The mournful blare of horns echoed across the autumn grasslands, where the herbage had turned yellow and dry. On the far side of the horizon, another dark army appeared—a sea of black-clad soldiers bearing a motley of banners. From a distance, they stared toward the great camp of the Northland Allied Forces. After a long moment, several riders galloped to the front of the column and shouted something indistinguishable to the assembled troops. A roar rose from the crowd, a jumble of voices, and then the army began to move, heading toward the camp that the forces of the Duchy of Madras had set up beneath a distant hill.
The
However, when Count Kenmais presented the new conditions, the envoy had laughed, his eyes filled with mockery: "My Lord Count, do you take the duchy for a fat ox? Do you think His Grace the Grand Duke would agree to such terms? Don't forget that even the fattest ox has a pair of sharp horns. As an envoy, I have no authority to rebuke your wild fantasies—I can only relay your words exactly as you spoke them to His Grace. But before I leave, allow me to say one thing: since you desire war, then we shall certainly not disappoint you…"
After the envoy departed in a huff, the Second Prince was beside himself with excitement. He immediately launched into a passionate speech, arguing that they had essentially torn off the mask of civility and the Northland Allied Forces should seize the initiative to strike first. Before the Duchy of Madras could react, they should sweep through all of Delaimuk Province, seizing as much territory as possible. Then, when Grand Duke Madras's main army arrived, they could fight a war of attrition, using their elite troops to defeat or grind down the duchy.
The only response the Second Prince received was four expressionless faces. Baron Shaxin was the first to speak. He saw no need to attack Delaimuk Province at all. During this period, he had frequently led troops out to pillage the manors and orchards of local nobles, and he had a thorough understanding of the province's situation. The landed lords had all gathered their private troops and fortified themselves in their castles—there was little point in attacking those strongholds. Even if they seized territory, they would have to leave garrisons behind, needlessly dividing their forces.
Baron Fillim, his face stern, also objected. It was already late October, with only a month left before winter. Thirty-five days was far from enough time to sweep through the entire province. Moreover, Delaimuk Province contained only one proper city—Kebo City. The rest consisted entirely of the estates and castles of landed lords. Kebo was a fortress city garrisoned by twenty thousand troops, easy to defend and difficult to attack. The Northland Allied Forces could not possibly capture it in the short term; they would only suffer catastrophic casualties in the attempt…
Count Kenmais smiled and counseled the Second Prince to be patient. The envoy would return and report to Grand Duke Madras, and it would take at least ten days or more for the Grand Duke to dispatch his army. By then, it would already be mid-November. That would leave only about half a month to set up camp and stockpile supplies for winter. Compared to the Northland Allied Forces, who had nearly completed their winter preparations, Grand Duke Madras's army would have a miserable winter indeed. They could simply wait at ease, spending the winter in comfort, and then in the spring deliver a fatal blow to those frost-bitten fools.
Finally,
The war council ended there. The four Northland lords rose, bowed respectfully to the Second Prince, and took their leave—without giving him the slightest opportunity to argue further. They left the Second Prince alone in the great tent, gnashing his teeth in fury, regretting that he had not secured command of the Northland Allied Forces before signing the oath document.
An oath document was a guarantee issued by a superior lord to a subordinate lord. Once the subordinate lord completed the tasks assigned to him by the superior lord as specified in the document, the rewards promised by the superior lord would take effect immediately—no further approval or consent from the superior lord was required.
An oath document was typically prepared in triplicate: one copy for the superior lord, one for the subordinate lord, and one for public announcement. The Second Prince's oath document, however, existed in six copies. He himself held one, and each of the four Northland lords held one. The remaining copy would be unveiled on New Year's Day, when Count Kenmais, representing the four great Northland families, would host a grand New Year's banquet at the former Grand Duke's estate in Gildusk City. Before all the Northland nobles—those lords sustained by the
The Second Prince had originally wanted to sign separate oath documents with each of the families one by one. But Count Kenmais argued against it, saying it would easily give the four great Northland families the impression that the Second Prince was trying to fracture their alliance. Moreover, in the wars to destroy the Duchy of Madras and conquer the Iblia Kingdom, the four great families would need to coordinate closely at many junctures. Therefore, the oath document should be centered on the four great families as a whole. That way, they would be bound together—sharing in prosperity and sharing in adversity, all grasshoppers on the same string, none able to escape.
