Kirov Saga: Devil's Garden (Kirov Series) (25 page)

Commander Kawase had picked up the wireless signal from
Tatsu
Maru
, and decided to investigate. He notified his base that he was
answering a distress call and following up reports of a large Russian warship
in the straits. Yet he was not prepared for what he now saw on the far horizon.

The tiny two stack patrol destroyers had been steaming at twenty
knots when they saw the distant ship, and with each passing minute as they
closed the range Kawase’s alarm grew with the silhouette he was peering at. It
was definitely a warship, yet the ship’s bow was very different, long and sleek
as it cut through the sea, unlike the reverse bows on all the ships he had come
to know. He could not see any large cannon on that long deck, only a few
smaller guns to note. Yet he knew that a ship of that size would fight
broadside, and that many guns could be concealed in the shadows along her
sides, swiveling out from the hull on casements to take deadly aim at his tiny
patrol boats.

Now he could clearly see this was, indeed, a Russian ship! It flew
the flag of Saint Andrew on its high main conning tower, where he could see something
strange rotating in the fading sunlight. The look of the ship reminded him of
the tall battlements of Osaka Castle, the high stone fortress of the south that
had broken so many armies on its walls. His instinct was to move in closer, and
learn more, but something cautioned him, like the voice of a fallen ancestor
whispering a dire warning to him. Be cautious here…He made a decision that
would save his life, and those of all the men under his charge that day.

If this was a ship of war, and it certainly looked to be all of
that and more, then his four torpedo boats were not about to start the next war
here on his command. They would be no match for this monster in any case, and
so he wisely decided that his best course was to observe and report. He had
come close enough, and gave the order to come about.

He turned to a junior Lieutenant and calmly told him to signal
Amori with a report that would confirm the distress call of
Tatsu Maru.
It had already been seconded by
Kanto Maru
, when it hurriedly steamed
into port at Hakodate with tales of a massive ship in the straits. “Send this,”
he said. “Sighted large enemy warship flying the Flag of St. Andrew. Give our
position and tell them we are circling in place. Request instructions.”

The message sent, it was his to wait for senior officers to decide
his fate that day. Thankfully, there were wiser heads in Amori as well, and he
was soon ordered to return to base. It was a decision he was glad to hear, even
if he was prepared to face danger and even death if so ordered to defend his
homeland. One does not fight a dragon with a knife, he thought. They would need
no less than an armored cruiser to confront a ship like the one he was peering
at through his field glasses. No… Not even that would do. They would need a
battleship…they would need
many
battleships. It was the most frightening
ship he had ever seen in his life.

*
* *

“They
are turning away, Captain.” Rodenko knew Karpov could see that,
but he wanted to make certain the Captain knew the ships were no longer closing
on them. “I do not think they mean to attack.”

“No, Rodenko, you are correct. I think they merely wanted to get a
look at us, and what they saw may have had the desired effect. No doubt they
will return to port with tales of a sea monster at large, which would be just
what we need at the moment. Fear is a potent weapon, and a contagious disease
once it gets rooted in an enemy. I showed them our full silhouette for that
very reason.”

“Those look to be small torpedo boats, sir.”

“Indeed. Well they pose us no threat unless they get very close.
And these do not seem to have the backbone to do that at the moment. Well
enough. I think we will turn south.”

“South, sir? I thought we were heading for Tokyo.”

“There is no Japanese base of note here in the north. Their main
naval facilities are mostly in the south at Kure and Sasebo. I had thought to
visit Yokohama off Tokyo, but I think we should first settle the matter with
the Japanese Navy before I come calling on the Emperor here. As long as they
think they have a navy to oppose us they will never listen to any demand I
might make at Yokohama. So first things first. We go south, to show our
silhouette to these little people and see what they decide to do about it.”

“I understand, sir. Helm, come about, and steady on 185 degrees.”
He seconded Karpov’s order, but with a deep feeling of foreboding and regret.

The Captain had the right idea, thought Rodenko. But I think he is
wrong about the Japanese. They are bigger men than he may realize.

Part VIII

Togo

“Hear your fate, O dwellers in Sparta of the wide spaces…

For not the strength of lions or of bulls shall hold him,
Strength against strength; for he has the power of Zeus,
And will not be checked...”

—
The Oracle’s Vision, as related to Herodotus

Chapter 22

They
were once called the Spartans of Japan, a hardy clan of Samurai
warriors in the southern province of Satsuma. The decadence that attends to
privilege and power in their position had not fallen on them, for Satsuma was
not a rich province, and its samurai had to work in the fields like common
peasants to eke out a living and provide the rice necessary to sustain them.
Rugged and disciplined, they were a rock-like people, constantly training in
the arts of war like the formidable Spartans of ancient Greece.

Every village in the province had its own
Gochu,
an
organization of samurai that recruited all the young men by the age of 15. Here
they would be instilled with the virtues of bravery, and the necessity of
endurance, and the power of will in ensuring the attainment of both. The
samurai were constantly being tested by their senior members, forced to
confront their fears and overcome in the face of all hardship.

With a long and dangerously exposed coastline, the clan had also
taken to the development of maritime skills. When foreign devils first came to
Japan in their awesomely ugly ships of iron, the Sagumo took note of the power
these new machines represented. And one, in particular, drew some very
important conclusions when an enemy fleet first darkened the horizon off the
shores of Satsuma.

Born in 1847, he was called Chugoro until coming of age in the
youth clans in the spring of 1860 and receiving the adult name of Heihachiro
Togo. He joined his
Gochu
, training and studying each day even as the
boys of Sparta were put through trials to forge them into the hardened warriors
they became as men. He sang at the
Gochu
patriotic festivals, recounting
the tragic death of the ‘Forty Ronin’ and other heroic stories just as the
Greeks celebrated and recounted stories of the Iliad and Odyssey.

