That still left a lot of people potentially in a high risk area. Darius looked across the table at Navid. “Whoever is left, get them out of there. When those supply trains are destroyed, anyone nearby is going to be at the receiving end of Brindisi’s desperation. I don’t want any civilian casualties.”
Something about Navid…softened. In fact, was that a smile on the man’s face? “Yes, sir.”
“If they see a lot of civilians being carted off, won’t they suspect that something is going to happen soon?” Ramin looked nervous for objecting, but gamely forged on. “Not that I want casualties either, sir, but it might be showing our hand.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Darius assured him with a feral smile. “I’ll keep them nice and distracted.”
For the next week, Darius ran around like a mad man, trying to be in three places at once. There were too many things that needed to be done, and he simply didn’t have the time to properly see to each one. Even delegating things out to his staff only helped to a degree because there were certain tasks that he couldn’t possibly delegate. He had to go out to the front lines and see the situation himself, meet with the former lead general and do a formal change of command, and then rush back to the capital to make sure that everything he set in motion had stayedin motion.
The only thing that had saved him so far was the nature of the desert itself. General Jahangir of Brindisi couldn’t leave his forces on the open desert for more than two weeks at a time for one simple reason: water. That and heat exhaustion. The men weren’t used this kind of heat and fighting in it made matters worse. Every two weeks or so, he had to retreat to the foot of the mountains to let his men rest and re-hydrate. But he only stayed for a week or so, and then returned.
Darius had been forced to do the same thing, so he knew the timing of this very well. They had six more days, maybe seven, to get into position before Jahangir’s forces were at the eastern border again. If Darius failed to get all of his troops in position before they arrived…well, the consequences would be dire.
In truth, he needed a month to properly plan this out instead of the barely-two weeks he’d been given. He felt like he was constantly scrambling, trying to outpace time itself. If Shaa were with him, he’d make only the minor mistakes and miss the major ones.
When they had three days to go, Darius called for another meeting to hammer out some of the finer details of the plan and to add a few tactics he had thought of. His staff arrived after breakfast, as usual, and went directly into the war room. Darius evaluated them as he sat down at the head of the table.
Every man there looked tired. But then, he doubted anyone had been able to get more than four or five hours of sleep a night considering the insane amount of work on their shoulders. He’d been meeting with them as a group and individually for the past four days and they’d slowly been opening up to him. Even Navid now spoke without being prodded into it. (Although he still hesitated strongly before opening his mouth.)
Darius intended for this to be a quick meeting, nothing more than a status check, so he launched into it without any preamble. “Ramin, shields?”
“Ready, sir. They’re being swapped out with the troops now.”
“Excellent. Are all of your men ready to deploy, Navid?”
“Just about, sir.” Navid shrugged. “Night Raiders on standby.”
The Night Raiders were actually mercenaries hired to augment Niotan’s flagging number of troops. Darius had been half-surprised to find them here, as he had fought them once before on the opposite end of the continent. But he was very glad to have them. No regular foot soldier would ever consider fighting at night. In fact, any army commander would look at you cross-eyed for even considering night battles. The Night Raiders were highly effective for this very reason—they could blend in with the night so well that they could walk into an enemy encampment and do an unbelievable amount of damage without being caught. Darius planned to use them ruthlessly.
Their first task was to do something about those supply trains.
Alright, what else?
“Do we have an accurate count of the enemy’s forces?” Darius had asked that question before but had been given three different numbers. He’d requested an immediate recount to make sure he knew what to plan for.
Sego eased into a chair next to him and handed him a report. “Twelve thousand, sir. The breakdown of their deployments are as listed.”
“Twelve thousand troops.” Kaveh looked like he’d bitten into a sour lemon saying that number. “They will not be easily defeated.”
“Perhaps,” Darius responded noncommittally. “Perhaps not. From here, it’s hard to see their weaknesses. But they have them.” And I know most of them. He’d had a flash of inspiration at some bird’s hour of the morning, a tactic that would help whittle down those numbers with no loss of life on their part. He turned to Navid and asked, “How many stray cats are in the capital?”
Navid blinked, surprised by the question, but answered readily. “City’s full up. Why, sir?”
“We’re going to need as many cats as we can put our hands on in the next day. If I put a bounty on the cats, do you think the children will run them down for me?”
His commander still looked a little confused, but he also had a quirked eyebrow that suggested Darius had just asked a stupid question. “Kidden’s do ‘bout anything for a copper’s turn. But cats, sir?”
“Cats.” Darius had to tamp down the urge to smile evilly. “I happen to know that a good portion of that army facing us is made of barbarians. They’re excellent to put at the flanks. With that berserker attitude of theirs in war, not much can outflank you.”
Ramin grimaced. “As we’ve discovered, sir.”
Darius gave him an acknowledging nod and raised a finger in the air. “But, they’re highly superstitious. I learned the basics of the language and their culture, mostly because I had to, otherwise they were almost more liability than help. If they ran across anything ‘unlucky’ the day before a battle, they always tried to avoid fighting. And believe me, the list for unlucky things could fill up a man’s arm. But the thing that they fear the most is—”
“Cats?” Kaveh blurted out incredulously, eyes wide.
