That day, for the first time in my life, I truly resigned myself to death.
I had thought about dying plenty of times before. The nights I couldn't sleep for fear of assassins, the plain of Ino where I crossed blades with my brother. But back then, there had still been some chance of living. This time was different. No matter how I counted, I couldn't find a single chance of coming out alive.
Imagawa Yoshimoto of Suruga. The foremost great daimyo of the east, hailed as the finest bowman of the Tokaido, had at last turned his army on Owari.
His numbers: twenty-five thousand.
If I scraped together every soldier in the house, I'd barely reach two or three thousand. Not even a tenth.
On the eastern border, our castles were swallowed by the great Imagawa wave one after another. Narumi and Odaka were cut off and left isolated. Every time a report came in, my stomach clenched with pain.
I couldn't get food down my throat. At night, the moment I closed my eyes, I saw them on the backs of my eyelids: countless banners surging toward me, masses of armor covering the ground. Every one of them looked to me like a blade's point aimed at my neck.
Twenty-five thousand. I'd try to count that number in my head, then get scared halfway and stop. There was no way to count that many. So many people I couldn't count them, all walking this way for no other reason than to kill me. Just thinking about it turned my fingers and toes cold.
The council chamber at Kiyosu was heavy and sunken.
"There is no path but to hold the castle."
"Let us make the castle our pillow, and resolve to die in battle."
My retainers spoke up one after another.
I sat in the seat of honor, saying nothing at all.
To be honest, I didn't want to hold the castle either. Sallying out, I wanted even less.
Hold the castle, and we'd be surrounded and slowly tormented to death. Sally out, and I'd be throwing myself into an enemy ten times our size. Just thinking about either one twisted my guts.
I couldn't stop imagining it. The castle walls closing in inch by inch, nowhere left to run, and in the end, the place set on fire. Or, out on an open field, blades thrust into me from every side. Whichever way it went, what waited at the end was something painful, and cold, and dark.
I wanted to run. If I could, I wanted to jump on a horse right now, take Kicho, ride off to some country village where nobody knew us, till a field or something, and live quietly.
Get up in the morning, work the soil, and at night eat dinner with Kicho, just the two of us. That would be enough. I didn't need the realm. That was my one and only wish.
But nothing was further from me right now than that wish.
But there was nowhere to run.
To the east, the vast Imagawa army. Retreat, and the house of Oda was finished. It would end, and drag Kicho, the retainers, the people of my lands all down with it. Whichever way I turned, all I could see was the shadow of death.
I was trembling. On my knees, my clenched fists were quivering. I squeezed them so hard my nails dug into my palms. If I didn't, I couldn't keep my whole body from shaking.
If I spoke, I felt the shaking would get into my voice, too. So I just stayed silent. If I opened my mouth, "I'm scared," "I want to run," "Somebody help me"—pathetic words like that would come bursting out like a broken dam.
And my retainers, yet again, interpreted that silence however they liked.
"Our lord has some plan in mind."
"Such composure, even at this pass. Truly, he is a man of unfathomable depths."
No.
I had no plan at all. I was just frozen stiff with fear, unable to make a sound.
In the council chamber, I sat trembling, all alone. So that no one would notice.