“And we’ll have a food shortage again!” Helion slammed his fist on the table. He had swapped his rag bandage for a new steel pad. This ‘decoration’ made his already frightening appearance seem even more severe.
“That’s right, Commander.” Simon nodded. “The sectarians’ stores of grain and provisions would be enough to feed fifty thousand disciples for three months. We haven’t touched those stores yet. We, however, will go through those supplies in a week. We have our own stockpile as well, but-”
“We’ll be forced to trade with the villages or hunt,” Lian finished.
She’d been able to find a good artifact bow in the Armory of the sectarians. If the word ‘good’ could even be applied to an artifact.
“I’d appreciate it if you'd stop interrupting me.” Simon frowned, cleared his throat, and then continued. “We did not find any armor in the warehouses of the pavilion, but there were plenty of medium-quality metal ingots, and they will be suitable for making armor. In addition, there is also a forge. I have already given the order and our blacksmiths have been forging suitable armor for our soldiers since this morning.”
Hadjar nodded approvingly. One of the main problems he had found himself facing was clothing his growing army. A soldier who wasn’t protected by armor was doomed to die in a large-scale battle and was therefore pretty much useless. They would turn into mincemeat faster than they could realize how hopeless their situation was.
“How many sets of armor will we be able to make in time for the winter?” The General asked.
Simon pulled out an abacus and ran through a few calculations. He looked through his scroll and briskly sorted out the wooden balls on the steel threads.
“About a hundred thousand,” he answered.
“What if we give the blacksmiths more assistance?”
Simon’s abacus snapped again.
“Then we’ll have one hundred and twenty, possibly a hundred and thirty thousand sets,” he summed up. “Even if we send the entire army to work at the forge, my General, not every soldier can do the job. It’s not only a matter of strength. A sharp mind is also needed to make the armor.”
Simon looked at Helion and added, “Not everyone has it in them.”
“What are you implying, hamster?”
“Implying? You already-”
Hadjar looked at the bickering officers, and they quickly saluted and immediately calmed down.
“Go on, Simon.”
“The sectarians only have ten thousand arrows and don’t have gunpowder at all. For us, this amount is a mere drop in the proverbial ocean when we take into account how much we actually need. In summary, we cannot survive this winter, and we will die of hunger. The first large-scale battle will see us lose most of our soldiers, and we'll still be short on armor.”
Hadjar sighed. The neural network had more or less told him the same thing, only more vaguely.
“Lian.”
“Yes, my General?”
“Take Simon and go to the nearest Baliumian villages. Don’t spend a lot of money, but do try to buy some provisions and possibly get hold of some metal. If they have it, of course.”
The archer nodded. She didn’t like the idea of collaborating with people from an enemy state, much less with traitors, but she had to obey the General’s orders. A second later, the archer left the tent with the chubby provisions officer in tow.
There were surprisingly few people left in the tent. There was the chief of intelligence, who always seemed so gloomy and silent, Helion, who’d used to take any risk, the chief engineer, and Serra. The rest were already busy with errands.
“My General!” Lergon entered the tent.
The leader of the Baliumians had proven to be a reliable and loyal ally in the last battle. Despite being wounded, he’d still managed to save at least a dozen soldiers from Lidus during the fight. Very few people were capable of such a feat, even while uninjured. One needed an iron will and a steadfast determination to perform such heroic deeds, and not every soldier had such qualities.
Not even close.
“Sit down, Officer.” Hadjar nodded at one of the vacant chairs. “I called you here to help me solve our latest problem.”
Lergon, covered in both old and new scars, sat at the table. He looked tired but excited. For the first time in its history, ‘The Black Gates’ sect had suffered a major defeat. Even though it wasn’t too significant for the sect as a whole, it was still a slap to the face for them.
“I understand.” Lergon nodded.
“Then I expect you to offer me some good solutions. What are we going to do with the prisoners?”
Helion was about to speak, but Hadjar raised his hand.
“They are people from another state, Helion,” the General reprimanded. “We haven't declared war on them. We have no moral or legal right to decide their fate.”
“We won the battle,” the cavalryman replied, leaning forward, both palms flat on the table. “We have the right that the swords and blood of our soldiers obtained.”
“It wasn’t just our soldiers,” Hadjar insisted. “So, it would perhaps be fairer if the Baliumians determined the fate of their countrymen themselves, would it not?”
Hadjar considered the fact that perhaps he simply didn’t want to be responsible for such a decision, and he was passing the responsibility on to someone else. Maybe that was the point. Hadjar preferred to call it delegation.
He had too many urgent matters to deal with and couldn’t afford to be distracted by several thousand prisoners. Moreover, he had plenty of scrolls lying around to prove it.
“What do you say, Officer Lergon?”
The Baliumian considered it carefully. The doubt was clear in his eyes. Thinking about bloody revenge was simple, but it was much harder to bring it to life—especially since he’d seen the disciples with his own eyes. Most of them had never left the sect and had done nothing wrong in general. And now Lergon was expected to decide the fate of these people.
