The fast warrior hurries into danger
The strong warrior walks into danger
The agile warrior dances into danger
The clever warrior walks around danger
From The Path of War, by Hu Xin
Jai watched the army moving into position with breathless anticipation. He was new to battle. Yes, he had served in the Jade Empire’s military for many years and trained as a swordsman, but he had been a scout, often working alone in bandit-infested territory, or with small groups of like men, testing the border regions. He had never until recently witnessed the true horrific majesty of an imperial army at war and, though he had now seen it numerous times in quick succession, still the tense expectancy remained.
The army had moved from Yuen with impressive speed and efficiency. It said a great deal about General Jiang that Jai had barely had time to gather his gear and draw what equipment he felt he needed from the Palace of Arms before couriers were urging him to join the staff as the general was preparing to move out.
The First Army had made Jai’s breath catch in his throat. He had been impressed to see them gathered in that wide valley, but to witness them on the move was a different thing entirely. The army slithered along the valley from Yuen like a great centipede of silver, black and red, uniform and perfect, like a grand piece of the silversmith’s art, like a flexible blade, aiming west. It was magnificent. And Jai pushed every ounce of his soul into the belief that they were a force of inclusion and civilisation, who would repair the long-term damage to the Inda. Because if he even for a moment allowed himself to be that son of Aram who had defied the Jade Empire’s foragers, he could not be the man he now needed to be.
And if he had thought that the gathered forces from Yuen were impressive, he had felt his conception of the scale of the world change when they reached the garrison town of Chengdi and the force doubled in size with the mustered units there. This massive army had moved west then, towards the border, where his preconceptions were once more destroyed as they met an even larger muster that joined them to form the full First Army. Jai had never seen so many humans in one place, let alone soldiers. An ocean of silvered figures filling the world. Here and there cavalry wings rose like reefs from the silver, and great dark cannon moved on carts like ships on the surface. It was an incredible thing to behold, and Jai felt a little of his trepidation over the possibility that the western empire might face them fade. How could any other people in the world match this?
And this was but a third of the Jade Empire’s force. The Second and Third Armies were elsewhere, moving into position as per General Jiang’s orders. While the First Army marched into the Inda heartland, where the strongest of the rajahs ruled and there would still be noticeable resistance, the Second Army was moving through the mountain passes in the north, securing the hardy but small northern kingdoms close to the horse clans. And the Third Army had moved south, into the jungle proper, to secure the southern rajahs. A trident. A three-pronged attack.
Jai had frowned as he listened to the plan, carefully wording a response to the effect that their campaign might have been more effective if Jai had been included in the early planning. A force this size would have trouble manoeuvring in the northern mountains and would be too unwieldy to deal with the rajahs there, and the south was hardly worth consideration, since much of it was empty, ruled only by ghosts. General Jiang had nodded his understanding. He had been forced to move precipitously by imperial command and had erred on the side of caution. But he had taken terrain into account. The northern army was largely infantry and the southern heavily weighted with cavalry. Only this central force was an equal mix. The three armies would converge, having secured their territory, on the largest of the Inda kingdoms – Jalnapur on the Nadu River.
Jai had understood. The Nadu River was the furthest the Jade Empire could hope to move without challenging their opposite number in the west. Crossing that river would bring them close to enemy borders and almost certainly be considered an act of aggression. And the Nadu ran from north to south along much of the Inda Diamond. The northern reaches wound through narrow valleys and rocky precipices, unsuitable for an army to cross. The southern reaches were too wide for an easy crossing, and largely within the forbidden lands of the spirits anyway. Only the central section was viable, and the only good bridge was at Jalnapur. It was the reason for the kingdom’s wealth and power, this ability to tax those who crossed. It was a natural bottleneck, but was also that line which, when crossed, would increase the chance of western opposition exponentially.
And so the three armies had passed into Inda lands on their grand campaign of annexation. Jai was impressed with the ease with which Jiang and his second and third generals kept in touch. Every day riders reached the army with the latest reports of the movements to north and south, and then returned with news to go the other way.
