Baptism of Fire

Seventh Year of the Sonwa Era
Second Moon, Twelfth Day
Hairyu County, Hairyu Castle

Ren sighed.

Before him, in the town square of Hairyu Castle, stood the townsfolk who volunteered to defend their city from the impending bandit attack. They brought nothing with them. No weapons. No uniforms. Only a fiery resolve and exceptionally high morale, which greatly confused Ren.

Ren expected roughly a regiment’s worth of volunteers at best, somewhere between eight hundred and one thousand men.

According to Governor Shou, Ren instead received twice that number at his disposal.

And now, Ren needed to turn these people into soldiers.

Out of the roughly two thousand volunteers, half stood in front of Ren.

Ren sighed, before the sound of wooden wheels interrupted his thoughts.

“Ren,” Mina called. “I brought them all.”

She confidently tapped the lid of one of the many wooden crates she and her assistants brought over as she did so.

“... Thanks,” Ren said, his low energy and confidence evident in his tone.

His eyes then widened as he saw the next person walking into the square.

Ginshi, her white hair flowing beautifully in the wind, walked in front of the gathered volunteers to the surprise of many. Bandages still wrapped her body here and there, she still walked with a limp, and she still wore a set of peasant’s robes.

Normally, high-born people prefer not to let others see them as weak, especially when they find themselves at their most vulnerable.

And yet, here Ginshi stood.

The already high morale of the volunteers rose even higher.

Ginshi nodded in acknowledgment of the volunteers before gesturing at Ren to continue.

Ren, once more, sighed.

He glanced to his left, where roughly a hundred volunteers from the Village of the Sage stood at ease.

“Company!” Ren called. “Attention!”

Immediately, the volunteers from the Village snapped to the position of attention with a stomp, posture straight, arms at their sides, shoulders square, and standing firm and steady.

The volunteers from the town, meanwhile, jumped in surprise at the sudden command.

Ren smiled. Merely an empty smile, yes, but he needed to put on a show for these volunteers.

“Soldiers!” he called. “Yes, you’re soldiers now, at least in name, whether you like it or not. If you have second thoughts, blame your governor because I’m not taking responsibility for that.”

Laughter erupted among the volunteers, inadvertently putting Ren at ease.

“Anyway,” Ren continued. “My job is to turn all of you into soldiers in both name and practice. However, we don’t have time. Usually, getting to the level of the men you see to your right…”

Ren gestured towards the volunteers from the Village of the Sage.

“…takes weeks, even months. Unfortunately, we don’t have weeks. Only a couple of days. So, before I hand all of you over to these men, just remember to listen and wait for orders. If you don’t, you will die.”

The volunteers listened in silence.

Clearly, Ren put on a decent enough show, as most of what he said came from second-hand knowledge.

Flashes of Teacher reading him one of the many books in his library darted across his mind.

Ren, again, sighed.

“Princess,” said he. “Anything you wish to add?”

Ginshi shook her head in response.

Seeing this, Ren returned his attention to the volunteers.

“Right,” said he. “You will be divided up into groups of ten and placed under the supervision of one of these men.”

Ren again gestured towards the volunteers from the Village of the Sage.

“They will teach you everything you need to know. That’s all from me. Issen!”

Ren called on one of the volunteers from the village.

“I’ll leave the rest to you.”

The volunteer, Issen (逸仙), responded with a fist-and-palm salute.

“Understood!” he exclaimed, before stepping forward and shouting orders at the volunteers from the town.

Ren, for the umpteenth time, sighed, before turning to walk away from the town square.

Someone then tugged on his collar, stopping him. Turning around, Ren found Ginshi with an uneasy look on her face.

But, before she managed to open her mouth to say anything, Ren lifted a hand to stop her.

“If it’s an apology or something,” said he. “Don’t bother. All of us here have our own reasons for taking up arms.”

“But I…” Ginshi tried. Instead, she found herself cut off by Ren shaking his head.

“Save it for later,” Ren said. “That’ll give both of us a reason to not get ourselves killed.”

Ginshi opened her mouth again, as if wanting to say something anyway, but soon sighed instead.

“…You better keep that promise,” said she. “That’s an order.”

Chuckling, Ren simply responded with a fist-and-palm salute.

--------------------------------------------------------

Seventh Year of the Sonwa Era
Second Moon, Fourteenth Day
Hairyu County, Eastern Road

Shot after shot rang out from the tree line, as Zen-u and his fellow hunters took potshots at the bandit army.

“Remember the drill guys!” Zen-u yelled. “Target the officers and sergeants! Don’t waste your shots!”

Zen-u then took aim at one of the bandits who shouted and pointed at those around him, as if giving orders.
Flint struck steel, and a shower of sparks rained down on the priming powder of his rifle.
With a notable crack, the ball burst out of the rifle’s muzzle, sailing and screwing its way through the air until striking the bandit square in the chest, knocking him off his feet.

