Jade Empire

by S. J. A. Turney

  The general scratched his neck thoughtfully. ‘Then we need to find out more, and if he can be of value we need to bring him in. With our policy thus far failing as badly as it is, there is no point in continuing as we have been. I shall take the army and drive directly north-east for the vital crossing of the Nadu River. They believe the enemy are too powerful? Then let us meet them at a bottleneck, where their numbers and their technology become limited in value. They may have discipline, vast ranks and terrifying weapons, but they lack what has always driven the west: initiative. Even facing horrendous odds, we might be able to hold the Jade Empire there until we find support elsewhere.’

  Dev felt his blood chill. He knew what was coming.

  ‘You will take half a cohort of cavalry and Captain Tyrus, who is an excellent judge of men and forces, and find this Sizhad. Test him. Examine him between you. If you and Tyrus judge him to be what we need, negotiate and bring him to our banner. I will send two chests of gold with you as a taster for him, but I give you full authority to act on behalf of both myself and the imperial government in negotiations. Find him, Dev. And if he can help us, bring him.’

  The young Inda officer shivered and hurried to hide the moment of visible weakness beneath a salute. The general either failed to notice, or ignored it, dismissing Dev with a nod.

  The northern mountains.

  A bandit chief.

  A zealot.

  Two hundred miles or more of riding. Anywhere up to five hundred miles, in fact, depending upon where in the mountains the Sizhad could be found. With the constant threat of other bandits, local rajahs and the very real possibility of bumping into the forces of the Jade Empire somewhere in a valley. The Sizhad clearly had a strong army. And Dev would ride into his lair with five hundred men and two chests of gold.

  When he thought about it like that, it suggested that the emperor Bassianus was not the only madman involved in this war.

  Summer, the northern mountains

  The Sizhad stared down at the parched soil. The mud had cracked and receded, leaving crevasses of darkness. If one looked closely at it, it could be a distant view of a massive landscape, rather than just the patch of ground before his crossed legs. And in some way, it was like a microcosm of his world. Parched and brown, dusty and formed of plateaus and heights, valleys and dark ravines.

  He felt his eyes drift out of focus for a moment as the drug took effect.

  Leaning back slightly, he looked up into the glaring, fiery orb of the sun for as long as he could manage without his eyes burning clean and robbing him of vision. Persevere. The sun was the way. Devotion was all. Blinking, half-blinded and with odd yellow-purple blotches obscuring everything, he leaned over the bowl once more, inhaling the burning root.

  The smoke filled his being, reaching out into every extremity and making his flesh tingle. The root had caught light easily this morning. A good omen. The glaring rays of the sun, focused with a single lens into a beam of light that burned through the coarse fibres. Ritual. Devotion and ritual were all.

  Slowly, the ground coalesced into detail before him once more. He knew he was half-dreaming now, as was the way and the path.

  The valleys were flooding.

  No. Not the valleys. This was not his world. Just a patch of earth. The cracks in the dry dusty ground were flooding though. Was it blood? It looked like blood. It could be water tinted by the dusty red earth, of course. It was hard to tell with the root smoke filling him, but then that was the point of devotion and divination and prophecy. It was ever vague, the sun-granted images melding seamlessly with the real and mundane before his eyes.

  The red torrents surged and crashed through the crevasses, occasionally meeting and forming stronger currents that then flooded on into new cracks. So much blood.

  So much blood.

  But now the blood was changing. It was still surging, but no longer along the cracks, for the ground was full, and now it was rising. Not how liquid should. It was bulging at the centre and bursting upwards into the air, leaving the cracked ground and growing like a slender column of blood in the sunlit air. The Sizhad watched in fascination as the red liquid put forth leaves and formed into smooth shapes, crafting a rose of crimson before his very eyes.

  A rose from the parched earth, reaching for the sun.

  Prophecy was a wondrous thing. He felt sure he knew what it meant. And it had been born from valleys flooded with blood.

  Blood. It was all about blood.

