Chapter 1249: What’s next(2)
Chapter 1249: What’s next(2)
"War?" Rykio asked. He rolled his head back, staring up at the vaulted stone ceiling with a blank, bewildered gaze, as if wondering whether he had somehow slept through a council meeting. "More than a sweet bride, it seems War is our overbearing mother-in-law, the way she constantly nags at us, never leaving us in peace. Didn’t we literally just end it? And you already want to drag us into another?"
"What I want is useless compared to what we have to do," Alpheo replied, his voice flat and hard as a paving stone. He looked around the table, his hazel eyes locking onto each of his captains in turn. "And besides, the war is not over. It has only just started."
"Aye, you spoke of it with our dear Kakunian during the feast, didn’t you?" Jarza muttered, his thick arms crossing over his chest. The massive legate made no effort to hide his deep-seated displeasure for Merelao; even if his words remained technically polite, his tone was dripping with venom.
"I saw him smiling through his pretty cheeks and offering you his hand. Not that I’m complaining about the alliance itself. Better to have that graceful madman holding the throne in Kakunia than the fat fuck of Habadia, I suppose. As long as Kakunia remains a bleeding sore of civil war, the Habadians won’t be able to find a clear road to Herculia. That’s where they’re going to strike next, isn’t it?" He drew a calloused finger across his own throat. "The moment Habadia gets a proper army across that border, we’re going to have a bloody revolt on our hands."
Jarza let the rest of the thought hang in the chilled air, but every man at the table felt the weight of the unspoken truth. If Herculia rose up in rebellion, nearly half of the new kingdom’s entire food production would instantly grind to a halt. The Herculians had only been bending their knees to the banner of Yarzat for a little less than a decade,far too short a time to cultivate anything resembling genuine, deep-rooted loyalty. The old aristocratic houses of that region had emerged from the previous conflicts mostly unscathed, their wealth intact and their private levies still strong enough to give the crown immense trouble. And if they decided to strike Alpheo in the back while he was looking North...
"You think Arnold would actually jump ship?" Edric asked, leaning forward and squinting through the candlelight. "I do not really see the man doing it. He proved his mettle on the walls of the Bastion well enough to earn my trust on that front. He is loyal and honorable.He has my respect.
"And he has mine as well," Alpheo agreed, nodding slowly. "The problem is not Arnold. Even if he and his brother Thalien remain perfectly loyal, we cannot ignore the fact that the Habadians still hold the middle son. During a great war, laws and birthrights are heard and ignored based entirely on convenience. If the Prince of Habadia gives Lorens a proper army and a chest of gold, you will find Herculia declaring itself an independent principality before the month is out."
Alpheo leaned back, tracing a map line with his finger. He knew full well that the bloody memory of the Bastion would be a nightmare severe enough to push Habadia to find a different path of conquest. Inciting a rebellion in the rear was a textbook strategy. In fact, it would have been a brilliantly devastating move had the Habadians employed it during this recent war. But impatience had gotten the better of the League; with the Yarzat capital sitting a mere five-day ride from the border, the target had simply been too juicy for them to pass up.
A engineered rebellion in Herculia would not have been the lightning-fast campaign the League had planned for this conflict. To win that way, they would have been forced to first lay siege to the heavily fortified main cities of Herculia, only to then claw their way down through the brutal chokepoint of Bracum, enduring a slow, agonizing line of sieges all the way to the capital.
But Habadia wouldn’t need a total military victory if they could master psychological warfare. If the old Herculian houses saw their homeland rebel, and if they witnessed even one or two early victories against the crown’s forces, the long-standing resentments would spread like wildfire. The only anchor keeping those treacherous lords in check was the terrifying reputation of the White Army. Take that iron hand out of the equation, and a full-scale civil war would tear the realm apart.
Yarzat was a young kingdom, and the wounds of its creation were still raw. Many were the ancient enmities between the proud, traditional noble houses and the crown, which in its relentless, iron-willed effort to centralize all power, had earned a deep and unspoken resentment from the very men who now knelt on the cold stone floors.
How laughable, Alpheo thought with no small irony , our biggest danger being on the inside instead of the man who had just led twelve thousands sword at our throat.
"Kakunia will be our main strategic interest in our immediate policies, that is true," Alpheo said, his fingers drumming a slow, martial rhythm against the edge of the map table. "We shall support Merelao in his war with money, food, equipment, and active intervention. We shall devise a comprehensive war strategy there soon."