Meanwhile, the bandit leader, recovering from his initial shock of the sudden ambush, began issuing orders.

“Gunners!” he called. “Form a firing line to our front! We’ll scatter them with a volley!”

He then switched his attention to behind him.

“And get the cannons ready!” he ordered.

The bandits then rushed forward, those armed with snap matchlocks up front, halberdiers trailing not far behind. All the while, Zen-u and his hunters picked apart the formation.

Even with the reduced leadership courtesy of the sharpshooting, the bandit arquebusiers managed to form two ranks parallel to the tree line, with one rank kneeling in front of the other. Though bandits, many already experienced repeated combat, allowing them to function as such on instinct.

As they leveled their snap matchlocks in the general direction of Zen-u and his hunters, more bullets whizzed into the formation, knocking more officers and sergeants down in the process.

The bandits then opened the pan covers of their matchlocks and, after one of the officers yelled the command, opened fire with a hail of bullets.

A massive volley, from roughly three thousand matchlock muskets, roared across the battlefield.

Yet, to no avail.

A stray shot or two grazed some of the hunters, but, for the most part, the volley only resulted in smoke and noise.

Zen-u, as he reloaded his rifle among the bushes, smiled as he remembered Ren explaining the plan

“Muskets and arquebuses,” Ren previously explained, “only have a maximum effective range of one-hundred and fifty paces. Rifles, on the other hand, can comfortably hit three hundred or more, especially in your hands.”

The sound of a conch-shell horn dragged Zen-u back to reality.

He peaked back at the bandits and saw the enemy, this time its halberdiers and spearmen, rushing out of the smoke made by the bandits’ volley towards the tree line. The enemy arquebusiers followed close behind, their match cords removed from their weapons to prevent negligent discharges. The force of roughly eight thousand men running at once made the ground tremble.

Their weapons shined menacingly in the winter sunlight, but Zen-u remained undeterred.

With two short, sharp whistles, he called for the attention of the hunters before gesturing to their rear. The hunters nodded, before slowly abandoning their positions and falling back, taking potshots at the enemy as they did so.

Seeing this, the bandit leader scoffed.

“To think I panicked just from seeing mere scouts,” he spat. “After them! Their main force must not be far behind! We’ll rush them and run them down!”

With cheering and whooping, the bandits surged forward at the command. However, the damage done by the hunters soon became clear as the bandits began breaking ranks as they ran.

They also ran slowly in comparison to the lightly equipped hunters.

Zen-u and the others soon jumped over a wall of sand bags and took cover behind them.

“Ren!” he called. “I reeled them in! You owe me a drink now!”

Ren, who hid in the bushes roughly a dozen paces away from the sand bag wall, simply rolled his eyes.

“Zen-u…”

“Oh, right!”

Zen-u peeked over the wall to look at the approaching enemy.

“Two hundred paces!” he reported. “One seventy five…! One fifty!”

At that moment, Ren grabbed the whistle hanging from his neck and blew it as hard as he could.

Shouts went up all across the sand bag wall as thousands of volunteers emerged from behind the cover of the wall and surround bushes.

Two thousand volunteers, all armed with snaplock muskets, cocked and opened the pan covers of their weapons and leveled them at the enemy at once.

A massive cacophony of gunfire erupted from the volunteers, blanketing the battlefield in a cloud of smoke. Bullets whizzed through the air, tearing to shreds the bodies of the bandits still in the middle of their advance.

The volley stopped the bandits in their tracks.

“Now, Governor!” Ren yelled behind him.

Governor Shou, barely able to hear Ren over the gunfire, enthusiastically nodded before turning to his contingent.

“Archers!” he commanded. “Let fly!”

A volley of arrows sailed over the volunteer musketeers right into the bandit formation. Not enough arrows to blot out the sun, unfortunately, but just enough to do their job.

With the initial musket volley pinning the bandits in place, the arrows found many appetizing targets to jam their arrowheads into.

As the volunteer archers used hunting bows with low draw weights, effectiveness on armored enemies remained minimal.

For Ren, however, this did not matter.

Ren planned his ambush as such; first, he elected to intercept the bandit force a day’s march away from the city in order to avoid a protracted siege. This also gave the benefit of allowing Ren the room to maneuver the forces available to him as he liked, instead of the limited options of a siege.
Second, he chose a battlefield well suited for an ambush, situated in an area he knew the enemy needed to pass to get to the city and possessed dense foliage to conceal his troops. Here, he constructed a basic low wall out of sand bags to provide a modicum of protection in the exchange of gunfire. The position, flanked by swampy terrain on the left and hills on the right, prevented the almost exclusively infantry-based force from flanking Ren’s forces.

