Spring of the tenth year of Tensho. A piece of news reached the keep.
The Takeda had fallen, it said.
The Takeda of Kai. That cavalry army hailed as the strongest of the warring age. The very Takeda who had once, at Mikatagahara, beaten my best friend Ieyasu so wretchedly he'd crawled in the dirt.
Even after old Shingen died, that house had stayed mighty, and for a long time, night after night, I'd lived in fear of that army's shadow. The sound of hooves bearing down like the rumble of an earthquake. Just picturing it went cold all the way to my fingertips.
The head of that house of Takeda, Katsuyori, had been cornered in the mountains at a place called Mount Tenmoku, and had taken his own life along with his wife, his children, and his clan, it said. All those horsemen, that name of Takeda that had rung so loudly—no longer anywhere at all.
I couldn't believe it. The Takeda that had kept me from ever sleeping soundly. So easily as that.
The one who brought the news was a messenger on a fast horse, from the army that had invaded Kai. Sweat gleaming on his forehead, his voice pitched high with the thrill of victory, he rattled off what had happened at Mount Tenmoku all in one breath. My heir Nobutada had been in the vanguard, he said, and had done remarkable work.
As for me, I hadn't taken a single step from this keep at Azuchi. The enemy who'd scared me most in my whole life had crumbled on his own, vanished on his own, in mountains far away, before I'd drawn so much as a sword.
As if all my fear had never meant anything from the start.
My retainers were jubilant.
"We've done it, my lord! At last we've destroyed the Takeda! Now there is no enemy left in the east!"
"Unification of the realm is all but at hand. The Demon King's great work is at last achieved!"
From below the keep rose victory cries that shook the ground. Everyone was laughing, everyone drunk on sake, drunk on victory. Envoys with congratulations formed lines, gifts piled up like mountains, and the whole castle was buzzing with what joy, what joy.
But I.
In the middle of those victory cries, I stood alone in the golden hall, unable to move. No one noticed the look on my face.
For a long time, I'd been afraid of the Takeda. How many times had I dreamed of that army coming at me from beyond the horizon, kicking up dust? I couldn't count the mornings I'd jumped awake with my nightclothes soaked and stuck to my back with sweat. Even on the day I heard Shingen was dead, I couldn't sleep all night, wondering if it was a trap to make me let my guard down.
That's how afraid I was of the Takeda. Every time I heard about how they'd fought when they beat Ieyasu at Mikatagahara, the pit of my stomach went cold, sure I'd be next.
That enemy, the one I'd feared most, had now vanished from this world.
I should never again wake up in the middle of the night afraid of the sound of those hooves. I should have been breathing a sigh of relief, my chest easing—I should have been.
And yet.
My heart didn't clear at all. If anything, the louder the victory cries rang out, the heavier and colder the bottom of my chest sank.