The liquor began to kick in something devilish. They drank more than any man rightly should. Far more. Their livers protested with stomach pangs, but they drank even more to drown out the pain.
The day went as quiet as Gengyo had predicted. The Hojo-Imagawa army remained inactive. Their generals staged a meeting and many furious words were exchanged. It was not an environment that allowed for sensible decision making.
With the amount they had drunk, the small commander's room was no longer enough to constrain them. Gengyo was the first to stumble out of the sliding door, prepared to explore the rest of the castle.
There was a thought on his mind, and that thought was of cannons. He recalled his plans to inspect the defences that Takeshi and Matsudaira had setup. Akiko counselled against it, but he went anyway.
"I've never seen any of you so drunk," Akiko said, hovering in the background, playing mother to all of them. She had to all but carry Rin as they went outside. Rin had her eyes closed like a corpse, groaning lightly. Akiko wrinkled her nose as she smelt the drink on her breath.
"I'm not even that drunk," Jikouji protested, trying to maintain his dignity. But his words were undermined by the drunken swagger that went with his walk.
The sky had turned an orange with the setting sun, and the men were beginning to filter their way indoors. Soldiers clapped each other on the shoulder as they exchanged watches, sharing idle words. More than just the Generals were pleased to be back together, everyone was.
It was an odd boiling pot of many different men within that castle. Takeda, Uesugi, and Miura. They all accepted each other very quickly. The Takeda men looked upon their old enemies with understanding eyes, for they had once stood in their very position, and understood the feeling of being an outsider. They did as the Miura men had once done for them and they welcomed them completely.
In that rather peaceful castle, the antics of the drunken generals stood out and soldiers stuck their heads around doors trying to sneak a peek at their intoxicated leaders, hardly able to believe it.
Gengyo brought his feet slowly up a ladder and staggered on top of a wall. He helped Matsudaira up after him. "A lot of cannons," he commented.
A drunken Matsudaira giggled at that. "A lot of cannons," he agreed, "a lot of shiny cannons."
Takeshi materialized from almost nowhere. Talk of cannons might have been all that was needed to summon the little smith. But in truth, he had been on top of that very wall for a while, running his inspections on the equipment, making sure that they were ready to be used at a moments notice.
"Miura-dono… W-what are you doing here?" He stuttered. He looked past Gengyo to see the rest of them climbing the ladder behind. A rowdy drunken Morohira singing a tuneless song with Rokkaku; a brooding Togashi with cheeks flushed red; a jolly Sasaki unable to stop smiling; a half-serious Jikouji and a half-dead Rin. Akiko smiled at him apologetically, understanding how troublesome it was bound to be for him very soon.
"Ah… Takeshi. Hello. We wanted to look at cannons. We thought about looking at cannons. We are now looking at cannons," Gengyo explained very succinctly.
"Poetic… That was very poetic, Miura-dono," a drunken Matsudaira praised.
"You think so?" Gengyo asked, feeling unusually pleased with himself. "There are a lot of cannons," he said again.
"Yes… There are a hundred on this wall alone," Takeshi explained, doing his very best to keep up with their drunken conversation.
"One hundred? That's a lot. How far can they fire?" Gengyo managed to concentrate his brain enough for a half-serious question as he put a hand on his chin.
"A few hundred yards, at least," Takeshi said, "enough to wipe out any attackers before they can even get close."
"Demonstration," Gengyo demanded.
"Demonstration!" Matsudaira repeated eagerly.
"Demonstration!" Rin mumbled, seeming to like the word.
"Oh, a demonstration?" Sasaki echoed.
With so much pressure on him, Takeshi blushed. "I can't lift the cannonball," he apologised weakly.
Sasaki was all smiles hearing that. "I can lift it. You've got a big brain, I've got big arms. We'll work together," the bear of a man said. He stooped down low to scoop up the cannonball with a ridiculous ease. Gengyo thought that he might have been able to do it with one hand if he really tried. He slid it into the end barrel.
"Ah! You forgot the gunpowder!" Matsudaira squeaked, suddenly realizing how bad it was.
Takeshi scratched the back of his head. He was unused to seeing the normally stoic Matsudaira so childish with his liquor. He wasn't at all sure how to act. "Actually… Seeing as there's to be no rain for a while, we put in the gunpowder already, just in case we need to fire quickly."
"Oh, clever!" Matsudaira praised, instantly relieved.
"Here, Takeshi-dono," a soldier came by with a lit torch and handed it to the smith, overhearing their intentions. He spared an odd look for his leaders, seeing the state that they had got themselves in. He was hardly able to hide his smile.
"Thank you," Takeshi said, a grateful look on his face. He seemed to want to appease the crowd of a.d.u.l.t children that had gathered around him so expectantly as Akiko shepherded them, making sure that none of them slipped off the wall in their drunkenness. "Well… You had better cover your ears."
They all covered their ears very obediently, aside from Morohira. "No I don't," he said confidently.
Takeshi put the torch to the fuse and an instant later, the ground shook as a boom resounded across the sky. Even covering their ears, it was enough to make them ring. A great big ball thundered across the sky, high and powerful. When it came down, it did so with a force, leaving a dent in the soil and sending a cloud of filth flying through the air.