Two years went by.
The third year of Tensho. The place: Nagashino, in Mikawa. Before the allied armies of Ieyasu and me, the Takeda cavalry appeared.
Shingen had already left this world. But his army had passed to his son Katsuyori, and it was as terrifyingly strong as ever.
The Takeda horsemen, coming at a gallop that shook the ground.
Just watching them from far off.
My knees had already turned to jelly.
I'll be honest.
I'm scared of cavalry charges.
The earth shakes. The thunder of hooves echoes in the pit of your stomach. Dust rises like a wall, and from beyond it the glinting points of spears come at you. Warriors on horseback, spears leveled, riding straight in. If one of those slammed into you up close, you wouldn't stand a chance. You'd be trampled and skewered. Just picturing it made my mouth go bone dry.
So I had made up my mind.
"They don't get close. Not ever. I shoot them all from far away, with guns."
Luckily I had guns—well, I'd given a good many of them to Ieyasu, but I still had more than I knew what to do with.
Stop the horses at a palisade, and shoot them down from far away. That was the plan I'd come up with.
But.
The night before the battle.
My stomach started to hurt.
A sharp, cramping pain crept up from deep in my gut. Cold sweat beaded on my back. When I'm nervous, my stomach goes right away. It's been like that since I was a child. When something frightening gets close, my stomach gives up before my head does.
Tomorrow, I'd be fighting those Takeda horsemen.
It would be stranger if my stomach didn't hurt.
Clutching my belly, I hurried through the dark camp toward the latrine. The winter night air stung the sweaty back of my neck.
And there I found a long line. Foot soldiers, terrified of tomorrow's battle and with their stomachs in the same state as mine, all standing in a row. Every one of them pale, silently waiting his turn.
Oh, I thought, and felt a little relieved. I wasn't the only one who was scared.
I took my place at the end of the line. Demon King or not, it didn't matter. When your stomach hurts, rank means nothing. The foot soldier in front of me noticed who I was and started to jump out of the way in shock, so I waved my hand to tell him to stay where he was.
As I waited, I idly watched the line. One man would finish and come out, and the next would slip in to take his place. When he came out, the next went in. Without a break, never stopping—one out, step back, the next one in.
As I watched it blankly, something suddenly clicked in my head.
After a man fires, he steps back. Then the next man moves up to take his place and fires. When he steps back, the next one comes in.
If we did that—couldn't the guns keep firing without a break?
That maddening pause for reloading would disappear. We could keep firing, never stopping.
Just like this line for the latrine.
I'd come up with a way of fighting, out of my own stomachache. A commander who works out battle plans by watching the latrine line—I'm probably the only one, in all of history.
But that this latrine idea would—later become the tactic that destroyed the Takeda, I didn't know yet.