Don't Just Charge In!
Stop charging at me like that!
Life as a commoner in the medieval era was, in a word, grinding poverty. Getting even two meals a day was considered a blessing. And it was into this bleak existence that rumors began to spread around the Fujiwara kokushi's estate near Iwami.
Word had it that anyone who worked the mine got breakfast and lunch, plus a daily wage on top.
"Ha! There's no such place."
"They're probably just rounding people up to work them as slaves."
Few believed it, but before long, more and more people were slipping away to observe from a distance — and coming back with stories. The children who'd gone were filling out, their clothes growing cleaner by the day.
Clothes, no less. Not the ragged scraps these people draped over themselves when their old ones tore, but real clothes.
"Let's go. We'll starve to death here anyway."
One by one, people slipped away under the cover of night.
The Fujiwara family, of course, knew what was happening.
"Yes, we've sent plenty of spies in?"
"Indeed, my lord. Several hundred by now."
"All that remains is for the soldiers to arrive from the capital."
But they, too, worried whether those soldiers could even make it there. They needed to come by sea, and the fleet simply couldn't put out at all.
Daehan's ominous black warships were simply too powerful.
"For now, focus on gathering intelligence."
"Yes, my lord!"
Unfortunately, the spies kept defecting — and once they defected, the infiltrators left behind began getting rounded up.
As the flow of intelligence dwindled to a trickle, the Fujiwara household finally realized what was going on.
"Ghh...!"
"Perhaps we should stop sending people, my lord?"
"How many have fled, then?"
It was the first time the man had ever asked — commoners had always been beneath his notice, their numbers meaning nothing to him.
"That is...."
"What is it?"
"Roughly half of them have already left."
"Urk...!"
His subordinate didn't say the rest, but half was only the beginning. Nearly all the young people were gone. The ones who remained were overwhelmingly the old, determined to die in the land of their birth.
It had been a long while since children could be seen anywhere in the vicinity. Everyone understood that this region would soon simply cease to exist.
"What am I to do?"
"I believe you must fight, my lord — prepared to retreat or to die."
"Haah..."
His son had been made a eunuch, and two of his four remaining daughters had died in accidents. He himself had grown too old, and that weighed on him as well.
"Where is Hirohito?"
"That is..."
"Is he off torturing some woman again?"
"Yes, my lord..."
Since the accident, Hirohito had gradually turned savage and cruel. It was far from the first or second time he had seized a woman, tortured her mercilessly, and killed her.
The parts of the body that proclaimed a woman's womanhood — her breasts, her sex — he mutilated with such horrifying brutality that no one could bear to look. The mutilated corpses were quietly buried in the earth or burned to ash without a trace, time and time again.
Perhaps that was part of why people had fled. Officially, word was put about that it was the work of ghosts, but...
Just as he was agonizing over what to do, welcome news arrived.
"A messenger has come from Kyoto, my lord!"
"Well? What did they say!"
"They say an army can be dispatched next year!"
"Excellent! At last, my vengeance is within reach!"
What they didn't know was that the capital had already sent troops not once, but four times. Each had turned back for lack of provisions once the roads were underway.
Unless one traveled by sea, reaching Iwami from the capital was a monumental undertaking. A man on foot might manage it, but carts were needed to carry food — and carts needed roads.
"My lady, it appears an army is coming."
"How large?"
"They haven't arrived yet, so I couldn't find out beyond that."
We'd sent out spies of our own, after all — double agents. We fed them bits of our own information while they ferried back everything else.
"At these numbers, you're confident no matter how many come?"
"Some may get hurt, but I'm certain not a single one of ours will die."
We'd made plenty of preparations in the meantime. The villagers would stay hidden and put out fires if any broke out, while we focused on nothing but the fight from the walls.
Two hundred at the port, five hundred at the mine — it looked thin on paper, but against an enemy charging ladders and bows, armed with nothing but gunpowder ordnance, this would be more than enough.
Truthfully, without the bombs we couldn't have held them at bay at close quarters, so it was a stroke of luck. The Fist Potatoes were going to put on a spectacular show.
