For a full three heartbeats, Jiro did nothing but stare. The cacophony of the battle, the screams of his clansmen, all of it faded into a dull roar. In front of him stood Akiyama Takeru, his face smeared with mud and blood, his shoulder slumped from injury, yet his eyes burned with an authority that was utterly alien.
Bring the mountain down?
Every instinct, honed by thirty years of warfare, screamed that his young lord had lost his mind to battle-fever. It was a tragic, but not uncommon, end for young warriors. They were in a desperate melee, and Takeru wanted to take eleven of their remaining fighters on a fool's errand up a cliff face. It was suicide.
But the look in Takeru-sama's eyes... It was not the glaze of madness. It was the sharp, cold glint of polished steel. It was the look of a man who saw not chaos, but a sequence of events he could control. Desperation was a powerful motivator. With a guttural curse that was half-prayer, half-surrender, Jiro made his choice.
"You heard him!" he bellowed, his voice cracking through the din. "Saito! Kenji! Mori! You're with me! Gather every length of rope you can find! Move as if a demon is chasing you!"
The chosen men, all seasoned warriors with grim faces, hesitated for only a second before Jiro's fierce glare compelled them into motion. They stripped rope from their packs and from the bodies of the fallen. Within a minute, a small, bewildered, but obedient group stood before Takeru.
"This way," Takeru commanded, not waiting for an answer. He turned and began scrambling up the steep, muddy incline of the pass, using his good arm to grip roots and rocks for leverage.
The climb was treacherous. Loose stones skittered under their waraji sandals, and the sounds of the brutal fight below seemed to mock their ascent. Takeru moved with an unnerving purpose, his eyes scanning the terrain not like a warrior, but like a master builder assessing a foundation. He ignored several large, precariously balanced boulders that seemed like obvious choices, much to the confusion of his men.
"Here," he finally said, stopping at a point a hundred feet above the fray. Below them, the Izumo warriors, sensing victory, had pushed forward in a dense, confident mass. They were a perfect target.
In front of Takeru's chosen spot was a massive, ancient pine that had fallen years ago, its root ball ripped from the earth. The log, thick as three men, was wedged against a series of smaller rocks, acting as a natural dam for a wide fan of scree and smaller boulders behind it.
"The ropes," Takeru ordered, breathing heavily. "Anchor them to these trees up here." He pointed to a trio of sturdy, living pines. "Loop the other ends around the log. Not that way," he snapped at a warrior fumbling with a knot. "Give it two full wraps. We need friction."
The men worked in confused silence, their minds unable to grasp the strategy. They were trying to pull a log that weighed more than a small house.
"My lord," Jiro panted, his skepticism returning. "Even with all of us, we cannot move this."
"We aren't going to move it, Jiro," Takeru corrected, his eyes fixed on the battle below. "We are going to shift its balance. We will use those small rocks as a fulcrum. We are not pulling it down. We are pulling it sideways."
He spoke with such simple, academic certainty that Jiro could only nod, his mind reeling. Fulcrum? Sideways? The concepts were strange, but the confidence behind them was hypnotic.
Takeru positioned the men, each holding a rope. He waited, his patience a stark contrast to the frenzied battle below. He watched as the Izumo commander, a large man in distinctive horned armor, urged his elite troops forward for the final, crushing blow. The concentration of enemy soldiers in the kill zone was now at its peak.
"NOW!" Takeru roared, his voice cutting through the wind. "PULL! ALL OF YOU! HEAVE!"
Ten warriors and one injured heir threw their entire weight into the ropes. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a deep groaning sound echoed from the ancient log. The smaller rocks beneath it shifted, grinding against the mountainside. With a sound like a giant's sigh, the massive deadfall pine slid sideways just a few inches.
It was enough.
The dam was broken.
The mountainside seemed to exhale. A low rumble became a deep, cracking roar as the wide fan of rock and scree behind the log was unleashed. It was not a simple rockslide; it was an unstoppable tide of rock and timber, a river of destruction that surged down the steep slope.
Where the Izumo vanguard had been a solid wall of shields just moments before, there was now only a churning pit of desperation. Men clawed their way out from under fallen comrades, their disciplined shouts replaced by raw screams as they scrambled over the dead and dying. The roar of the slide faded, leaving a thick, choking dust that filled the air. The quiet was soon pierced by the sharp cries and low moans of the crushed and broken.
On the Akiyama side of the pass, weapons lowered. Men who had been bracing for a fatal charge now stood frozen, their minds struggling to reconcile the impossible sight with their own survival. Their gazes lifted as one to the slope above. There, silhouetted against the gray sky, stood Takeru. He wasn't the boy they knew; he was the architect of this impossible event, a figure of terrible power surveying his creation. A shiver ran through the Akiyama ranks—not of fear, but of something new. The despair in their bones evaporated, replaced by a raw, potent reverence for the young lord who had just commanded a mountain to fight for them.
Takeru and his small party scrambled back down to the line, their faces pale with shock and adrenaline. Jiro looked at the boy he had known his whole life, but he no longer saw the quiet, unremarkable heir. He saw something else. A strategist. A savior. Or perhaps a demon.
All eyes—Akiyama and the terrified Izumo survivors alike—were on Takeru. He did not bask in the moment. He did not pause. His historian's mind knew that a broken enemy was at its most vulnerable. This was the moment to turn a miraculous defense into a crushing victory.
He raised his spear, pointed it at the panicked and decimated Izumo ranks, and his voice, raw and powerful, echoed through the pass.
"The Izumo are broken! Their spirit is gone! Drive them from our pass! FORWARD!"