Jai’s focus became the First Army pure and simple. Those in the south would encounter precious little true opposition, though he had sent warnings to stay out of the spirit lands and not cross the line of markers bearing their weapons. General Jiang had wholeheartedly supported these words, and the soldiers of the Third Army would obey the command. They were Jade Empire; obedience was in their blood. Beyond simple obedience, soldiers faced enough horror in their lives without deliberately offending gods and spirits, and so that line of markers would remain uncrossed. To the north the Second Army would be slow going through the mountains, but should encounter little resistance. Jai was more than grateful not to be with them, for somewhere on that campaign, the Jade Empire would encounter the rajah of Initpur, and Jai was not at all sure he could have done that. Without his needing to ask, General Jiang had sent strict instructions that the rajah of Initpur and his people were to be treated leniently and with respect.
And so the First Army thundered into the west. Initially they encountered only minor border kingdoms, most of whom capitulated upon their arrival. For the first twenty days of moving through those lands, it became a simple diplomatic mission. Rajahs would leave their palaces, accompanied by their courts and priests, and welcome the Jade Empire to their lands. It was all praise and acceptance with wide smiles and open arms, though Jai knew his people well enough to see the utter dejection and defeat that sat behind their gleaming eyes. Each kingdom was subsequently allotted an imperial commander and left with a garrison of two hundred men to begin the process of assimilation. The rajahs were required to officially renounce their titles and take an oath of obedience to the Jade Emperor, upon which they became a private citizen like the rest of their people. In due course, if they showed talent in administration, they could rise to rule after a fashion, in the name of the Jade Emperor, but they would never again be rajahs of the Inda.
The first battle had taken place four days ago, though perhaps ‘battle’ was too grand a term. Engagement, perhaps. Or slaughter? The two hundred thousand men of the First Army had poured from one of the valleys of a low range of hills and out onto the grassy plains of Pala to find the local rajah’s forces waiting for them. The native ruler had done well. Remarkably well, given the restrictions of manpower and resources. He had mustered almost a thousand men and eight elephants. They had stood, defiant, at the entrance to Pala village, the rajah’s palace rising on a low hill beside the river at the far side. They had formed into a square as if expecting cavalry, the elephants to one side, kept in check by their mahouts, four archers in each of the fortified howdahs on the beasts’ backs. More archers waited in the centre of the square.
‘How likely is it we can talk them down from this?’ General Jiang had asked Jai.
Jai had replied with an air of sadness. ‘Not at all. The rajah knew we were coming, as he has had time to gather forces. And he must have known the size of our army, for word will have carried ahead of us. If he is willing to stand now, he has no interest in negotiation.’
The general agreed. ‘Then we need to make a statement. One example here could prevent similar stupidity further along.’
Jai had swallowed hard but nodded. He forced himself to watch as the army of which he was a leader brought death to his own people. The general was right. If ten thousand could be persuaded to simple surrender in future because of a few hundred deaths now, it was worthwhile. Jai had shuddered at the thought that war was not the skill of the forms of steel that he had so painstakingly learned in the academy, but a soulless, callous matter of numbers and logic. A man with a pen could be a better general than a man with a sword, and yet while a sword blow could kill a man, one stroke from that pen could kill thousands.
It had been brief. So brief. General Jiang had taken his time and let the army move into battle positions, giving the defiant rajah a last small chance to surrender. Still he did not, and so as the last of the First Army’s units fell into position, the general’s orders were carried out. While the army had been manoeuvring, a triad of destruction had been settled onto a low terrace on the nearest hill behind them, loaded and sighted.
Despite being in use for a thousand years, cannon were still dangerous to handle. It was not for nothing that rocketeers and artillerists were the highest paid of all the imperial military. There was, by common reckoning, a one in four chance of something going wrong. It was not always fatal, but could be extremely nasty even when not.
The three cannon fired. The first had been badly settled into its cradle and the detonation simply threw it from its bed. The great stone ball was hurled harmlessly off into the grassy plain, way beyond any soldier of either side, but two of the artillerists died horribly, crushed under the great iron beast as it fell from position. The second cannon had been sighted too high, and the ball struck a building in the village behind the rajah and his men, demolishing it in an explosion of bricks, plaster, timber and tile shards. But the locals had neither time nor the luxury to turn in dismay and examine the damage, for the third cannon had been perfectly positioned and sighted. The stone ball, perfectly spherical and a foot across, hit the square of men in the centre. Such was the power behind the missile that the three men in the front rank died instantly, one near vaporised by the direct blow, the other two mangled by its passing. The second rank fared no better, nor the third. The stone ball had lost very little momentum even by the time its gore-coated, glistening bulk passed through the centre of the square, pulverising archers and obliterating men.
