"Find cover!" shouted Lady Eboshi as Asano's archers raised their bows, notched their arrows, and aimed their shots towards the apex of the walls. Two hundred townspeople scrambled behind houses, beneath the ramparts, or adjacent a wagon loaded with barrels of rice and crates of supplies that ranged from cloth to lamp oil. The familiar twang of bow strings rang. One hundred and twenty archers released the taut sinew strands without harmony, watching as the iron heads took to the sky and swept down like an osprey seeking fish in a river. Lady Eboshi kept her head low, listening as the metallic teeth of the arrows made plunking noises as they planted themselves in the wall, snapped against the ground, and stuck into the buildings. Toki took initiative. She popped up like a gopher and pointed her rifle at a desultory unit, releasing the flint trigger. A cloud of smoke and soot erupted from the barrel, pierced by the untrackable bullet that struck not an archer, but an infantryman holding one of six ladders built to ascend the walls of Irontown. Blood and bits of flesh splattered onto the dirt road as the bullet entered through his right eye and expelled itself through his left shoulder. Gasps and shocked cries arose from those flanking the fallen soldier, though Shohei's booming voice overpowered them as he commanded order amongst the ranks. None saw the soldier's killer as Toki ducked behind the bulwark.
"I got one of them!" she hissed in perverse joy.
"Don't do that again," Lady Eboshi ordered in a hushed tone. "All it takes is one stray arrow to come your way, and then you'll drop just like that man you killed."
"All right, sorry, Milady," Toki apologized. "I just couldn't help myself, you know?"
"It's fine; just don't attack unless I give the call."
Another hundred and twenty arrows rained from the sky, scattered like seeds during spring, but none managed to strike a single townsperson in a fatal or non-fatal manner. Their cover proved impenetrable. Shohei rode rank to rank, eyes focused on the front gate without once shifting from the great obstacle that stood between him and the victory he desired and his daimyo demanded. He ordered a third assault, but without the possibility of visual confirmation, he relied on his hearing to inform whether or not the now three hundred and sixty total arrows fired struck even a single person. No screams sounded. The lone shriek throughout the battle, now five minutes passed as the third blanket of arrows fell, came from his forces, the death knell of one of his soldiers and the horrified wails of those around the carnage. Many hadn't seen blood in such quantities. They all saw blood several times before in their lives, the result of a cut brought upon by broken glass or damaged farming equipment, but none save for several samurai witnessed a man's eye torn apart by an iron bullet, or the aftermath of an exit wound that left a gaping hole in the fallen warrior's shoulder.
"Ladders, advance!" Shohei ordered. Ploddingly, the fifty-nine men marched toward the walls, awaiting the welcomed twang of bow strings from the archers behind them. They began their march one thousand feet from the wall, dragging their heels as they kept their heads low. Ten soldiers carried one ladder, five on each side, save for one group who lost one man on the left side to an aimless bullet. That group that marched one man short trudged at the slowest pace, ignoring the grinding of dirt behind them as other fighters dragged away the corpse, leaving a clear path for the army to march.
"Archers, prepare the fourth attack!" Shohei commanded.
"Everyone, get ready to fire once those arrows stop falling!" Lady Eboshi directed. One hundred of the two hundred gathered militia had bows, and five carried rifles: Toki, Asuka, Gonza, Hirooki, and Eboshi herself.
A storm poured above Irontown, releasing not rain, but arrows that pelted the rooftops of fearful men and women, yet once again failed to draw blood or budge those still hiding behind cover. Their clunks and pops replaced the gentle patter of raindrops, and the reverberation of the bow strings took place of thunder as the deadly monsoon subsided. Hunters notched their arrows. Eboshi and those with rifles readied themselves to jump and fire at the invaders, bullets loaded and gunpowder packed by iron rods. Toki's fingers trembled.
