Chapter 160

Translator: Willia

Many have agonized over it. They agonize over it still. How to win a fight.

A few of them put it down in writing. Do this and that, and you win. But look at those writings, and they spouted nothing but things so obvious it was absurd.

When you attack, your forces should outnumber the enemy three to one; strike the enemy's weak points with your strengths; that sort of thing.

As if anyone's slogging through all this misery because they didn't already know that, right? Probably about half of people think more or less the same.

And that half drops out. Then they go around acting like they know it all. Knowing nothing, they puff themselves up as though there's nothing to it.

But the other half is different. At least once, they stop and wonder why that person said such a thing. And here, again, half of them find the answer, and the other half do not.

The ones who find it finally understand. Ah, it's something everyone knows, and yet the instant you plunge into the real thing, you forget it completely.

In the end, you only learn by throwing yourself against it. Stake your life, hurl yourself into one battle after another, and countless things come through to you as instinct.

And of those, only a few survive to grasp the essence of victory.

And again, ask them to put that realization into words, and there's nothing much to say. In the end, they too wind up spouting only the obvious.

And again, people ask to be let in on the secret of success. Don't they already know it all? They know, so why ask? If what they want is the easy road, there's only one thing to tell them. There's no such thing.

Ricardt, too, had read books on strategy, tactics, and the art of war here and there. The only thought they ever left him with was: ah, so this is the kind of warfare this man has waged.

One stressed momentum; another stressed meticulous planning. Every word of it was right. It was only that each man was unpacking what he himself had lived through.

Ricardt respected every one of those authors. But that was all. He respected them and nothing more; he didn't particularly follow what they said. Even where his own ways resembled theirs, he gave it little thought.

Ricardt put more faith in what he had experienced himself, in the techniques and insights he had honed ever finer along the way. That faith had never once betrayed him.

So if you asked Ricardt how to win, he had only one thing to say.

"First, observe. Make camp here and let the soldiers rest, and have the knights scout the upper and lower reaches."

Ricardt said this as he strolled the riverbank with his knights. Thick brush grew along the water, the kind of place no one in their right mind would wade into under normal circumstances.

Across the river were the enemy. Over there, beyond the brush, stakes had been driven in and a long line of obstacles set up to make any crossing impossible.

From the far bank, the enemy stared fixedly toward Ricardt's side.

"Are we making the crossing, then?"

Raimund asked.

"We have to cross the river to win, don't we?"

"The water's chest-deep here. More than half of us would be swept away in the crossing. And there'd be a hail of arrows on top of it."

"I'm not such a recklessly foolhardy man as all that. I'm not telling anyone to cross here. Still, it would suit me well if the enemy believed that's exactly what we meant to do."

At Ricardt's words, Raimund nodded as though he understood. There was little need to say more. The Knight Order's men were seasoned veterans; a hint, as they say, was as good as the whole explanation.

For now they dug trenches, drove in stakes, pitched tents, and set up camp first of all. The soldiers, as if the enemy across the river didn't trouble them in the slightest, laid their march-weary bodies down and rested easy.

It was because they knew that if their own side couldn't get across, neither could the other.

That said, even Ricardt had no good plan ready on the spot. Crossing by the bridge made no sense, and fording the river made even less.

Even so, he felt no frustration. Because observation always handed you the answer.

Watch the enemy closely, watch yourself just as closely, and the answer would well up of its own accord from somewhere inside it.

So he simply watched. Strolling the riverbank as though out for a walk, he'd glance up at the sky, then down at the grass, then at the running water, and then gaze blankly at the enemy.

Naturally, the enemy watched his side as well. Each just watched the other. There was nothing to hide, the intent was plain, and it was all simply there for the seeing.

And so two days simply went by. Whenever they patrolled up and down the bank, the enemy clung to them like magnets and shadowed them from the far side.

Then, when three days had passed, Ricardt noticed one change. Day by day, the enemy was reinforcing the bridge and the bank ever more sturdily. They set their units more carefully too, leaving no gaps.

Their determination to make sure nothing got across, no matter what, came through plainly. And here Ricardt found his thread.

"Those fellows over there, how long do you reckon it'd take them to pack all that up?"

"Pardon?"

"To move out, they'd have to tear all of it down, wouldn't they."

"Well, I'd say a fair while. Half a day, perhaps?"

Raimund said it too, looking across the river. Half a day meant six hours.

"You're giving the enemy far too much credit, Ray. That's by our measure."

"Then how long do you think it would take them, Commander?"

"A whole day at it and they still couldn't manage."

