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War is war, and that is the last lesson of those who seek to know it—whether you fear it or instigate it, at the heart of every war is conflict, and at the heart of every conflict is sin. No matter on what scale, it is sin to harm, and harm in the face of harm (as said in the Five Precepts: do not kill, do not steal, do not cheat, do not lie, do not[...])
To those who hold war in contempt get called idealists, while those who say it is inevitable get called fatalists. I believe those of the world should be both: for while we think death inevitable, we fear it still due to a lingering attachment to this world. Should we not apply the same principle to war? Then is[...]
[...] war not death? And is total liberation—rather than peace as a solution to conflict—acceptance, rather than denial?
Is acceptance condonation? Is denial condemnation? Is participation sin?
Answer these questions, and in the end, you will gain nothing but more questions[...]
Yet the fundamental fact—assumption, if you will—that you must operate on when thinking about war is that war is war, and in war there is no such thing as sin or virtue...for if you were to measure the worth of a person for the things they do in defense of their livelihoods, the world would be a very irredeemable place indeed.
—ON WAR IN REGARDS TO THE HOLY TEACHINGS, VENERABLE MAHAUHTETAR THE ELDER
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DUSK WAS...AN EXPERIENCE.
That was the right word, I thought. An experience.
Wisps of a warm blush-orange streaked the faraway mountains with light streaks of citrine above the tops of the Draconian Peaks; stars dusted themselves across the almost-night sky. A cleaved-half moon glinted like a scythe, high above our necks like an executioner’s knife.
Delightful.
They’d arrived when it had still been light outside, the troops less like animals and more like an organized swarm of soldier ants in their armor and leather uniforms—instead of approaching the wall, they were a good distance away, almost an hour from Bellum and just barely across the border, where the forest started thinning. It was due to the border scouts Leon had suggested we send that we even knew they were there, and even then their numbers were, admittedly, larger than we’d expected.
Do not engage, Greta had explicitly sent my uncle and me along with. Observe.
“I thought you were with the Galani skirmishers,” Leon had said when I’d joined, in a what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-here tone.
“I thought the same,” I’d replied while feigning ignorance in an I-don’t-know-either mask that had led to him grudgingly leaving me alone.
“Don’t get in the way,” he’d warned, before leaving me to my own devices.
I was polishing off a piece of candy while examining their makeshift camp—Julian hadn’t come out of his tent, but there’d been important-looking patricians coming in and out—when legionaries came out from their tarps with what looked like—
“Are those…cages?” Leon asked incredulously, before squinting.
I pulled out my spyglass and looked through it.
“Looks like it,” I agreed, being met with black tarp and small metal bars. I zoomed in as the legionaries aimlessly stood, as if waiting for orders, and then the long-awaited Consul came out of his tent and gave them a nod. Julian then cast a glance in our direction—he probably saw past our (not so) clever camouflage—and then looked away as the legionaries set the cages down and dipped their hands in what looked like…
Chicken feed.
The birds themselves came scuttling out, pecking at the feed in the legionaries’ hands as they winced. One authoritative-looking one bent down to the birds’ levels and barked something, and immediately the chickens surged forward, waddling away from the camp a good five meters or so before stopping and turning around, as if expecting feed. The ‘Pub soldiers followed up and fed them.
It was after it happened once or twice that Leon swore.
“Trained chickens,” I said with the proper amount of grimness. “They know we have bombs.”
Rather than saying the sensible thing—Of course they know we have bombs, we blew up their Senate building—Leon just turned as if I was an aide.
“Are the explosives set up near here?” he asked. Would they be set off?
I shot him a small glance. “In the meeting, they were distributed in several areas within a half-mile radius of Bellum. At this rate, though, they’ll reach it in…” I calculated the time in my head. “Around three hours. It’ll slow them down considerably—oh, they’re making the chickens go further out. Splendid.”
The chickens were, in fact, going further out, and Leon noted the fact with another obscenity, grabbing a crossbow from his soldier and—aiming. For fuck’s sake. I immediately got up from my position and drove a knife towards the held weapon, causing the general’s personal guard to draw their knives.
“What exactly are you doing? If you shoot the chickens, you’ll let them know we’re here,” I hissed. “Did you not hear what Her Majesty said? Don’t engage.”
The general looked pissed at me for interrupting his decision.
“In war, timing is everything,” Leon hissed back. “We need to get rid of those chickens now, otherwise they’ll ruin everything. Let go of me, damnit. I’m your superior, this is insubordination.”
