Jade Empire Read online

  ‘Majesty, the Jade Emperor is a man who does not back down or submit. None of them ever has. A man who would do so would never manage to become Jade Emperor in the first place. When he commits to something, the Jade Emperor sees it through to the end. It is part of what and who he is. If war is declared, it will only end one way, but a diplomatic solution is always possible until the first blow or the first insult. We have that opportunity right now. We will never have it again.’

  ‘Your opinion is noted,’ the emperor replied in that same bored tone.

  ‘Majesty, if we go to war against the Jade Empire it will not be a simple undecided border dispute.’ The court were holding their breath now. Cinna was on very dangerous ground, and Dev could see again out of the corner of his eye the emperor’s increasingly irritated face. Still the general went on. ‘A war against the Jade Empire will be a war of extinction. Whether the vanquished would be us or them I cannot say with any certainty, but even the winner will be left weak and vulnerable. If they won such a conflict, they would likely fall to the horse lords or one of their subjugated peoples within the year. If we won with such losses as we would suffer, the Gota and the Pelasians would divide up our territories like beasts sharing a kill. I cannot advise such a course of action that leads to such a war.’

  ‘How lucky you are, then,’ snapped the emperor angrily, ‘that I am not seeking your advice. Your opinions are noted, but the order stands. You will make ready. The moment that slippery eastern dog sends his men across the border, you will retaliate. I give you the freedom and authority to commandeer whatever you need. You will gather what force you deem necessary and cross the Oxus in response. You will not stop until they are defeated and driven back across their border.’

  The general, beaten, straightened and saluted.

  ‘I obey, Majesty.’

  ‘Good, because you come recommended to me as the very best strategist in the imperial military, and I would hate to have to scoop out that brain for insolence and rely on the second best. And to complement your strategic brilliance, I have had a search made of our military and administrative personnel. We have found more than a dozen soldiers and servants of Inda birth, but I have selected one to serve as your adviser.’ His hand gestured to Dev. ‘Orosius Devinius here, I am given to understand, was the son of one of their kings before he came to the empire voluntarily to serve. He has a good military record here and is clearly of a strategic mind himself, since he has been serving as an overseer of eastern border fortifications. Devinius will, I am sure, be invaluable as your second.’

  Dev bowed. Clearly he was not required to speak.

  ‘Very well, Majesty,’ the general said quietly. ‘I beg your leave to withdraw and begin my work.’

  ‘You have my permission,’ Emperor Bassianus replied loftily.

  ‘You, Devinius,’ the general said, gesturing to Dev. ‘Walk with me.’

  With a nervous look to the emperor, who nodded his assent, Dev left his green circle and walked quickly over to Flavius Cinna, who saluted his master, turned smartly on his heel and left the room the way he had entered. Dev hurried after him, and the door to the great room closed with a click, leaving them alone in a long, wide corridor lined with statues of very martial-looking gods.

  ‘Are you a sycophant?’ Cinna said, stopping so suddenly that Dev almost walked into him.

  ‘What, General?’

  ‘You are Inda-born, you willingly serve the government of that emperor in there and made no comment at the possibility that you might be required to invade your own lands to face off against a foe who is almost certainly more powerful than us. That makes you either stupid or a sycophant, to my mind. Which is it? Are you daft enough to want a world-ending war amid the ruins of your homeland or are you so far up the emperor’s backside that only your feet stick out and you are willing to do the worst things imaginable to please him?’

  Dev stopped and stepped back. The general looked genuinely angry, and Dev was suddenly quite aware that his easy acquiescence in the hall did not look strong when placed against the general’s outspoken attempts to change the emperor’s mind.

  ‘I have my reasons, General,’ he said, somewhat weakly.

  ‘Yes. I am sure you have. And I want to know what they are. If I am about to initiate the end of the world and the only way I can prevent it is to win, I will not have a man I cannot trust at my side. You tell me everything right now or you can spend the entire campaign in the baggage train commanding sacks of grain. I am a forthright man and a sane one, despite the general tendency to morons and dangerous lunatics in imperial command, and I will have the truth from you or I will have nothing to do with you, hang the emperor’s command.’

  Dev nodded. There was sense in what the general said, and there had to be respect if they were to serve together.

  ‘I am neither,’ he replied to General Cinna. ‘Neither idiot nor sycophant. I am Inda before imperial, always. To men such as those in that room I am Orosius Devinius, but in truth I am Dev, and that is who I have always been. Dev, son of Aram, the rajah of Initpur. I remained silent over the matter of war with the Jade Empire because war with the Jade Empire is what I seek. It is the reason I came to the empire many years ago, for the Inda are far from strong enough to fight the eastern menace, but you are not. I would burn out my eyes and tear out my heart if it would help you beat the Jade Empire. Fervour it is. Not sycophancy or idiocy. Just fervour. And I will serve you to the end if you will be straight with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  Dev frowned. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do you hate the Jade Empire that much? I trust zealots almost as little as I trust idiots and sycophants.’

  ‘The Jade Empire took everything from me.’