  Devotion and ritual and blood were all…

  He rose, unsteadily. Two of his close companions hurried over to help him, but he waved them away and steadied himself.

  ‘Brothers, the time is nigh. Sharpen your blades.’

  PART TWO – THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION

  Chapter 7

  The wind blows but never dies

  The reed bends but never breaks

  This is the way of things

  Wind and reed go on

  The contest is endless

  War, by Gueng Ji

  The urgent calls of the scouts echoed back across the wide valley. Jai glanced sidelong at General Jiang, who nodded in response. Both urged their mounts forward to intercept the agitated riders, leaving behind the bulk of the men. The column stretched on for almost three miles, despite being well spread out to the sides, given the ease of the shallow and bare terrain. An immense force that shook the world with their passage. The earth sizzled in the sun, baked dry, the grass brown and unhealthy. Dust rose in endless clouds about the booted feet of the infantry, and only the cavalry astride their mounts and the officers at the front escaped the choking miasma.

  These were two of the Jade Emperor’s armies now, that of the southern prong having met up and joined forces with General Jiang’s column a few days earlier. The numbers were quite awe-inspiring to see, and Jai had watched the force move like a silver centipede across the dusty brown world with awe, certain that no army on earth could stand against them now. And what would it be like when the northern army joined them, he wondered? That being said, they had heard nothing from the north in over a week. While that was quite explicable and reasonable given the difficulty of the mountainous terrain there and the distances involved, Jai had found himself in darker moments wondering whether the vicious bandit chiefs in the north might be strong enough to face an army of the Jade Empire. He had kept his worries to himself, though, not wishing to concern the general, who was dealing with the lack of communication stoically.

  Still, even without the northern army, the sheer size of the force was mind-boggling. Jai glanced over his shoulder as he started to move, casting an impressed gaze over the dust cloud and the great colonizing force within it. The only troops to ride at the front of the column with the commanders were General Jiang’s Crimson Guard, resplendent in gleaming silver cuirass and all-red uniform beneath, right down to the wicked painted wooden face masks of the helmets, cunningly formed into the shape of legendary demons.

  As Jai and the general kicked forward, the Crimson Guard split into three wings, accompanying their master on both flanks and to the rear.

  The scouts – men serving in the same role as Jai had occupied just months ago – reined in on a narrow roadway between two fishing pools and bowed their heads respectfully.

  ‘What is it?’ the general asked in a businesslike manner as he hauled on the reins and stopped before them.

  ‘Enemy sighted, General.’

  ‘Inda?’

  ‘Imperial, General.’

  Jai felt the world lurch beneath him. They had heard that the western armies had crossed their border, of course. News of such magnitude travelled fast, after all. And it was not even as though he and the general had not been expecting something like this, but he’d never thought it would happen so soon. He was not sure he’d ever be prepared to hear such tidings, mind, and suddenly the unpleasant truth of the situation impressed itself upon him. While they had been conquering, annexing and negotiating with Inda lords, it had felt
surprisingly glorious and simple. It had been something of an adventure. It had not truly felt like a war. This changed things entirely. The empire would not capitulate or be so easily overwhelmed.

  ‘So soon?’ General Jiang replied, mirroring Jai’s feelings perfectly.

  The scout simply nodded.

  ‘They have moved with impressive speed, then,’ the general mused. ‘I had expected to come within perhaps fifty or a hundred miles of their border before a major reaction. They cannot have moved thoroughly through Inda territories as we did, securing each land. They have not had time. Jai, what is your assessment of their motives and methods?’

  Jai pursed his lips as he thought on the matter. ‘If they are not consolidating as they go it means they have focused on a goal, and that goal is almost certainly us. They have ignored all else in a rush to confront us. They are not intending to control the Inda, they are just coming to oppose the forces of the Jade Emperor.’

