CHAPTER 337: CHAPTER 236: UNDERESTIMATING THE HEROES OF THE WORLD!_2

They were all inland river boats, none of large size. The biggest boats could carry maybe twenty or thirty people; some of the smaller ones were just household fishing boats that would almost sink with three or five people aboard. Regardless of size, all the boats fought mainly by boarding, with virtually no added protection or firepower emplacements. After all, in the past, the "Kawamata Group" on the Kisogawa and Changliang Rivers only robbed scattered merchants, never needing to engage in large-scale frontal battles.

This was the entire strength of the Kawamata Group, the infamous Owari river pirates: more than sixty boats heading downstream. Set across the river, leaving aside combat strength, their presence alone was imposing enough.

Nakamura Yajiro commanded the inland navy to stop near Matsukura Castle. Soon, his scouts who had gone ahead returned to report, "Lord, Lord Yehua said they can cross the river on their own. He asks that you just provide cover."

"They don’t need our help?"

Nakamura Yajiro was slightly surprised. He didn’t recall seeing the Wanjin people bring a navy along—he’d thought the plan was to use the Kawamata Group’s boats to ferry the Wanjin Army across. Was Harano not going to use them after all?

He was momentarily baffled. How was the Wanjin Army going to cross? And if they didn’t, how would they exert pressure on the Igi family and the Ozawa family?

Could it be—they were annoyed he hadn’t gone to invite them personally?

As he brooded and guessed on the boat, he suddenly spotted the Wanjin Army on the move. Large groups of soldiers poured out of the city, quickly but with perfect orderliness, as if they’d practiced hundreds of times. Even before their assembly was complete, soldiers in leather armor had already begun pounding stakes into the riverbank, while others began inflating hide rafts with foot-operated bellows. Once ready, they dragged iron chains and ropes, rowing quickly across to the other side.

All told, these leather-armored troops worked with the same speed, and with a distinct efficiently drilled grace—as if they had repeated this dozens, hundreds of times. Not a word was spoken by either the laboring leather-armored soldiers or the quickly assembling lacquered armor troops. Apart from the pounding of stakes and the occasional Bamboo Whistle command, the whole spectacle was like a peculiar pantomime, sending a chill into one’s heart.

Standing on deck, Nakamura Yajiro was briefly entranced by the sight, but the Wanjin Army obviously intended to keep them busy. Very soon, a junior officer with a gourd banner on his back rode over without ceremony, shouting loudly from a distance, "His Lordship orders you to go and fortify the north bank—obey at once!"

"Uh, all right!" Nakamura Yajiro came to his senses. Harano clearly didn’t want his troops crowding onto their boats and disorderly crossing the river—he was building his own bridge. So be it; Harano was out of his hands anyway.

He immediately ordered the Kawamata Group’s boats to moor on the north bank and line up on shore to guard against small Minoh detachments, in case they tried to ambush the Wanjin engineers during the initial river crossing and staking phase.

In truth, their help was barely needed. After tugging over the ropes and chains, the Wanjin Army already had advance units crossing on hide rafts to establish a defensive perimeter. It seemed the main reason for hustling the Kawamata Group out of the river was to prevent confusion from their boats milling about.

In fact, the initiative for this whole operation had quietly shifted into Wanjin’s hands—Nakamura Yajiro and his five hundred men had become mere spectators, with nothing to do.

Still, brute force counted above all in these times, and Harano’s status and rank were far higher than Yajiro’s. Neither Nakamura Yajiro, Maeno Nagakane, nor Hosokawa Shigekatsu had any complaints. Only Maeno Nagakane hesitated as he watched, asking, "Will they have time? Should we just string the boats together now, make that floating bridge for the Nozawa family as promised?"

They had a plan to build a floating bridge out of these sixty-odd boats—that had actually been Yajiro’s suggestion. But the plan was to do so only after securing Igi Mountain City and Tinuma Castle, not at the outset.

Otherwise, if the Minoh people refused to submit and insisted on a head-on fight—and the allies lost—once the boats were all lashed together, there would be nowhere to retreat to.

Yet Harano wanted to build a bridge over the Kisogawa River right from the start—could there possibly be enough time?

Once Igi Seibei and Ozawa Masahide got their armies in order and marched together, they’d have at least three to five thousand men. With only their five hundred unarmored warriors and a hundred-some Wanjin troops crossing in hide rafts, how long could they hold out?

Fighting with their backs to the river was no easy task. With no retreat, nerves would fray; there’d be no room for shifting formations—it was hard to see any chance of victory!

"Wait, no—Look how fast the Nozawa family is working..."

Nakamura Yajiro, Maeno Nagakane, and the rest still hadn’t decided whether to lash the boats together as a bridge and save Harano the trouble. Yet the usually silent Hosokawa Shigekatsu quickly sensed something unusual—the Nozawa family’s leather-armored troops seemed purpose-trained. Everything from tools to materials had been thoroughly prepared in advance.

They used hide rafts to pull the ropes across, then ran them back, mounting pulleys at both ends. They were already ferrying prefabricated piles, beams, crossbeams, struts, and planks over to the other side. From the bridge piers, they began horizontally installing the first cantilever beams toward the center of the river.

One end of each cantilever beam was slotted into a pre-made hole in the pier and fixed with iron nails, the other end jutting out in midair.

Below each layer of cantilever beams, diagonal struts were installed: one end braced on the beam, the other anchored to the lower supporting structure, forming a triangular support system.

In this way, the iron-cabled structures advanced from both banks toward the center, the tensioned cables serving as secondary supports. There was no need to waste time pounding bridge pylons into the riverbed. Even unfinished, its basic outline could be clearly seen—a cable-stayed cantilever bridge nearly two meters above the river surface.