Ren positioned his forces as follows; in front of the wall, right along the tree line, Ren placed Zen-u and his hunters as a screening and skirmishing force, softening up the enemy before the main engagement.
Behind the wall, Ren placed the volunteers, divided into battalions of five hundred, along the length of the wall. One of these battalions consisted exclusively of volunteers from the Village of the Sage, identifiable by their wearing a cuirass of lamellar armor and being equipped with bayonets. Two of these battalions consisted exclusively of volunteers from the castle, equipped only with a basic cartridge pouch and whatever melee weapons they managed to scavenge. The final battalion consisted of a mix of volunteers from both the village and the castle.
Behind this line, a five-hundred strong force of the castle garrison, augmented numerically by volunteers from the castle, lay in wait, armed with various types of polearm as a counter for possible cavalry attack. Behind this, Governor Shou directly commanded one thousand archers, mostly volunteers from the castle, who acted as a suppressing force covering the main firing line as they reloaded.

However, a deep boom soon threw a wrench into Ren’s plans, as a cannonball sailed into the woods, bursting trees and sending splinters in every direction as it did so.

The bandits, despite casualties inflicted by Zen-u and his hunters, managed to get one of the cannons operational, and another one seemed on the verge of joining the fight as well.

Zen-u attempted to snipe the artillery crew, managing to score some hits, but clicked his tongue in frustration; the smoke from the gunfire obscuring his vision.

Another boom rang out, with the cannonball this time tearing through the bandits’ own infantry before bouncing into the volunteer formation.

Screams rang out as the cannonball crushed arms and legs.

The volunteers, most of them experiencing battle for the first time, saw their morale drop like a rock. As the bandits began to regroup and fire their own volleys back at the volunteers, only adrenaline kept them in the fight.

(But,) Ren thought as he grit his teeth in frustration, (At this rate, they won’t last long…)

Then he heard the sound of hooves, followed by a familiar voice.

“Soldiers!” the voice called. “Hold fast! Hold on for just a little longer!”

Ren turned around and, to his amazement, surprise, and horror, saw Ginshi.

She rode atop a horse, her bandages stained with blood and her white hair blowing in the wind. Her sword, drawn and pointed in the air, shined brightly in the winter sun.

“The enemy is weakened!” she yelled. “YOU did that! Just a little longer and we can break them for good!”

A stray bullet from the bandits grazed Ginshi’s arm.

She flinched from the pain but nevertheless stood her ground.

Seeing this, one of the volunteer officers began yelling.

“Men of Hairyu County!” he called, “You’re not going to let a wounded girl outshine you in battle, are you!?”

A great roar erupted from the volunteers over the sound of gunfire.

For the moment, at least, morale seemed restored.

Another cannon shot rang out, this time tearing an arm off the battalion commander of the mixed battalion.

The commander screamed and withered in pain on the ground as the rest of the battalion, shaken at the sight of their gravely wounded commander, began wavering.

Ren cursed before abandoning his position and running to take over command of the mixed battalion.

A stray bullet grazed his cheek, causing him to flinch, but he could not care less.

Drawing the machete he carried as an ersatz sword, he raised it into the air to gain the attention of the battalion.

“Battalion! Volley fire by rank!” he yelled. “Front rank! Present!”

The battalion immediately began regaining cohesion.

“Fire!”

A volley tore into a group of bandits in front of them, only for another group to appear out of the smoke.

“Rear rank!” Ren yelled. “Present! Fire!”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, the bandit leader clicked his tongue in annoyance as he observed the battle.

“Where the hell did these guys come from…?” he muttered. “I thought the castle garrison was only two hundred men. Those bastards from the court must’ve lied to me!”

He squinted his eyes.

“Damn all this smoke,” he spat. “I can’t see a thing.”

A couple of stray bullets landed near the leader, adding to his annoyance.

Then, barely, he heard hooves.

Turning to his left, he widened his eyes horror at the sight.

A hundred cavalrymen, all clad in armor, barreled down at the leader, his personal guard, and the artillery from the hill on the bandits’ left flank.

“The cannons are wide open!” General Kai exclaimed, glaive raised high in the air. “Hack them down!”

The cavalry smashed through the hastily prepared spear formation vainly attempting to defend the artillery, the riders cutting down spearmen and gunners as they went.

Skillfully, the surviving artillery crews found themselves driven towards the main battle, while General Kai rushed towards the bandit leader.

“Enemy general!” he called. “Your head is mine!!”

Clicking his tongue in annoyance as he did so, the bandit leader drew his sword and charged towards General Kai.

The bandit leader swung his sword down on General Kai, hard, but General Kai parried the blow with his bare hands. He then swung his glaive from below, cleaving the bandit leader in half in a fountain of blood.

With this single blow, the battle, the first taste of battle for many, including Ren, came to a close.

No one knew at the time, but this small battle in this backwater county, marked the birth of the most powerful and effective fighting force the continent ever saw up to that point.

That, however, still remained a thing of the future.