“You’ll reveal our location,” I said back, raising my volume but letting the tone remain even so it didn’t seem like a catfight. “Her Imperial Majesty specifically said, ‘Observe, don’t engage.’ She didn’t give you the authority to make executive decisions by yourself, General. Unless you want them to charge us right this instant and outnumber us, I suggest you heed caution. The people around us have their lives in your hands.”
I couldn’t care less about the people around me, but Leon’s eyes flickered, surprisingly considering.
He was still all bluster when he let me send a pigeon (and runner as a precaution) back, though. I held a conversation—well, more accurately, an argument—with him while I looked through my spyglass and continued watching.
If they know we have bombs, even if we kill their chickens, they’ll find some other way.
The Republicas would likely be forced to start using soldiers instead—as morally controversial as human shields were, the Consul wouldn’t risk leading troops into a trap that could potentially explode. Sacrifice of the few over the many was a core tenet of Republica military strategy, aside from sheer will, brutal force, and surprisingly enough, ruthless efficiency.
So why were they using such a terribly inefficient method?
I mulled it over for a while.
They’re playing it safe from the start. Prioritizing numbers.
I know that, I told myself. But why else?
If I thought of a game of Crown, it was almost certainly a Soldier’s Defense: straightaway from the game, you’d offer up the pawn that was the Soldier in order to take early initiative—playing not for equal stakes, but higher ones.
It wasn’t exactly a trap, per se, but it was more of not falling for a skirmish early on that would only lead to a loss. If we shot the chickens, and met their Soldier with one of our own, we’d be giving up our advantage of remaining unseen, as well as one of our troops. A Soldier near the heart of our game.
No, the common way to meet Soldier’s Defense was to—
My head snapped up as I heard the cooing of a pigeon—the bird settled on my shoulder, and I unrolled the parchment as Leon watched and smiled.
Will send Akila. Stay where you are.
— move another Soldier.
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I’d liked to have said that I laid there under the sunshine eating candy and watching the chickens, but alas it was only so for the better quarter of an hour, when Leon shoved a map in my hands and demanded me to mark down where the bombs were. After I spent five minutes carefully warning him that my memory wasn’t perfect (even though it was, I thought wryly), I complied.
He then blinked, as if remembering something, and then cleared his throat rather awkwardly.
“Right, er—I remember ‘Dora passed away a few Dayhepts ago.” He coughed. “My condolences.”
“Isn’t she your sister?” I couldn’t resist the urge to say. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
Leon looked like he hadn’t expected that reply, but still responded in turn.
“She was your mother.”
I appreciated the sentiment, but was rather too tired to be diplomatic.
“Well, then, I hope it doesn’t offend you too much to say that when I heard, I thought nothing but ‘good fucking riddance,’” I said cheerily. “My condolences to you as well.”
A wisp of a grin—shock, mingling with kinship—tugged at his lips after the initial floored expression.
“I can’t have imagined how she treated her own daughter,” he admitted. “Dora and Nora are…Godsdamned nightmares, I swear. I didn’t know I could be happy that I was invited to a funeral.” For a beat, kinship rather than animosity filled the air, and then my uncle who I’d never known—but saw often, at family gatherings— cleared his throat and turned. “Well. Have things to do, anyway. Thanks for the map.”
I gave an offhanded wave as a substitution for a No problem and leaned back, continuing to watch through the telescope.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
The group of three soldiers with the chickens had doubled to two, sent west and north of the Republica camp. They had made it surprisingly far, but I was sure there would be more people soon. Either that, or they would do something else soon then sweep the nearby area of bombs.
Our camp had been moved—again, the near-forest was cover, but shuffling troops and packs in broad daylight while the enemy was near didn’t seem like a good idea. But at least it avoided conflict, I conceded. It wasn’t even a camp, either—more like a cluster of Cadmi soldiers huddling together on the ground while they discussed strategy and Leon talked with them, surprisingly thoughtful.
The chickens weren’t in our direct path, but if one of the lovely birds decided to scamper where they weren’t supposed to and stumble upon our ragtag coalition…
Knifing chickens was a perfectly princely activity for a Chosen of the Gods, I thought before my Ability pricked and I immediately snapped my head up, swiveling my spyglass in the direction. I didn’t drop it even when I saw the crowd of Galani skirmishers—headed by Akila, daughter of Ur—coming towards us.
Was that—fire?
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Seeing your home in flames was never a good start to a day, Akila had thought.
The fire had come from the direction of Eurus.