Even if three of the families suffered losses together, they could not allow the Second Prince's campaign of restoration to falter…
The Second Prince greatly admired Count Kenmais's sense of the greater picture and decided to follow his advice, drafting the oath document with the four great Northland families as the primary signatories. The contents were precisely those terms he had discussed and agreed upon with Count Kenmais. When the Second Prince signed, stamped, and pressed his thumbprint on all six copies, Lorist, Baron Fillim, and Baron Shaxin all bowed their heads in salute. In that moment, the Second Prince's ambition soared to the heavens. The four great Northland families were at his command, and all his enemies would soon witness his triumphant return to conquer the world.
Yet when Lorist and the others simultaneously refused the Second Prince's proposal to deploy troops immediately and sweep through Delaimuk Province, he realized that though he was nominally the superior lord of the four great Northland families, he had absolutely no authority to command or constrain their military forces. Even the guards at his side had been assigned by the four families. Apart from a
Unwilling to give up, the Second Prince sought out Lorist and the others again, earnestly imploring them to heed his advice. Speed was the essence of warfare. If they did not seize the opportunity while the Duchy of Madras was still mobilizing to carve out territory and disrupt Grand Duke Madras's deployment, and instead allowed the enemy to concentrate for a decisive battle, it would be a catastrophic strategic error. When that time came, the Duchy of Madras would leverage terrain and popular support to mobilize the full strength of the duchy. Even if they lost the decisive battle, they could shift to defensive positions and drag the war into a prolonged stalemate.
Only by seizing this one month before winter to ravage Delaimuk Province—even if they could not hold it, they must reduce it to ruins—could they slash the duchy's war potential to the bone, forcing the approaching Madras army to receive no support in Delaimuk Province and be unable to gather provisions or supplies. Only then, when the decisive battle came after winter, would the enemy's morale be shattered and their forces crumble…
Since Lorist and the others wanted a decisive battle, the Second Prince cleverly adjusted his approach. He argued that even before the decisive battle, they should strive to weaken the enemy's strength rather than sit back and watch them mass their forces. The Second Prince likened the Duchy of Madras to a fat wild ox, while the Northland Allied Forces should be wolves hunting that ox—inflicting wounds wherever possible, harrying its frontal assaults, and only when the ox had lost too much blood to stand delivering the killing blow. Then the Duchy of Madras would fall.
To persuade Lorist and the others, the Second Prince magnanimously cited his own experience as an example, pointing out the lessons he had learned from his failed campaign two years ago in the Kingdom of Redlis, when he had fought the allied lords of Andewof Province. The Second Prince explained that his army had indeed engaged the allied lords in decisive battle—three or four times, each ending in the lords' utter rout. But those landed lords of Andewof Province simply reformed and fought again, refusing to surrender even in defeat. Even after the Second Prince's forces occupied Andewof Province, the lords retreated to Majik Province and continued their guerrilla warfare against his army. They ultimately won the support of the four central duchies and the Commercial Alliance, and persisted until final victory…
Therefore, a single decisive battle could not, as Lorist and the others imagined, defeat the Duchy of Madras in one stroke. The Second Prince believed there was a significant chance the Northland Allied Forces would end up, just as he had in Andewof Province, dragged into prolonged guerrilla and sabotage warfare by the duchy's landed lords—a scenario with grave consequences for the future course of the war. The only correct strategy was to strike first, sweeping through the estates and castles of Delaimuk Province's landed lords and destroying the Duchy of Madras's war-making capacity. The Northland Allied Forces must seize this opportunity, not let their soldiers idle away the month in camp doing nothing.