"Fight it exactly as planned. Nothing improvised."
"Yes, my lady!"
Rifles at long range, canister shot at mid range, and once they closed in — shotguns and bombs.
The plan was to simply bar the gates with iron bars once battle began. We assumed they'd try to smash through.
"Keep the villagers from panicking, and get them evacuated to the port ahead of time. It's fewer people there, and safer anyway."
"Understood."
"The children and the elderly especially — send them first."
Once the gunpowder started going off it would get deafening. Then again, I did wonder if the smoke would get so thick we wouldn't be able to see what we were shooting at.
"You built the roofs sturdy, yes?"
"Of course. No need to worry, my lady. The wooden planks may splinter, but the iron bars will hold."
Our single greatest worry was the rain — which was exactly why we'd built roofs to shield the guns from it.
We'd probably need to start making at least primitive cartridges soon, even with plenty of misfires. Now that it's actually upon us, I'm an absolute wreck of nerves.
「Doom! Doom! Doom!」
"Looks like they're here."
"Why on earth do they announce their position like that as they march?"
"Beats me. Shouldn't you be sneaking up on someone?"
"If it were me, I'd have come quietly and started by blowing off a gate."
Wrong, actually? Knowing you, you'd blow off the whole wall first, gate or no gate. That's a perfectly reasonable suspicion.
"What now, another envoy?"
Someone was riding up again under a white flag.
"Don't go leaping off for no reason."
「Flinch」
He was about to jump down again, wasn't he? A repeat offender, this one.
Down below, he spent a good long while talking with the friend stationed at the gate, then turned back. The fellow at the foot of the wall came up and relayed the message.
"They're demanding our surrender, my lady."
"Why? Looks to me like we're going to win."
"The other side apparently doesn't see it that way."
"Let them talk. They come at us, we just shoot them dead in the order they arrive."
"They say the assault begins tomorrow."
What is this now? Are they announcing a siege?
"Don't believe a word of it! They're not the type to honor anything."
"Yes, my lady! We'll stay sharp."
Trust the Japanese to keep their word. Sure, some ordinary folk looked trustworthy enough, but those blockheads at the top weren't.
「Waaaargh!」
"See? Told you what they were like."
At least nights like this meant no sleep was wasted — I could keep watch straight through until dawn.
"Shall we give them a proper welcome?"
「Bang! Bang!」
We fired off a pistol salute that doubled as an alarm clock for the kids. The reports were surprisingly loud.
"Enemy sighted!"
"Battle stations!"
Why do those men insist on screaming at the top of their lungs as they charge? If you're planning a surprise attack, you come quietly.
Still, it had its uses! The vanguard made it right up to the foot of the wall.
"They're right below us! Fist Potatoes first, we'll talk afterwards!"
「Tatak-tatak-tatak」
Then they lit the braziers we'd built alongside the walls in advance. A lighter would have been lovely, but since we didn't have one, igniting the Fist Potatoes was an irritatingly laborious affair.
"Grenadiers! Throw at will!"
"Throw!"
「KABOOM! Ka-BLAM! KRAKA-BOOM」
The fortress wasn't built on a grand scale, so even a modest volley of grenades swept the entire approach clear.
"Gwaaaagh!"
"Aaargh! What is this thing?!"
"Urgh..."
"I... I'm alive?"
The dead couldn't even manage a scream, but the lucky survivors could be heard muttering below.
And at this range, they might as well have been dead men talking.
"Artillery — fire!"
「BANG! BANG! KRAK-BOOM! BANG!」
We'd dub this opening volley "negotiation," but honestly, what kind of negotiating weapon vaporizes the other party the instant you fire it?
Dozens of lead balls sprayed in every direction. Take one at close range and you were reduced to ribbons.
"Cough, cough."
"Whoa, that's a lot of smoke, isn't it?"
"It really is. We'd best wait a bit between volleys."
"Everyone keep your heads down. Don't go catching a stray arrow."
The smoke was thicker than I'd expected — thick enough that it blinded us as much as them.
「Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat! Thwip-thwip」
"Hah. Doesn't look like their arrows have the range."
"I suppose they can't judge distance in the dark."
Arrows were smacking into the wall, but low — if our soldiers had still been manning the parapets, we'd have had a fine view of the enemy shooting their own men in the back of the head. A shame we had to miss it.
"Waaaargh!"
"Why do they keep yelling like that? I genuinely want to know."
Seriously, though? All that shouting lets us pin their position and return fire or lob whatever we like.
「Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!」
And we were happily plinking away with pistols too? Cleaning the barrel after every shot, though — that part was a real chore.
Black powder's eternal plague, nothing to be done about it. At least we only had to swab after six to twelve rounds, so fair enough.
「Tang! Ta-dang! Tang! Tang」
Our kids were firing whenever the mood struck them, matching the enemy's noise shot for shot.
"Hey, do we have any of those? Fire pots."
"A few, my lady."
"If we throw those, wouldn't they light the field up nicely?"
"Oh! Excellent idea."
I had a few myself, but the kids could throw theirs a good deal farther.
"Throw!"
「KRAKA-BOOM」
Another potato bomb arc, and another swath of Japanese soldiers swept off the field. At this rate — an occasional throw from us — they'd collapse on their own before we even had to try.
It was, truly, a vicious battle. On their side, men died the moment they stepped forward; on ours, we battled nothing but drowsiness.
And when dawn finally broke — oof, look at the field in front of the fortress. Corpses as far as the eye could see.
"Everyone! We can see now! Fire at will! The faster we clear this up, the faster we sleep!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
And so the rifle volleys began in earnest. The enemy could see us now too, and closed in to loose their arrows — which was precisely their undoing. Every man who advanced dropped to rifle fire.
"I never imagined a battle could be this stress-free..."
"Blowing demolition charges at the mine is more fun, honestly."
"Why won't those men fall back? Half of them are dead already."
Were they truly planning to fight to the last man? This wasn't some battle for the survival of their entire race — it was a border skirmish, wasn't it?
Why were they throwing their lives away like this? The problem was those nobles sitting on horseback behind the lines, spectating.
"Anyone here a particularly good shot?"
"Hmm, we're all about equally decent, my lady?"
I'd have to pick out the best marksmen later and start training snipers. That'd have to wait for rifled barrels, though.
"A few of you — keep your eyes on those men on horseback at the rear."
"They look like the high-ranking ones. Just sitting there watching."
"Yeah. Rather distasteful, isn't it?"
"Those must be the ones who sent the letter, then?"
Not directing anything, not commanding anything — just watching?
"Yeah. If it weren't for them, their soldiers wouldn't be dying by the hundreds for nothing."
When daylight revealed the carnage, the three Fujiwara men found themselves struck speechless.
"What in the world..."
They had heard the thunder roll through the night, had heard the screams of men — but they had never imagined anything like this.
Men were, quite literally, bursting apart. The blood they had shed pooled across the ground, and it felt as though the earth itself had been dyed red.
The thirteen thousand soldiers they had brought were troops scraped together by the barest force of will.
"We must withdraw the army, my lord!"
"Absolutely not!"
Even their weapons had their limits, surely — but could they really come all this way only to give up now?
Half their force seemed dead already, and to retreat now would be true defeat. Go home like this, and nothing awaited them but death.
"No! We press the assault. Even these foes must have an end to them!"
One point of misunderstanding here: unlike a bow, a firearm demands almost no strength to fire. What exhausted Daehan's soldiers wasn't the fighting — it was the sleepiness...
"Retreat now and death is all that awaits us anyway!"
「Hiss — thud」
As Fujiwara Yoriyoshi bellowed, nearly rabid with frenzy, something came flying and buried itself in his temple.
His body grew heavy, and strength drained from his limbs.
Ah. What's happening? My body is so heavy. My eyelids are so heavy...
In the battle of thirteen thousand Japanese against five hundred Daehan soldiers, Fujiwara Yoriyoshi's life came to an end just like that.
The Daehan casualties, for the record: zero. However many scrapes and bruises there may have been...