It didn’t make any sense to Darius either, so he shrugged, hands spread palm up. “To them, cats are the harbingers of evil. You do not want to test your luck when there are cats nearby. If we deliver a great many cats to them, their nerve will break. At the first sign of trouble in the battle, they’ll run for it.” It had happened to him often enough.
Navid had a glint in his eyes that spoke of troublemaking. He apparently liked this plan. “Give a word to a shade finder, and you’ll have sacks of cats by night’s first bell.”
Shade finder being some form of informer? Darius wasn’t quite sure of that, but clearly Navid knew how to approach this, which meant he was the right man for the job. “Since you apparently know who to talk to and how this works, I’ll let you handle it. When the cats are collected, can you have your Night Raiders sneak them onto a few surviving supply wagons?”
“Cats instead of supplies?” Ramin stared at the map thoughtfully. “Sir, that’s evil.”
“You say that, Ramin, but you’re smiling.”
“Because I can picture it in my mind, sir.” He gave a regretful sigh. “What I wouldn’t give to watch as those poor hungry souls open the wagons for food only to get angry cats.”
Darius had to admit, the mental picture had a certain appeal to it. He might fantasize about it more during that interminable dinner tonight. But for now, he had to stay focused. “Navid?”
His taciturn commander gave a simple nod of the head.
“Good.” Darius turned to the next item. “Sego suggested that we do a little propaganda. I want flyers made stating that I am now the lead general and that any man that wishes to change sides will be welcome. Put it in as many languages as you can think of.”
Kaveh caught the implications first and let out
a low, admiring whistle. “That will be a heavy blow to morale, sir.”
Indeed it would be. Darius was the only general that’d come anywhere close to conquering Niotan. He also had more experience than General Jahangir, who’d basically gotten to the rank he had because of family connections. Hearing that they would now go against Darius would be a huge psychological blow.
“It will demoralize them, but it won’t make them go away,” Ramin pointed out. He lost his energy for a moment and some of his exhaustion seeped into his expression. “Granted, it will make them easier to fight.”
“We don’t need to defeat all twelve thousand,” Darius corrected. His commanders looked at him, clearly not sure if they could believe this or not. With a shake of the head and a sad smile, he explained quietly. “We don’t need to kill them all. We just need them to retreat. Do you know? The easiest army in the world to demoralize and defeat is the conquering force. The defending force is much harder to defeat because they have so much they are fighting for—if they fall, their homes and family are in jeopardy. But the conquering force is only marching on orders, with vague ideas of power and glory. If we can defeat them here—” Darius tapped his forehead with his index finger “—then they will quickly give up and yearn for home. A man with no fighting spirit is easily persuaded to retreat.”
Kaveh and Navid looked sold on this idea but Ramin clearly wasn’t sure. He just didn’t want to contradict a superior officer out loud.
Darius reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, a smirk on his face. “Tell you what, Ramin, I’ll make a bet with you. Two thousand Brindisi soldiers will desert their posts before the first day of battle is over.”
Those dark eyes lit up in anticipation. Ramin, apparently, was a betting man. “If I win, sir, you have to take me to a formal dinner.”
That would have been Darius’s idea of a punishment, actually, but to each their own. “And if I win, you are my errand boy on your next day of rest.”
Ramin stuck out his hand with a fierce smile of anticipation and challenge. Darius clasped the hand firmly to seal the deal.
“But isn’t two thousand deserters a bit too many for the first day?” Kaveh objected.
“The barbarian forces number about two thousand,” Darius informed him cheerfully.
Ramin’s eyes shot wide. He had apparently not realized just how many barbarians there were in that army. “Sir!”
Darius shook his head with a genial smile on his face. “A bet’s a bet, Commander.”
“But sir, with the cats, of course they’ll run!”
“You should have asked more questions.” Cheerfully ignoring Ramin’s wail of protest, he went back to his plans. “Navid, after you see to the cats, talk with your Night Raiders. I want them to go into the enemy’s camp every night and hassle them. Tell them to bring me their ideas and their plans of approach. I’ll have other tactics in play during the night, and I don’t want anyone taken down by their own allies.”
Navid gave a nod and started jotting down notes to himself.
“Kaveh, you and Sego deal with the propaganda. I don’t care how it’s delivered, but make sure that most of the troops over there can read it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ramin, I want you to contact everyone in Niotan and offer them this bounty: if they can defeat an officer and bring me proof of it, then I will reward them.” He thought about it for a moment before adding, “Tell them they must bring me either the officer’s helmet, insignia, or sword. No, make it at least two of those three.” Otherwise there would be people who would quickly steal something in the heat of battle without actually earning the reward. Darius wanted those officers taken care of first. If the sub-commanders were disposed of, the men would be unsure of what to do. Especially in that hodge-podge army. They’d retreat by default. Almost as an afterthought he ordered, “That’s including army personnel.”
