Excerpt: The Willow Years

Prologue – The Aftermath of Nagashino

Muto Kihei returned home a changed man. Though the air was clear and cold with autumn, he still felt harangued by the grimy dust of battle and journeying, or perhaps now it was the ghosts of his two brothers who had met their ends at Nagashino. The battle had stripped him of many things – not least among them the headship of the entire cadet branch family of the Takeda clan. That particular honour had been promised him by the famous Lord Takeda Shingen, doubtless one of the greatest warlords Japan had ever seen while he had been alive, and with the deaths of his brothers Sanada Nobutsuna and Masateru, Muto Kihei had no choice but to shed that name and take up his old one and the headship of the Sanada clan. At thirty-one, Sanada Masayuki was the oldest man in the family now. His father had died only the year before.

Masayuki was alone but for his personal retinue and the two thousand strangers of the Sanada clan’s army by the time the most familiar mountains of Shinano province came into view, and he couldn’t muster the energy to even acknowledge their presences. He was too relieved to be home at last, where maybe he could forget the defeat they had just suffered through. Autumn lay heavy and certain on the mountains they rode through, suffusing the thick forest in spatters and ripples from the top downwards so that the trees in the valleys were barely tinted yellow in some places

There was no sound but the inane chatter of birdsong and the creaking of tack on the horse he rode, the footsteps of his personal guard scraping along the path. Masayuki’s eyes remained fixed in front of him, hungry for the first glimpse of home. He would be able to take a bath at last and let the world soak away from his skin, and allow the wounds that bothered him through the repetitive motions of riding to heal over. He had been lucky to escape with scratches, when so many others had been killed by the enemy’s arquebuses.

Mochizuki Rokuro, the thin, wiry boy holding the reins of his horse, tripped on a stone, jolting Masayuki out of his weary anticipations. “Pick your feet up, boy,” he said.

Rokuro turned around, scratching at his nose with his free hand. “Yes, my lord.” Even all of his energy seemed to have left him, though perhaps that was no surprise. It was his first defeat. Receiving no further answer, Rokuro faced the front once more, showing Masayuki his dust-faded back. His clothes had been a bright, intense blue before Nagashino; the flag he carried like a burden had bore the deadly, eye-catching design of a battle messenger, though it now hung frayed and stained.

“Go straight home when we return, Mochizuki,” said Masayuki suddenly. “I will have no further need of you today.”

Rokuro looked surprised, and a little confused. “My lord?”

“You did well today,” Masayuki continued. “Carried out your duties bravely despite your age. You’ve earned a rest.”

That shook the fatigue from him, and he stood straighter as though someone had thrust the blade of a wooden sword to his back to correct his posture. “Oh! Thank you sir!” He executed a flustered bow, letting the horse pass him, and then jogging ahead again. “But-” He interrupted himself, silently, falling over his words in his haste to preserve his master’s current high regard for him. “My lord- What… What will happen now? To the Takeda. And…”

“Lord Katsuyori isn’t going to die from one defeat.” It would have been easy for Masayuki to feign incomprehension, to say, ‘What do you mean?’, but of course he knew. The first defeat shook everyone’s confidence and undermined everyone’s faith, but in the grand scheme of things, it was only one defeat in the face of a good run of victories. And if the greatest of those victories had belonged to the late Lord Shingen rather than his son, then it was surely coincidence and nothing more.

He needed to pass on to Rokuro the words that had been given to him when he had asked the same question, though he knew that this time it was different. The Oda clan, given life and ambition by their charismatic Lord Nobunaga, had changed the face of warfare forever. If only it were Shingen, and not Katsuyori, who was facing it…

When they reached the village of Ueda under the grey afternoon sky, after passing through Sanada, Maruko and Takeshi, they were greeted by excited villagers who quickly ascertained the outcome of the battle and quieted down. Masayuki rode grimly through the river of people, painfully aware of his missing brothers, who should have been heading this procession instead of him. Just as he had in the last three villages that now belonged to him, he waited as long as he could until the words threatened to swallow him, and then he released them.

“Lord Nobutsuna and Lord Masateru are dead! I, Sanada Masayuki, claim my right to the Sanada clan!” His voice rang out alone, echoing like the cry of a hawk in the mountains.

No one disputed his claim, but no one could quite bring themselves to celebrate, either.