Richmond Chapter 3
"Ants Marching"
(South Window)
Ya know, we can't live on words alone, though sometimes we gotta eat them. Just because I say something don't mean a damn thing in the reality. Could mean anything. Could mean that I'm a bloody raving hypocrite.
Could mean nothing, because, after all-- war means every damn rule gets broken and nobody gives a damn except for somebody thinking too hard about it. Heh, don't look at me-- I ain't a thinker.
There's a lot of things that go on in war. Not necessarily the fighting and the killing, but that's what everybody thinks it is. Heh, ain't that real stupid-- nobody sees the real thing about it. Like the thinking. The praying. Tears. Blood. The screaming.
Maybe, just maybe, it's loss. Whether it's friends, or enemies, or body parts. Maybe even innocence. Maybe it was the thing that made you-- you.
Soldiers come back, try to adapt into the normal life, and they do. But they'll have nightmares for the rest of their lives. Flashbacks in the middle of a perfectly sane and normal day. And they'll know that they'll never be able to adapt. They'll suffer, all the way until the end of their days, and they won't even know the fuck why.
Like I said, war's a real bitch. She'll flirt, and she'll tease, and she'll draw ya close like she's some pretty little winsome thing. And then she'll slam into you, like a hurricane-- no love, no pity, nothing. She'll hike that skirt up and she'll make you look. And ya can't turn away, because ya'll remember until the end of days what the hell she's really like.
We're all ants, marching away, taking our chances into the unknown.
The sun beat down on his head like an onslaught; South Window springs were relatively mild and mostly rainy, but down in the Empire, it was already raging into summer heat. But spring was winding down already; a couple more weeks and it would be summer. Richmond wiped the sweat off his face and squinted at the map again; it wasn't a very detailed map, but it was decent enough to give him a damn good idea of where he was-- far away from South Window City. Hell, damn far away from anywhere. He was in the Scarlet Moon Empire, sitting smack in the middle of a whole unwashed lot of people, waiting for tomorrow to come.
Freed had sent him a short letter by Granmeyer-- which consisted of mostly questions that even he couldn't answer. It had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with personal reasons: they were sitting in the middle of nowhere, about fifty miles away from the nearest city, ten to the nearest village. The northern checkpoint that was ever so carefully detailed on the map was a good seventy miles away; about a good four or five days ride away, more if he calculated lugging the rest of the soldiers along. Richmond had spent his first day on march formulating his opinion of what an army was: a giant machine that took in valuable resources and spit out a whole lotta garbage and unwashed, discontented people. It was a miracle that the army moved at a decent pace. Hell, it was a miracle that it moved at all.
"Sir! Richmond!"
The detective closed the map and looked up, squinting to see who it was. The mayor's aide came jogging up to him, a little out of breath but still presentable. Richmond regarded Freed as something of a mini-miracle; the man stayed completely immaculate in all weather, dressed to the nines, and above all, stuck to protocol like glue. While, he, the professional investigator, had stripped down his uniform and had a temper shorter than a fuse in the onslaught of heat. "Yeah?" Richmond answered, and then frowned. "Hey, weren't ya supposed to head back to South Window or something? I thought Granmeyer wanted ya back."
Freed had the grace to look embarrassed. "Ah, well," he hedged, "I was supposed to go, but-- ah, well, I didn't want to leave the front--"
Richmond waved off his stammering. "I get it," he said. "All right. Ya don't want to live down to the mayor's expectation. 'Sides, it's your job to be his aide. Better than pushing paper, believe me." He tossed the map over to Freed. "Here ya go, it's a map of the region. Not very bloody accurate, but enough to get ya somewhere-- maybe the middle of nowhere, who knows?"
Freed caught the map clumsily, juggling the roll in both hands before securing a firm grasp. He shot a reproving look to Richmond, who shrugged and smiled. Unrolling the map, he asked, "Where did you get it?"
Richmond grinned. "Easy," he said. "I asked somebody where I could get a map, and then I walked twenty bloody miles to the nearest town to find a damn cartographer who apparently knows everything you need to know within twenty feet of his town and not much farther than that. We ain't gonna get anything more accurate than that until we reach a city."
Freed looked at it for a few moments, turning it this way and that before closing the map with some frustration. "I think we can do better than that," he said, frowning. "We might be reaching a city tomorrow."
