Without knowing your LED specifications, it's impossible to give exact numbers.
Let's say your LEDs require 20ma of current and drop 2 volts each, and you're using a 9 volt battery, like are commonly used in smoke detectors. This is pretty typical.
For simplicity you can put everything in series. Battery, LEDs, and resistor.
To calculate the resistor, use v=i*r. V=the remaining voltage that is not dropped across the LEDs, which in this case=9-2-2=5 volts. i=0.02 amps (20 milliamps),
This gives R=250 ohms.
You can google for much more detailed info. The first link I got was
http://unclean.org/howto/led_circuit.htmlRegards,
Buddabing