They already had a strategy for that northern theater, of course, but it was no longer worth the parchment it was scrawled upon. The initial plan had been blunt and bloody: send the Hounds to put fire and steel to everything along the Herculian-Kakunian border, while simultaneously moving supplies and the main host through Lake Lintia to strike at Florum and Ricorum, opening a direct push toward the Kakunian capital.
(MAP OF STRATEGY HERE)
It hadn’t been a stroke of genius. It relied entirely on the dangerous logistical gamble of capturing Florum first. Worse, the Herculian border with Kakunia was an unforgiving spine of treacherous mountains. A small, disciplined band of men entrenched in those peaks could give a Yarzat offensive more bloody trouble than two thousand heavy infantry in an open field. Fortunately, new players had shaken the board enough to tilt the odds in an actual conflict, but that was a tale for another council.
"As important as Kakunia is, that is not the war I am speaking of," Alpheo continued, his eyes darkening as he leaned forward, casting a shadow over the maps. "The one I mean is the long war, the one sitting right on our doorstep, the one that will ride at our sides from this very moment until one of us falls into the dirt. We are surrounded by enemies. Our only true ally is a northern rebel whose entire bid for a throne resides on our charity and whatever desperate army of free-riders and sellswords he can scrape together with his family name alone. No matter. We shall forge our own friends, just as we shall make an end of our foes."
"How?" Asag asked, his voice sharp, cutting through the low murmur of the room.
"Divide and conquer. The very alphabet of warfare," Alpheo said with a humorless smile. "We have all seen how deeply fractured the League’s army truly was. It would be a crime against the gods not to exploit those cracks. Kakunia is already bleeding out of the equation, and Oizen is still precariously on the fence. Now, we must gaze at the others and see exactly where to drive the wedge."
"Oizen on the fence?" Xanthios scoffed, a brutal chuckle rumbling in his scarred chest. "We just tore half their state away from them and utterly humiliated the other half. They don’t possess the teeth to bother us anymore, and with Kakunia tearing itself apart in civil war, Nibadur has absolutely no way to send them aid. I’d say that takesthem out of the equation well enough. They have a mountain of their own miseries to climb; war should be the very last of their worries."
"Aye," Edric chimed in, a smirk playing on his lips. "They are practically our property now."
"A funny thing about property, it tends to develop opinions of its own as of late," Alpheo countered softly, the quietness of his voice more menacing than a shout. "I am certain we thought the exact same thing of the Oizenians after our victory at Apurvio. And the Romelians did too after we broke them the Fingers for them. What magnificent fruits came from those trees, eh? Sweet as morning milk..." He paused, scanning the table. When he saw no one was eager to offer a counterargument, he drove the point home. "As long as Oizen exists as a state, they are never truly finished."
"Didn’t their council agree to send the craven’s brother to us as a hostage?" Jarza asked, his thick brow furrowing.
"In a few weeks, he will arrive in chains," Alpheo admitted. "But there is precious little love between those brothers. In truth, the boy will be useful as a pawn and nothing more."
"Are you planning on something for dear Sorza?As I recall he only has a single new born boy" Jarza asked, though he knew that such dark, back-alley matters were usually left to the discretion of the Carrion Raven.
"Only if the Prince of Oizen forces my hand," Alpheo said, shifting his gaze out the window toward the gray sky. "I am more than willing to let the man live out the rest of his days in peace. I have absolutely no interest in conquering the remainder of Oizen. It does me far more good to have a broken Oizen bending its knee to Yarzat than to absorb its territory. That place is a hot potato I am not eager to eat.
There is a saying about mouses over-feasting themselves."
"Enough of Oizen," Asag interjected, his patience wearing thin. Of all the legates, he was the most practical when it came to charting the deaths of princes. "If you do not mean Kakunia, and you do not mean Oizen, then who do you intend to strike against next?"
"I recall there were five princes in our lands," the King said, his voice dropping down as his finger flicked at the table.
Tick.
"One we have thoroughly broken at the knees. ’’
Tick.
’’One has fallen into the bloody chaos of his own backyard. Another two are simply too far out of our reach for us to do anything meaningful against them just yet. That leaves only the last one. I’d say there is still a treacherous snake who needs to fit the bill."
The legates went quiet, the realization dawning on them. The Prince of Sharjaan.
"He may be eating his own hands in regret at the grand harvest of gold and glory he lost by letting the League sort it out at the Bastion" Alpheo murmured, his eyes glittering with a terrible satisfaction. "Soon, he will be eating an entirely different dish. I’d say this is the perfect moment to establish a new motto for our newly fledged kingdom. Something the lords and the commoners alike will remember."
Alpheo looked around the table.
"I’d say ’Yarzat always pays its debts’ is a fine place to start."