  Cinna shook his head. ‘Not good enough. You’re holding back. They took everything from all the Inda, yet surprisingly few of you came to us with a burning urge for revenge. Why you?’

  Damn you, Dev rumbled silently. He fixed the general with a steady gaze.

  ‘Because they took my brother. As a slave, simply because we did not have enough gold.’

  He was shaking. Cinna’s eyebrow rose a little, and he nodded. ‘Good. That at least was the truth. I can see it in your eyes. And quite understandable. I approve of your motivations, though I do not trust them. Revenge is a dangerous thing. It leads men to do unpredictable things and to make mistakes. If you are to serve with me, I do not wish to find myself armpit-deep in shit because of your personal need for justice. I don’t care what gods you believe in, but I want you to swear on whoever they are right now that you will not put your personal vengeance above our task.’

  Dev nodded. Their task was his personal vengeance. What did he have to lose? ‘On the life of my father and my brothers and upon the seven sacred gods of the mountain, I give you my word.’

  Cinna stood for a long moment and then nodded, turning and walking on so that Dev had to hurry and fall in step next to him. ‘Very well,’ the general said. ‘I have no intention of making this worse than it is, but it is my personal belief that we cannot win a war against the Jade Empire without committing our entire military. And if we do that we will essentially hand the empire to the Gota while we are busy trying to win in the east. Had we better relations with the Pelasians we might have sought help in that quarter, but the previous emperor’s eschewing of his Pelasian first wife in favour of a ‘racially pure’ imperial one did us no favours there, and the Pelasians are as likely to send help to the Jade Empire as to us these days, so we are better off not involving them at all. We will withdraw one cohort in four from the other provinces and add them to the eastern army. That should give us somewhere in the region of one hundred and fifty thousand men. If we draw more, we threaten the rest of the empire. I will give orders for them all to muster on the Oxus one month from today. You recently came from the eastern border, I heard?’

  Dev nodded. ‘I was running a report on the upkeep and faults of the fortifications there.’

  �
��You found plenty, I presume?’

  ‘It was not a pleasing list to write.’

  Cinna nodded. ‘Governors who are given the responsibility of border fortifications tend to leave the military side to their officers, but they siphon off funds for their own use and leave the soldiers scrabbling around trying to meet the shortfall. Happens all the time. I tend to haul people over the coals when I spot it, but it doesn’t stop it happening. Ancius Veridius is governor out there now, if I remember rightly. He’s no better than the rest, but if you’ve recently reported to him, he’ll be careful to put things right for a while, in case the palace sends for a full audit. I think by the time we get there things will be moving back to rights. And you know the Inda lands beyond the border, I presume?’

  ‘Relatively well, General. It has been a number of years, and I was young when I left, but we used to visit other rajahs regularly, so I know plenty of places in the northern Inda lands, all the way from there to the Jade border.’

  ‘Good. Because while the Jade Emperor’s men are on a mission of conquest, we are on a mission of prevention. They will have to fight for every mile they push, while I want to deal with the Inda through negotiation and pass through their lands without fighting. It is the only way we can hope to outmanoeuvre and surprise the Jade Empire. What do you know of the forces of the northern rajahs?’

  ‘I can tell you who had small or large forces over a decade ago, but that will have changed, General. With the tribute paid to the Jade Empire, my own father found it increasingly difficult to pay the men under his command. Thus it will have been with all the rajahs. My assumption will be that only the most powerful of the rajahs will now have men at all, and they will be forces of no real consequence.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Cinna mused. ‘And unemployed soldiers only ever go a limited number of ways. They become mercenaries, selling their services to greater powers, which in this case I suspect will be the Jade Empire yet again, since we’ve not see it happening. Or they change career and become innkeepers, or private guards, or drunks. Or they take to the hills and live by banditry and violence. So we can expect to meet a number of bandit groups, no doubt. Still, they should not bother a full army in the field. If the Inda rajahs are used to paying this tribute to the Jade Empire, while they might baulk at the idea of providing us with safe passage and fodder while in their lands, it will be nothing new to them, and we can offer them one thing the enemy cannot.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘A future. The Jade Empire is coming to conquer them. We are not. Once we have passed through they are free again. If I were a gambling man, I would put money on the emperor following up any workable victory with a new command to settle the lands we fought in, but at this time, I made very careful note of my orders. We are to push back the Jade Empire to their border. At no time was I given the task of conquest, and so I will not begin it.’

  Dev nodded as they strode on. He liked General Cinna, and it seemed the man held the future of the Inda in his hands. He would have to be nurtured and supported.

  ‘I have no fears about engagements with cavalry and infantry,’ the general said, suddenly. ‘They will be hard-fought, but I know what I am about with such matters, and with your local knowledge our strategy should be sound. What I fear is coming up against the enemy’s cannon. They only deploy such dread weapons in full campaigns, but there are still tales of the one used against Velutio last century. The remnants of the beast are kept in the palace, but no man has ever been able to fully figure out how it works. If their cannon can do what I hear to the walls of a city, it pains me to think what it might do to a cohort of men. Still, I have engineers and scientists who can ponder that as we work. Now, we must look to preparations. Do I call you Devinius or Dev?’

