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average soldier had an almost supernatural fear of the ninjas, with
good reason.
Nobunaga was, it seemed, a skeptic. He had had years of ninja
advice, and assumed he knew it all. He thought to eradicate the
last of the line by this direct assault.
He would have a harsh education.
*
The siege was horrendous. The numerical strength of the ninjas
was small, while the shogun's army was the mightiest ever massed
in that period of Japan's history. But the Black Castle was a virtually
impregnable fortress, and the ninjas were the most skilled
siege and antisiege artists known.
Nobunaga was the first in Japan to appreciate the value of
firearms. He had a corps of musket men, using the new Portuguese
imported weapons. But the muskets were cumbersome things,
heavy, each requiring a long forked stick like a tripod to support
the barrel, because it was impossible to hold it up by the arms
alone. The warrior had to be strapped to the weapon to prevent
the recoil from sending him tumbling. Embossed in gold and silver
filigree, the musket was more a work of art than a field weapon.
It took a long time to set it up.
The ninjas, on the other hand, had special rapid-firing crossbows,
capable of penetrating the armor of the musketeers even
from the distance they were separated. They blanketed the sky
with poisoned arrows; the slightest scratch was fatal. The ninja
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archers were protected by special leather shields erected on frames,
neru kawa, so that the musketballs did very little damage. And
they could shoot their missiles high into the air, like mortar shells,
negating the shields of the enemy.
There would come a day when firearms were more effective
than bows and crossbows. But not in this century.
The shogun's men tried to use a battering ram to break down
the doors. The ninjas used catapults to lob homemade powder
bombs on them, nullifying the effort explosively.
Nobunaga directed the construction of a mighty siege engine,
a tower as tall as the wall, shielded from fire arrows and bombs. It
was on stout wheels, and capable of carrying enough soldiers to
hold a beachhead on the ramparts. But the ninjas made a night
foray and planted a cache of gunpowder within it, blowing it to
pieces.
The soldiers tried to tunnel under the wall, but the castle was
built atop a mountain, the foundations sunk into bedrock in all
but a few secret places, impervious to any tunneling that could be
accomplished within a year.
The shogun had many troops. He tried a human-sea tactic,
heedless of the great numbers lost so long as some few got through
to scale the walls and open the way. But only a few paths were
available up the mountain, and above those were perched huge
boulders, readily tipped to roll crushingly down. The vibrations of
their irresistible descent set off small avalanches that further decimated
the attackers. There were also pits, cunningly concealed,
with poisoned stakes mounted in the bottom; only a supremely
cautious approach could negate these traps, and caution was impossible
under the gaze of the ninja archers.
But for those who did win through to the base of the walls,
scrambling over the corpses of their companions, a special treat
had been prepared: tremendous wooden vats filled with human
excreta, dead animals, scraps of spoiled food, garbage, manure,
and other organic refuse. It had been stewed in urine for several
weeks, until it simmered with its own heat of decomposition and
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bubbled bilious gases from its fulsome mass. This was poured on
the heads of the soldiers, and the streams of foul-smelling slurry
mixture coated everything with nauseous slime-walls, ground,
and men.
The soldiers fled in disgust and panic, as experience had shown
them that the slightest wound, the most minor cut or scrape or
break in the skin, became infected. Soon it festered, blood poisoning
developed, and the sequence terminated in the most painfully
bloated death. The retreating men were hardly welcomed by their
cleaner comrades.
A cavalry charge was met by two giant bears suddenly uncaged.
The bears rose high on their hind feet, swiping at soldiers and
panicking the horses, who reared and threw their riders. The bears
were finally killed by archers from a distance, but the carnage had
been terrible.
The ninjas also loosed fierce dogs upon the enemy camp at
night, to rove among the sleeping men tearing out throats. Deadly
vipers slithered into the tents, striking at will, almost impossible
to locate and kill. Hundreds of ferrets scurried through, lighted
firebrands tied to their tails, igniting hundreds of structures and
wreaking havoc throughout the camp.
Nevertheless, the samurais persevered, for they were the ultimate
dedicated soldiers. They threw ladders against the walls and
scaled them. They were met at the top by the naginata, a kind of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]