"Rifles, fire!" Eboshi shouted. Her order reached the ears of those beyond the walls, but it was past their physical ability to outrun the impending projectiles. Gonza, Asuka, Hirooki, Toki, and Lady Eboshi sprung from their positions and turned the barrels towards the archers, ignoring the more distant attackers carrying ladders, as they posed no threat. A roar of five lions ripped through the air as five rifles fired in tangent, soaring with a speed that could tear the wings off an eagle and leave in its wake the wind in a race. Asuka's bullet tore through one man's skull and embedded itself in another's chest, taking two soldiers from Asano's forces. Hirooki and Gonza shot the same man by coincidence, but Gonza's bullet cut through another's abdomen while Hirooki's blasted into fragments as it struck his target's shoulder. Lady Eboshi's shot managed to strike an archer in the neck. Toki's fell three. Although the rifles did not possess tremendous accuracy, the proximity of the archers in their cluster mad landing a shot an easier task than spearing fish packed into a crate.
"Archers, fire!" Eboshi called. There stood thirty archers on the wall, many of whom once hunted with a bow, making them far more proficient than the farmers and craftsmen who desperately learned how to wield a bow under duress. Some had white cloth masking their faces save for their eyes, the one piece of clothing that indicated they acted as one of Irontown's several dozen guards. Two women archers had such a hood covering most of their faces, both of whom guarded Lady Eboshi's home when they were not needed to defend the town from samurai and peasant soldiers. They and the twenty-eight other archers raised their notched bows and sent their arrows towards the sky, poised to land on the archers firing upon Irontown. The soldiers carrying ladders had not yet stepped into the range of the archers defending Irontown, and Lady Eboshi didn't want them attacked until she specifically ordered their demise. Half of the arrows fired from the ramparts struck an invader. Six immediately killed their intended target, while the others that pierced through flesh caused a non-fatal wound, some grievous, others painful but manageable. Blood trailed down their tunics and coagulated on the ground or between their toes.
The thirty archers standing atop the wall ducked below the wooden bulwark, readying their next shot as they awaited Lady Eboshi's order. Eboshi's eyes peeked over the wall, though most of her face hid under the wide brim of her hat, and tracked the footsoldiers approaching with ladders in hand. Her rifle and those of the other four weighed with gunpowder and an iron slug ready to fire. Despite this, she didn't give the order to attack, and instead remained silent and still as her narrowed eyes watched as the unwitting infantrymen approached the bridge. Sitting atop the bridge was a heavy layer of soil that hadn't appeared until a week before the attack, and it remained undisturbed by the townsfolk. Those who did need to cross the bridge instead balanced themselves on the edge, avoiding the middle for fear of triggering the landmines by mistake. However, despite what she warned them, however, the traps she laid did not activate when stepped on, only when shot. Once the the first group of invaders walked halfway across the bridge, Eboshi raised the barrel of her rifle and aimed it at a board painted black, the mark that a mine lay beneath the panel.
"Fire!" she ordered the four. The five barrels exploded at once, but each fired five different directions. Eboshi's remained on the blackened board, a shot that would destroy the bridge, but it was a shot she took without hesitation. Gonza, Hirooki, Toki, and Asuka's targets proved more difficult to hit, and Toki's bullet struck nothing but a pebble in the road that disintegrated when hit. As for the rest, they aimed at tiny depressions in the ground marked by small flowers that wouldn't grow in the road even if watered each day, for the soil on the artificial path proved too barren to nurture a plant. Buried beneath the indents of dirt were more mines. Hirooki and Asuka triggered the blast of two mines several feet from each other, while Gonza's shot lit a spark among the gunpowder filled mine in between four groups of archers.