The detective shook his head. "No city around for bloody miles, that's a fact. And besides, we ain't got time to do that this week. Why do you think all the signal fires are damped tonight?"
Freed looked up. "Now that you mention it, it's rather strange," he noted. "Normally we keep the signal fires up all night. Is there something going on that I don't know about?"
Richmond laughed sourly. "I guess you've not been at the meetings lately, have ya?"
Freed shook his head. "I haven't had time," he said. "Why? What's happening?" His brows creased with perplexity, he was beginning to show traces of worry, evident through his nervous fiddling of the map between his fingers.
"You really ain't been around, I guess," Richmond said, shaking his head. "The generals decided that we're gonna to attack the garrisons tomorrow. The signal fires for that were sent out last night. Most of Tinto's troops already left."
Freed dropped the map. "W-what? I-- I didn't hear anything about this!"
"Figures that they didn't tell ya," Richard sighed. He leaned down and picked up the map and put it away onto the table. "Don't want to involve no bloody paper-pushing aide. Ya wanna know?"
The man flushed. "Of course I do!"
"There was a meeting last night," Richmond explained wearily, "and they got the hold of some new information. We ain't fighting on one front anymore, we're fightin' on two fronts, Freed."
The aide looked surprised. "You don't mean the Liberation Army, do you?" he asked. "We've had a temporary sort of truce when we crossed the border… they don't seem very likely to interfere, would they?"
"That's what you think," Richmond snorted. "Truce? Ha! Ain't hardly likely. We ain't allies with the Liberation Army, no matter what ya think. We ain't allies with the Empire, neither. So that's two fronts. The info they got? Well, it's this-- Silverberg's got the Liberation Army heading toward the Northern Checkpoint now. Nobody's supposed to know, though. Kasim's gonna go haywire-- he ain't got any troops over there, not with the way he has to man all the garrisons. What do ya think he's gonna do?"
Understanding dawned in Freed's eyes. "The garrisons," he breathed. "He's going to call reinforcements." There was a slightly sick look to his eyes.
Richmond said, sourly, "Yeah, that's it. So we gotta stop the general from rallying or calling reinforcements, period. Granmeyer ain't gonna be happy about this, but we ain't gonna let the South Window or the Tinto army get flattened between Kasim's reinforcements and the Liberation Army. And the reinforcements are the lesser of the two evils. The garrisons are pretty damn poorly protected." He paused for a moment, and grimaced. "This ain't gonna be pretty, Freed. You ever been in war?"
Freed was pale, but he nodded. "Once," he said. Once only hung in the air between them. The two stood staring at each other for a long moment.
Richmond laughed, again, not happy. "Well," he said. "That's a new one. Didn't think a paper-pushing aide would beat me to it. I ain't ever been in war before. If it makes ya feel happy, I ain't as happy about it as the idiot mayor of Tinto. He's probably dancing a jig at this very damn moment."
Freed stared him, very white, wordless; the man looked utterly horrified at the thought of the carnage. Richmond felt sorry for the man; the mayor's aide was very much like the mayor himself, full of scruples and principles and ideals. Trouble was, the mayor's aide didn't have the stomach to take everything else that came with it. The damn thing about it all was that Richmond genuinely liked the aide; still, it was a damn pity that he also had to feel sorry for him, too. The man wasn't cut out for politics, or anything else for that matter. Hell, he should have been at home with his wife, taking care of the family. Freed was that kind of person. It wouldn't do Granmeyer, or his wife, to see the man so needlessly killed.
It wasn't too late yet, though. "Look," Richmond said carefully, "it ain't my problem, but ya still got a choice. You can leave for South Window tonight; anyone ain't gonna blame you. Ya ain't needed here now. We ain't the movers and shakers of society, lemme tell ya. That's what Granmeyer and you are for. We're just the bloody cannon fodder, and it'd be a damn waste if ya ended up with us."
Freed shook himself, as if out of a dream; he blinked a few times, and then pushed his glasses up his nose with his finger; a movement, like Freed, rather nervous and almost twitchy. He shook his head. "No," he said. "No, it's all right. I'll stay here. I'm needed here, like you are." He gave a glance to the detective, who shrugged. "I'm needed," he repeated stubbornly.
"Needed," Richmond said. "Yeah, we're needed. By Granmeyer." He leaned forward. "Alive and ticking, that's what."
Freed shook his head again. "I'll be all right," he said.
Richmond sighed. "Yeah, I know, we'll all be. What else can we be?"
