successive shogunates had deliberately restricted the Court, leaving it with no army of its own. The current force had been newly recruited in recent times. To distinguish themselves from the various armies, they had imitated the practice of the domain armies, who embroidered their family crests on their clothing, and stitched the chrysanthemum representing the Imperial Court onto their own garments.

So when he saw the crooked chrysanthemum patterns embroidered in yellow silk thread on their clothes, Higashigō Shigekata knew these were friendly troops approaching, and he finally set his mind at ease.

When these men caught sight of Higashigō Shigekata and his group, they too were startled by their ferocious appearance. Only after noticing the insignia on their clothes did they relax and come forward to meet them.

Yet, though they were allies, the way they looked at Higashigō Shigekata was exceedingly strange, as if they were staring at some kind of monster.

Higashigō Shigekata knew full well what he must look like right now, but he had no energy to spare for such concerns.

"Water…" He parted his nearly cracked lips and used the last of his strength to speak to them.

The soldiers were visibly flustered when they heard him, but once they understood, they cautiously passed water over to Higashigō Shigekata and his men.

Higashigō Shigekata snatched the waterskin, practically wresting it into his own hands, then raised it and gulped the water down noisily. As that life-saving sweet spring poured down his throat and into his stomach, Higashigō Shigekata felt it was so sweet it was as if he were drinking some heavenly nectar.

His strength and spirit restored, he abruptly lifted his head and thrust the waterskin back toward the man who had given it to him.

Under his glare, the man was clearly somewhat alarmed.

"What is the situation outside the castle now?" Higashigō Shigekata demanded impatiently.

After days of fighting cut off from the world, what he wanted most now was news from outside — whether good or bad, at least it would make him feel he had not been abandoned by the entire world.

"These past few days we've been assaulting this castle, sending troops in without pause… His Excellency the Ufu has been constantly urging us to take it quickly." This junior officer was clearly somewhat afraid of Higashigō Shigekata and answered him at once. "The fighting inside the castle is brutal. Every so often we have to send in reinforcements. I was sent in yesterday…"

As if I need you to tell me how brutal the fighting inside the castle is? Higashigō Shigekata sneered inwardly. These soldiers before him had clearly been recruited into the army only recently. They lacked not just experience, but even sufficient courage. Barring any surprises, they would probably soon join the heaps of corpses in this castle.

He made no effort to hide his disdain, and the junior officer across from him naturally sensed it. But instead of anger, the officer felt respect. Toward a man who had been fighting inside the castle for days, he could not help but feel a sense of awe and fear.

"You should go back and rest for now. You've been fighting long enough these past few days," he said hesitantly to Higashigō Shigekata. "The Nishi-no-maru is nearly in our hands now. You can rest inside the castle."

"The Nishi-no-maru has been taken?" Higashigō Shigekata was somewhat surprised to hear this.

But the surprise quickly faded. He himself had already fought his way this far; the other allied forces must have advanced quite far as well. At the very least, the Nishi-no-maru, where the initial breakthrough had occurred, should have been completely taken by now.

After fighting all this way, even resting for a while would be only natural.

Thinking back on his days of slaughter amidst blood and fire, Higashigō Shigekata suddenly felt as if he had passed into another life.

"Yes, it's been taken," the junior officer nodded. "The lord from the Celestial Dynasty has already given the order: once the Nishi-no-maru is fully taken and the enemy there cleared out, the cannons are to be brought in and used to bombard the castle's tenshu and other strongholds, so everyone can use the artillery fire to take the rest of the place!"

"Cannons…?" Higashigō Shigekata repeated blankly, and then his eyes suddenly lit up.

Soon they would be able to use cannon fire to continue the assault.

Having witnessed the overwhelming, devastating artillery barrage when the Great Han army first began its attack on the castle, he had become a fervent worshipper of cannon fire. During the fierce fighting inside the castle these past days, every time they encountered an insurmountable obstacle, he had longed desperately for those cannons of the Great Han army.

But he also knew that the cannons could not be brought into the castle for now; they could only rely on their own flesh and blood to force an attack and carve out a bloody path. Yet if they could have that same intense artillery fire as before, surely all these obstacles would be blasted flat.

Higashigō Shigekata both deeply feared the Great Han army that possessed such firepower and desperately longed for their aid.

"Yes, the cannons! Those siege cannons!" The junior officer beside him clearly shared the same thought. "With the Great Han's cannons, we'll defeat the enemy in no time!"

I can rest now.

Higashigō Shigekata was suddenly overcome with exhaustion, as if he could barely stand. For days he had been fighting without end, sleeping only a short while each day, or sometimes having no time to sleep at all, forcing himself on through sheer willpower. Now, fed and watered and encouraged by such good news, his taut nerves finally slackened, and he craved rest with every fiber of his being.

"You men, help him up!" Seeing him swaying unsteadily, the officer hastily ordered his men to support Higashigō Shigekata. "Take him back to rest!"

Soldiers from both sides immediately obeyed, propping up Higashigō Shigekata, and then began leading him back in the direction from which he had fought his way forward.

Higashigō Shigekata's head was swimming; he could barely make anything out. But he could still see the way these people were looking at him.

Respect, fear, and a touch of envy.

As if… they were looking at a hero.

I suppose, right now, I can be considered something of a hero. Higashigō Shigekata thought to himself.

Then before his eyes, scene after scene suddenly surfaced — the subordinates who had followed him when he first stormed the city, the comrades he had met while conquering his way along the road, and finally the image froze on that young man lying face-up on the ground.