An eruption of fire only a dragon could match flared from the struck mines, rupturing the earth as the hot iron bullets detonated the metallic canisters packed with gunpowder. The blast sent a plume of dirt and soil into the air, creating a brown cloud that burst the moment the projectiles hit. Screams, shrieks, and cries of horror and agony wailed from the dusty veil, some of which silenced the very next second. Shrapnel tore tunics into scraps of cloth unfit to cover ants, rended bows and ladders into chunks of wood useful only as tinder, and shredded the flesh of the over one hundred men. Red specks mixed with the bits of earth. Though she built the rifles to hit with an accuracy no bowman could match, Lady Eboshi's eyes widened at the precision of the bullets, a lethal pinpoint keenness that she didn't expect out of even her best gunsmiths.
Shohei's expression did not change beneath his mask, though the loss of several dozen men caused his teeth to clench behind his lips. The sight alone caused those in the army to glance at one another with the same worried look and questioning eyes, the ones who believed that more landmines lay in wait for another victim. He had none of it. His hand flew towards the sky.
"Archers!" Shohei bellowed. "Prepare the burning arrows!"
"What?" Kota hissed, quiet enough so that the sound failed to exit his helmet. His jaw came close to dropping at the command issued by Shohei, as he abandoned his plan mere seconds after they met a challenge. He didn't express his disbelief. Instead, he watched as the bowmen paused and gathered the oil flasks carried from camp, enough to light the shafts of sixty arrows, an amount not enough to cover a quarter of the wall. Slick, tan liquid dripped from the cloth wrapped around the arrows, placed to the flames wouldn't extinguish in an instant, and roared to life when auxiliary soldiers smacked flint and stone to create sparks. Tiny fires leapt from each arrow. The crimson and golden flames did little to bring Kota a shred of optimism, as he doubted the fires would make it to the wall before flickering into nothing but smoke.
"Fire!" Shohei ordered. The unit captains echoed his command, and the archers beneath them fired. Sixty tails of fire took to the sky, streaks of red against the cerulean canvas above, and descended with their tapered heads towards the wooden wall and timber buildings of Irontown. Those on the ramparts and below caught sight of the flaming arrows. They scrambled for shelter as they shouted for others to do the same, retreating from the walls for the protection of storehouses and homes. Lady Eboshi pressed her back against the firm side of the parapet, leaning her head down as the arrows plunked against objects unseen by her eyes that saw nothing but the blue of her dress.
Though the arrows flew far, many failed to clear the remnants of the bridge, instead falling into the waters amongst the splinters, shrapnel, and fragments of bone. Several plugged into the wall, but so sparse was the array that the fires didn't spread. Three flew over the walls, two of which harmlessly snapped in two when they struck the ground, but one one set ablaze the straw roof of a nearby hut. The leaping tails of scarlet and orange caught Eboshi's eye as she peeked from her crouched position to assess the damage. Although the fire didn't immediately spread over the entirety of the rooftop, its capability of spreading to other buildings prompted Eboshi to hand out an order.
"Get the fire out, now!" Eboshi called from the ramparts. "We can't let it spread to the other houses; and make sure everyone inside is safe."
Townspeople closest to the slowly growing fire took action, dashing to the storehouses to find empty buckets and barrels brimming with water gathered from the lake. They left their protective cover and hurried through the streets. An elderly man, two adolescent girls, and an adult woman approaching forty fled the house as the tongues of the flames crept towards the edge of the roof. The old man hobbled while the woman lifted the children into her arms and retreated to find shelter in a structure closer to the town's center. Smoke ascended from the burning straw. Shohei, whom remained determined to dent Irontown's seemingly unbreakable resolve, viewed the smoke as a signal, one that told him to launch another flurry. Lady Eboshi's transfixion on the threat of an inferno shattered when the soft, harrowing twang of sixty bow strings sounded from the sixty archers whose arrows had no oil coat, and though notched, awaited release.
Those who remained behind their cover remained unharmed. Several of those who broke from their protective shelter to fetch water or assist the old man found themselves in an arrow's path. One man handed a bucket of water to a woman on the ramparts, and not three seconds later the same arm that gripped the wooden handle tore open when an arrow cut through his forearm. He cried out as the pain caused his red coated arm to tremble and shake, almost numb from the searing, piercing agony inflicting the bone-cutting laceration. Another man and a woman scurried down the walkway to help him, but they then saw that others perhaps met a worse fate.