The battles had been mercifully short.
With few casualties, most garrisons had promptly surrendered at the sight of Tinto's and South Window's standards; most had pleaded for leniency, which Freed had granted under Granmeyer's command. Richmond noted that the Tinto army had protested; he suspected that Gustav had not been entirely truthful about the promises he made to the Tinto troops.
Mayor Gustav was entirely too pleased; the damn man didn't even pretend to hide it. His missives to Freed practically chortled with glee; more than once the detective had an urge to throttle the mayor if he had been within arm's reach; the damn man didn't even know what stakes he was playing with, and he was betting them all like a crazed man.
Richmond found himself spending more and more time with Granmeyer's aide, helping to write missives to Mayor Gustav. They were, altogether, works of art and artifice, heaped with glowing praises and slick commentary, all of which neatly did their job: to hide all the details of what really was happening to the two armies. Both the mayor's aide and the detective, unofficially the informants of the expedition, wrote like fiends to the various officials back in the City-States of Jowston, weighing carefully the amount of truth to the amount of pure crap as needed for each individual official. To Granmeyer the two were bluntly truthful; Granmeyer was the leading man of the expedition, a concession that Gustav had to make when enlisting the South Window armies. It did not mean that Granmeyer called the shots, which Richmond had hoped would be the case: it only meant that Granmeyer exercised more authority than Gustav did. Not a great deal more, but war, like all other things, even that extra edge counted.
Despite the low casualties, there were still plenty to look at. The morning after the surrender of Kasim's garrisons, Richmond had helped with Freed with what had seemed the trivial afterwards: burying the dead, a luxury that the City-State armies could afford because of the low casualties. Huge trenches had already been prepared and the two spent the rest of the afternoon throwing body after body in. The detective had helped for three hours with a stony look on his face before excusing himself to find the nearest empty bin. It wasn't, he realized, so much as seeing all the dead that horrified him so much as the fact he recognized them, had remembered them alive only a few weeks before, had played cards or ate supper with them. The dead didn't revolt him; he instinctively saw them as shells, somebody--something--with nobody at home. But it was his memories that horrified him. Just the remembering.
Freed found him a few hours later in one of the rooms of the garrison, an abandoned weapon closet that had a small window, with a sympathetic look on his face. "Bad?" he asked.
Richmond was staring out the window. "No," he said distractedly. "Yes. No. I don't know."
Freed was silent for a few minutes, before he cleared his throat, self-consciously, and then spoke, his words falling awkwardly in the silence. "Mayor Granmeyer and Mayor Gustav granted pardons on all the Empire troops, did you know?"
Richmond opened his mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. "That's got to be the damnest crock of… what a bloody goddamn thing to say," he finally said. "Pardons? Hell, most of 'em are dead anyway. And what right do we have to pardon Empire troops? We ain't the Empire. Hell, what are we pardoning them for? They're just doing their goddamn job."
Freed shoved his glasses up his nose, awkwardly. "I-- I don't know," he said with some helplessness. "I thought you might feel better about it."
"Yeah," Richmond said. "Being kind to strangers is always real nice, ain't it? Maybe I should feel better about them Empire troops getting a pardon from, oh, us enemy Jowston people. But, hell, ya can go pretty damn far when lending a helping hand when ya got a sword in the other one."
"At least it wasn't slaughter," Freed said, with a hopeless look on his face. "It wasn't anything like the Empire and Jowston so many years ago. It wasn't slaughter. Isn't that enough?"
It dawned on the detective that Freed rarely stammered when he forgot himself; sometimes, Richmond thought that the aide used the same trick that most government personnel did: made himself look like a less attractive target for those higher up. But when the man spoke about something he really believed in… all traces of his stammers and his nervous quirks disappeared into the face of a quiet, deathly serious man with the god's luck for being blindly loyal to the right sort of people. It was a knack, that much was certain; whatever it was, Granmeyer must've seen it and valued it for what it was. Distractedly, Richmond reflected on that and lost the next part of the conversation. Snapping to attention, he shook his head, and said, "I'm sorry, I haven't been listening. What did ya just say?"
Freed shook his head. "It really wasn't important."
"Oh." Richmond was silent for a moment before he said, suddenly, "Ya know, you don't stammer a whole lot."
The mayor's aide looked surprised. "I--I don't?" he said, surprised. "Really."
