The Heart of the Warrior

War Is A Gamble

25000 soldiers marching to kill us all and we have about 3000 soldiers. I like those odds. There have been worse odds. I bet the Spartans at Thermopylae would laugh at this battle. But we don't have the soilders or tactics the Greeks had.

" First order of business is what our response should be?"
"Oda, we can't possibly fight that many men with what we have. The only option is to surrender. " was the response of a small and feeble man.
"Thank you for your opinion, but there has to be another option. I have not worked this hard to unite Japan to stop now."

I stood up to voice my opinion. I pushed my fear of public speaking aside and said "The only option is to fight, if we are smart and use tactics. We can win."
" Is that so Hideyoshi? Well, we can't give up, so how do you propose we do such a thing? "
" Is their path going through a gorge? "
" We believe that they will be going through a gorge. What does that have to do with anything?"
"While they are stuck in there we ambush them. We can set decoys in there path, they will think we have more forces than we do. As they come up to our fake blockade we ambush them."
"It could work but..."

The small man who spoke earlier jumped up and started yelling "That's crazy, we can't do that. It is against our tradition for fighting! And they still have more forces than us!"
" Isn't using guns against tradition? This will work, trust me."
"This is your first day here, you have no right."

I got out of my seat and began to walk over to this annoying pest and yelled " I have 10 times your education, I have seen more battles than you, studied war far beyond your comprehension and killed hundreds of men. This might be my first day here, but it is not my first fight. So shut the f@$# up and sit down."

The small man sank into his chair and didn't say another word.

" Well everyone, war is a gamble. So let's bluff."

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The rest of the meeting was spent editing my plan. We discussed necessary materials, materials we had, and where to set the trap. We decided that I would lead the ambush and Oda would direct us when to attack. The plan was good, I couldn't remember how they did it in my history book but it sounded the same.

The enemy was going really slow which gave us a lot of time to train. We had 2 weeks to teach our inexperienced army everything we knew before we would have to leave. Ryuu and I had a lot of work to do, everyday for 16 hours we taught and fought. They wanted me to ride a horse, so when ever I could I would practice with the horse.

Ryuu and I grew extremely close in those few weeks. For the first time in years it felt like I had a brother again. I learned about his past and everything he went through. He was abandoned as a child and had to fight for life. He switched between clans a lot, but decided to stay with Oda. I knew that I had heard his story before but from where?

After 2 weeks we had to march out to the gorge and wait to attack. We arrived just in time to set up. Just as we arrived the scouts came rushing in saying the army was camping in the middle of the gorge. We had 1 hour to travel along the top rim of the gorge and get to the other side. I gathered the 2900 men and they followed me to set the ambush.

One hundred men stayed behind to set the decoys and protect Oda and Asika. I have no idea why they would want her out here, but whatever.

1 hour later we were at the entrance to the gorge. I could see the direction flags of Oda. Oda was saying the army was approaching the blockade. We would have no time to rest.

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I looked around at the soldiers, they were exhausted. No way could they fight like this especially against such a large force but we had no choice.