The Order had spent a long time building experience as a single army, but the enemy was a levied host. That is, men from different lands lumped together under one man, their fighting power varying wildly from one to the next.

And fighting power here meant not just taking up arms to fight, but the army's total capacity: making camp, breaking it down, moving out, all of it.

Now Ricardt could see a little. He could see what lay beyond what met the eye.

And that, as it always did, held a truth inside it. A truth shown only to the one who watches closely and with patience.

"Let me ask you one more thing. Suppose we struck camp and moved the whole force up to that upstream point we saw yesterday. How long do you think it would take?"

"We could be there by around evening."

"And at a forced march?"

"Half a day."

Raimund answered each question the instant it was asked, without a moment's hesitation. It wasn't some rough sum he'd run in his head; it was a conclusion that came to him naturally, from having done it more times than he could count.

But the other way around, did the enemy even know what they themselves were capable of? As far as Ricardt could tell, they did not.

On the surface, their unit placements and obstacle works looked careful and solid, but they'd only reached that state by doing it little by little over a long stretch of time.

So then, all he had to do was scatter it. The key to victory lay right there, he thought. And the thought soon hardened into certainty.

Once the road to victory came into sight, the plan to follow it took shape in an instant.

"Here's what we'll do. We've got a week of rations left, so for the next four days, every morning we break camp and form up for the attack. Then around evening we make camp again and turn in."

"Is this a drill?"

"That too, but tell the soldiers it's the real thing. On the fifth day we move upstream. That's where we settle it."

Raimund thought it over in silence, then nodded. He grasped soon enough what Ricardt was after.

"......It sounds like a fine plan. Though the soldiers will have a rough time of it, of course."

"If aching bodies mean even one more life saved, that's the better trade."

Ricardt said this, gazing at the enemy ranged across the river, flawless and without a single gap.

From the next day, the plan went into action. From early morning the soldiers struck camp and formed up for the attack.

Brave as they were, no one knew better than they did how reckless and dangerous it was to attack across the bridge.

So even as they obeyed Ricardt's order, there was no stopping the pounding of their hearts. A few simply accepted death early and were done with it.

The enemy, by contrast, when the Knight Order moved as if to attack, panicked far more than one would expect and milled about in confusion. Defending is far easier than attacking, and yet they looked as though they hadn't braced themselves for it at all.

But come evening, word went around inside the Knight Order that the attack had been called off. The soldiers let out sighs of relief, pitched camp once more, and went to bed.

But the same thing repeated the next day. And the day after that. After three days or so of it, the soldiers started to think Ricardt's resolve was wavering.

There were times in war when you had to act even at the cost of losses. Perhaps believing that was the problem, the soldiers asked Ricardt to give the order to attack.

Ricardt had no intention of doing so, of course, but it touched him a little all the same. So this is how far they'll follow me, he found himself feeling anew.

The enemy, on the other hand, began to bristle at what the hell all this was supposed to be. Come to think of it, attacking across the bridge made no sense at all. And so they reached the conclusion that the Knight Order was simply toying with them.

From the fourth day on, even when the Knight Order formed up for the attack, they made no real response. And sure enough, that day too the attack was called off.

And so the fifth day broke. It was the hour before the sun had shown itself, that time when the world turns from black to slowly deepening blue. It was already autumn, and the air carried a fair chill.

Perhaps from the daily repetition, the soldiers folded up camp in no time at all. And even before the order came, they were finding their places to fall into formation; but this time things were different.

"Form up in march column."

They were puzzled, but it was far easier than forming up for an attack. Around the time the sun was slyly poking its head over the horizon, the entire force of the Knight Order, the enemy left behind across the river, began moving upstream along the bank.

The enemy watched, blinking. The rank and file were the first to sense something was off, but they wavered over whether it was worth waking the commander to send a report up. So the report went up about an hour late.

"Why are you only telling me this now?! You crazy son of a bitch!"

One moment the man had been all bullshit about being woken over nothing; now he was all bullshit about why he hadn't been told faster. He scrambled to pass the report up to the high command.

Second Prince Rotarius, who had been enjoying a wine-paired feast at the crack of dawn, spoke as if it were nothing.

"If they move, then we simply move as well, no?"

"That is so. But I believe we must hurry. The enemy moved out a good hour ago already."

"It's fine. Don't make a fuss. The art of war says that when the commander is uneasy, the soldiers grow uneasy as well. Either way, it changes nothing about the fact that they still have to cross the river. Pass the word for whichever units are ready first to head upstream."

