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“I . . .” Rin didn’t know what to say. She had to admit those were real problems, problems she had to deal with eventually, but they seemed so far off that she’d never given them any thought. Those seemed like good problems to have, because by the time they became relevant, it would mean that she’d won. But what was the point of daydreaming about an empire when Nezha still ruled the southeast? “I haven’t—”
“Ah, don’t look so scared.” Moag gave her shoulder a condescending pat. “You’ll be sitting on a throne of riches soon enough. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The Consortium wants to be here for a reason. All those silks? Porcelains? Tungsten deposits? Antique vases? They want that shit, and they’ll pay good money for it.”
“But they’re not going to trade with us,” Rin said. “Are they? I mean, if we win, won’t they just blockade us?”
“They will, on paper, refuse to trade with the Nikara Empire.” Moag spread her hands in a magnanimous gesture. “But I’ve got ships aplenty, and I know a million ways to disguise the trade channels so it’s not coming directly from you. You can always find a way to make a sale when there’s demand. I’ll take a cut, of course.”
Rin was still confused. “But if it’s Nikara goods they’re buying, won’t they know—”
“Of course they’ll know,” Moag said. She shook her head, casting again that pitying smile. “Everyone knows. But that’s the business of statecraft. Nations rise and fall, but appetites remain the same. Trust me, Speerly—you’ll be carting in Hesperian grain weeks after you boot them from your shores, so long as you’re willing to send back some of Arlong’s treasures in return. The world runs on trade. Send an envoy when you’re ready to start.”
The battles got harder as the Southern Army moved farther east. Rin had expected this. She was essentially knocking on Nezha’s door now; they were only several months’ march from Arlong. Now well-trained Republican troops occupied every major city in their path. Now Rin regularly encountered artillery formations armed with opium missiles, which forced her to get more and more creative with how and when she deployed shamans. In half her battles she didn’t send in Pipaji or Dulin at all, relying instead on conventional military means to break the opposition. More often than not she was the only shaman in action, since she had a higher opium tolerance than the rest; she could withstand close to twenty minutes of smoke, during which she could do incalculable damage before she was forced to retreat.
The fighting turned vicious. The defenders weren’t so quick to surrender anymore; more often they fought to the death, taking as many southerners with them as they could. Her casualty rates, once in the dozens, climbed to triple digits.
But Rin was also blessed by the fact that Nezha’s troops were so fucking slow. They weren’t mobile in the least. They were stationary defenders—they stuck behind city walls and protected them as best they could, but never did they attempt the roving strikes that might have put the Southern Army in real trouble.
“It’s likely because they’re weighed down by tons of Hesperian equipment,” Kitay guessed. “Mounted arquebuses, multiple fire cannons, all that heavy stuff. They haven’t got the transportation support to take it on the road, so they’re always tethered to one place.”
That turned Nezha’s troops into sitting targets and offset the technology imbalance somewhat—Nezha’s troops were committed to their trenches with their heavy machinery, while Rin’s squadrons were quick and agile, always on the offensive. They were fighting like a turtle and a wolf—one retreating into its ever-shrinking shell, while the other paced its boundaries, waiting for the slightest weakness to strike.
That suited Rin just fine. After all, she, Kitay, and Nezha had all been taught since their first year at Sinegard that it was always, always better to be on the offensive.
Despite the increased resistance, week by week they continued to gain ground, while Nezha’s territory crumbled.
Rin knew Nezha’s losses weren’t entirely his fault. He had inherited a Republic fractured and riddled with resentment toward his father, as well as a massive, unwieldy army that was tired of fighting a civil war they’d been promised would end quickly. His inner circle was getting smaller and smaller, reduced now to a Hesperian attaché who did little more than make snide comments about how Nezha was on his way to losing a country, and a handful of Vaisra’s old advisers who resented that he wasn’t his father. She heard rumors that since Mount Tianshan, he’d already had to quash two attempted coups, and although he’d swiftly jailed the perpetrators, his dissenters had only increased.
Most importantly, he was losing the support of the countryside.
Most of the Nikara elite—aristocrats, provincial officials, and city bureaucrats—remained loyal to Arlong. But the villagers had no entrenched interests in the Republic. They hadn’t benefited financially from Nezha’s new trade policies, and now that they’d tasted life under Hesperian occupation, they threw their support behind the only other alternative.
The upshot of this was that as Rin moved south, she stumbled into a remarkable intelligence network. In the countryside, everyone was tangentially connected to everyone else. Market gossip became a hub for crucial information. It didn’t matter that none of her new sources were privy to high-level conversations, or that none of them had ever seen a map of troop placements. They saw its evidence with their own eyes.
Three columns crossed this river two nights ago, they told her.
We saw wagons of fire powder moving east this morning.
They are building temporary bridges across the river at these two junctions.
Much of this ground-level, eyewitness intelligence was useless. The villagers weren’t trained spies, they didn’t draw accurate maps, and they often embellished their stories for dramatic effect. But the sheer volume of information made up for it; once Rin had reports from at least three different sources, she and Kitay could piece them together into a mostly accurate composite image of where Nezha had arranged his defenses, and where he intended to strike next.
And that, again, confirmed what Rin had believed since the start of her campaign—that Nikan’s southerners were weak but many, and that united, they could topple empires.
“Nezha can’t be doing this on purpose,” Kitay said one evening after yet another city in Hare Province had tumbled into southern hands with barely so much as a whimper. “It’s like he’s not even trying.”
Rin yawned. “Maybe it’s the best he can do.”
He shot her a wary look. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She knew she couldn’t really take credit for their victory. They both knew that their ongoing streak of wins was in large part because Nezha simply had not committed as many troops or resources as they had.
But why?
They had to assume at this point that Nezha’s dominant strategy was to hole up in Arlong and concentrate his defenses there. But surely he knew better than to put all his eggs in one basket. Arlong was blessed with a bevy of natural defenses, but defaulting to a siege mentality this early screamed of either desperation or insanity.