  The general nodded. ‘Quite so. This imperial general is focused, as you say, and it is on us that he is focused, which concerns me. He has come fast and direct for one reason, Jai: Jalnapur.’ Jai nodded, realising what that meant. In the excitement of the news, he had forgotten quite where they were. Less than a mile away, at the end of the valley, lay Jalnapur, the fortress palace on the Nadu River. The only feasible crossing for an entire army throughout its great north-south length. It was the key to the west of the Inda Diamond. Or conversely, the lock, if you were an imperial general intent on preventing Jade Empire expansion.

  ‘I had assumed we would be across the Nadu before we met them,’ Jai said quietly.

  ‘I too,’ the general replied, ‘but the wily enemy general has sacrificed security to his rear in order to reach this place before us and secure it. It is, I fear, a failing in our culture that we are sometimes unable to think in such fluid terms. The empire has bred intuition out of its sons in return for total obedience. It is our strength, but I sometimes fear it is also our curse, as seems to now be the case. Our latest reports suggest that we outnumber the enemy two to one – though that cannot be confirmed until I see them with my own eyes – which would give us a tremendous advantage in the open field. But at a bridge? A determined man with a hardened force could hold a bridge against superior numbers for a very long time indeed. The only sure ways to dislodge an enemy from such a position are either by trickery and subterfuge or by simply throwing men and resources at it in swathes and hoping that a gap opens up in the midst of the killing.’

  ‘I do not like the sound of the latter,’ Jai replied.

  ‘Quite. That would reduce our forces, even if we win, to unmanageable levels. But sadly the former is not likely. This general is clearly sharp. I doubt he would fall for trickery. Which leaves us with two equally unpleasant possibilities. Either we settle in for a long fight and a war of attrition, or we accept that this is the furthest we go and seek another path somewhere north or south. Again, the former is not to be wished for, but the latter is the sort of decision that makes heads fall off back at the imperial court.’

  Jai sighed. ‘So what do we do, General?’

  ‘We try everything we can short of direct assault. To begin with, we have two advantages: numbers and artillery. Numbers only come into play when attrition becomes the killer or in open field warfare. But artillery? In my understanding, the westerners rely upon torsion projectile weapons, launching bolts and rocks like backward barbarians. We, however, have cannon. Before we commit men to an endless war, we try everything, and first we see if we can pulverise them into submission.’

  He wagged a finger in the air. ‘But before we attempt any kind of action, we need to meet with them. However strange these western men might be, they are said to be civilised, and civilised men talk before they draw a blade. If there is even a hope that we can resolve this without vast bloodshed, it is our duty to do just that.’

  Jai nodded, and without further pause the two men rode for Jalnapur, the scouts accompanying them and the Crimson Guard retaining their protective formation. The valley was wide, the seasonal stream at the centre long since dried for the year, and the collection of horsemen rode easily around the long, gentle curve until the vale opened out into the wide floodplain of the Nadu River. The vast swathes of bright green crops here were an odd sight after so many days of parched brown vegetation, and the general held up a hand to stop them at the edge of the great plain.

  The enemy were visible a mile away as a huge mass of shapes scattered over the flat land on the far bank, though it was near impossible to pick out much detail at this range. Jai wondered why the general had stopped, and waited as Jiang rubbed his chin, deep in thought.

  ‘Such wide fertile plains are not simply fed by one river, no matter how large. The Nadu floods, Jai.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is it a simple matter of meltwater in the spring, or the effect of the monsoons of which I hear?’

  Jai frowned. They had never suffered seasonal flooding in Initpur, at least not on the scale it was witnessed in Jalnapur. The area was too dry and hilly. They had seen occasional burst river banks and the like at home, but nothing that did more than surprise a few farmers and cattle. He tried to think back on what he knew of the Nadu and the central Inda lands from his father and grandfather.

  ‘There is meltwater flooding – we see it in Initpur – but that is not responsible for this fertile land. This is certainly because of the monsoons.’

