They came on, these derelicts, of duty, their banners waving and mouths sustaining, the advancing heavy-weights skirting the mountains to the eastward, with the singly doled daimyos holding down their respective posts as assigned. Yodogima surveyed the situation, as she could, from her central position. The semicircle occasioned no uneasiness; as she surmised--Ieyasu had overlooked it--every one of them considered his place a most advantageous roost from which to observe results in front, sliding down on either side as convenience should dictate. They did serve their would-be master, however, in quite another respect: their absence relieved Ieyasu of the necessity of lumbering more than Maeda's contingent around those hills and over the plains, where bubbled the waters and grew the seed Yodogima had sprung or sown in lavish abundance. Patriots were budding like cherries in springtime, and a driven march but made the fragrance smell the sweeter. Now, Maeda swung into the open, a formidable army loomed to the southward, and Yodogima breathed easier; her estimate thus far had proven correct; the attack would come as expected; Ieyasu had employed the only tactics he knew--Sanada apparently slept at the nearest gate. Directly across the intended battlefield, well in advance of the outer moat, running from the water front on the right to the river Nekogawa at her left, a low embankment, some ten feet in height, had been unexpectedly thrown up and faced of rock, with a deep water-trap hugging the farthest side, from end to end. The invaders mistook this to be the outer moat: the patriots lay low, behind Sanada; who, to their astonishment, only snored. Then, Hidetada wheeled his van, the flower of Yedo, well onto the plain; they were loyal men, but as yet in the measurement, as to their fullest capacity; the commander-in-chief had recruited of the newer Tokugawa, and any sudden charge might be expected to stampede the whole, in case of Maeda's rout, in advance--Harunaga, mobilized just inside the last regular moat, at the right-hand gate, awaiting only a chance. Yodogima had not as much confidence in his boldness, as respect for his courage; their strategy, like the enemy's valor, must abide younger heads or hearts than those of Harunaga and Ieyasu. Lastly, Ieyasu showed his face, and the veterans of his experience, samurai tried and found true, on many a scarred and fought-to-the-finish contest, their steps more studied and ears better cocked, these trusties ranked in, on the farthest side of the broad open, still beyond, in the rear. This, then, were the division that Hideyori, young and untried, should meet, if needs be, in a final determination of their destinies: the decisive conflict of an age. Hideyori at the beginning: Ieyasu at the end of a career.