A woman who went to fetch a bucket of water collapsed without so much a groan when an arrow plunged into her left breast, burrowing into her heart. She fell limp. The bucket in her right hand crashed onto the ground and spilled its contents onto the dirt street, mixing with her blood to turn the soil into mud. Not far ahead of the lifeless woman, an arrow struck a man who helped the feeble elderly man out of the enemy's range. Death did not claim him as swift it did the woman behind him, as the arrow stabbed through his stomach and left him writhing in pain, screaming in a pain that twisted his mind, so much so that he couldn't form words that cried for help. He fell unconscious from the shock and blood loss, quivering a few moments before he lay still. Eboshi's jaw clenched.
"Everyone return to cover once that fire's out; hurry!" she ordered from the ramparts. The townpeople grew frantic and clumsy in their work, one man spilling the bucket of water handed to him, another almost slipping off the edge of the roof as he went to dump water on the fast-growing flames. He and a woman who managed to make it to the maturing inferno doused the blaze, extinguishing three-quarters of the fire, and the area they covered refused to light. A coat of water on the normally dry straw kept the fire from growing, buying a third man the time to reach the remaining flames and hurl water over the staggles of burning tails. Their efforts, however, did not kill the billowing tower of smoke in time before another storm of arrows rained down upon Irontown. Those within the walls scrambled for cover, rolling beneath carts and hugging the walls as they waited out the brief storm, one that seemed longer than a winter's night. Lady Eboshi's face contorted further from its usual confident poise as four others fell to Asano's arrows.
"Infantry unit six; retrieve the ladders!" Shohei ordered. Sixty foot soldiers armed with spears and knives dissolved their formation to retrieve whatever ladders remained usable. Most lied on the ground in splinters, their rungs shattered and useless, though four remained sturdy enough to support the weight of an armed man. Forty of the sixty men grabbed the reliable ladders, and those twenty who didn't carry one side instead hurried to the walls. Rifle barrels peeked over the walls and let loose five bullets. Four struck a man while one ricocheted off the ground and struck a distant tree, and of the four men, three died immediately. The one man who remained on his feet winced as a searing bullet grazed his shoulder, nearly causing him to drop the ladder, but he kept strong and marched over his three dead comrades along with the other infantry.
Arrows from the wall cast patches of shadows over the infantrymen, converging into a single broken dark blanket that landed in and around the soldiers. Most that did hit concentrated on the group of twenty that advanced ahead of those carrying the ladders, while a few other projectiles struck those behind them. They traded barrages with the archers under Shohei's command, though Shohei's men didn't manage another casualty. The archers fighting for Irontown knew they weren't going to drive away the soldiers standing outside the walls. Their focus lay on the group advancing towards Irontown, the one that began moving with sixty and now stood at the bridge with forty-six.
"Up the walls; without fear, advance!" cried the commander of the unit. He boasted a scar on his right shoulder from one of the arrows, his beige tunic stained scarlet from the unfortunate strike. Ladder in his left hand, spear in his right, he advanced with the first unit to march over the ruined bridge. Though much of it now rested in the lake, enough remained for the men to maneuver over the broken planks and scattered soil, albeit at such a pace that a turtle would mock. Shohei, mind clear of the rageful haze brought on by the initial blast, cursed under his breath. Arrows cascaded from the walls, pouring onto those crossing the ravaged planks. His plan in more shambles than the bridge, Shohei clenched his horse's reins and raised his free hand, eyes down as Irontown's defenders caused his plan to burn away in only ten minutes. A disaster on hand, he made an impulse decision and decided to abandon his current strategy in favor of one of his substitutes.
"Retreat from the walls and return to position!" Shohei roared. "Everyone, prepare to return to camp! We will return here within two days!"