Chapter 10 — "Are There No Others Without Us?!"
"Kill those rabble—wipe them all out!"
Murata's roar split the air. He had expected nothing more than the usual, predictable obedience: levy the taxes, slaughter a handful of troublemakers, and watch the rest return to their plows as obedient shadows. The plan was simple, profit secured, order restored.
So he was stunned—outright flabbergasted—to see the peasants rise instead. They hadn't cowered. They hadn't merely scattered. Even with so few proper weapons among them, they'd gathered and pushed to storm his very mansion.
It was an affront to the natural order as Murata saw it.
How dare the common folk turn on those who managed them?
He paced the tiled halls of his estate like a caged tiger, then lurched to the window to peer down at the dark, surging mass outside. Rage boiled in his veins. Returning to the courtyard, he tore into the samurai under his command.
"You useless lot—worthless!" he spat. "You can't even put down a little riot? I fed and clothed every one of you for years, and this is how you repay me?"
The samurai bowed their heads, faces stony, but each carried his own unspoken burden. They could not tell their master what troubled them: ever since shinobi replaced samurai as this world's true military power, open warfare had become the domain of ninja. The handful of samurai maintained by noble houses were no match in skill or numbers for an angry people who were at least united by desperation.
Against a mass of furious villagers, the samurai's odds were hopelessly outgunned—both in technique and in manpower.
Murata stamped the floor, eyes blazing. "Speak! Say something—anything!"
"Cowards!" he spat. "All of you are worthless! You brag about holding off a hundred men — where is that strength now? You claim to wield chakra and blade-style jutsu — show me! Use it!"
The talk of chakra and ninja sword arts had always been hot air in these households — if any of them truly held such power, they would have long ago been in the service of a Great Nation, not a backwater lord.
Murata's face reddened with rage and humiliation. He had spent years cultivating these men, yet in this moment they were useless. Still, he was no fool: he knew how to survive in a small state. He had once hired wandering ninja, men of renown, to act as his teeth — but those men had been sent away months before and had not returned.
A terrible possibility struck him like a blow. He lunged for his steward.
"Tokinari! Where are those ninja I ordered you to hire? Why haven't they come?"
Chief Steward Tokinari's lips trembled; his voice came out thin and broken. "We sent for them, my lord. I sent men across the province. But… they cannot be found."
"Impossible!" Murata barked, grabbing the steward and shaking him. "When did they disappear?"
Tokinari swallowed and answered haltingly, "It was… some two or three months ago. Their shadows grew scarce; then they were simply gone."
Murata staggered back as if struck. The truth landed with the force of lightning: this wasn't a coincidence. Everything — the sudden disappearance of the ninja, the mounting unrest — pointed at one hand. The newly enthroned, boyish daimyō: Oda Nobunaga.
He could hardly comprehend it. How could such a young child display such ruthless calculation? How had the boy dared push the people to rebellion — and then seize the moment? Didn't he know that the populace, once unleashed, could turn on him as well?
From outside came the thunder of voices. Murata pressed a hand to his ear and heard the cry that froze his blood: the people were chanting "Long live the Lord!"
Like a man possessed, Murata moved with a speed no one expected from his pampered frame. He darted to the courtyard wall and looked down.
There he saw the cause of his ruin: Oda Nobunaga, riding into the square. The angry mob that had moments ago foamed with violence fell silent as if a scythe had passed through them — then, as one, they sank to their knees. In their eyes Nobunaga was not a child but a god, the sun and sky of their world. Any previous rage against the nobles dissolved into reverence.
"Damn child!" Murata snarled. He knew his time might be up. He would not be made the butt of this boy's triumph without a fight.
"Open the gates!" he ordered. He would not let Nobunaga stand triumphant. If he was to fall, he would make sure the young lord did not enjoy it.
Nobunaga reined his horse and regarded Murata with a cold, composed gaze. By now his third lie had borne fruit; the populace's loyalty had been reshaped around his person. Murata could see it in their faces: the fate and fortune of the Land of Fields now rested with the boy.
Murata, still trembling with defiance, spat venom: "Foolish youth—how little you understand. Do you know how much it costs to found Otogakure?" he barked to the crowd. "And how much it takes to maintain such a village? Do you ignorant peasants think taxes will disappear once we're removed?"
He paced and jeered. "Even if you topple houses like ours, the village you imagine will hollow you out. The ninja you call upon won't answer to your title — they follow their village leaders. You and your country will become nothing but wallets for shinobi."
A cruel, triumphant laugh escaped him. "Look at the great lords of the Five Nations — their double-faced policies are nothing but illusions to preserve honor. You are the fools—Nobunaga the Fool, and all of you simpletons who believe in miracles."
"And you lot—when we are gone, when we're gone, the ninja will be on your heads. You will curse the day you ever dreamed of this!"
His words were meant to chill, to warn that without the nobles' control the people would be worse off. But they landed on ears already drunk on a different truth — the image of a daimyō who bowed and wept for them, who had taken up his own sword for their sake.
Murata's final sneer was a savage, defiant note in a chorus that would not heed him. The tide had turned. The streets rang with a single, new voice: the people's loyalty to Nobunaga had been sealed — and Murata, for all his plots and coin, stood exposed and alone.