The shot almost made it through the block, finally coming to ground at the far side and tearing the legs from men, smashing bones and crushing torsos in its passage.
Jai watched in horror. A line just over a man wide had been carved through the enemy, killing and injuring perhaps a tenth of the gathered force. To stack terror upon terror, the triple detonation had panicked the elephants, and their mahouts stood no chance of controlling them. Two of the great beasts turned and ran through the village, screaming archers desperately trying to stay in the shaking howdahs. Three more ran for the open grass. One hurtled towards the serried ranks of the Jade Empire, though it sprouted a thousand arrows before it could reach them and fell, a sliding mass of grey flesh, coming to rest some fifty paces from the front lines, where the two Inda archers who had survived threw up their hands in surrender. The other two elephants once more reinforced the reason so many great generals would not field the beasts among their force. A panicked elephant is deadly and uncontrollable. The two great animals thundered through the square of men with almost as much grisly destruction as the cannon ball. Men died in their hundreds.
Jai estimated that if he’d been counting he would have reached less than fifty from the first cannon shot before the whole thing was over. The pitiful remnants of the defiant rajah’s force surrendered and were disarmed. The lord himself was executed. Jai might have tried to argue against that, but did not trust himself to speak. He was still sickened by what he had witnessed. Later, he came to understand the general’s decision. The rajah had been a symbol of defiance. They had utterly flattened such defiance but could not complete the task without tearing down that symbol. At least the death had been clean and quick, unlike the mangled half-dead from the cannon and elephants, who were then given peace at knifepoint by their comrades.
Four hundred or so Inda dead. Many more wounded. A rajah beheaded and a garrison installed. And the losses to the First Army? Two unfortunate artillerists. This, then, thought Jai, was war.
But despite the horror of what he had witnessed, the general had been astute. In the subsequent three days they entered the lands of some of the stronger rajahs and found that men who might have considered standing against them were capitulating easily. Defending forces of several thousand men were simply disbanded and turned over to the invader. In one notable case, a rajah gathered a force of men to stand against them and the soldiers themselves revolted, fleeing into the countryside before the Jade Empire arrived, leaving a distressed rajah with no army and no option other than surrender.
And so it had gone.
Until this morning. Jai had warned the general that here he would be tested, and it seemed that would be the case. The Rajah of Salaya had been reckoned one of the most powerful of all the Inda lords a generation or more ago and, despite the continual draining of power and wealth from the land, such was Salaya’s prominence that he remained stronger even now than many others had been in their prime. And what strength the rajah could rely on from money and men was as nothing compared to that gifted him by the gods.
Salaya occupied a high, rocky ridge in the shape of a spoon. The long extent of the handle contained the civilian town and a grand temple, and the bowl of the spoon was a fortress. Even General Jiang had drawn an impressed breath at the sight of it. Jai had been here once as a youth, when his grandfather had sought aid in methods of extracting copper from his local valley – the town of Salaya had become rich on copper mining, and its engineers were reckoned the best. As a boy Jai had marvelled at the place.
The town was not walled, but the sheer cliffs upon which it rested were as defensible as any rampart in the world. The fort that occupied the bowl shape at the other end was walled, and what defences they were. Already resting upon two hundred feet of sheer cliff, they were a double circuit of walls, the outer low and squat, the inner high and delicate, with painted turrets at equal spaces along the rampart. Only across the top of the ridge facing the town was it a single wall, and any attacking army would have to ascend the heights just to get that far. All around the ridge, the cliff had been carved into the shapes of gods, adding a certain eeriness to the entire ensemble. The only access to the ridge top was a ramp carved into the rock that wove back and forth like a gently folded scarf. Each turn in the ramp was guarded by a gate with towers.
‘Manpower?’
Jai shrugged. ‘As many as eight or nine thousand, at least. In its days of glory, Salaya housed a garrison of twenty thousand, but those days are gone.’
‘Still,’ the general said, ‘eight or nine thousand men could hold that place for some time.’