He had to choose and also be responsible for that decision his whole life. This burden, or rather, the willingness to take on such a responsibility and endure it, determined the real leaders in any army. Even when it might seem like the burden was unbearable.
“I think we-”
The tent flap was thrown aside and the Healer of the ‘Bear’ squad rushed in. The scholar, usually neat and calm, looked a lot more tense than usual. His hair was tousled, the sleeves of his silken robes were rolled up, and his hands trembled.
Serra and Hadjar immediately stood up.
Their eyes reflected the concern they shared.
“I have bad news, my General.”
Chapter 112
Hadjar stood in front of the portable bed on which Nero lay, his friend’s breathing still labored. A cloth soaked in cold water lay on his reddened forehead, and a variety of glowing stones had been placed on his chest. Numerous odorous flasks with various ointments and powders were on the bedside table.
Sitting on the floor, Serra took her lover's hand and gently stroked it. She rocked back and forth as she wailed, trying, unsuccessfully, to hold back her tears. Nero hadn’t regained consciousness. He mumbled something that Hadjar could not make out as he absently stared at the black ceiling above him.
Hadjar clenched his fists tightly. He felt angry at the fact that the Master had already gone to meet the forefathers and he couldn’t kill him a second time.
“My General,” the scholar wiped his hands, but they still smelled like herbs and various mixtures. “I’ve tried everything I know. I have prepared over a hundred and thirty different antidotes thus far, but none of them helped the commander.”
“You said the wound wasn’t serious,” Hadjar replied.
“It isn’t.” The scholar nodded. “Come. Take a look for yourself.”
He approached Nero and moved the blanket off him. The healer explained to Hadjar that Nero was constantly throwing the blanket off anyway. He would alternate between hot and cold, just
like during a fever.
The outline of the shallow cut was clearly visible under the bandages on Nero’s body. Black lines were spreading from the point where the halberd had struck him. It looked like ink now flowed through Nero’s veins instead of blood.
Nero’s skin had already gotten dark and gray. In some places, it resembled the flesh of a corpse more than the healthy tissue of a living person.
“Necrosis?” Hadjar asked, feeling for his friend’s pulse.
The Palace scholar South Wind had devoted plenty of lectures to teaching his disciples the basics of medicine long ago.
“I doubt it,” the healer shook his head. “If it had been necrosis, I’d have found a problem within the blood. A poison, maybe. But I could find nothing of the sort.”
Strangely, his pulse was steady, and Nero otherwise appeared to be a perfectly healthy man—other than the fact that an almost living corpse seemed to be lying on the yellow, sweat-soaked sheets.
“General, with all due respect and sympathy for your grief, I have hundreds of wounded soldiers that I must attend to.”
In fact, he was understating it. Thousands of wounded were currently lying, sitting, standing, moaning, screaming, or sleeping behind the screen. There were so many of them that some warriors were forced to share bunk beds. There wasn’t enough space for everyone—even in such a spacious house—and tents had been erected at the makeshift hospital’s entrance.
The army had a lot of healers, but there was a severe lack of good doctors. The scholar of the ‘Bear’ squad was one of the best doctors the army had. As a military scholar and physician, he always followed one simple rule: ‘Save those that can be saved, pray and swiftly move on from those who can’t.’
War didn’t tolerate time wasted expressing one’s feelings.
“I did everything I could, my General.” The doctor sighed and laid a towel on the edge of the table. “All I could.”
It was unclear whether he’d repeated it for Hadjar’s sake or his own. But, after sighing once more, he left to attend to the other wounded, to the ones he could steal from the clutches of death.
“Fool!” Serra was crying. Her eyes had lost their fire, and her lips trembled slightly. “May all the demons race down your throat, Nero. Stop pretending!”
The usually cheerful Nero muttered something inarticulate in reply.
Hadjar gently squeezed the caster’s shoulder.
“We still have time,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way to cure him.”
Serra turned to the General but didn’t say a word. Hadjar knew she didn’t believe him.
Damn it. He didn’t even believe himself.
A dying friend who needed his help was lying in front of him. Even if the gods themselves came down from the heavens and told him that it would be impossible to save Nero, he would still send them to the abyss.
Hadjar turned around, going past the rows of beds on which the wounded soldiers writhed, and strode out into the yard.
The dark sky glimmered as large flakes of snow fell on the hieroglyphs that circled the pavilion. A terrible blizzard raged behind the shimmering veil for the second day in a row. The watchmen on the other side of the veil couldn't carry out their duties for longer than an hour at a time. Everyone who came back looked more like a snowman than a person. Many who wanted to demonstrate their patience and professionalism merely succeeded in nearly freezing their fingers off.
“Tuur?” Hadjar called for the chief engineer.
“Yes, my General?”
“I won't be available for the next few days. I would ask you to perform my duties in my absence. I trust your decisions as I would my own.”
“But, my General…” The engineer didn’t immediately realize that he’d been given the General’s locket. “I understand, my General. But there’s only one commander... you can’t leave your post now, at such a crucial time! Who knows when the remaining members of the sect will come to fight us… Without you, we-”
“I trust your judgment, Tuur.”