There was nothing wrong with the words themselves. The trouble was whether they fit the situation at hand.

For one thing, though they had gathered under Rotarius, the whole was not an army knit together as one.

Some units finished their march preparations quickly enough, while others looked as if they couldn't manage it in a whole day. And among them were units that dragged their feet on purpose.

Acting on the order they'd received, the units that were ready first set out, and their number came to a few hundred men.

But no matter how far upstream they pushed, the Knight Order, which ought to have been across the river, was nowhere to be seen. It was because the Knight Order had begun moving briskly from early morning, driving a forced march unlike its usual pace.

Only after their horsemen had ridden hard for a good long stretch could they barely make out the Knight Order moving up ahead.

They were the first to catch on. That something had gone wrong. That they were in serious trouble.

But there was a gap between what was felt on the ground and what the command staff sensed and judged. The men on the ground had spotted the trouble long before, but the command had not.

"Even if the enemy fords the river, it takes them a long while to form their ranks. That we have over ten thousand men and the enemy six thousand is already common knowledge. While they're soaked and in disarray from the crossing, we form up and fight, and we win as easily as we please."

Rotarius was always right. There was never anything wrong with what he said. It was only that he thought solely at his own level, and overlooked the fact that reality is not some problem to be solved on paper.

From this point on, Rotarius's army began to crack. The judgments of the lower units split apart.

Some argued they should rush upstream and fight the enemy even now, while others argued they could only get there if they went as one mass. And none of it was reported properly; they each moved however they pleased.

While they floundered this way and that, Ricardt pressed on with the forced march at the head of the entire Order. After roughly six hours on foot, they reached the upper reaches in a single stretch.

Here the water came up only to the calf, and the far bank was simply bare. The enemy had failed to keep up by an even wider margin than expected.

And unlike the enemy, Ricardt made his decision at once, right there on the spot.

"Knights cross first. The soldiers form up for the attack once they're across and come down slowly. Two hundred knights guard the flank; the rest, follow me and we swing wide around the enemy."

And with that he led the way across the river himself, several hundred knights following on their massive war horses. The water churned and splashed so hard that for a moment the riverbed lay bare.

Having crossed without meeting any real resistance, Ricardt led his knights down toward the lower reaches for now. Before long, a small body of enemy came into view, scrambling upstream in a panic.

Unlike the Knight Order, which moved as one commander, one order, one army, the enemy had been split in every way before the battle even began. Into many commanders, many orders, many units.

When the knights took up their lances and came charging headlong, there was hardly any call for Ricardt to do anything himself. The enemy, scared out of their wits, threw down their weapons and ran, and the knights ran them down and butchered them, all of it one-sided.

The ground shuddered with a thunder of hooves, and the enemy's screams tangled into the rumble. After trampling them a few times over like this, the knights moved not down the lower river but inland, and began to fold a wide arc around the foe.

Knowing nothing of how things truly stood, Rotarius only set out around the afternoon, riding upstream at a leisurely walk. At his side were nothing but fawning sycophants.

"If we capture the Knight Commander, Your Highness's renown will spread across the whole Empire. More factions will rally to you then, and you'll be able to bring your younger brother to heel without ever lifting a sword."

"I find that a great pity. Having raised my banner, I ought by rights to test which of us is the stronger, at least once......"

"Once you ascend the throne, you must take all your subjects into your arms, and so you must not shed blood without need. Show them mercy."

"That is well said. Our Imperial House has ever counted it an honor to protect the weak. I could hardly let my own private desires come first."

Rotarius spoke with his eyes gently shut, as if mastering himself. There was no denying he'd grown a touch drunk on the whole performance.

But before they had gone very far, they spotted their own men come scrambling toward them from up ahead. Several hundred of them, weapons cast aside, running all at once: it made for a rather grotesque sight.

"What is the matter?"

Rotarius asked. But the men beside him, fit only for flattery, had no better idea than he did how things were unfolding. It was a nameless knight, one who had all but died on the field and lived, who gave them the truth.

"Uh, the enemy has crossed the river. They've already formed up for the attack and are coming down the lower reaches."

At that, Rotarius and the whole fawning crowd screwed their faces into deep frowns. What was this nonsense? That was impossible.

But even as they thought it, the routed soldiers kept pouring toward them at a dead run. Every last one wore the face of a man who'd just played host to the Reaper himself.

And from far off, a mighty roar began to reach them, small and faint.

–Rise, Knight Order! Raise the storm!

At the sound of it, they all went still, faces frozen as though time itself had stopped. Then, out of nowhere, someone spoke.