‘I doubt negotiation will work,’ Jai added. ‘The rajah is one of the proudest in the land. To him not being the lord of Salaya is tantamount to being dead anyway.’
‘Then we must take it. The cannon will be of little use from here. We cannot sight them high enough to damage those walls. We could take a lower gatehouse or two out with them, but then we run the risk of damaging the ramp in the process, and destroying the only point of access is poor strategy. I think the cannon should be left out of the initial stages. I do, however, have a plan to make things a little easier. My Inda is not strong. Will you be my voice?’
Jai nodded.
‘Ride with a hundred men to the base of the ramp and shout to the effect that the ordinary people of Salaya have one hour to descend the ramp and leave the town before the attack commences.’
‘You know the rajah’s men will not open the gates to let them out?’
The general nodded. ‘Sadly, that seems likely. But I will then have adhered to the etiquette of war, and when the first phase begins, the citizens will, I believe, perform half the task of conquest for us.’
Jai frowned his incomprehension, but took an honour guard and rode to the ramp. He would have liked to stay out of arrow range just in case, but needed to be close enough to be heard and understood, and he couldn’t have said what range arrows had from such a height anyway. Under the stern gaze of the defenders, Jai delivered the ultimatum – an offer of survival for the people, unspokenly extended to the garrison, of course. The rajah’s men at the various ramp gates jeered. Straining his ears, Jai could hear no such similar taunting from the civilians far above. They would be watching in terror as the largest army ever seen in Inda lands assembled before them, preparing to capture their town. Soldiers could jeer, the people would not.
Moments later, message delivered, Jai rode back to join the general where they watched with interest from a good viewpoint on a rocky hill. It took less than a quarter of an hour for the panic to begin – people starting to leave the built-up jumble of the clifftop town. They massed in two directions. Some moved towards the great high gate of the fortress, seeking safety within the rajah’s strong walls. Others pressed at the top gate of the ramp, seeking to flee Salaya as ordered, carrying their most valuable goods on their back, children in tow. Neither path was fruitful, just as Jai and the general had anticipated. The rajah was not about to weaken his defensive position by doling out precious space and supplies to the common people, and those men guarding the gate were not about to open the only access to the mountain top for a few locals.
‘It begins,’ the general said, quietly.
‘But they still cannot leave.’
‘That is because they are not yet desperate enough. Another half an hour and things will change. Watch.’
Down below, the First Army was reorganising. Jai was not surprised to see the heavy infantry in their armour of black and silver moving to a position at the fore, facing the ramp. His heart jumped a little as he spotted the rocket teams moving into position. As dangerous as the cannon, if not more so, those dreadful weapons were rarely fielded without good reason.
‘Rockets?’
The general nodded. ‘I try not to use them unless I have to, but they have their place. And if they must be used, we are experiencing the very best conditions for it. Dry weather and no wind of which to speak.’
Time passed in an odd semblance of peace. The ridge top of Salaya was just too far away for the commotion up there to reach Jai’s ears, and the Jade Empire military stood silent and confident, awaiting the order to move. Finally, General Jiang turned to Jai. ‘It has been an hour, I think?’
‘Agreed, General.’
Jiang waved one hand and behind him a great red flag was thrust into the air and hauled back and forth. Within moments the rocket teams burst into frenzied activity. Jai watched, tense, as the first missile launched. The great tube whispered up into the morning air, the long launching stick falling away. It missed the ridge by some fifty paces, coming down harmlessly into a field nearby with a nerve-chilling bang. There was a new round of jeering from the mountain, but it did not last long, for another dozen rockets launched in the wake of the first, and only two of those went astray. Ten blazing tubes arced up high into the air and dropped neatly over the clifftop into the town. The muffled bangs made Jai wince. He had watched a rocket demonstration at Yuen some years ago. It was not the tube that did the damage. The tube just contained the black powder that propelled the rocket. It was when that tube reached the end and the rocket dropped that the real damage occurred. At the lower end of each missile was an iron container holding yet more black powder. As the rocket’s fuel disappeared, it lit the taper of the iron ball. The main detonation varied. Sometimes it would happen somewhere in the air before landing. Sometimes it would happen on impact. Sometimes the ball would land and there would be a long pause before the bang. Jai listened to the muffled crumps amid the combustible buildings of the town and could picture those ten iron containers detonating, sending deadly shards of hot metal in every direction, followed by a boiling cloud of fire that dissipated instantly, but not before igniting anything close enough.
