Shōgun

Mariko-san, it was your karma to die gloriously and live forever. Anjin-san, my friend, it is your karma never to leave this land. It is mine to be Shōgun.

Kogo, the goshawk, fluttered on his wrist and settled herself, watching him. Toranaga smiled at her. I did not choose to be what I am. It is my karma.

That year, at dawn on the twenty-first day of the tenth month, the Month without Gods, the main armies clashed. It was in the mountains near Sekigahara, astride the North Road, the weather foul—fog, then sleet. By late afternoon Toranaga had won the battle and the slaughter began. Forty thousand heads were taken.

Three days later Ishido was captured alive and Toranaga genially reminded him of the prophecy and sent him in chains to Osaka for public viewing, ordering the eta to plant the General Lord Ishido’s feet firm in the earth, with only his head outside the earth, and to invite passersby to saw at the most famous neck in the realm with a bamboo saw. Ishido lingered three days and died very old.