"Let us form ranks even now and meet them in battle."

"Shouldn't we first fall back and gather the soldiers together?"

"Only a small vanguard has been wiped out; the main body is still perfectly sound. The Order numbers six thousand all told, and we are ten thousand. To turn tail without so much as a fight would be not only a disgrace but would make us the laughingstock of the whole Empire."

"Defeat would be the greater disgrace!"

"You speak of defeat before the battle is even joined?!"

"The battle is already upon us!"

Only moments before, they'd been chuckling and laying on the flattery, and now that something truly grave had landed, they split into camps and fell to quarreling among themselves.

This was the moment for the supreme commander to make his decision, and yet Rotarius just stood there dumbly, mouth hanging open, vacant.

When his retainers turned to him as if to press a decision out of him, Rotarius stammered his reply.

"I, I, I commanded it properly, but you, you lot, the foolish soldiers failed to carry it out properly."

For a moment the retainers wore blank looks of their own, wondering if they'd heard him right. To say such a thing at a time like this; even having heard it, it was hard to believe. What was he saying? Shifting the blame? Now of all times?

And all the while, the Knight Order's roar came louder.

"Rise, Knight Order! Raise the storm!"

Rotarius flinched in fright. The main body, which had yet to fight at all, had already had its spirit broken.

And then the enemy came into view, and even though they had force-marched without rest from morning until now, breaking every foe in their path as they came, the Knight Order's ranks looked solid as an iron wall.

The spears bristling out like a hedgehog's quills lined up at angles as exact as if drawn with a ruler, and their footfalls fell so perfectly in unison that it sounded like a single man walking.

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!

Not a single man idling out of step, from the commander down to the lowest soldier, they moved as one body.

But then something truly grave broke loose. Eight hundred knights, split into two wings, struck the rear and the flank of Rotarius's army. And it had not even formed proper ranks yet.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

Close to a thousand war horses kicked off the earth. The thick cloud of dust trailing behind them made their might look greater still.

It was the kind of sight that made one want to deny reality right up to the last. But it happened all the same.

Thwack! Crunch! Whump! Crrrack! Thwack!

Like turtles stripped of their shells, Rotarius's army, with no preparation for battle whatsoever, was simply trampled and swept away. Soldiers fell one after another, run through and crushed underfoot. From here on, Rotarius lost all memory of events.

It was not that the enemy had struck him down; his mind had simply gone blank white, and he had thrown himself into the river. Many threw themselves into the river. It was the only place left to flee.

In the midst of it, the few who were at least loyal seized the reins of the Second Prince's horse and led it along, themselves sunk to the waist in the water.

It was not deep enough for a man to fall in and drown, yet the scene was so chaotic that many drowned all the same. No fewer than ten thousand of them. The sight of ten thousand men hurling themselves into the river all at once was truly something to behold.

As time passed, the two sides' positions had been reversed. The Order did not give chase across the river.

Having achieved their aim, they stopped dead right there. Cleanly. Like a blade honed to a chilling edge. That this was the work not of one man but of six thousand was hard to believe.

Rotarius, who had barely made it across the river, looked back. Soaked to the bone, he was a wretched sight, like a drowned rat.

He didn't have to look for the man; he stood out at a single glance. There, beneath the late afternoon sun, mounted on a blood-red horse.

Ricardt was staring straight at Rotarius. They were close enough that a shout would have carried, but he only gave a thin, mocking snort and turned his horse's head away.

Where he was bound was not Adeloron, but the place where Rotarius had stockpiled the supplies for waging his war. There sat a vast hoard of gold, silver, treasure, and grain, every bit of it untouched.

From this single clash, the dead that day came to around three thousand. Not casualties; the dead alone. The wounded were no concern of the Knight Order's. That they were out of the fight, at least, was beyond doubt.

Ricardt had made good on what he'd said. That it would be a lesson cut to the bone.

But whether the student could take that lesson to heart and make it his own, or not, was up to the student.

Rotarius did not know why he had lost. He had commanded well, he thought; it was his retainers, his soldiers, who had failed to grasp it.

In the end, he too was one of those who reckoned the art of war was nothing much, just obvious drivel some fool had scrawled down.

On top of that, he deluded himself that he was clever and had grasped it quickly. The truth was that he knew nothing, and couldn't even recognize the fact that he knew nothing.

From Ricardt's vantage, he had failed to observe the enemy, and failed to observe himself as well.

It was a pitiable thing. For himself, and for those who followed him.

****

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