Gala
Gala felt conflicted. They had lost the battle of King Harbor, but Romulus’s collapse in Birdmouth reignited her hope that the war would be won. She believed this not because Romulus lost the battle, though, that didn’t hurt, but because all of the western earls declared their support for Gala as the result of the battle. Altogether, 150,000 troops were pledged to Gala, and though they would be mostly made up of men who never held a spear before, she didn’t exactly complain about it.
In the meantime, while her army waited for the reinforcements and waited out the winter, there were several matters to attend to. Though Gala was the reformist in the war, Nero advised not to do anything too harsh until they had beaten back Romulus, so when the eastern earls were defeated, Gala could appoint reformist earls to support her in case the western ones put up a fight. To Gala, the war was on the brink of victory. Romulus had barely escaped the battle with around 30,000 men, and though Romulus inflicted around the same number of casualties, the war seemed to become more of a manhunt for Romulus rather than a war of thousands.
What was a more immediate concern was the treasury. It turned out that war is terrible for the economy, and Gala didn’t even have an opportunity to do anything before the treasury started to default on its debts. Luckily, due to the kingdom's internal focus, a decent portion of the debt was owed to other earls and not foreign countries, or more specifically, the earls in Seneca’s peninsula who were in open rebellion. Even with that, Gala needed money fast as she instructed the treasury to take out more loans to pay for the older ones. She still had some time to deal with it, but if the civil war didn’t end fast, Gala could be at the point where declaring bankruptcy might become the only option.
Nero spent most of his time planning how to deal with the earls once the war was over, and the impression Gala got from Nero was that it was a lot harder to pass reforms than what Gala thought. Unlike the Griffin Republic, the power structure wasn’t as clear-cut. You couldn’t lobby for votes or convince voters but rather worry about the psychology of the most powerful men in the country.
About a month later, Gala was sitting in what was her father’s chambers when a knock came at her door. It was a messenger in beaten armor with his helmet in his hands. “They’re burning the crops. They’ve decided to bypass the cities and go after the food stores.”
Gala launched out of her chair and thanked the messenger. She made her way down to the general staff’s headquarters where Smith was ordering the other generals around, demanding that something be done. Gala asked the specifics, and Smith’s response seemed eerily close to his demeanor after he retreated from King Harbor. She stood next to him as he hunched over a map. “The bastards are squeezing between Gatherstorm and Birdmouth and finding any food stores along the way and destroying them.”
“Can we survive without them?” Gala asked.
“Yes, but that’s not it. Scouts from Birdmouth reported that Romulus’s forces are doing what is called a shadow siege. The only food supply for Birdmouth is from the farms directly around it, which they already burned, and upriver. Birdmouth can’t supply using the Wine River since Romulus has controlled everything up from Birdmouth since the start of the war, and now they have sent troops to destroy any transport heading north up the Golden River.”
“How many months can Birdmouth hold out?”
“Three months.” Smith’s knuckles pressed into the table. “Three months, and then we have to consider abandoning Gatherstorm.”
Gala looked at Smith with shock. “Abandon Gatherstorm? Are you insane? If we give up the capital, we are basically giving up. We were supposed to be on the brink of victory. We have four times the number of men down there. Why can’t we send the troops after them.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“If we send all of our troops, we abandon the city, and they can walk in. They have fewer men, so they can hold out in a long siege. If we said just enough to beat them, Romulus is most likely not going to bunch up his troops in one place. He is trying to disrupt our supply lines, and he doesn’t need all 30,000 of his men to do so.”
“So, you are saying there is no way to beat them?”
“Negative. It seems that we need to lull them north somehow, but they seem determined to take Birdmouth. If they take Birdmouth, nothing is stopping them from heading due west to Alington.”
“They have the supplies for that?” Gala asked.
“Maybe by pillaging cities on the way, but the important thing is what will the western earls think when they see an army marching on their city? Do you think people who didn’t declare their loyalty to you until you seemed on the brink of victory will die for you on the battlefield?” Smith asked.
“What do say we do then?”
“Kosta is commanding an army a little further south of the city.”
“That’s why everyone is panicking,” Gala added.
“If we take our army in Gatherstorm and find Kosta, we can beat him in a battle. We have more than twice his men and can destroy him in a fair fight. The only problem is that he can move faster than us. We have to catch him. Somehow.
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Gala approved the plan, and Smith took the Gatherstorm army south. In the weeks that followed, Gala felt like whispers dominated her head. People tell her what to do, what to think, and who to trust.
Night after night, letters would come from Smith that Kosta was still running circles around him. It was encouraging that running was Kosta’s only strategy, but it grew ever more concerning when Smith couldn’t catch up to him, night after night. Gala trusted Smith. He had been a loyal dog ever since she met him. Though they disagreed on some things, Gala understood Smith’s perspective, but now Gala felt the general grew more erratic. In his letters, Smith seemed to become more emotional in the chase for Kosta as he cursed the young general in his tactics to not necessarily win but survive.
Eventually, a month after that messenger with the tattered armor told her of the burning crops, Birdmouth fell. Gala hovered over the letter from General Pluto in shock as the general told of the greatest mistake he made in his life. Apparently, in the days between Romulus’s defeat at Birdmouth and his harassment of the supply lines, Pluto let the residents of the city reenter. He quickly kicked them out again after Romulus attacked the supply lines, but in that short time, a month’s supplies were used up.
As the weeks drew on, with Smith not catching up with Kosta, the troops and the city’s civilians who now camped outside the city grew restless. They were frustrated with the lack of aid and food. After two battles and a month of their supplies being cut off, the soldiers mutinied and forced General Pluto to raise the white flag. He was now only writing this as a courtesy as his own troops held him captive, awaiting Romulus’s arrival. He was to be executed the same day Romulus arrived, and the soldiers were going to join ranks with Romulus in the hopes that Romulus’s small army had reserves of food.
Gala sat silent as she remembered the letters that General Pluto sent requesting aid, only to be met with Gala informing them that Smith would aid them as soon as he dealt with Kosta. How ignorant she was of the situation. What was depression turned into rage as Gala couldn’t understand why the soldiers defected. Couldn’t they realize that Romulus would lead them down the same dreaded path that every other monarch had? Of course, they didn’t because she couldn’t tell the world her true intentions. If she did, she wouldn’t be here in the first place.
She needed to clear her mind, so she took a wall around the palace, but the longer she walked, the more she heard whispers from the servants talking about the People’s Lord. Eventually, she got worried that something about the People’s Lord didn’t reach her and asked one of the servants what was going on. “Sorry, but did something happen with the People’s Lord? I’ve heard nothing from the generals.”
The two servants she asked glanced at each other before one of them answered. “Is it true? That you are the liberator?”
“Excuse me?” Gala asked. She hoped they weren’t asking what she thought they were asking.
“Are you the People’s Lord?”
Gala didn’t respond as stared at them blankly. The servants asked again, and Gala immediately denied it before excusing herself. She suddenly felt hot all over her body, she cracked every bone in her body to distract herself and became desperately thirsty, but when she came to her senses, she brainstormed who could have started such an accusation, and only one name came to mind. Benito Diaz.