Richmond nodded. "Heh, only until ya notice it, anyway. Ya don't stammer when ya help Granmeyer."
"I-- I guess so," Freed said uncertainly. "B-but what does that have to do w-with this?"
Richmond laughed shortly. "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, either," he said. "Truthfully, I don't wanna be here. I can't take it, all those people. All of them dead as doornails. It ain't even because they're dead that I can't take. It's because I still think they're alive that I can't take."
Freed was silent for a few minutes before he spoke. "I don't really try to think about it," he finally said. "I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but I think that's what you have to do." He raised his hands helplessly. "What else can you do?"
"Heh," Richmond said, after a moment. "Damn stupid, not trying to think. What do you think I'm supposed to do? What do ya think my job is? It's to think, it ain't to do anything else. Why do you goddamn think I hate ninjas? They ain't paid to think. They do the same goddamn things I do, and they ain't paid to think. I just don't kill people. I don't do any of that damn business of buying one dead human, get next half off. I ain't paid not to think." He exhaled noisily. "God," he muttered. "What I wouldn't do for a drink."
"Why don't you?" Freed said unexpectedly.
Richmond looked at Freed sharply. "Didn't think I'd hear something like that from ya," he said.
"Why not?" Freed said. "Maybe it's hard; I don't know. But the best thing is to forget, and if you want to drink, do it that way."
Richmond was silent for a long moment. "Nah," he said, finally. "I won't do it that way. I can't drink my problems away. Being a drunkard-- that just means you're sodding poor. Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass." He grinned suddenly in the ensuing darkness. "Heh, didn't think I'd hear something like that coming from you. Ain't no bloody paper pusher, are ya?"
"No," Freed said, in an echo of Granmeyer's seriousness. "Granmeyer wouldn't have made me his aide."
"Yeah," Richmond said, after a moment. "I hope Granmeyer knows what the hell he's doing, and if he does, I'd like to know what the hell's he planning. I hate this. I bloody sodding hate this." He snapped his fingers, and rummaged through his pockets. "God, what I wouldn't do for a cigarette…" His voice trailed off as he located the matches from his many pockets. He lit a match, a brief flare of orange light, letting it sputter a moment before lighting his cigarette. He extinguished by waving it sharply, letting the thin tendrils of smoke drift in the air; the air smelled sharply of something burnt. Catching Freed's look, he smiled weakly, and said, "Heh, you're a whole lot better at this than I am. God, I wish my damn dog was here. This is just so goddamn bloody stupid…"
Freed said, very quietly, "This is war."
The detective regarded the aide with some resignation; then, he shifted his gaze to his shaking hands, barely able to hold the cigarette. "Yeah," Richmond said. "Damn, what I would do to not be here."
The days wore on; as expected, when the Liberation Army of Toran came to invade the Northern Checkpoint, Kasim called for reinforcements upon the garrisons of the northern Scarlet Moon Empire, outnumbered by nearly four to one. South Window and Tinto, settled firmly within the trenches, captured most of the messengers upon arrival and promptly told Kasim to surrender, under the guarantee that his men would be saved from the Liberation Army. A proud man, Kasim refused; within a few days, news spread that he surrendered Northern Checkpoint to the Liberation Army.
Mathiu Silverberg, with a shrewdness underneath a deceptively mild exterior, granted leniency to the Empire troops and posted a ransom to the Empire. Richmond recognized the ruse almost instantly: he knew, and presumably Silverberg knew, that the Empire's coffers were empty; thus, the Empire did not reply to the ransom and the soldiers were left virtual prisoners of the Liberation Army. A demoralizing blow, the soldiers underneath Kasim's command, most of whom had been staunch loyalists to the Empire, saw what Silverberg had expected them to: that the Empire had no love for them and that it was only the Liberation Army left to protect them from the threat of the City-State Army-- who were only a day's ride away in what had formerly been their garrisons. The man had played all his cards well: Kasim's soldiers promptly joined the Liberation Army under a new goal: to create a strong, unified country again, swelling the ranks of the Liberation Army by nearly ten thousand troops along the five thousand that had been stationed at the Northern Checkpoint. And like all the previous generals before him, Kasim himself joined as well, obeying his soldiers' rally toward the Liberation Army. It was like a chain reaction that set off with timely precision: the fall of the Northern Checkpoint, the Empire's refusal to ransom, the defection of Kasim's troops, the defection of Kasim Hazil himself, the demoralization of Sonya Shulen's army, the crumbling of the Empire.
