John Flanagan - The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

The Emperor nodded. 'That is General Todoki. He's one of Arisaka's most ardent supporters. His men attacked the palisade. He'll be eager to avenge that defeat.'

'Good,' Halt said. 'That'll mean he's more likely to act without thinking. Always a good thing to fight an enemy who's angry.'

'Let's get moving!' Will said and the five of them shook hands, then moved to their positions. At a word of command, the men of the two goju, who had been resting on the ground, conserving their strength, climbed quickly to their feet.

They formed in three files and set out at a steady jog, their equipment and weapons rattling in rhythm to the thud of their feet. They rounded the bluff and the enemy camp came into view.

As the two gojus reached their positions, Halt, Will and Shigeru diverted to a small hillock from where they could observe the battle. They were a little behind the Kikori ranks. Moka, Shigeru's senior bodyguard, had wanted to accompany them but Shigeru refused.

'I want the Kikori to see that my trust in them is complete,' he said.

Moka had remained with ten Senshi at the entrance to Mikeru's Pass. If the worst came to the worst, it would be their task to hold the pass against Arisaka's men while the Kikori made their escape up the secret path.

The gojus deployed now, forming into two extended ranks, twenty-five men long. Each man in the second rank held two javelins. The front rank were armed with their stabbing blades only. All of them, of course, had their massive shields on their left arms.

Remarkably, there was no reaction from the enemy camp. Not one of the slouching sentries seemed to have noticed that one hundred armed men had suddenly appeared barely one hundred and fifty metres away.

Halt shook his head in disgust. 'I thought this might happen,' he said. He took out a fire arrow he had prepared the night before – a standard shaft with a bunch of oil-soaked rag tied around the head. 'Light me up, Will.'

The younger Ranger worked briefly with flint and steel and in a few seconds set a tongue of flame to the oil-soaked rag. Halt waited until he was sure the flame had taken and was well established. Then he glanced at the enemy camp, raised his bow to almost forty-five degrees, drew and released.

The fire arrow left a thin black trail of smoke behind it as it rose into the overcast morning sky.

They lost sight of it as it plunged down past the apogee of its flight. Then Will saw a bright tongue of flame flare up at Todoki's ornate pavilion. After a second, the entire roof of the pavilion, daubed with oil to make it waterproof, burst into flames and they could hear shouts from the camp as several men ran out of the tent, one falling in his haste.

'I'm afraid you'll have made Todoki-san very angry now, Halto-san,' said Shigeru.

Halt smiled grimly. 'That was the general idea.' He glanced at Will and nodded. The young Ranger filled his lungs and shouted across the intervening space to Horace.

'Horace! Go!'

Horace drew his sword and raised it in the air. Selethen mirrored the action. There was a rattling crunch as the heavy shields were lifted from the rest position on the rocky ground. Then, at a word from Horace, the fifty Kikori bellowed as one.

'Issho ni!'

Selethen's men echoed the cry.

'Issho ni!'

Then all one hundred men began chanting their war cry as a cadence, marching in time to it as they advanced across the plain towards the Senshi camp. Horace and Selethen halted them after twenty paces, but the war cry continued, booming across the plain.

Todoki's men, roused by the sudden fire in their commander's tent, were now fully awake. Their initial alarm at the sudden sound of the Kikori war cry and the tramp of their boots turned to anger as they realised that they were being attacked by mere Kikori – despised peasants who had no right to raise arms against their betters. Arming themselves, Todoki's Senshi began streaming out of the camp in an unco-ordinated mass, hurrying to attack these presumptuous fools. They formed into a ragged line as they ran towards the waiting Kikori. Then Horace gave an order and a shrill whistle sounded among the two waiting gojus.

With a crash, the shields in each front rank were presented round to the enemy and the charging Senshi found themselves confronted by a seemingly solid wall of hardwood and iron. Two quick whistle blasts sounded and the wall of shields started to tramp steadily towards them.

This was an insult that could not be borne! The leading Senshi threw themselves against the shield wall, seeking an enemy to engage. But the Kikori were hidden behind the huge shields. Furious, the first Senshi swung their katana in sweeping overhead strokes. But the top edges of the shields were reinforced with iron. The swords bit into it but, with the support of the hardwood beneath it, the iron held, stopping the murderous downstrokes. The Senshi who were engaged struggled to free their swords. But now a new danger arose.

The Kikori had not stopped their steady advance and the men in the second rank were lending their weight to the front rank, shoving them forward. The shields smashed into the Senshi, sending them reeling. In some cases, they lost their grip on the hilts of their katana, leaving them embedded in the shields.

Now, those engaged closely could see vague glimpses of the enemy through narrow gaps in the shield wall. Several tried to stab through the gaps but as a blade went between two shields, the Kikori holding them suddenly clashed them together, overlapping them like giant shears and twisting the sword from its owner's grasp. Instinctively, the Senshi reached to retrieve their fallen weapons, only to realise their mistake.

Short, razor-sharp iron blades began to stab out of the gaps in the wall, skewering arms, legs, bodies, aiming for gaps in the Senshi armour. One Senshi warrior drew back his sword for a mighty cut at a Kikori on his left, exposed by a momentary gap in the shield wall. But as he did so, he felt a sudden massive pain under his arm as a blade darted out, wielded by a Kikori on his right – unseen until now. His katana fell from his hand and his knees gave under him as he heard the battle cry ringing in his ears.

'Issho ni!'

It was the last thing that many of the Senshi heard that day. Horace and Selethen, swords drawn and ready, moved between the two ranks, looking for any weakness where they might be needed. But they found none. The Kikori, drilled and trained for weeks, and with their Emperor's eyes upon them, performed like a machine. A machine that stabbed and cut and smashed and shoved at the Senshi in a perfectly co-ordinated programme of destruction.

Some of the Senshi did manage to cause casualties. They attempted high, overhead stabbing lunges that went over the huge shields and, in some cases, they found their marks. But few of them lived to celebrate the fact. The act of reaching high over a shield left them critically exposed to the men either side of the Kikori they were targeting.

For the most part, they found themselves cramped and forced back, without sufficient room to wield their long swords effectively, without opportunity to employ the elaborate, baffling sequences of sword play they had learned and practised since childhood. And all the while, they were buffeted by the shields, while those wicked iron blades flickered in and out like serpents' tongues, stabbing, cutting, wounding and killing.

Todoki's men had never experienced a battle like this before. A Senshi was accustomed to finding an enemy in the battle line, engaging him in single combat and either winning or losing. But there were no individuals facing them – just this impersonal wall of shields that pressed into them like a mobile fortress. Confused, disillusioned, not knowing how to counteract the inexorable force before them, seeing their comrades falling, dead or wounded – the latter soon to be despatched by the second rank of Kikori – they did what any sensible men would do.