When the first scout came back having reported sighting the enemy, I couldn't help the smile that spread over my face. A short, sharp conflict, ending in decisive victory. That was what I wanted, and I had been afraid that our enemy was going to deny it to me by hiding in their fortress and daring us to do something stupid.

Instead, it looked like we would have our battle. Now, all that I had to do was to win it.

I followed the scouts out to the field where they had spotted the enemy. I got there while the enemy was still forming up. It seemed that their scouts had raced back to their army just as ours had hurried to report to me, and they were intent on fighting it out. Our battle would be taking place in a clearing a mile or two outside of the town at the foot of the mountain.

The terrain wouldn't be a major factor one way or the other. I was a little concerned by the fact that our enemy would have a fairly easy and short retreat back to their fortifications should we win, while we would have to march all the way back to our camp if we should lose. Unfortunately, that just came with the territory of being an invading army.

If we could beat them badly enough, then they might just scatter rather than retreating as a unit. Peasant armies could be unreliable like that. Even if they could gather a lot of people, they would scatter like loose sand when they were up against professionals.

I had to keep reassuring myself of our martial superiority as I watched the enemy lines spread and thicken while I was waiting for my own men to form up. It would have been nice if we could have launched a spoiling attack while they were still getting ready, but unfortunately both sides were relying on the same level of movement technology, that being our soldiers' legs. Thus, both sides got ready at more or less the same pace.

It was hard to be precise from this distance, but it seemed like two or three men were showing up on the other side of the field for every single man falling into line by my side. It was a worse numerical disparity than I'd been hoping for, though better than I'd feared. It was never fun to fight while outnumbered, but we could make up a lot of ground through superior discipline and skill.

Discipline and skill was a relative thing. There was a lot of yelling and a lot of walking around as my men sorted themselves out from a walking mob to some semblance of an army. It was nothing like the crisp organization that I imagined a group of professional soldiers could carry off. Still, as long as we were better than our opponents, we'd be fine.

After all, the men managed to form up in reasonable shape in the end. The lines were a little ragged, and we didn't have any musketeers, but we did have a few soldiers who had brought bows or crossbows with them to the fight. They were positioned out in front of our spearmen, ready to skirmish with their opposite number. The spearmen themselves were packed together in something of an extended blob, which Hideyoshi had assured me was the most effective formation.

My students, twelve strong, stood together in front of the center of the line of spears. I thought they made quite a dashing sight, although I may have been unfairly influenced by the fact that they would be charging forward into danger so that I wouldn't have to face it personally. I had taken up position behind my students. Once battle was joined I would follow through the gap they created to act as a sort of mobile reserve and, hopefully, do nothing more than watch the battle play out in front of me.

Our own army was more or less in line with my expectations. That was good. Across what was to become the battlefield, the opposing army looked a lot better organized than I'd expected. That was bad.

I'd known we were going to be outnumbered. Just the fact that we were marching into enemy territory meant that it would be easier for the enemy to gather a big mob of locals to oppose us, while each soldier I brought was an additional strain on my logistics. Throw in the fact that the religious zealots on the other side were willing to accept anybody who could heft a spear into service for their cause, and it was only to be expected that we'd face a numerical disparity.

What I hadn't expected was the calm attitude on display from the army facing us. Nor the organized spearpoints bristling out from the tidy lines of soldiers that made up the enemy army. If I had just come to this sight cold, I would have thought that we were facing the well trained army of a rival daimyo, not the desperate force of a peasant levy.

Lord Ota had done well in the face of being outnumbered by launching an aggressive surprise attack. Part of me wanted to follow his example. However, thinking it over, there was that word in there: surprise. We wouldn't have done nearly as well in routing the enemy camp if the enemy commander had known we were coming. Here, we were up against what was obviously a prepared army. A senseless charge would do more harm than good.

"Hold!" I shouted. I listened as the command was echoed up and down the line until the repetitions passed outside of my hearing. Then I stepped forward to the little knot of my students and moved close to Hideyoshi so as to speak in confidence. "What do you make of this?"

He looked at the army across the way for a moment before he replied. "They are more disciplined than we expected."

"I know," I said. "Did they find an ally to supply them with professional troops?"

He shook his head. "I see no banner other than the one the monks have adopted for themselves."

I stood there for a moment, observing the distant army. I had to use magical enhancement to my eyesight to make out the features of the men opposing us, and even with that help I could only get a general impression of what they looked like. I thought I would be able to see if they looked panicked, though, and right now they definitely did not.

What should I do? If I ordered the attack, the bloodthirsty idiots following me would be happy to charge forward. Now that they were no longer faced with dispersing a peasant mob but rather an actual enemy army, though, I was far less confident in their ability to carry out the task.

On the other hand, we wouldn't enjoy much of an advantage standing on the defense. There was no defensive works or favorable terrain here. Considering that both armies could really only harm each other by stabbing each other with spears, there was nothing like the concept of "good firing positions" that might have allowed for clever tactics with more modern weaponry.

Just standing here, waffling over what to do, was itself a poor choice. For whatever reason, these men had taken me as their leader. If they were to see me show visible uncertainty, that hesitation would transmit itself down the line.

Really, leading an army to war was one big swindle. You had to convince each soldier that they'd be one of the lucky ones who would survive the ordeal, and that somehow they'd end up better off for the experience. Professional recruiters had to resort to such nonsense as national pride and proving your manhood to convince people to sign up. I'd been spared that because the villages I had been recruiting from were facing a major problem with their personal security.

My soldiers had been willing to take on a certain amount of personal risk now so as to reduce the personal risk that they'd be facing in the future. A rational, admirable decision, assuming the balance of risks were appropriate. When weighing the danger posed by an unruly mob up against a semi-organized army, on the one hand, and the danger an individual faced if he happened to be targeted by that unruly mob, on the other, then joining up with the anti-bandit army was perfectly logical.

If we were in for a close-run fight, though, then the calculus changed. Instead of taking on the risks of a tough battle, it could well make more sense for any individual soldier to head home to his farm and take his chances, hoping the bandits would pass him over. It wasn't the kind of thing that made an inspiring story, but, well, if you wanted to tell inspiring stories to your grandchildren then you had to live long enough to have grandchildren to begin with.

Any visible hesitation or uncertainty on my part was as good as telling the soldiers under my command that they had better start looking out for their own survival instead of counting on victory as a unit. I was confident I would come out ahead if it came down to a footrace in order to escape the enemy army, but that would look terrible on my resume.

Accordingly, I had just about resolved myself to order the advance when the enemy army made the decision for me. I saw men moving around, shouting out orders, and saw a ripple of motion move up and down the line before they finally began marching forward.

A couple thousand men moving together was an intimidating sight. Once I saw that coordinated march, I knew that my barely-trained villagers weren't going to be enough to carry the day. Instead, the burden would fall on my barely-trained students.

"I'll be relying on you to defeat this charge," I told Hideyoshi.

He looked at the oncoming army, then back at me. "It's an honor. Only... there are a lot of them."

I nodded, then gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "It's all right. You only have to kill one at a time until you run out of targets."

Twelve half-trained sword saints would enjoy a huge advantage over mundane troops, but it would be ridiculous to expect them to kill a hundred men apiece. What I needed was for my students to disrupt the cohesion of the enemy so that the rest of my troops would be able to put them to flight.

Easier said than done. Well, if all else failed, at least the enemy didn't have any horses. I was confident that I could run away faster than they could follow, if nothing else.