A studious and diligent youth, he was well like by his peers,
respected, and thought of as possessing a natural quality of leadership without
being showy or ostentatious. These same virtues of character, determination,
assiduous study, and a quiet disposition that endowed him with a well of calm
in battle, would serve him throughout his life. He took up with a favorite
schoolmate, Kuroki, who would also take a dramatic role in the defeat of the
Great European power of Imperial Russia. The teachers of the
Gochu
did
not realize it at that time, but they were schooling the boys who would become
the men to usher Japan into the modern age and lead her onto the world stage
with some of the most astounding and decisive military victories ever recorded
in history.

Two years later an incident would occur that would set the course
of young Heihachiro Togo’s life. In 1862, a notable lord, a relative of the
ruling clan lord of Satsuma province, was traveling home through the village of
Namamugi when his procession came upon four British foreigners. Thinking
themselves as the equal or better of any man in Japan, the foreigners rudely
crossed the path of the lord’s procession, failing to dismount or pay him any
respect as he passed.

The lord’s guards were infuriated at the behavior and deliberate
bad manners of the British, and the resulting confrontation left one foreigner
dead, beheaded with a single swipe of a samurai guard’s sword, with two of the
remaining four seriously injured. Great Britain, however, would not tolerate
the abuse of its citizens, no matter where they were found, and protested
vigorously to the
bakufu
, the central government of Japan, which
subsequently offered a payment equivalent to 100,000 British pounds in
reparation. It was an enormous sum, equal to nearly twenty percent of the
current treasury of Japan in silver, yet it was not deemed sufficient by the
British. They wanted blood for blood, but the proud samurai of Satsuma province
refused to apologize or to execute the guards responsible for the attack.

A brief, little known war resulted, the “Anglo-Satsuma” war, when
ships of the Royal Navy appeared off Kagoshima Bay to express the Crown’s
displeasure. A Japanese emissary from Satsuma came aboard the British flagship
Euryalus
,
commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Neale. There letters were exchanged presenting
the British demands for redress, but the Japanese simply sought to delay any
negotiations.

Impatient after the expiration of their 24-hour ultimatum, the
British first seized several steamships anchored in the harbor and belonging to
the Satsuma clan, which quickly prompted the Japanese to open fire on the
British fleet with shore based cannon. They had waited until the onset of a
raging Typhoon to begin this attack, thinking of how the invading fleet of Genghis
Khan had been utterly destroyed by a similar “Divine Wind” in a previous
century.

The British had not expected to be opposed, believing that the
mere sight of their fleet at anchor would be sufficient to intimidate the Japanese,
but they had not taken the full measure of the Spartans of Japan. They
escalated by pillaging and burning the steamers they had captured, and then
formed a battle line to bombard the town. Five trading junks were set ablaze,
and an equal number of peasants ashore were killed in the attack, as the
Japanese had wisely ordered the evacuation of the city before the bombardment
began.

One man evacuating was the young samurai Togo, who was ordered
instead to a nearby castle on the shore with other samurai to defend it from
any British incursion. There he stood behind a cannon on the battlements to witness
the British bombardment with his close friend Kuroki.

“Look how they form a line of battle, Kuroki! They mean to sail
past us and then one ship after another will deliver its broadside to any point
they desire. This is fearsome power!”

“Let us hope these stone walls can provide a shield. What of our
own cannon?”

“They seem a meager reprisal in the face of that,” Togo pointed to
the bay where smoke from the British guns wafted up to darken the furled sails
on the main masts of their ships.”

“And with ships like that the British can go wherever they please.
They can stand off our shores like shadows, like sea dragons waiting to breathe
this hot fire on our ports and cities at their whim!”

“Yes, but let them dare set foot on our sacred land and then see
what happens. Our samurai will muster in the tens of thousands to devour them.
We will cut them to pieces and feed their entrails to the birds!”

“I would hope so, Kuroki, but remember, the British have guns as
well. They can kill well beyond the range of even the best of our swordsmen.”

“And we have archers.”

“They have cannon to bring ashore with their infantry—artillery,
mortars, siege guns. My father has seen these things.”

“Our valor and numbers will overcome them, and the Gods will favor
us too. Is this not the heavenly land, Togo? Do not learn fear by watching the
British bombard our city here.”

“Oh no, Kuroki, I do not fear them—but I respect them for what
they are and what they can do with the weapons they have, many far superior to
anything we have here. No. I learn something else entirely from this.”

“And what is that?”

“Just this, my friend… An enemy approaching from the sea must be
fought at sea and stopped there,
before
they can bring the power of
their cannons to bear on our sacred homeland.”

“A good lesson, but I’m afraid it is one we cannot heed at the moment.
We have no ships to stop the likes of this at sea. Only these forts and the
cannon we should be firing instead of all this talking!”

“Not at the moment,” Togo said with determination. “Yet one day
soon we will have ships like that. Japan is an island nation surrounded by the
sea on every side, just as England is. See what the British have done? We must
do the same. Japan must have a great navy, the greatest in all the Pacific, if
not the world. Only then will we ever ascent to our rightful place in the
events of this century. Without a navy, all we can do is sit here under these
guns and sharpen our swords in utter frustration, because the British need not
ever set foot here to humble us. Those ships can strangle our trade and
commerce, and keep us landed here forever if we let them. That must not happen.
The next time an enemy comes from the sea, we must be ready to meet them there,
and prevail.”