A few weeks after that, the Liberation Army withdrew from the Kasim's region, presumably to head to Shazarade where General Sonya Shulen held the last bastion of defense for the Empire. Surprisingly, they left nobody behind, the Northern Checkpoint completely abandoned; not even a soldier left for watch. And all six of the City-States watched with breathless, greedy anticipation.
It was clear to anyone that the Empire was crumbling, inside out, outside in. Nipped at the heels by hungry kingdoms and empires, they suffered the most from their ultimately fatal mistake in the heart of the Empire: their pride. The pride that had made the Empire nearly fifty years ago, the same pride that kept them strong and feared for so many years, that stubborn pride that made them ultimately so vulnerable-- it was all the same. And it would be ultimately pride that would bring the City-State Army low.
Mathieu Silverberg must have planned it, Richmond reflected; it had been the sheer cold-bloodness of it all that made it so damn ludicrous to think that it could have been anything else but careful planning. Perhaps the man hadn't realized; perhaps he had taken advantage of the greediness of the City-State when all the pieces fell into place so neatly for him to take advantage. Whatever the reason was, the damn man must have known what would happen when he left the Northern Checkpoint alone; a valuable fortress, it was a key point to the northern edges of the Empire, one that gained access to the inner lands. In a fit of absolute sheer stupidity and sleeplessness, Freed and Richmond sent a dispatch to the mayor that had mentioned the fact, and Gustav rose to drop his authority on the two of them like a meteor. He promptly gave the order to secure the Northern Checkpoint under the authority of the joint rule of the City-State army. Granmeyer had not approved, but neither had he objected to Gustav's demand; the man was no fool and knew a hopeless cause when he saw it. Whether or not Gustav actually knew anything about the situation wasn't a matter of importance: what mattered, however, was that it was empty and theirs for the taking.
Freed and Richmond obeyed, having no choice but to obey, and within days of the Liberation Army's withdrawal the City-State army moved into occupying the whole of the Northern Checkpoint. Neither the Empire, nor the Liberation Army did anything, as was expected, too intent on prowling around each other like wary cats; one, getting stronger by the minute, the other bleeding to death. The damn strategist must have known what the City-States would do: he must have at least guessed what kind of chain reaction would have been set off had Freed and Richmond refused to obey Gustav. With such a tempting and valuable target like the Northern Checkpoint so clearly vulnerable and open, the other four City-States who had not participated in the war would have rose up and sided with Gustav, Liberation Army or not. It was no longer a matter of yes or no; it was a matter of pride and abused dignity and fear that the Empire would find a way to retaliate.
Within a matter of weeks after the occupation of the Northern Checkpoint, the inevitable arrived: the fall of Shazarade, Sonya's navy and pride of the Empire. The beautiful general had, it was rumored, wept as she was taken prisoner. And then, a few days after, she stood under the standards of the Liberation Army, not as a prisoner but as a woman sworn to help the son of a man she had loved. Silverberg played his cards well; the near legendary status of the army was as much a weapon as their military strength. And, to the watching eyes of the City States of Jowston, it looked like he had played all his cards out, finishing the game with masterly precision at the siege of Gregminster.
The Liberation Army was truly, truly a "minor" nuisance to the City States of Jowston, apparently intent on the goal of conquering the Empire. But that was until the Mathiu Silverberg, once strategist to the Scarlet Moon Empire and now that of the Liberation Army, played his final card out, not against the Emperor of the Scarlet Moon Empire, but rather, to the City-States of Jowston themselves.
Richmond was reading Granmeyer's missive when somebody knocked on the door; the somebody, as it turned out, was Freed, who looked haggard. Weeks of enforced limited rations-- the supply wagons from Two River were delayed by the swamps-- had made the mayor's aide even thinner than he already was; his uniform hung awkwardly on him, as if it had been built for a man of bigger proportions. It had been, anyway, until Freed shrunk a few sizes.
"What the hell just happened to--" Richmond started, but the mayor's aide stopped him, cutting him off with his voice.
"Too late," Freed said hopelessly. "It's too late. The Liberation Army is attacking the Northern Checkpoint."
And ya know the rest.
No? I guess not. And I might as well finish this chapter of my life with the truth, one that was covered up by vicious accusations from both South Window and Tinto and the hubbub of the establishment of the Toran Republic. It's gonna be the truth as I saw it, since I was there.
