The Sengoku Festival (An Oda Nobuna No Yabou fanfic)

Chapter 13

The dawn slowly rose over the horizon as I watched our army slowly coming together to march against the Asato Clan's advancement to Minakonai. Our army for Lord Annon was made up of this: 30 Yari Ashigaru, 10 Yumi Ashigaru, and 10 Cavalry from my group; the 100 Yari Ashigaru and 50 Yumi Ashigaru under General Takechi Mura's command, and then we still had the 40 Yari Ashigaru and 10 Yumi Ashigaru under Joeys and Noble's command. In total, we numbered a 250-man army that, although had some veteran units in it, was still made up by the bulk of recruit units under the Generals command.

Finally, as I watched the column come together, I watched the General pull out his Fan of War as he shouted, "Forward to the enemy!"

Everyone gave a loud shout and then the column was marching away from the city of Minakonai as people from the city waved to us and cheered and more.

As we were marching, my company was towards the rear with Joey's and Nobles and as I managed to fall back from leading my troops to following them, I said to the two of them, "Hey! You ready for this?"

"Well, its everyone first real battle. We've been just fighting skirmishes and more with bandits and for you, you took on a small minor clan... but even then, that wasn't a true straight up fight.." said Joey. "I guess we're all nervous because we might not come back from this."

"Well if we do, I know what I'm spending that koku on." said Noble as he suddenly wiggled his eyebrows at some nearby ladies, even if they could only see his red mask.

"No you won't. I won't allow it from my possible buddy-in-arms."

They looked at me as Noble then asked, "Wait.. what do you mean by that?"

"Well." I said as I looked at them from over my shoulder. "I thought about your alliance thing.. if this keeps up... or if we lose a lot of men... we may not have much choice but to team up."

Joey and Noble looked at me and then Joey sighed as he said, "You might be right.. we are going up against a lot of hardened, veteran mercenaries here I bet..."

We marched for about two hours, just slowly reaching the low hills that I had met both Joey and Noble at, when suddenly there was a conch war horn that blew from up front and as everyone began to quickly ran out to spread out across the hills, I quickly ran to lead my company out onto one of the hills as I positioned us on the left flank of General Takechi's army. As I watched Noble and Joey position their red-white mercenaries on the right flank of the light green Anno army, I looked across to the navy blue Asato clan army as they slowly spread out. I saw over 100 Yari Ashigaru with the fukoro-style yari's while 50 of them I saw holding the fukoro-style long yari, which were the closest thing to pikes anyone would get to. And behind them were a group of 50 yumi Ashigaru as they were prepared with their long bows for combat.

As I watched the Yellow handed move farther down the flank with his men, I positioned myself with my archers as we kept our bows out and I watched Nobles archers do the same thing and in between us were the Anno clans 50 archers behind their 100 Yari ashigaru with more fukoro-style spears.

I looked back towards the Asato and clearly saw the village elder, now clad in samurai armor, as he sat upon a horse and as he had several men around him, I assumed them to be both his advisors and the mercenaries he hired. I wished I was confident enough to fire at him but as I watched General Takechi approach me, I looked to him and jogged over as he told me, "Prepare to set up camp."

"The day is young, why wait to engage them?" I asked him.

"Because, if Lord Anno can get a message out to the Oda, we can had both General Nagahide and General Katsuie helping us in this fight." he told me.