Time passed. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. After two months of doing nothing but training, my students were approaching halfway competent. They weren't doing as well as I would have liked, but I thought the results were at least good enough that Lord Ota wouldn't have an excuse to saddle me with this kind of punitive duty any longer.

Part of the result was down to diet. In general, during a military campaign a soldier was lucky if he could eat his fill of rice every day. Up here in the hills, we did have a bit of rice, of course, but it was mixed in with a hearty dose of wild vegetables and, best of all, wild game. I was feeling better at having the protein in my diet, and I imagined everybody else felt the same.

Also, the steady application of magical pressure in a controlled environment had borne fruit. While my students were still largely inept when it came to any kind of fine grained magical control, they had at least learned how to express their own mana around them. It wasn't enough to establish a proper domain of control, not even a little one like Kana could manage, but at least they were capable of self defense.

They had adopted the breathing exercises I'd shown them with almost religious fervor. It wasn't as helpful as it might have been had their mana manipulation been up to snuff, but many stones make a wall. Diligent daily practice, combined with intense physical exercise, had done its bit to build them up a little bit every day.

We still had a month before I would feel obligated to report back to Lord Ota, but I thought we had reached the point that we should have a little graduation ceremony. From here on out I wanted to spend more of our time tracking down those bandits. I didn't dare return to Lord Ota with a bunch of trained students and a mob of bandits still plaguing his lands. I could tell that he wasn't the sort of boss who appreciated a job being left half done.

All in all, after two months of hard work my students were able to fight about as well as the daimyo who I had faced on the battlefield. It was hard to be certain, considering that our encounter had been so brief, but after doing my best to be objective I had to say that I thought someone like Hideyoshi would have a fifty fifty chance against the daimyo if he had a chance to fight him for himself.

On the bright side, that daimyo was the most effective magical fighter that I had faced in life or death battle. On the dark side, the daimyo's standard of performance was far below that of Kana, my childhood friend who was, essentially, a peasant girl that liked playing with sticks. I wasn't about to go boasting about my students' ability to go toe to toe with a man who spent his whole life as a leader and administrator, but at least they were less hopeless than they had been when they were entrusted to my care.

Thus, after our morning meditations, I called the men together and informed them that today's lesson would be of a more practical nature. I even let them carry their swords again. I'd had them train without them, in part because I didn't want anybody to get hurt and in part because I didn't want anybody breaking a valuable weapon. By now I was sure that they posed more danger to their enemies than themselves. 

Pretty sure.

They did perk up on being handed back their swords. Well, that was to be expected. It was a sign of trust, after all.

Once the men were properly armed, I led them down from the hillside where we'd been camped. Once we reached the valley floor, I led them up further into the mountains. I didn't rush the pace, since I wanted us to put our best foot forward once we arrived at our destination. Accordingly, the sun was just about directly overhead when the small farming village came into view.

I had been born and raised in what I had thought of as a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. This mountain village, though, made my nameless home look like a metropolis. A few scattered handfuls of houses, spread through the haphazardly laid out rice paddies. It looked like the surrounding landscape would support more intensive farming, especially if the hills were terraced, but the village was simply too small to support such an effort. It couldn't have held more than five hundred people.

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In a place like this, most people were busy scratching a livelihood out of the land from sunup to sundown. Even so, there were always a few people working in their homes. As we made our way into town and up what passed for a main street, a chorus of whispers greeted our arrival. That much I had expected.

I hadn't expected the chorus of slamming doors that met our approach. It seemed that these weren't exactly trusting folk.

It didn't take long to reach the center of town. I stood in what passed for the town square, waiting for some notable personage to come out and greet us. It took an uncomfortably long time, during which I considered whether I would have to kick in a door or two in order to force an introduction, before an old man came wobbling our way.

"You can kill us if you want," he said, "but we don't have anything left to give."

I stared at him in shock for a moment. For such a fatalistic pronouncement, he had delivered it in a strong voice with a head held high. I could admire the backbone he was showing, even if the whole situation was the result of a ridiculous misunderstanding.

I glanced around at my men to see how they had taken his greeting. They didn't seem particularly offended. Now that I took a closer look at them, I could understand why. After two months of training in the woods, my students were not exactly sterling examples of upstanding citizens, at least not to the untrained eye. Not to mention that we had left for the training shortly after a military campaign. It had been some time since any of them had even made a real effort to look presentable.

There was no need to jump down the old man's throat about his mistake. However, I couldn't let the misunderstanding linger. Building relationships requires that both sides have a clear understanding of each other in order to make anything last.

"I'm afraid you're mistaken," I said. "We are soldiers of Lord Ota, sent here to hunt bandits."

He didn't reply for a long moment, looking me up and down before turning his searching gaze to my students. I didn't look back, but I had enough mana out to feel them nodding in affirmation to my words.

"Is that so?" he asked, unwilling to change his mind so quickly.

"Yes," I said, nodding for emphasis. "He has won a great victory over the Imakama army and now seeks to settle the unrest that plagues these lands."

He had definitely won a great victory. Whether he actually had it in mind to take care of troublemakers and ease the burden placed on the peasantry by anarchy and violence, I was less sure. It was possible that he just wanted me out of his sight for a little while. In any event, Lord Ota would certainly be happy to hear that the bandits in the area had been killed, so I figured my words were true enough.

"Well, that's a relief," the man said, finally relenting. I hoped he had chosen to trust me and not merely given in due to the overwhelming force under my command. "We were about due for some good fortune."

It didn't take much prompting after that to convince him to tell us of the troubles that had been plaguing the village. Since the civil war had begun, several generations ago now, the village had gone through several cycles of trouble. That is to say, most of the time its remote location and the difficult surrounding terrain sheltered it from the consequences of the ongoing fighting, leaving the peasants their idyllic mountain homes.

Sometimes, though, when unrest and violence became sufficiently widespread, bandits prowled the lands looking for easy prey. In those situations, the remote location of the village worked against it. It was difficult to get to the village due to the terrain, but that applied to the forces of the daimyo that would enforce order just as it did to the bandits.

The latest group of bandits had first appeared almost a year ago. They had raided the village several times, carrying off whatever valuables they could find and threatening horrible fates for any who dared to resist. In the last few months the bandit's visits had taken on the outward form of tax collection more than robbery, as they brazenly appeared in the middle of the day to exact their tribute. They hadn't pushed the town to the brink of starvation, but belts had definitely been tightened. The village was one bad harvest away from disaster.

Fortunately, the bandits didn't sound like anything we couldn't handle. At least, there were no sword saints among them. Accordingly, I figured that whatever their numbers, my students ought to be able to handle them.

Back when I had been training my students in the woods, I had concocted various elaborate schemes to track down the bandits. Now that I was aware of the actual situation, though, it seemed that clever plans would not be required. Since the bandits were courteous enough to come to the village on a regular basis, all that we had to do was wait for them to appear.