Everyone at the table froze and gave him incredulous looks. Bounties like this normally excluded the army, as any soldier worth his salt would naturally try to take down the officers of the enemy. But Darius didn’t prescribe to the theory that rewards should be withheld from men that were bound by duty. Besides, his position as lead general was very precarious with the men. If he showed that he was generous, they might view him more favorably. He needed to win their loyalty somehow and he was not above using bribes to do it.
Ramin scratched at that too-bright hair of his, gave his general an odd look, but dutifully jotted this down. “Yes, sir.”
Alright, what next? “Kaveh, are the engineers ready to build our barricades?”
“Yes, sir. They reported to me that they’ve done as much prep work as they can. They think they can assemble the barricades quickly once we’re there. Say, two days or so altogether. The watchtowers are ready to roll out at any time.”
Excellent. That was one worry off his mind. Most of Niotan’s troops were already on the front line, keeping the army at bay with any tactic they could think of. Darius would be bringing little more than relief troops and crews of engineers with him. The trick would be rearranging the troops once he arrived in order for his tactics to be the most effective.
They weren’t quite ready to leave but it had to be soon. “Gentlemen, we march out the day after tomorrow at sun rise. Will you be ready?”
He got firm voices of assent from around the table. Satisfied, he blew out a breath and stood up. “Then this meeting is dismissed.”
~~~
The problem with being a general was the political obligations that came hand in hand with the job. Maneuvering through a formal court demanded the same amount of ingenuity, intelligence, and strategy as being on a battlefield. The sole difference between the two being that Darius couldn’t stab anyone when they said something he didn’t like. Unfortunately.
But he knew better than to try to avoid the political nature of the job. It was politics, after all, that’d led him to being a wanted man with a significant bounty on his head. So even though he was on the eve of battle, he went to the formal dinner that night and even lingered for a while afterward, mixing with his new peers.
Or at least trying to.
Sego had called it correctly when he said that no one here knew how to react to Darius yet. They weren’t quite avoiding him, but they didn’t engage either. They were deliberately standing so that their backs were to him or they stood in profile. The more daring ones stole glances at him and whispered behind their hands to their neighbors. The others kept their backs rigidly to him in an obvious rebuff of his presence. Darius looked around the room in a slow motion. For a formal court, it was not a large space, although with the open glass doors on either end, it appeared expansive. Some brave soul had climbed up and lit the wall sconces all along the edge of the ceiling, which illuminated the area and made the gilded decorations on the wall glow softly.
For a small country, there were not many in the aristocratic class, perhaps three hundred or so. Darius, after a quick count, estimated that most of them were in this room, with perhaps two dozen or so absent. Putting over two hundred and fifty people in this space made it tight quarters, and yet he could stretch out both arms without hitting anyone. There were a great many guards as well. He had Bohme with him just to prevent someone putting a dagger into his back. But what were they afraid of? The people that didn’t have a bodyguard hovering in their shadow were visibly armed. In a formal setting he found that…odd. For such a crowd, they were strangely quiet as well. It sounded like a subdued beehive in here. The Brindisi court could be so loud at moments as to be deafening, so this relative quiet struck him as very strange.
Turning to Bohme, he muttered, “Are they normally like this with newcomers or is it just me?”
“Jusht you, shir,” Bohme assured him dryly.
Wonderful. Now, how did he go about winning them over? He had to make friends; it would be political suicide otherwise. If he wanted to actually live a fulfilling life here after the war had ended, he needed to es
tablish himself now. But he’d never faced this situation before and didn’t know enough about the culture to try blindly striking out on his own.
Where was Sego when he needed him? Surely the packing could wait another hour!
“General,” a very familiar female voice called from the side.
Darius turned sharply and relaxed to finally see one friendly face in the crowd. “Raja Morva, I am delighted to see you.”
Morva looked remarkably similar to her sister, Tailli. The elder of the two daughters, she had already been married when Darius took her hostage, and at the time had been three months pregnant. She had gained a few pounds since he last saw her—no doubt a side effect of having children—but her heart-shaped face had the same beauty to it and her smile was just as infectious. At her side stood another familiar face, Heydar, her husband. He had been the one to come and collect his wife and her family at the exchange. Darius had only passed a few words with him at the time, but the man had been sincerely thankful to see his wife unharmed and had not tried any tricks when Darius withdrew and returned to the front lines. He barely remembered what the man looked like from that brief encounter, but it didn’t seem he’d changed much. Still a little stocky, black hair untamable, expression in a semi-permanent smile. The smile widened as he exchanged a short bow with Darius.
“Tailli told me all about your arrival here,” Morva informed him. “I am so glad that you came to us for sanctuary.”
That was not quite how he arrived…ah well. “I am very thankful to your sister, as well, for giving me Bohme. I’d be quite lost without him.”
For some reason, Morva laughed softly. “Apparently I should think about giving you a gift as well. You do give the most wonderful gifts in return. Wherever did you find that vase? It’s remarkable.”
“Sego,” Darius admitted with spread hands. “The man knows where to shop. Or at least, he knows who to ask before shopping. We found that in the space of an hour.”
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