Mathiu Silverberg was a real strategist, that one. He never made the mistake that everyone else did: to stop planning after the goal was accomplished. Even after the fall of the Empire, he never stopped planning for that step ahead, even to his death during the fall of Gregminster to the Liberation Army. Even his failing health was only another part of the plan. If he died, he was a martyr for the Toran Republic, glorified forever. And if he lived… he would have worked in the service of the Republic and the Liberation Army that he so fiercely believed in. He won, both ways.
He knew about the City-States of Jowston, ya see. When he sent that letter, he knew what kind of events were gonna happen. And he planned for it. The bastard fought us before; it ain't been that long ago that the Empire and the City-States fought each other, slaughtering each other, with ghost towns now in places like Kalekka, ruins in cities that don't have a name anymore because nobody remembers them. It didn't matter if no one else remembered. He did, and he remembered what tactics we used, and he remembered the mistakes that the Empire made. And he made sure that the Toran Republic didn't make those same goddamn mistakes again.
The Liberation Army, upon the fall of Gregminster, didn't even pause to savor the victory. Under Lepant, then the head of the military of the new Toran Republic, the forces split up and headed toward the Northern Checkpoint and the assorted garrisons that were under the City-States' command. General Sonya Shulen and her navy stayed behind, out of the way, and blocked all passage into the South Window region and set an unofficial embargo for imports and exports into South Window's principality, Radat. Lepant, also upon his departure of Gregminster, also made sure to spread the rumor that the Liberation Army had dispersed to their various ways, now that their task was done. This lead the City-State army in the garrisons to believe that the Toran Republic wasn't interested in reclaiming the Empire land under City-State control. Interested? Hah, we thought they were too busy licking their own wounds to even spare a thought for us.
President McDohl, guided by Mathiu's hand even after his death, started opening peace agreements to the kingdoms bordering the new Republic, establishing ties and trade favors to those kingdoms eager to resume business that had faltered during the rebellion. Naturally, the City-States were eager to establish peace relations with the Toran Republic, to get a piece of the pie, if ya want to look at it that way.
Heh, I guess you're seeing what's gonna happen, huh? While we were busy scrambling for diplomatic ties and favored trade relations, Lepant's army settled around us, Sonya's navy circling in the waters. What the City-States of Jowston had forgotten in their arrogance and pride was this: that while we held a grudge against the Scarlet Moon Empire for what it had done to us, the Scarlet Moon Empire-- now the Toran Republic--too, also held a grudge toward us, for what we did, to them.
Lepant attacked. And we, caught by surprise, did nothing, too stunned to even put up a fight. They did it for the Toran Republic. For Kalekka. For a thousand little grievances. For a display of the military might that the Toran Republic was capable of.
Granmeyer pulled authority and ordered the South Window army to retreat, knowing that Tinto, severely outnumbered by Lepant's army, would follow. Gustav protested and demanded for Granmeyer to stop. Stubborn, the mayor of South Window used the edge he had in the war and forced the South Window army to retreat. We followed, as quick as we could, out of the garrisons and back up to Jowston. A few units were sent by ship to inform the City-States of Jowston to prepare the armies to reinforce the Northern Checkpoint region.
They never made it. Sonya Shulen, as I said earlier, had established an unofficial embargo to Radat that very rapidly because official once the City-State ships were launched. General Shulen's decisive military tactics decimated the poorly equipped City-State fleets and took them as prisoners. For our leniency toward Kasim's troops in our conquest, she announced, she would return the favor, and ransomed them back to Granmeyer, who paid every cent and never regretted it. That was something we-- Freed and I-- never told to Gustav, who had been all for slaughtering the troops like a kid looking forward to a big party, under the reason that less troops meant less to fight against. Hell, I don't think he ever cared that a fraction of our troops were saved by our behavior in the war. Or that he would ever care. They weren't his troops. They were Granmeyer's.
So the remainder of the South Window army went the only way that was open to them: through the swamp and fen. A lot of soldiers died during the forced march, due to marsh fever. The Tinto army followed, having no choice. The death toll, by the time we reached the plains of South Window were so high that it looked like that we had seen some battle, personal encounters with steel weapons. But the truth was, the real battle had been with ourselves, fighting off fevers and poor conditions and hoping to hell that we didn't end up like our friend or enemy or acquaintance who died along the way.