That youth's eyes, dead yet unclosed, seemed to be staring straight back at him.

His eyes suddenly stung, and tears streamed down of their own accord.

So many people have died, yet I am still alive.

I suppose this is what it means to be a hero.

So this is what they call winning glory and building a career.

………………………………

After several days of slaughter, through the efforts of wave after wave of soldiers thrown into the fray, the siege army finally carved out a stable occupied zone within the city and withstood several counter-assaults from inside; amid the heaped dead and wounded, the defenders at last abandoned the idea of driving the siege army out.

Having achieved this phased victory, Nijo Yasumichi and Hashimoto Sanemura began petitioning Zhou Pu to increase support for the siege forces — the main strength of the siege army now consisted of their own subordinates, and the appalling losses pained them beyond measure; they desperately hoped for reinforcements to reduce their own casualties.

Although Zhou Pu did harbor the intention of bleeding them dry, he had no wish to see the campaign affected. After weighing the situation, he decided to support them by having the artillery haul the cannons into the city and then bombard the enemy from the commanding heights within the occupied zone.

Upon hearing Zhou Pu's decision, Nijo Yasumichi and the others were naturally overjoyed and immediately ordered their men to level all the roads outside and inside the city to clear a path for the cannons.

Through the efforts of the Great Han artillerymen, these heavy cannons were slowly pushed forward and finally moved into the Western Bailey of Himeji Castle.

While the cannons were being brought into Himeji Castle, the siege forces inside the city were also resting and regrouping, awaiting the next opportunity to attack.

This time they gained another batch of reinforcements — under Zhou Pu's orders, his deputy commander Tachibana Muneshige led his own troops to escort the Great Han artillery into the city, and would also serve as reinforcements within the city, preparing to join the next round of the assault.

After the offensives of recent days, and especially after the defending forces' several failed counterattacks, Zhou Pu judged that the garrison inside the city was already a spent force; a few more blows and they would surely be unable to hold on. Under these circumstances, he decided to send Tachibana Muneshige into the field, to wrap up the battle quickly and incidentally claim the military credit.

Besides, if he kept his own trusted core troops off the battlefield indefinitely, the other armies would likely begin to harbor resentment, which would be extremely detrimental to internal unity.

And so, just as Togo Shigekata was finally getting a respite, Tachibana Muneshige led his men and the Great Han army's cannons into the city.

During this period, the siege forces also reduced the intensity of their attacks, and in the rare lull between great battles, they made preparations at a feverish pace.

This strange interlude of calm also gave the defending army a temporary chance to catch their breath.

But this chance to catch their breath did not set their minds at ease.

At the very least, Itakura Shigemune, the Kyoto Shoshidai in overall command of this campaign, could not feel the slightest relief.

At this moment, he was inside the Great Keep, just as before, gazing down along the window ledge to observe the city below.

Yet the Himeji Castle before him now was utterly different from the one he had first arrived at.

The western side facing him had been wrecked beyond recognition. The original walls had collapsed everywhere; rubble and ruins lay all around. Fires still blazed in some places, smoke drifting into the sky and obscuring the ground. Everything was blackened by soot, and the once-beautiful white egrets had all turned to gray egrets.

In these past days, right before his eyes, those flames had crept slowly forward like dreadful serpents — from the walls to the Western Bailey, then deeper into the city, even reaching beneath the walls several times, coming to places not far from his Great Keep.

It was plain to see that if the fighting continued, the rest of this castle would suffer the same fate, and in the end the entire fortress would be reduced to a field of rubble.

Though the fighting had quieted somewhat these last few days, he knew full well that the enemy was neither retreating nor in disarray — they were consolidating their forces, reorganizing their troops, preparing to launch a new round of attacks. And that round of attacks would surely bring them immense, unbearable pressure once again.

All these recent days he had been constantly summoning reinforcements from outside the city to bolster the garrison within. But the garrison's casualties were enormous; the speed of the reinforcements' arrival could never keep pace with the rate of attrition, so they were forced to slowly fall back before the siege army's blade. And the enemy's occupied zone within the city grew larger and larger.

Although he knew the siege army's losses must be even greater than theirs, they seemed utterly hell-bent, paying no heed whatsoever to casualties, grinding forward inch by inch. Heaven only knew how the opposing commander could bear to face such losses.

If the fighting went on, how much longer could the city hold out? He could no longer answer that question.

"Takagi." Standing by the window, he suddenly spoke.

Takagi Kiyoshi inside the room was somewhat startled; it took him a moment to realize he was being addressed. "My lord?"

"Find a way to make contact with the Han bandits. See if we can talk once more…" Itakura Shigemune spoke in a tone that bordered on anguish. "And by the way — what exactly is the bottom line the Elder has given you? Now you can tell the Han bandits… while the city can still hold out…"

"My lord…" Takagi Kiyoshi was now utterly dumbfounded.

He had never imagined that Lord Itakura, who had been so full of high spirits, would utter such words at a time like this. This was already hinting that he should pursue peace negotiations with all his might.

But how could peace talks be so easy? To go and negotiate now would be tantamount to suing for peace. Why would the Han bandits make any concessions?

"My lord, the Han bandits' arrogance is at its peak right now. If we go to negotiate, they may not… may not even listen!"

Itakura Shigemune's face was deathly pale, his gaze wavering between the outside of the castle and Takagi Kiyoshi.

"If we keep fighting… we may not…"

Just at that moment, the earth suddenly trembled.

"Boom!"

Then, like thunder rolling in from beyond the ninth heaven, a colossal roar crashed into the Great Keep.