In that moment, inside me,
something began to wake.
What it was, I still don't know. Only one thing is certain—I found it terrifying, from the bottom of my heart.
The battle began on the plain of Ino.
At first, we were the ones being pushed back. Naturally. They had more than twice our numbers, and on top of that, they had Shibata Katsuie. In feats of arms, the man had no equal in all Owari. Shibata's troops were crumpling our right wing. Our men were falling, one after another.
I sat trembling on my horse.
I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared.
The screams of my men. The clash of iron on iron. The smell of blood. People going down. All of it happening right next to me.
And then the tide of battle turned—no, it rolled the wrong way. Our lines broke, and before I knew it, the men around me were thinning out.
Enemy soldiers began to surround me.
"There! That is Oda Kazusa-no-suke!"
"The commander's head! Take it!"
The ring around me crept tighter. There was nowhere to run. Ahead, behind, on either side—blades. Blades. Blades. And every one of those countless points was aimed at me alone.
What happened after that, I don't clearly remember. What I remember is my body going wrong.
Cold sweat burst out all over me. I could feel it soaking through under my armor. My back, my chest, my thighs, as if I'd been doused with water.
My teeth wouldn't stay together. They chattered and clacked.
My heart ran wild. As if it would smash my chest open from inside.
I couldn't breathe. I breathed in and breathed in, and still there wasn't enough air.
And then—everything went white. The faces of the soldiers around me, the glint of their blades, the color of the sky, all of it faded into white haze.
Ah. So this is where I die.
I was on the verge of passing out.
But.
There, at the very bottom, just as my consciousness was about to go out,
something lurched. Inside me.
The fear—simply vanished. The terror that had gripped me so completely drained away as if it had never been.
In its place, from somewhere far at the back of my head, I thought I heard a voice. Not my voice. Something else's.
Kill. Mow down everything in front of you, and live.
My body tried to move on its own. My hands, somewhere apart from my will, tried to reset their grip on the spear. I could feel a strength I had never known flooding into my arms. This body I had trained so relentlessly was leaving me—the person—behind, and waking up all by itself—
"My lord! Are you safe?!"
A shout from one of my men. From the flank, a band of our troops broke through the enemy ring and came charging in.
At that voice,
I came back to myself.
Color flowed back into my whitened vision. My body, which had been about to move, froze stiff where it was. The voice at the back of my head went silent, too.
I sat on my horse, spear still in my hand, heaving for breath. Drenched in sweat. Teeth still chattering.
And alive.
The rest of the battle, I fought in a frenzy. Taking the moment when my men broke the ring, I swung my spear for all I was worth. My memory comes in fragments. Terrified, frantic, I just kept knocking aside the blades in front of me. Before I knew it, the enemy was pulling back. I was told Hayashi Michitomo had been slain. Hayashi Hidesada fled. Shibata's troops broke and withdrew as well.
The victory was mine. With a small force, I had beaten an enemy twice my size. My retainers were roaring in triumph.
But I—
I just sat on my horse, dazed.
Not the victory.
What filled my head was that one moment.
That moment. The moment when fear hit its limit, when I was about to die. Something inside me had begun to wake. Wiping out the fear, root and all. Shoving aside the person I was. Something that commanded only: kill, and live.
What on earth was that? Inside me, something I didn't know, something I couldn't name, lay sleeping. And it—if not for my men's shout, it would have woken all the way.
A chill went through me.
I had won. I had survived. And yet what terrified me more than anything was myself.
What was it that had begun to wake inside me in that moment?
I was afraid to know. I felt that once I knew, there would be no turning back.