  ‘Dev, General.’

  ‘Good. Very well, then, Dev. Return to your lodgings and gather your goods. Meet with my staff at the Hall of Warriors by third watch. We, my young Inda friend, are going to chastise the Jade Emperor.’

  Chapter 4

  The fast warrior hurries into danger

  The strong warrior walks into danger

  The agile warrior dances into danger

  The clever warrior walks around danger

  From The Path of War, by Hu Xin

  Jai watched the army moving into position with breathless anticipation. He was new to battle. Yes, he had served in the Jade Empire’s military for many years and trained as a swordsman, but he had been a scout, often working alone in bandit-infested territory, or with small groups of like men, testing the border regions. He had never until recently witnessed the true horrific majesty of an imperial army at war and, though he had now seen it numerous times in quick succession, still the tense expectancy remained.

  The army had moved from Yuen with impressive speed and efficiency. It said a great deal about General Jiang that Jai had barely had time to gather his gear and draw what equipment he felt he needed from the Palace of Arms before couriers were urging him to join the staff as the general was preparing to move out.

  The First Army had made Jai’s breath catch in his throat. He had been impressed to see them gathered in that wide valley, but to witness them on the move was a different thing entirely. The army slithered along the valley from Yuen like a great centipede of silver, black and red, uniform and perfect, like a grand piece of the silversmith’s art, like a flexible blade, aiming west. It was magnificent. And Jai pushed every ounce of his soul into the belief that they were a force of inclusion and civilisation, who would repair the long-term damage to the Inda. Because if he even for a moment allowed himself to be that son of Aram who had defied the Jade Empire’s foragers, he could not be the man he now needed to be.

  And if he had thought that the gathered forces from Yuen were impressive, he had felt his conception of the scale of the world change when they reached the garrison town of Chengdi and the force doubled in size with the mustered units there. This massive army had moved west then, towards the border, where his preconceptions were once more destroyed as they met an even larger muster that joined them to form the full First Army. Jai had never seen so many humans in one place, let alone soldiers. An ocean of silvered figures filling the world. Here and there cavalry wings rose like reefs from the silver, and great dark cannon moved on carts like ships on the surface. It was an incredible thing to behold, and Jai felt a little of his trepidation over the possibility that the western empire might face them fade. How could any other people in the world match this?

  And this was but a third of the Jade Empire’s force. The Second and Third Armies were elsewhere, moving into position as per General Jiang’s orders. While the First Army marched into the Inda heartland, where the strongest of the rajahs ruled and there would still be noticeable resistance, the Second Army was moving through the mountain passes in the north, securing the hardy but small northern kingdoms close to the horse clans. And the Third Army had moved south, into the jungle proper, to secure the southern rajahs. A trident. A three-pronged attack.

  Jai had frowned as he listened to the plan, carefully wording a response to the effect that their campaign might have been more effective if Jai had been included in the early planning. A force this size would have trouble manoeuvring in the northern mountains and would be too unwieldy to deal with the rajahs there, and the south was hardly worth consideration, since much of it was empty, ruled only by ghosts. General Jiang had nodded his understanding. He had been forced to move precipitously by imperial command and had erred on the side of caution. But he had taken terrain into account. The northern army was largely infantry and the southern heavily weighted with cavalry. Only this central force was an equal mix. The three armies would converge, having secured their territory, on the largest of the Inda kingdoms – Jalnapur on the Nadu River.

  Jai had understood. The Nadu River was the furthest the Jade Empire could hope to move without challenging their opposite number in the west. Crossing that river would bring them close to enemy borders and almo
st certainly be considered an act of aggression. And the Nadu ran from north to south along much of the Inda Diamond. The northern reaches wound through narrow valleys and rocky precipices, unsuitable for an army to cross. The southern reaches were too wide for an easy crossing, and largely within the forbidden lands of the spirits anyway. Only the central section was viable, and the only good bridge was at Jalnapur. It was the reason for the kingdom’s wealth and power, this ability to tax those who crossed. It was a natural bottleneck, but was also that line which, when crossed, would increase the chance of western opposition exponentially.

  And so the three armies had passed into Inda lands on their grand campaign of annexation. Jai was impressed with the ease with which Jiang and his second and third generals kept in touch. Every day riders reached the army with the latest reports of the movements to north and south, and then returned with news to go the other way.

  Jai’s focus became the First Army pure and simple. Those in the south would encounter precious little true opposition, though he had sent warnings to stay out of the spirit lands and not cross the line of markers bearing their weapons. General Jiang had wholeheartedly supported these words, and the soldiers of the Third Army would obey the command. They were Jade Empire; obedience was in their blood. Beyond simple obedience, soldiers faced enough horror in their lives without deliberately offending gods and spirits, and so that line of markers would remain uncrossed. To the north the Second Army would be slow going through the mountains, but should encounter little resistance. Jai was more than grateful not to be with them, for somewhere on that campaign, the Jade Empire would encounter the rajah of Initpur, and Jai was not at all sure he could have done that. Without his needing to ask, General Jiang had sent strict instructions that the rajah of Initpur and his people were to be treated leniently and with respect.