The Republicas had very obviously approached from the north, and—
It had been incomprehensible. The house that she had come home to every single day, the spears that she had painstakingly crafted and set on the walls by her bed, the handmade clay bowls that she had gotten as a gift—everything had gone up in flames. There was a pang of shame as Akila remembered how she had stood, hollow-faced and slack-jawed, as she’d watched that flames roar in a twisted, symphonic crescendo over the walls of her home.
All of the people she loved—talked with, embraced, protected—had been screaming, ashen-streaked faces clutching their children or themselves, running away from the flames. It had been their yells that had jolted Akila out of her second-long stupor, prompting her to order all of them to get to the river.
The desperation and sheer shock as the Republica soldiers had set the Snakelands alight were still bright with fervency in Akila’s chest.
And now, Akila—daughter of Ur, son of Chione—stood grimly with a torch in her hand.
People liked to talk about how revenge was a vicious cycle. They said that you would kill someone, and their loved ones would get angry, and come and kill you, and you would either kill them and their loved ones would come to kill you, or you would get killed—then, Akila had always asked, did the blame fall on a singular person? Who’s the “better” person, she always argued inside her head, the person who’s willing to kill to get revenge, or the person who killed in the first place? The person continuing the cycle, or the person who started it?
For all people liked to use primal instincts as an excuse to justify murder—hey, anyone would break if pushed to a certain point—the use of the “advice” depended on whether the person even cared about being a good person in the first place, and whether they would listen to “reason.” (Otherwise, there was no point.)
And there was always no reasoning with a person well and truly consumed by revenge.
So Akila dropped the torch while the skirmishes attacked the camp, letting the flames consume the tattered canvas of the tent like a drawn-out breath.
And the only thing she felt was triumph.
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Julian would be lying if he hadn’t said he’d expected it. Imperials were absolute fucking batshit insane that way.
Do you believe that what you’re doing is good? he had asked Cyrus in the Golden Fortress.
Worthy, not good, Cyrus had corrected. Because the cost of a cause shouldn’t diminish its value.
But now the cost was laid bare to Julian, in the faces of the broken and maimed victims of the Curia explosion, the dying legionaries of this fire—the cost was lives. And it wasn’t just wasted potential these lives were costing the Republic, it was its heartblood—if there were no people, there would be no nation.
And the boy felt disgust, yes, he could say it now—an irredeemable, hollow disgust for the patricians that had threatened his mother for him to fight for his people, for the greedy, empty shells of monsters in human skin that couldn’t care less for the people—his people—and once, that disgust had been enough to consider handing over his nation to the Empire.
But, even though the Imperials weren’t exactly monsters, they didn’t know the cost of the cause—maybe they were right in saying it had value, but at its root, this war had started because of greed and a lust for power, and Julian would never forget that.
“Retreat!” Julian roared for the sake of the audience, before adding a, “Protocol Six!”
He had gone over all the protocols.
Julian had never put it past the Imperials to not sink low—there were no lows in war—and deliberately sabotaging the food supply had always been a possibility. So while the chickens had been sent out as a diversion—a provocation—he had ordered some of his more discreet legionaries to begin digging small pits in the ground covered by tents. By slowly unloading the food supply into dark cellars, and covering it up with stone slabs, it would hide the food supply in plain sight and protect the latter from whatever the Imperials would pull.
Such as, for example, a fire set by the galanos an hour after the troops had crossed the border.
But if the Empress thought they would run around like headless chickens when part of the forest terrain was set on fire, she was sorely wrong.
From a strategic standpoint, such an extreme action was made to force the Republica troops somewhere. If they retreated backwards, they would be going further into the fire (which served a double purpose to threaten the area around Honos, Julian was sure). If they continued forwards, the Imperial troops that Julian had felt surveilling the chickens would most likely be forced to engage. And that was discounting the galanos troops around them at the moment.
A classic Weaver’s Pass.
Where “the only way out is through” strategy is rendered useless.
But there was Protocol Six.
“Protocol Six,” Julian continued, mentally pinpointing the vague area where the trap was as he stabbed an incoming warrior, “eleven o’clock, do not engage!”
It’s a monster horde.
Pretend they’re monsters.
One by one went down as Julian’s troops immediately pulled back, avoiding the general eleven o’clock direction while going on the defensive against the galanos—they pressed against the forest as if falling back, feigning a slow retreat while they redirected the tide of battle so the Galani were against the fire.
Pretend they’re monsters.
Julian cut down a man in front of him as easily as he would a Harpy, the sheer force that came easily to him flowing easily with his blows. He watched the battle as the fire grew warm around him, more than scorching, blazing his sides as he killed, repeatedly and desperately, the blood roaring in his ears as his heart hammered.
