Kyutaro was yelling himself hoarse. "It's useless to chase after them for too long. Genza! Momoemon! Stop the troops! Tell them to fall back!"
Several of his retainers rode forward and, with difficulty, restrained their troops.
“Fall back!"
"Draw up beneath the commander's standard!"
Hori Kyutaro dismounted and walked from the road onto the promontory of a bluff. From where he stood, his field of vision was unobstructed. He stared steadily out into the distance.
"Ah, he has come so quickly," he muttered.
The expression on his face showed that he had become completely sobered. Turning to his attendants, he invited them to take a look.
In the west, in an elevated area just opposite the morning sun, something was glittering on Mount Fujigane.
Was it not Ieyasu's emblem—the commander's standard with the golden fan? Kyutaro raised his voice in grief. "It's a sad thing to say, but we have no strategy for dealing with such a great foe. Our work here is finished."
Collecting his troops, Kyutaro quickly began to retreat. But at that point, four messengers from the First and Second Corps came together from the direction of Nagakute looking for him.
"The order is for you to turn back and join forces with the vanguard. This comes directly from Lord Shonyu."
Kyutaro flatly refused. "Absolutely not. We're retreating."
The messengers could hardly believe their ears. "The battle is starting now! Please turn back and join our lords' forces immediately!" they repeated, raising their voices.
Kyutaro raised his voice as well. "If I said I'm retreating, I'm retreating! We have to make sure that Lord Hidetsugu is safe. Besides, more than half of this section of the army has sustained wounds, and if our men come up against a fresh enemy, it will be a disaster. I, for one, am not going to fight a battle that I know I'll lose. You can tell that to Lore Shonyu and to Lord Nagayoshi as well!"
With those parting words, he rode off at a gallop.
Hori Kyutaro's corps ran into Hidetsugu and his surviving troops in the vicinity of Inaba. Then, setting fire to the farmhouses along the way, they defended themselves time and again from the pursuing Tokugawa troops and finally returned to Hideyoshi's main camp at Gakuden before sunset.
The messengers who had come seeking Kyutaro's aid were outraged.
"What kind of cowardice is it to run away to the main camp without even looking back at your allies' desperate situation?"
"He's clearly lost his nerve."
"Today Hori Kyutaro showed us his true character. We'll despise him if we return alive."
They now turned toward their own isolated corps, led by Shonyu, and whipped their horses' flanks in fits of rage.
Indeed, the two corps under the command of Shonyu and Nagayoshi were now only fodder for Ieyasu. The two men were as different as their abilities. The battle between Hideyoshi and Ieyasu at this time was like a grand championship match in sumo, and each man understood his opponent well. Both Hideyoshi and Ieyasu had realized early on that the situation would reach the present pass, and each knew through his own circumspection that his enemy was not a man who could be brought down by a cheap trick orshowmanship. But pity the brave and ferocious soldier who acts with a warrior's pride alone. Burning with nothing but his own will, he knows neither the enemy nor his own capacities.
Having had his camp stool set up on Mount Rokubo, Shonyu inspected the more than two hundred enemy heads that had been taken at Iwasaki Castle.
It was morning, just about the first half of the Hour of the Dragon. Shonyu still had not the slightest idea of the disaster that had occurred at his rear. Looking only at the smoking ruins of the enemy castle in front of him, he was drunk on the small pleasure that the warrior falls into so easily.
After the inspection of the heads and the recording of the meritorious deeds of the troops, breakfast was eaten. As the soldiers chewed their food, they occasionally looked toward the northwest. Suddenly something in that direction caught Shonyu's attention as well.
“Tango, what's that in the sky over there?" Shonyu asked.
The generals around Shonyu all turned to the northwest.
“Could it be an insurrection?" one suggested.
But as they continued to eat what was left of their rations, they suddenly heard some confused shouting at the foot of the hill.
As hey were wondering what it was about, a messenger from Nagayoshi ran up to them. "We've been taken off guard! They've come up behind us!" the man shouted as he prostrated himself in front of Shonyu's camp stool.
The generals felt as if a chill wind had blown clear through their armor.
“What do you mean, they've come up behind us?" Shonyu asked.
“An enemy force followed Lord Hidetsugu's rear guard."
“The rear guard?"
“They made a sudden attack from both flanks."
Shonyu stood up abruptly, just as a second messenger arrived from Nagayoshi.
“There's no time to lose, my lord. Lord Hidetsugu's rear guard has been completely routed."
There was a sudden stir of motion on the hill, and following that, the noise of short tempered commands and the sounds of soldiers flowing down the road to the bottom of the hill.
From the shady side of Mount Fujigane, the commander's standard of the golden fan shone brilliantly above the Tokugawa army. There was something almost bewitching about the symbol, and it sent a shiver through the soul of every warrior of the western army on the plain.
There is a great psychological difference between the spirit of an advancing army and of an army that has turned back. Nagayoshi, who was now encouraging his men from horseback, looked like a man who was anticipating his own death. His armor was made of black leather with dark blue threading, and his coat was gold brocade on a white background. Deer horns adorned his helmet, which he wore thrown back on his shoulders. His head was still wrapped down to his cheeks in the white bandage that covered his wounds.
The Second Corps had been resting at Oushigahara, but as soon as he heard about the Tokugawa forces' pursuit, Nagayoshi roused his men and glared at the golden fan on Mount Fujigane.
"This man is a worthy opponent," he said. "The failure at Haguro that I wash away today won't be just for me. I'll show them that I'll wipe away my father-in-law's disgrace as well."
Today he intended to vindicate his honor. Nagayoshi was a handsome man, and the death attire that he wore today seemed all too desolate for him.
"Did you deliver the report to the vanguard?"
The messenger, who had returned, brought his horse up next to his lord's, adjusted himself to his lord's pace, and made his report.
Nagayoshi, looking straight ahead, held the reins loosely as he listened. "What about the men at Mount Rokubo?" he asked.
"The men were quickly put in order, and they're now coming along behind us."
"Well then, tell Lord Kyutaro of the Third Corps that we have combined our forces and are advancing to confront Ieyasu at Mount Fujigane, so he should pull back in this direction to support us."
Just as the man galloped off, two mounted messengers hurried up with the same instructions for Kyutaro from Shonyu.
But, as has already been related, Kyutaro refused that request and the messengers returned in outrage. By the time Nagayoshi received their reports, his army had already marched through a swampy area between the mountains and was starting to climb to the top of Gifugadake in search of a good position. Before them waved Ieyasu's standard of the golden fan.