Gods, let the people of Salaya have fled their houses already, prayed Jai. It would be a horrible way to go.
Even as the rocketeers reloaded for a second salvo, already the tightly packed buildings of Salaya were burning. The second wave of missiles simply added to the horrid conflagration, and it was not long before the civilian town was a roaring inferno. The desperate, panicked townsfolk flooded now against the ramp’s top gate. The general had known. He had understood. There was no way the rajah was going to admit the common folk, and it had not taken long for them to realise that too, so they pressed hard for the ramp and perceived freedom.
Jai and the staff could not see the action up there, so high and so distant was it, but the results quickly became evident. The guards must have been overthrown and outnumbered by the panicked townsfolk, for the gates were suddenly thrown open and a veritable flood of humanity issued forth down the slope towards the first turn in the hairpin ramp and the next gate that guarded it.
‘Concentrate on the interior near the top gate,’ the general commanded, and flags were waved in response. The rocketeers sent up a third grouping, this time aiming for the area where the town petered out near the fortress entrance and the upper ramp gate. A new conflagration began there, right behind the tailing figures of the refugees. It was well-timed and well-placed. The great timber doors of the fortress had just opened and men issued forth under orders to secure that top gate, but the moment they emerged the whole area exploded in flame and shrapnel, and those unwounded quickly hurried back inside the fortress, leaving burning, dying comrades and slamming shut the fortress gates once more.
Jai watched, as impressed as he was sickened, as the ordinary people of Salaya opened the mountaintop to their enemies. Bend after bend, gate after gate, the poor Inda overcame the guards and threw open the portals, fleeing their burning town to throw themselves upon the mercy of the Jade Empire.
‘Pass the word to all the captains,’ General Jiang announced. ‘The people of Salaya are not to be harmed. They may leave freely and with all their goods and family.’
Jai watched as the last few gates at the bottom of the ramp were overcome and the people of that burning town ran for safety to the countryside. To be certain, another rocket volley was aimed at the space near the top gate, and then new flags were being waved.
‘Come, Jai.’
In the wake of the General, Jai crossed the battlefield, walking his horse between the ranks of infantry and cavalry, archers and sappers. As he reached the base of the cliffs at the fore of the army, the towering walls of Salaya high above, Jai was impressed. The civilians had gone. The ramp was open, and already teams of oxen were dragging three cannon into view. At an order, the heavy infantry began to march. Jai watched as the ranks stomped forward with rhythmic thuds of feet and clonks of armour and weapons. They moved through the open first gate six abreast and began to climb without slackening the pace. Twelve hundred men, or thereabouts, snaked up that ramp. As they reached the halfway point, further orders rang out and shields were raised above heads, forming a mobile roof. Just in time, for at that moment arrows and stones started to drop from the fortress walls. Fortunately, the attacking force gained regular respite as they wound this way and that, for only one side of that switchback ramp ran beneath the castle walls.
There were casualties, but not enough to weaken the force. At each corner, they passed through deserted gates and continued to climb. And behind them the cannon were slowly rising, each pulled by a team of eight huge oxen and tended by a group of artillerists.
At the general’s beckoning, Jai joined him and a group of cavalry who rode onto the ramp after the cannon. They rose slowly, and Jai was as nervous of the great iron menaces on the carts in front as he was of the missiles dropping from the walls. He remembered all too well the two men being crushed by the weapon that fell off its cradle in the first engagement, and had no wish to go to the afterlife in that manner.
It took an hour, and it was probably the most nerve-shredding hour of Jai’s life. Every time the ramp wound back towards the fortress end, he winced and braced against the arrows and rocks. Unnecessarily so, of course. General Jiang had no intention of leaving the world in such an ignominious manner. Bodyguards rode on either side of the officers, holding up posts that supported a timber roof which covered them as they moved. But there was still the ever-present threat of falling cannon, and Jai watched them intently throughout, drawing a sharp breath every time one even faintly rocked in its housing at a corner.