Lorist did not argue with the Second Prince. He simply pulled over a map of the Duchy of Madras and ran through a brief strategic simulation. With the Northland Allied Forces' current strength, sweeping through the estates and castles of Delaimuk Province's landed lords to achieve maximum results would require splitting into four columns of roughly twenty thousand each. This would allow them to overcome castles defended by two to three thousand private troops. Even at the most optimistic casualty ratio of one to one, after capturing four or five lords' estates and castles, each column would have suffered roughly half its numbers in losses and would have to withdraw—with the net result being that only one-third of Delaimuk Province had been ravaged.
The greatest weakness of this strategy was the inability to send a force to besiege Kebo City, since Madras reinforcements would arrive quickly. First, Grand Duke Madras might dispatch his most elite Haishan Corps to reinforce the city. Second, twenty thousand troops could be sent from the garrison beyond the Xindesen Mountains to attack from the flanks, putting the column headed for Kebo City in the most critical danger. If defeated, it could even threaten the security of the riverside crossing camp.
If forty to fifty thousand troops were sent to besiege Kebo City, they would have sufficient force for self-defense, but the columns dispatched to sweep through Delaimuk Province would be too few. Yet if Kebo City were ignored, the Madras reinforcements, upon arriving, would very likely launch an assault on the crossing camp. The camp was defended by barely over ten thousand troops, and unlike Kebo City, it had no permanent defensive fortifications. If the camp fell, the consequences would be unthinkable—the four raiding columns would have nowhere to retreat, and total annihilation was entirely possible.
This too bore great significance. But it seemed the Second Prince had not yet truly grasped where he had gone wrong. To have the Northland Allied Forces attack now would simply be repeating the failed campaign in the Kingdom of Redlis.
The Second Prince, humiliated and furious, shot back that once the Northland Allied Forces attacked, the Norton Family and the Fillim Family could march their forces to reinforce the crossing camp and fill the gap in its defenses. There would be absolutely no danger of the camp falling—they could even continuously dispatch troops to sweep through all of Delaimuk Province's landed lords.
Baron Fillim immediately shot this down. Absolutely impossible. The Second Prince clearly did not understand the composition of his family's and the Norton Family's forces. The Northland Allied Forces currently in camp were primarily composed of the Shaxin and Kenmais families' legions—heavy infantry excelling at defense but weak in offensive operations. Only Baron Shaxin's two light cavalry regiments were present, serving as scouts. The current camp layout and scale had been designed specifically to accommodate the defense and winter quarters of these heavy infantry forces.
To send these defense-oriented heavy infantry to attack and raid the landed lords of Delaimuk Province, then have his own family's and the Norton Family's offensive cavalry march to the camp to guard it—what a brilliant idea. Baron Fillim scoffed. Even if his and the Norton Family's cavalry arrived and held the camp, when the heavy infantry returned from their raids, the camp in its current form could not possibly accommodate so many troops. Setting everything else aside, the fodder consumption alone for two cavalry regiments' horses over the entire winter would be an astronomical figure…
There was no need to continue the debate. They would follow the predetermined strategy. From now until winter, all they needed to do was hold this camp. As for whether to sortie or not, everyone should just go wash up and go to bed—spare themselves the mental effort. With that, Lorist slapped his hands on his thighs and vanished.
The Second Prince was so furious he nearly spat blood. What did he mean, "wash up and go to bed, spare the mental effort"—was that directed at him? In a rage, the Second Prince pulled out the oath document and studied it intently, desperately searching for some clause that could bind Lorist and the Norton Family's military forces.
And then… the Second Prince suddenly realized he had been utterly duped by Count Kenmais… The count had dug an enormous pit, and the Second Prince had cheerfully jumped right in…
The terms and tasks in the oath document were crystal clear—every one of them had been agreed to by the Second Prince himself after careful consideration. But now, gazing at those terms, they seemed unbearably piercing to the eye. He spent the entire night studying the map of the former Krisen Empire, and only then did he understand: even if he managed to reunify the former empire's territory, the Duchy of Madras and the Iblia Kingdom—aside from the Eastern Wasteland Province and the Muyeh Province controlled by the Fisablen Family—were all contiguous with the Northland. In other words, all these territories fell under the control of the four great Northland families. As long as the four families' alliance held, this region—comprising one-third of the former empire's territory—would become a place where the Second Prince could neither thrust his hand nor pour a drop of water…
Take Delaimuk Province, for example. The Second Prince had agreed to allow the Norton Family to resettle the lords they had been sponsoring there. This amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that all those resettled lords were vassals of the Norton Family. Once the Duchy of Madras fell and Delaimuk Province came under Norton control, it would become reality.
