Chapter 19

In the mind's eye, the last hour of the Siege of Essin looked like a Kurosawa's historical movie blended with a Westerner's peplum. Imagination was all Ryou had to rely on. He could hear a deep sustained booming sound that could be felt through the ground; the tromp of feet, the clash of weapons, war cries and screams and possibly cannon fire, all so blended by numbers and distance they formed a homogeneous background noise like an earthquake. But a kilometer away in a dell near the river, Ryou couldn't even see the city's tallest buildings.

The rear guard was composed of a few hundred men watching the dam, presumably to stop the defenders from making a sortie to destroy it and drown the troops invading them over the marshy ground where the forked river had flowed. Riders regularly came and went, stopping near a group of three men with plumed helmets. They didn't spread the information on how the day was going, though, so Ryou and the rest of the infantry were left in ignorance to li