"Hachiman Great Bodhisattva! Th-this... these are Ezo People?!"
"Impossible! That towering build, that clanging heavy armor, that fearless bearing, and such a tight formation... how could they possibly be Ezo warriors?!"
"Buddha above! Look, look over there at the village harbor! There really are three great ships, as big as Kan-style ships, even more slender than Kan-style ships!..."
"Hiss! Could some warrior house really have meddled in this? But those strange faces don't look like Wajin at all. They look more like... Sanda from across the sea?..."
In the Wajin battle line, the old general Kudo Shigeyasu knitted his brows tightly as he stared at the Ezo village several hundred meters away. The village of the Cold Swamp Tribe had been built on a flat stretch of seashore. Its front had only a ring of crude wooden palisade, utterly unable to compare with Katsuyama Castle, which had been built to occupy the terrain. Likewise, the village's defenses were very weak. On the seaward rear side, there was not even a palisade wall, only a fence, making it easy to circle around behind and break into the village. An Ezo settlement like this, though not small in scale, was full of holes everywhere and was not suited for hiding inside and defending to the death.
Therefore, the "Ezo army" had chosen to send its main force out of the village to meet the attack, forming ranks with the palisade at their backs. Meanwhile, archers climbed onto the palisade and rooftops, shooting in support from high ground. Kudo Shigeyasu had encountered this sort of Ezo battle strategy more than once before, when fighting the Uchiura Clan.
"Generally speaking, Ezo archers are fairly good shots. The Yew Bows they use can pose no small threat to warriors in Do-maru Armor. But their tribal