By the way, we didn't even bury them. We couldn't afford to, with soldiers dying like flies. All we could do was hope for a peaceful rest, and that they had no family back home to mourn. Those who survived the fevers and the nightmares, they were the real heroes.
As ya can see, things didn't turn out like the way we expected. When we entered South Window City, a lot of citizens threw eggs. Rotten vegetables. Some, even harder things. We were the shame of the City-States of Jowston, a ragtag army that didn't even fight honorably.
What do ya think they saw? Well, I'll tell ya. With our military might so firmly established in the garrisons, we might have won, kept the Northern Checkpoint regions for the City-States. We were the ones besieged, the ones who had walls to hide behind. The Liberation Army was tired of fighting. The chances were our side that we would've been able to keep the garrisons. So why did we retreat, ya ask?
Why? Well, I'll tell ya why. Just because we get to keep the garrisons one more day didn't mean a damn thing. Gustav didn't see that. The citizens of South Window didn't see that. The citizens of Tinto didn't see that. The citizens of the City-States of Jowston didn't see that. Only Granmeyer saw it, and the soldiers who fled the Northern Checkpoint saw the truth: just because we got to keep the garrisons one more day didn't mean a goddamn bloody thing. What it meant was this: they stayed one more day, and that one day that they used in escaping was the day that gave them back their lives.
Ya see, the Toran Republic wouldn't have given up. One day didn't matter. They were willing to wait weeks, months, years, even. Sonya's enforced embargo would have weakened the South Window region greatly-- the sea route wasn't only just for passageway into the former Empire, but to the kingdoms and countries further south. Lepant's army was only a fraction of the force that the Liberation Army had wielded. The Toran Republic was only just recovering. Had we waited and stayed, it would have been just another full out slaughter, on our side. Whatever fragile peace we got out of retreating, we wouldn't have gotten it had we stayed. We would've been enemies, slaughtered on the battlefield like butchers goin' hogwild. And it would've been the City-States of Jowston versus the Empire all over again, with Kalekka, the ghost towns, and a lot more dead people than we got when we crossed the swamps.
But nobody saw that. Everybody saw the people that we lost in the swamps, and the prize that we lost-- the Northern Checkpoint, and all the garrisons, and the huge bloody chunk of Scarlet Moon Empire. And our dignity. I think they were real mad at the last bit, though. Real, bloody raving mad.
There's some other bits that I haven't mentioned, but it ain't really important. Like the Mayor of Two River, Makai, sniveling all the way about the work and the money that he invested in this little "expedition." Or Gustav, ranting and raving like some mad dog, laying all the blame on Granmeyer. And then all those bastards who thought that losing a few soldiers would be worth the price of keeping the garrisons in the Toran Republic and a blood feud between the two nations for the next generation.
Lepant retired from his military stint after that; but he was a hero to the people, driving back the hated City-States of Jowston. Shortly after, President McDohl retired, something that would have been a real shock to the Republic had the young man not had the wisdom to give it to the right person-- Lepant himself. To the Republic, both candidates were damn fine by them. Lepant accepted, and the President disappeared, presumably to get some real sleep without watching for daggers at his back.
And there was Granmeyer, who locked himself into a room for nearly a week. Maybe he did what Freed did-- cried bloody tears for all of this. Or perhaps he didn't. I don't know. Whatever happened, he came out of those doors and went on taking care of South Window, without that same prestige and respect that he had gotten before. But he never said anything. He just went on taking care of South Window like he had for the past forty years with the same calm and carefulness before the war. Maybe Annabelle knew more; she knew him better than anyone else. Or maybe he locked it somewhere far down. Whatever it was, he never said anything about it.
When I got back to South Window, I fetched my dog, quit my job, went on a drinking binge, and then moved to Radat. I think I cried when I got drunk. For Granmeyer, who got the shitty end of the deal. For all the soldiers, who survived the nightmare and went on living a normal life. But mostly for all those young, dead bastards that wanted to be heroes and once had a future.
Sometimes, I think that having power ain't worth it all. Mayor Granmeyer-- hell, he did the best he could, and if somebody had really paid attention, maybe this would've been all nothin' more than a bad dream. Maybe we would have really owned part of the Scarlet Moon Empire. But, that don't really matter anymore. The power that people like Gustav and Granmeyer got-- it ain't worth the death, the work, the snubbing, the assholes, the conscience.
Whatever it takes to hold onto power and to take every single bad thing to go with it, it's just not something that I got.
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