John Flanagan - The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

'Kikori! Show yourselves!'

He and Will had sent a messenger ahead to let the trainees know they were coming. Now, on his command, a file of ten Kikori trotted out from behind a pile of boulders halfway up the valley.

But they were equipped as no Kikori had ever been equipped before. Shigeru stared at them, fascinated.

Each man carried a long rectangular shield. It was slightly curved and made of wood, reinforced at the top and sides with strips of iron. In the centre, a plate-sized iron boss protruded. The men also wore hard leather breastplates and leather helmets. These too were trimmed with iron strips, for extra protection. As they ran, moving at a steady jog, they held long wooden javelins sloped over their shoulders.

Horace moved forward to look more closely. 'They're pretty primitive,' he said. The javelins were roughly trimmed wooden stocks, about a metre and a half long, each with an iron rod bound to it, protruding some fifty centimetres past the wooden stock. The iron rod ended in a barbed point.

'They don't need to be anything more than that,' Will told him. 'Selethen, will you conduct the drill, please?' He turned to the others. 'Let's move down a little, to the side. You'll be able to see better.'

He led the way to a small rock outcrop halfway down the gully. Selethen kept the ten Kikori in a line, waiting expectantly. When his companions were settled, Will called to Selethen.

'Enemy sighted!'

'Battle formation!' Selethen barked the command. Instantly, every second man in the line took two paces backwards. Then both lines closed up, so that where there had been ten men in one line, there were now two ranks of five. The movement was accomplished in seconds.

'Forward!' Selethen commanded. The two ranks stepped off together, pacing steadily forward, with the Kikori on the right end of the second rank calling time.

'Impressive,' said Horace softly.

Will glanced quickly at him. 'As I said, their sense of discipline is excellent. They pick up these drills quickly.' Then he looked away and shouted to Selethen again.

'Enemy archers!'

'Halt!' cried Selethen. The steadily advancing Kikori crashed to a stop.

Halt remembered Will's phrase at the display in Toscana: A cloud of dust and a line of statues. General Sapristi would have been impressed, he thought.

'Kame!' Selethen ordered.

The Emperor leaned back and looked at Will, a little confused. 'Tortoise?'

But Will gestured towards the ten trainees. The front rank had raised their shields to head height, while the second rank held theirs higher, parallel to the ground, the edges overlapping the tops of the front rank's shields. The ten men were now protected from the front and above by an uninterrupted carapace.

'Ah…yes. Tortoise. I see,' Shigeru said thoughtfully.

'Kame down!' Selethen ordered and the shields came back to their original position. 'Front rank, yari!'

Now the front rank took a large pace forward. The men turned side on, reversed their grips on the rough javelins and, as one, leaned their weight onto their right feet, the long weapons going back over their right shoulders, pointing up at a thirty-degree angle.

'Throw!'

They released as one, each man putting the strength and power of his entire body behind the cast. The weapons sailed high, then arced down as the weight of the iron tips took effect. Three of the fascines were struck and knocked to the ground, while the other two javelins bounded and slithered harmlessly past them. Already, Selethen was ordering the second rank forward. They moved through the first rank and repeated the sequence of movements. Another five javelins soared across the short distance. Another fascine was hit.

'Imagine that, but with fifty javelins each time instead of one,' Will said.

Horace nodded thoughtfully. A barrage of fifty of those rough-looking weapons could be devastating to an opposing force. His military mind had seen the value of the soft iron tips – understanding how a warrior, even lightly wounded, would be impeded by the dragging weight of the javelin.

'But now they are unarmed,' Shigeru said. He had been looking carefully, but could see no sign of the long katana that were the principal weapon of the Senshi. No sooner had he said the words than he heard the scraping rattle of blades being drawn. He saw now that each of the Kikori was armed with a short weapon.

'Issho ni!' Selethen called. The two ranks began to advance, shields locked together.

'Issho ni!' The shout was echoed from ten throats, then repeated as they moved steadily forward.

Will looked at the Emperor. 'We're using Nihon-Jan for the more important commands,' he explained. 'Less chance of misunderstanding that way.'

'Appropriate,' Shigeru answered.

Evanlyn cocked her head to one side curiously. 'What does "issho ni" mean?'

'Together,' Alyss told her.

'It's their battle cry,' Will said. 'It reminds them of how they fight – as a team.' He cupped his hands and called to Selethen. 'Bring them towards us!'

The Arridi waved acknowledgement and called an order. The left-hand marker on each rank began to march in place while his comrades wheeled to the left in a steady, co-ordinated movement.

Horace whistled softly. 'They might have been born to do this.'

Now the two ranks were facing the spectators and Selethen called another sequence of orders. The wheeling movement stopped and the formation, still intact, began to advance again. Shigeru and the others could see the value of the large shields. The men themselves were virtually invisible, only the tops of their helmets showing above the wall of shields.

There was nothing for a swordsman to engage, the Emperor realised. But darting out from narrow gaps between the shields, he could see the short weapons the Kikori carried, flickering like so many snakes' tongues.

'How can they see?' he asked.

Will smiled. 'Not very well. Their commander controls the direction of the advance. But they stab at anything that comes into sight through the gaps in the shields. Arms, legs, bodies. It's just stab and move forward, stab and move forward. We don't teach them any of the sort of sweeping, scything strokes that the Senshi use. They don't need to learn any complex techniques. Just stab quickly and withdraw the weapon immediately. If a Senshi warrior attacks one of them, he's confronted by a huge shield. And if he presses the attack, the man next to his opponent will probably stab him as he does so.'

'Where did their swords come from?' Halt asked.

'Some of them are the short swords carried by the Senshi killed at Riverside Village or at the palisade. The rest are cut-down spears, with the shafts reinforced with iron strips.'

'But a good katana will shear easily through iron like that,' Shigeru protested.

Will conceded the point. 'Admittedly. That's why each man will carry two reserve swords. But they're not using their short swords to parry or block the Senshi's katana. That's what the shields are for. And if a katana cuts into the iron and wood of a shield, its owner could find himself in trouble.'

'I don't understand.' The Emperor frowned.

But Horace had seen the truth of what Will said. In fact, he'd used the same idea as a tactic in times past.

'If the katana cuts into the shield, it will be jammed for a few seconds while its owner gets it free. And in that time, he'll have two or three Kikori stabbing at him. He stands to lose either his sword or his life.'

'Yes.' The Emperor fingered his chin thoughtfully. He had to admit that this display was a little unnerving. He was raised in the Senshi tradition and, egalitarian as he might be, it was unsettling to see that two foreigners had so quickly devised a way to counteract Senshi techniques.

Will held up his hand now and Selethen called the troop to a halt. Another command and, as one, they grounded their shields and bowed to their Emperor. Shigeru rose from where he had been seated on the rock and bowed deeply in return. His qualms of a few minutes ago were gone. These were his people, just as much as the Senshi were, he realised. They were willing to fight for him, and to learn new ways of doing so. They deserved his respect and loyalty.