Drums on Golden Mountain
Drums on Golden Mountain is a tale of the early Shogunate, whose stories of love and valor and cleverness went on (somewhat reduced) to form the basis for the Shogunate Romance Novel. Drums on Golden Mountain, unlike such novels, remains amongst the canon of classic literature even in the present Age, presented often as a play or novel.
The heroine of the tale is Four Petals, a beautiful girl forced into prostitution under a tyrannical madame who abuses her. As she works, she meets Devoted Spear, a low ranking soldier. The two fall in love, but Spear is in no position to wed her… he vows he shall return and do so before his unit departs. When he does, he has taken command and led a successful campaign, promoted to general by his daimyo for his skill and bravery. He weds Four Petals immediately.
As wars rage on, Devoted Spear is eventually faced with a dire situation after a retreat to the Argent Lake beneath Golden Mountain. Spear’s army had been reduced to few ships and less than ten thousand battle-weary soldiers, while the enemy general Furious Tsunami had a vast fleet of ships and over one hundred thousand fresh troops. The fight seemed hopeless, with no escape from the lake… until Four Petals came to her husband with a plan. Devoted Spear would lead a small force of ships out onto the lake to lure Furious Tsunami into advancing into the reed-soaked edges of the lake. There, the bulk of Spear’s forces would be waiting with flaming arrows to ambush the enemy fleet. Petals suggested that, due to a lack of officers, the soldiers could be coordinated in battle by the sounds of a huge war drum positioned on the mountain slope.
When the drum beat out a single repeated beat, Spear launched his ships in an attack. They fought until the thunderous drum switched to two repeating beats, when they fell back, Spear fighting at the rear to keep the enemy from overrunning them. When the bulk of friendly troops had reached the shore on the other side of the reeds, the drum sounded three repeating beats, and Spear’s archers unleashed a rain of flaming arrows, which set the reeds and enemy ships alight. In the ensuing chaos, Four Petals beat the drum harder and faster, and Spear and his troops were driven to fight ever more fiercely, while the enemy found their hearts quaking in fear as they were slaughtered.
It is said, according to the tale, that the Golden Mountain still echoes with the sound of Four Petal’s drum.