The most devastating clause was the appointment of Lorist as Governor of Windbury Royal City. The Second Prince had forgotten that Windbury was the capital of Winston Province. So even if all the landed lords in Winston Province were appointed by the Second Prince, Lorist as Governor held the real power. The sitting official outranks the distant sovereign—no matter what orders the Second Prince issued, they would pass through the Governor's hands first. Lorist could dismiss any such order on the grounds that it was unreasonable, and then take his time dealing with those lords who had been enfeoffed in Winston Province but refused to obey his commands…
The Second Prince was consumed by regret beyond measure. This was tantamount to handing over all of Winston Province to the Norton Family on a silver platter. Then he discovered another clause in the oath document that was extremely disadvantageous: there was no stipulation of when the Norton Family must capture the Imperial Capital to restore the Second Prince to the throne. Instead, it specified that as long as territory was seized in the process of destroying the Duchy of Madras and conquering the Iblia Kingdom, the promises the Second Prince had made to the four great Northland families would take effect immediately.
For instance, if Westdegel Province were captured, the Second Prince's pledge to grant it to Count Kenmais as a hereditary family estate would take effect at once, and Kenmais would automatically be elevated to the rank of Grand Duke—the only condition being that the Duchy of Madras must first be destroyed. Similarly, if the four great Northland families' forces occupied Winston Province and captured Windbury, then Lorist would automatically become Governor of Winston Province, and Windbury would become the Governor's directly administered city…
Blind fool! How could he have trusted Count Kenmais, a man born of a merchant's cunning! The Second Prince was anguished beyond words, especially when he could find no clause specifying when the four great Northland families had promised to help him march on the Imperial Capital and restore his throne. The date could be right after the Duchy of Madras fell—or it could be ten years, twenty years hence. The four great Northland families could simply keep the Second Prince comfortable and well-fed in the Northland while slowly pursuing their own strategies according to their own decisions and interests…
Although in the oath document the Second Prince had been giving away what was not his to give—using the Duchy of Madras and the Iblia Kingdom's assets as guarantees for the four great Northland families' service—he now realized that the concessions he had made would, once he reunited the former empire, essentially turn the territory controlled by the four great families into an independent kingdom. He wished he could chop off his own hands. How had he been so bewitched as to sign, stamp, and press his thumbprint on that oath document?
The Second Prince knew full well that the oath document was the four great Northland families' guarantee of service and their recognition of him as their superior lord. If he went back on his word, not only would his reputation be utterly destroyed, but the four great families would also have grounds to refuse to recognize him as their superior lord and return to the status of free nobles. At that point, he would not only lose even nominal authority over the four great families, but would also have gained four formidable enemies…
The Second Prince now stood atop the castle at the center of the camp, watching as the forces of the Duchy of Madras materialized on the distant horizon, gathering in a camp roughly two li from the Northland Allied Forces' position. They too were busy erecting camp walls and various defensive structures, digging trenches, and sending an endless stream of supply wagons loaded with all manner of provisions.
Let them gather in ever greater numbers. All he could do now was wait patiently. When spring came and the allied forces of the four great Northland families clashed with Grand Duke Madras's army in a devastating battle that left both sides battered, that might be his opportunity. Only when these arrogant and complacent Northland forces tasted hardship, fighting tooth and nail with Grand Duke Madras across Delaimuk Province, could he fish in troubled waters. As long as he could conscript enough troops to rebuild the White Lion Corps, he would seize control of this war.
That was what the Second Prince told himself…