  He’d heard of such weather, of course, even if it did not affect life in the northern hills. Dreadful, incessant rain so hard it tore through leaves and sent animals running for cover, flooding the low-lying ground and making it dangerous for months, then incredibly fertile for half a year. Fragile structures were washed away within monsoon months, the unwary drowned, plains flooded…

  He caught the look in the general’s eye.

  ‘Monsoon season is already upon us,’ he said nervously. ‘It is unusual, I think, that it has been dry this long.’

  ‘So we can expect to be subject to deluges in the coming days, and these flat lands separating us from the western empire’s army will become a quagmire, or possibly one great lake.’

  Jai peered out across the plain. The imperial troops beyond the river had deployed on the flat ground near the bridge. Were they unaware of the possibility of monsoon, or were they not concerned about it? Was their general even half as clever as Jiang seemed to expect?

  ‘This terrain and the season could effectively nullify our artillery advantage,’ the general sighed.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We can field men down there facing the enemy, much as they have, but we cannot place the cannon there. Their weight and the pressure they exert upon discharge make them unstable on soft ground, and they are too unmanageable to move swiftly if the rains come. It takes half an hour to remove them from their cradles and load them onto carts, and the oxen draw them away slowly too. We could find ourselves fleeing for high ground in a growing inundation and not being able to bring the cannon with us. It is an unpleasant choice to make. The artillery are either effective and at extreme risk, or they are safe and largely ineffective. I do not mean to lose my cannon and the advantage they grant, which means that we must deploy the cannon on the valley sides, here. They might still be able to touch the enemy, but it will be at maximum range. I shall be interested to see what the enemy have done with the disposition of their forces, given the terrain and potential flooding.’

  He turned and called to one of the Crimson Guard officers.

  ‘Wait here with your men. As the army arrives, have the cavalry move to the north and position themselves for my return. The bulk of the infantry should deploy at the edge of the plain before us here. Have the cannon masters site their weapons on the ridges facing Jalnapur and the bridge. No weapon is to be within twenty feet of the flood plain’s level. I shall return shortly.’

  The officer saluted and, accompanied by the remaining two thirds of the guard, Jai and the ge
neral rode down to the flat, fertile fields, selecting a low, wide causeway that carried a road to the bridge. By necessity the horsemen pulled in, moving four abreast at most. Despite the potential danger of riding directly into the enemy’s sight, the general insisted upon leading the way, the Crimson Guard at their back, and Jai took in every detail of the field of battle as they approached.

  The Nadu River was almost half a mile across, a vast force of water cutting through the land like the wavy blade of a sacrificial knife. The bridge – a grand, decorative, white stone edifice – was one of the greatest structures ever built by the Inda. A feat of art and engineering both, linked to a causeway on both sides that rose above the common flood level, it was famous even in Initpur. The fortress palace, and the connected walled city of Jalnapur, rose on the far bank beside the river, again on ground high enough that the rising waters during monsoon season could not flood the streets. The palace itself, walled only low on the river side, was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful buildings Jai had ever seen, all ornate windows and arches and graceful balconies in white and gold with delicate turrets twisting up into the blue. Interestingly, there was no sign of imperial military on its walls.

  The enemy forces were scattered. Though they had appeared one great mass from the far bank, the truth was clearer from close up. The enemy general had deployed his forces carefully, using every facet of the landscape, some close to the bridge and the river bank, others further back. Missile troops were clearly stationed close to infantry in small groups to support one another. Each area of manpower had been fortified with low earth banks, wicker fences and shields of timber lathes. An impressive feat. And another example of how different these westerners were. That they split their force up into such small units of a thousand, even a hundred men, and yet trusted them to follow a plan. The force of the Jade Empire simply could not function like that. The chain of command had to be in place. Without senior commanders passing the orders down, disseminating like ripples along a cobweb, the ranks of men would be uncertain and unable to act appropriately. Did the westerners have command capability even at such low levels? But in a way, Jai could understand how. In the east there was one branch of the military that functioned in such a way, and he was intimately familiar with them: the scouts.