Eventually the cannon were drawn into the square before the top gate and the officers emerged onto the ridge of Salaya behind them. Jai watched as the ranks of infantry, still largely intact, spread out to face the wall of the fortress. In some places the flames of the blaze here had not yet died out, but the town of Salaya was largely burned now, and the open spaces just a charred mess. It was amazing how an entire town could disappear within an hour in the dry season.
The cannon were moved into position and prepared as the cavalry who had followed the general up the ramp now settled into neat units at the rear.
‘Rajah of Salaya, hear me,’ the general said to Jai, gesturing to the walls. Jai repeated the words loudly in the Inda tongue.
‘Your town has fallen and your fortress will not last the hour. If you yield now, you alone will forfeit your life. If you force me to break down your walls, there will be no quarter given for soldier or citizen, or even your family. Do you understand?’
There was a pause and finally a tall figure in rich red and gold appeared at the battlements above the gate.
‘This is sovereign land, not part of your empire. Leave Salaya at once, or the gods will not be able to identify your corpse.’
Big words, nervously spoken. Jai could imagine how the rajah’s wife and children were now reacting to his response. Did he not realise this was a new type of war? Had he not seen what the Jade Empire had wrought? Cannon and black powder, fire and death inflicted from a great distance. He could not have been prepared for what Jiang and his army had brought west, but surely he was gaining an inkling now as the town burned? Could he not see the cannon? Even the glorious, ancient western empire had no such weapon in its arsenal.
The general turned and nodded. A yellow flag was waved.
The three cannon discharged in quick succession.
The first struck the gates of the fortress, turning them into a thousand pieces of kindling that hurtled through the air, killing and maiming more of the men behind the gate than the great stone ball itself. The second shot punched through the stone frame of that gate, taking the remnants of a wooden door with it and adding shards of dark red stone to the debris that scythed through the air. The third blow had been aimed by an expert. Like all red sandstone structures, the fortress of Salaya had been carved by the winds over the centuries, and the projecting tower to the left of the gate had clearly been one of the most exposed. The stones had hollowed out, such that the mortar between them projected further than the stones themselves. It was this very spot that the great stone ball struck. The wind-weakened sandstone gave way like a child’s pile of wooden blocks at a petulant kick.
There was a tremendous crash and a cloud of red dust. As it cleared, Jai watched, wide-eyed. A hole perhaps two feet across had been punched through the wall at the bottom of the tower. Cracks were already spidering up between the blocks, and the wall of the tower began to shift perceptibly. Horrible groaning noises and the sound of cracking stone echoed across the watching army. The defenders atop the gate were as yet oblivious, still reeling from the ease with which the gates themselves had been obliterated. They only became aware of their fresh peril as the tower collapsed beneath them. The cracks interconnected and reached up to the parapet, spreading out to the section of wall alongside and across the arch above the ruined gate. A man up there gave a cry of alarm and, before another could respond, the entire left-hand tower and the section above the gate collapsed into a pile of rubble, a massive cloud of red dust billowing out across both forces.
Slowly, the haze subsided. Inda warriors were staggering and limping from the rubble, clutching broken arms, weapons discarded. They were beaten and they knew it instantly. The impregnable Salaya had fallen in two hours.
‘Your orders, sir?’ asked a captain as his men kept their weapons out and pointed at the surrendering men.
‘No quarter, you said,’ Jai reminded the general.
‘Agreed, but there will be civilians in there too, and this should be an example, not a slaughter.’ The general turned to the captain. ‘Put the warriors to the sword. Swift and sharp – a soldier’s death. Search the rubble and find the body of the rajah. If he is still alive, remedy that. His family are not to be harmed and nor are any other civilians you find. They may join the refugees on the plain below.’
Jai heaved a sigh of relief. Though he felt for the warriors who would die, they had chosen their lot, but he had not been relishing the sight of a population slain. His initial opinion of General Xeng Shu Jiang seemed to have been well founded. If there had to be a conqueror of the Inda, Jai was grateful it would be him.
And now, when they had finished here and installed a garrison, the way was open to the heart of the Inda Diamond. Few places that stood in their way would be as troublesome as Salaya. And then the armies would combine at Jalnapur, and they would stare across the western hills towards Velutio and the western empire.
Gods, but let them stay behind their river, Jai wished fervently.