Dawn came.
The pain in my stomach still hadn't gone. I'd hardly slept all night, and my eyelids were heavy.
The Takeda horsemen lined up across the field at Nagashino. Beyond the morning mist, banners of every color swayed. I could see the red-armored troops too, the famous ones.
War cries that seemed to well up from under the earth. Horses neighing. If all of that came charging at once. Just imagining it, I couldn't stop the cold sweat. I could feel it soaking in under my nanban cuirass.
Inside the anti-cavalry palisade.
I split the men with guns into several groups and lined them up.
And I told them the formation I'd come up with last night, from the latrine line.
"First group, fire, then step back. Second group, in. Fire, then step back. Third group, in."
My voice was shaking.
My retainers seemed to take that shaking for a warrior's eagerness.
No. It was just the shaking of a man scared of the Takeda horsemen.
Before long, the ground began to rumble.
The Takeda horsemen came charging. Raising dust, straight at us. The very sight I feared most.
Half in tears, I shouted.
"Fire—!"
A roar. White smoke covered everything. The smell of gunpowder stung my nose.
As the smoke thinned, I saw it.
The lead horse had buckled at the forelegs and gone down. The lead balls loosed at my one word had crushed that great creature into the ground. The horse had done nothing wrong. It had only run, carrying its rider on its back. And now it lay there, toppled like a thing, just like that.
I'm a man who hesitates to step on a single bug.
And I, just now, with one shout.
Something rose in my throat. My hands wouldn't move.
I couldn't give the next order.
Don't come anymore. Please, don't come. I don't want to kill anymore.
I kept repeating that in my head, over and over. If only the Takeda would pull back now. Then I wouldn't have to fire again. That was all I wished for.
But.
The Takeda didn't flinch.
Over the bodies of their fallen comrades, the ones behind came charging straight on. Proud men that Shingen himself had trained. Not running, not hiding, not slowing a single step, coming at us—at me.
Close.
Much closer than before.
At that distance, my wish was swallowed up by fear.
They're coming. They'll come over the palisade and pour in here. They'll kill me. I'm going to be killed.
"—Fire! Fire!"
Before I knew it, I was shouting again. Not because I didn't want to kill. Only because I was scared. Because I was scared, scared out of my mind, of them getting close.
A roar.
This time, it was right up close. In that brief moment while my hands had stopped, the Takeda horsemen had pushed deep in, right up to the palisade. At a distance with no escape, the lead group was mowed down all together.
"Step back! Next, in! Fire!"
Another roar.
"Step back! In! Fire!"
Fire and step back, switch, fire again. The one who fired slipped to the rear, the next pressed to the front. Without a break, the lead balls kept flying.
Just like that latrine line. One out, step back, the next one in. Exactly that ridiculous sight.
The mightiest cavalry in the land, drawn in as close as they could be drawn, took a rain of bullets at the nearest point, the point with the least chance of escape. Horses fell, warriors were thrown. And still the ones behind charged over the bodies. Not running, not hiding, plunging straight into the jaws of death. The army of Kai, whose name had rung through the warring age, was being swallowed by the turning of the times.
It was a painful thing to watch.
I didn't hate the Takeda. If anything, I'd admired how strong they were. I'd only been scared. So I'd only wanted to stop them, at least, before they got close. People that strong, falling so fragile. And at the cruelest possible distance, because my hands had stopped. Rather than any sense of victory, my chest just felt blocked.
"...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Under the sound of reloading, I let it slip, quietly. So that no one could hear.
At last, the Takeda army withdrew. The dust thinned, and quiet came back over the field. Only the smell of gunpowder stayed, lingering in the back of my nose.
The battle was won, by Ieyasu and me. All over the camp, my retainers were raising victory cries.
One of them, his face flushed, knelt before me.
"My lord...! Magnificently done. After the first volley, you deliberately held your fire, dead still. You drew the enemy deep, right up to the palisade, held them until the very edge of losing all escape, then struck them down in one blow—timing such as we could never read. We are in awe, my lord."
Drew them in. On purpose.
No. My hands had just stopped, that's all. Because I felt sorry for them, the men and the horses. Because killing scared me. That's all it was.
"...No."
I said it in a hoarse voice.
"I only..."
I couldn't go on from there. I couldn't say I'd only been too scared to move.
My retainer seemed to take that silence as the modesty of a lord who doesn't speak of his deep designs. He bowed his head even lower.
"Truly the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven. ...There is no fathoming your depths."
No. Whatever depths I had, the bottom fell out long ago. I'm just a coward.
I leaned against the palisade and slid limply to the ground. There was no strength at all in my legs. My knees were still trembling, finely.
There was no joy at having won. Only the relief that it was over. Those horsemen would never come at me again. That alone was enough to almost make me cry.
I had won.
With a way of fighting I'd thought up out of a stomachache.
To be honest.
The pain in my stomach last night, in that latrine line, had scared me far more than the Takeda horsemen pouring in at me today.