Hadjar said nothing more, turned around, and headed for the library, or rather, what was left of it. One of the smartest and most cunning disciples of the sect had set it ablaze. Many of the scrolls had been saved, but most of them had still been severely damaged by the fire. Many of the Techniques’ instructions were now so incomplete that it was simply impossible to try and study them successfully.
On Hadjar’s order, everything that had been saved had been taken out of the ruins of the old building. A separate tent was then erected, shelves built, and Hadjar appointed a second librarian to assist in saving what they could.
He wasn’t the man who had been sent by the Empire. Instead, he was the private librarian of the Moon Army. Now that they had their own library—the fact it had been stolen was swiftly forgotten—the Moon Army was the first among the armies in all the surrounding kingdoms that could boast of such an achievement.
On his way to the tent, Hadjar didn’t think for a moment that his actions were worthy of a General. He knew it. He knew in his heart that he was neither a hero nor a leader. He couldn’t bear the burden of such a responsibility because, while his entire army was at stake, so was the life of his friend, and he hadn’t hesitated to choose the life of his friend.
The songs lied, glorifying the hero and General. Hadjar was a simple man.
All he could think about was an illusory sort of hope based on a guess. If the Master had used some special Technique to infect his friend, then information about it might be stored in their library, as well as a way to heal someone afflicted by it.
He had to find that information and save his friend.
Chapter 113
Hadjar absently scratched at the stubble he had grown over these past three days as he laid the latest scroll aside. Hundreds of similar scrolls were piled up beside him. Now that they were stored in the database of his neural network, the Techniques of different levels had expanded Hadjar’s knowledge about the way of cultivation, but all of it was useless to him at the moment. He was unable to find the most important thing—information about what the sixth pavilion’s Master had used to inflict such an injury on his friend and leave him in his current state.
“Damn it!” Hadjar dropped another scroll.
It was useless as well.
He looked at the shelves in front of him. How many more scrolls would he have to look through? Almost a thousand different Techniques lay here in front of him. The information he needed could be in any one of them or…
Hadjar didn’t want to think about the alternative.
Nero was getting worse by the day. The black substance was slowly spreading through his veins and getting closer to his heart. Serra tirelessly applied dozens of hieroglyphs to his body, but those could only slow down the process. They couldn’t stop it.
“Time!” Hadjar ordered.
[Estimated time before the body transitions to a state of complete inactivity: 58 hours 36 minutes 42 ... 41... 40 seconds]
So, Nero had less than three days remaining, according to the calculations of Hadjar’s neural network. The moment the timer reached ‘0’, the black substance would slither its way to the heart of the officer, and he would be lost to them. Hadjar couldn’t let that happen to his friend.
Sighing, he began to read the next scroll carefully.
“It’s unlikely that you will find the information you need in here,” a familiar voice sounded behind him.
“With all due respect, venerable adept,” Hadjar growled out without turning back to face the Heaven Soldier, “I don’t have time to talk to you.”
“I understand.”
The old man, wincing slightly in disgust, walked around the piles of dirty dishes, leftovers, and shards that littered the floor of the tent. The stench was so horrible now that neither soldiers nor officers, not even the guards, came here these days. Hadjar wasn’t going to get distracted by anything—he didn’t wash or shave. He had become more like an animal than a noble warrior
in just a few short days.
Stopping in front of the General, the Heaven Soldier sat down on a stool and picked up one of the scrolls.
“Mortal Technique,” he read. ‘A Boar’s Hoof.’ Who in their right mind would want to turn their left hand into a boar's hoof?”
“Someone who needs strength,” Hadjar replied without looking up from his current reading. “Not everyone, venerable adept, was lucky enough to have been born in the Empire.”
“Lucky…” the old man repeated. Sadness could be heard in his voice for some reason. “I wouldn’t wish such luck on... Regardless, I’m not here to talk about that.”
He pulled a thin scroll out of his clothes and handed it to the General.
“What’s this?” Hadjar asked, looking at a map of the mountain range they were on right now.
This map was much more detailed than the one in the General’s tent. A red circle, covering an area of several tens of square miles, had been drawn on it.
“It’s a map.”
“I can see that it’s a map.”
The old man smiled, and it was a little more predatory than what he normally allowed himself when he was among other people. They both knew that they didn’t trust each other and there was no need to hide this fact in an environment such as this.
“I’ve seen that kind of wound before, General.”
Hadjar’s mouth fell open, and he sprang to his feet.
“Do you know what the cure is?”
The old man shook his head.
“I doubt anyone does, except the Creator of this... Technique.” The old man literally hissed the last word. “This Technique is a disgrace to all true cultivators. It uses something that even the filthiest scoundrel would never stoop so low as to use. And yet, the Patriarch of ‘The Black Gates’ created it and spread it among his entourage. And I’m afraid that he's the only one who knows what the cure is.”
Dragon Heart: Iron Will. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 2 Page 21