“Do not run!” he screamed in Republica. “Do not roll over!”
“Do not burn!” Weak choruses of the chant came back, the legionaries pushing against the Galani of the same number.
Pretend they’re monsters.
A shuddering gasp came out of the warrior that Julian pierced with his knife—as the boy withdrew the blade, the other writhed and mouthed a desperate prayer as they fell to the ground, faint words lost to the blazing smoke that threatened to choke everyone’s throats.
“Do not run!” Julian screamed again, to be heard over the screams. “Do not roll over!”
The people that he commanded he was unfamiliar with, but all shared the same blood in their veins, that same sheer will to live that he always heard no matter the battlefield. It was never do not lose or do not be afraid that was Julian’s personal chant that was heard at Gloria, but—
“Do not burn!”
The boy fought fiercely as his soldiers moved, following his orders. The Galani warriors were forced to be pushed towards the direction the fire was spreading, and he could feel the moment they all realized the fact. Their leader, the one who had held the first torch, was now brandishing her spear against Julian, and the Hero was dodging vicious strikes as she hissed.
“You burned my home,” she snarled, and Julian had the hazy thought of shaking his head and saying, No, that wasn’t me, that was Cecilia.
He fought for the side that had burned her home—he was the side that had burned her home, and he represented everything she hated; thinking, or even wanting otherwise was shirking responsibility. There was no honor in killing, but it was because of his honor that he accepted he had to. All of the good, all of the bad—he would take on everything—
“I did,” Julian said back, and they fought, fierce and desperate, because there was no winning or losing: there was just fighting, fiercely and desperately, and that was what they were doing.
It was the moment that she jabbed her spear, eyes burning with fire and smoke, that the boy fell back and yelled,
“Protocol Six, end!”
And that meant one thing.
As the troops fell back from the fight, pushing forward but running all the same, they never looked back.
“Do not relent!” someone began. “Do not roll over!”
“Do not burn!”
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I stood.
It was impressive, how Julian managed to circumvent the scenario into his favor. He was, after all, an accoladed general, I conceded, but hearing about it and seeing it in action were two different things.
And the move Greta was making now—compared to the move you’d make in a regular Crown game—were also two very different things.
It was rather like overturning a board, I thought, but while still playing on it.
It was aggressive, forceful, and so Greta-like that I didn’t dwell on if she came up with it, but why.
The fire would spread near Honos, that much was obvious. I didn’t think it would burn the city, per se, but it would at least threaten the Republic’s hold on it. The no-two-praetors/Consuls-on-one-campaign rule had likely forced Celia to stay behind in Honos, and it would be hard to manage while conflicting with the patricians there.
It was a classic Weaver’s Embrace—made with the aim to corner the enemy and herd them towards a trap. A rock and a hard place.
Leon hissed a breath. “Fuck, they’re avoiding us.”
“Yes, it seems so,” I murmured agreeably, to a glare from my uncle.
“We should go and meet them,” he replied, probably abstaining from insulting me. “They—the Weaver’s Embrace is built on them being cornered. If they avoid the trap, there’s no sense in—”
Cold hands I felt on my shoulders, and it was that familiar weight of my Ability that came with an acrid realization. It was strange that my heart dropped, I thought. It shouldn’t have.
“There is,” I cut in, my Ability surprisingly not the source of the observation. My features were schooled into an unusually mild expression, one I hadn’t worn for quite some time. Weave had dug its fingers in my beating heart and squeezed, forcing it to stabilize, and there was nothing but a deathly calm amidst the smoke—everything had stilled, and I could feel nothing but the faint shaking of my hands.
“She…” My voice caught, but it sounded more like a considering pause than hesitation—the words I spoke felt foreign to me. “There is a reason.”
Fuck. So that was why the Galani had been late.
(Greta, after all, had always liked to make sure that her plans went the way they needed to.
That, I knew, was characteristic.)
The general looked at me strangely, as if I had just maniacally burst out laughing after turning into a pig and sprouting wings.
“What the fuck are you on about?” he demanded, and I just shook my head in response.
“Watch,” I said evenly, pointing towards the direction the Republic was running in with a small smile that wasn’t my own.
My uncle, surprisingly, obeyed with a small flicker of what felt like—fear.
(I had underestimated what lengths Greta the Great would go to, I thought dimly as the fire continued to roar at greater heights.
It was only a few minutes before the first legionary stepped on the pressure plate.)
The explosion was deafening.
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