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As hundreds of birds alighted in the plaza of training, tarnsmen dismounted, to fire the camp. - (Swordsmen of Gor, Chapter 17, Sentence #44)

A larger group may well defeat a smaller group but it cannot do so if the smaller, more agile group refuses to engage to its disadvantage. All I could see at the time were hundreds of tarnsmen, some so closely clustered that the birds, unable to keep their spacings, literally, here and there, buffeted into one another. Our centuries had swept to the sides and allowed the enemy to proceed to its destination, which was Tarncamp. As hundreds of birds alighted in the plaza of training, tarnsmen dismounted, to fire the camp. On the ground, of course, the tarnsman was a common infantryman, and I had no doubt their incursion, despite their superiority in numbers, would be fiercely met by the Ashigaru of the Pani and several of our mercenaries. The Pani, I was sure, would be loyal to their lord, their daimyo, Lord Nishida, for that seemed to be their way, and a cornered mercenary, one with no hope of a higher fee or escape, much like the cornered seventy-pound canal urt of Port Kar, is a most desperate and dangerous foe. The mercenary who fights for his life is more to be feared, surely, than one who fights merely for his pay. - (Swordsmen of Gor)