The Burning God

CHAPTER 4

“I want fresh troops when we get to the Beehive,” Rin said. “If we take the pace down to four-fifths our usual marching speed, we can still get there in twelve days. We’ll take detours here and here to avoid known Mugenese outposts. It adds distance, but I’d prefer to keep the element of surprise as long as we can. It’ll cut down their preparation time.”

She spoke with more confidence than she felt. She thought her voice sounded inordinately high and squeaky, though she could barely hear it, her blood was pumping so hard in her ears. Now that she’d finally gotten what she wanted, her giddiness had died away, replaced by a frightful mix of exhaustion and nerves.

Night had fallen on their first day of marching out of Ruijin. They’d stopped to make camp in the forest. A circle of soldiers—Kitay, Zhuden, Souji, and a smattering of officers—sat clustered in Rin’s tent, watching with rapt attention as she drew thick, inky lines across the maps before them.

Her hand kept shaking, scattering droplets across the parchment. It was so hard to write with her left hand. She felt as if she were taking an exam she hadn’t studied for. She should have been relishing this moment, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was a fraud.

You are a fraud. She had never led a proper campaign by herself before. Her brief stints as the commander of the Cike had always ended in disaster. She didn’t know how to manage logistics on this scale. And worst of all, she was currently describing an attack strategy that she wasn’t at all sure would work.

Altan’s laughter echoed in her mind.

Little fool, he said. Finally got yourself an army, and now you don’t know what to do with it.

She blinked and forced his specter to disappear.

“If all goes according to plan,” she continued, “Leiyang will be ours by the next moon.”

Leiyang was the biggest township in northern Rooster Province. She’d passed through there only once in her life, nearly five years ago when she’d made the long caravan trip north to start school at Sinegard. It was a central trading hub connected to dozens of smaller villages by two creeks and several wide roads so old they’d been paved in the days of the Red Emperor. Compared to any northern capital it was a shoddy, run-down market in the outskirts of nowhere, but back then Rin had found it the busiest market town she’d ever seen.

Kitay had dubbed the network around Leiyang the Beehive. Mugenese troops exercised some control over all villages in northern Rooster Province, but based on their troops’ patrol and travel patterns, Leiyang was the central node.

Something important lay in that township. Kitay thought it was likely a high-ranking general who, after his homeland’s demise, continued to wield regional authority. Or, as Rin feared, it was a weapons base that they didn’t know about. Leiyang could be sitting on cans of yellow gas. They had no way of knowing.

That was the root of their problem. Rin’s intelligence on Leiyang was terrible. She’d updated her maps with Souji’s detailed descriptions of the surrounding terrain, but everything else he knew had been outdated for months. A handful of Iron Wolves were escaped survivors from Leiyang, but their reports of Mugenese troop presence varied wildly. They’d been the opposite of helpful. Survivors almost always gave them bad information—either their terror made them exaggerate the threat, or they downplayed it in hopes they could entice a rescue force to help their village.

Rin had sent scouts ahead, but those scouts would have to be exceedingly cautious. Anything that tipped the Mugenese off to an impending ambush would spell disaster. That meant she could speculate as much as they liked, but she wouldn’t know the full power of the fighting force at Leiyang until just before the battle began.

“How are you going to draw them out from behind the gates?” Zhuden asked. “We don’t want to hit too close to civilians.”

Well, that’s obvious. Rin couldn’t tell if he was being condescending or simply careful. It had suddenly become very hard not to read everything like a challenge to her authority.

“We’ll give as much advance warning as we can without betraying our location. Souji has some local connections. But really we’ll just have to adapt to contingencies,” she added, knowing full well that was a bunch of babble that meant nothing.

She didn’t have a better answer. Zhuden’s question got to the critical strategic puzzle that, despite hours spent racking her brains with Kitay, she still hadn’t cracked.

The problem was that the Mugenese troops near Leiyang were not clustered in one area, where a well-coordinated ambush could have herded them into a singular burning ground, but spread out over an entire village network.

Rin needed to figure out a way to draw the Mugenese out onto an open battlefield. In Khudla it had been easy to minimize civilian casualties—the majority of Mugenese troops had lived in camps separate from the village itself. But all the Iron Wolves she’d questioned had reported that the Mugenese at Leiyang had integrated fully into the township. They’d formed some strange occupational system of predatory symbiosis. That made distinguishing targets from innocents much, much harder.

“We can’t make those calls now without more intelligence,” Rin said. “Our priority for now is to get as close as we can to Leiyang without any patrols seeing us coming. We don’t want a citywide hostage situation.” She glanced up. “Everyone clear?”

They nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Zhuden, post some men to first watch.”

“Yes, General.” Zhuden stood up.

The other officers filed out behind him. But Souji remained cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against his outstretched arms. A single stalk of grain hung annoyingly out the side of his mouth like a judgmental, wagging finger.

Rin shot him a wary look. “Is something the matter?”

“Your plans are all wrong,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, should have spoken up earlier. Just didn’t want you to lose face.”

She scowled. “If you’re here just to whine—”

“No, listen.” Souji straightened up, leaned forward, and tapped his finger at the little star that indicated Leiyang on the map. “For starters, you can’t take your army through these back roads. They’ll have sentries posted across every path, not just the main roads, and you know you don’t have the numbers to survive a prepared defense.”

“There’s no other route except those back roads,” Kitay said.

“Well, you’re just not being very creative, then.”

Irritation flickered across Kitay’s face. “You can’t drag supply carts through thick forest, there’s no way—”

“Do you two just refuse to listen to anyone who’s got advice to offer?” Souji spat the grain stalk out of his mouth. It landed on the map, smudging Rin’s carefully drawn routes. “I’m just trying to help, you know.”

“And we’re Sinegard-trained strategists who know what we’re doing,” Rin snapped. “So if you haven’t got anything more helpful to say than ‘your plans are all wrong,’ then—”

“You know that the Monkey Warlord wants you to fail, right?” Souji interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“The Southern Coalition don’t like you at all. Gurubai, Liu Dai, the whole cohort. They talk about you every time you’re not in the room. Fuck, I’d just gotten there, and they were already trying to turn me against you. It’s a boys’ club, Princess, and you’re the odd one out.”

Rin kept her voice carefully neutral. “And what did they say about me?”

“That you’re a little fool who thinks three years at Sinegard and a few months in the Militia can replace decades in the field,” Souji said calmly. “That you wouldn’t be worth keeping around if it weren’t for your nice little party trick. And that you’ll probably die at Leiyang because you’re too stupid to know what you’re up against, but then they’ll at least be rid of one nuisance.”

Rin couldn’t stop the heat rising in her cheeks. “That’s nothing new.”

“Look, Speerly.” Souji leaned forward. “I’m on your side. But Gurubai’s right about some things. You don’t know how to command, and you are inexperienced, especially in this kind of warfare. But I know how to fight these battles. And if my men are being dragged into them, then you’re going to fucking listen.”

“You’re not giving me orders,” Rin said.

“If you go in there according to those plans, then you’ll die.”

“Look, asshole—”

“Hold on.” Kitay held up a hand. “Rin, just—listen to him for a second.”

“But he’s—”

“He’s been here longer than we have. If he’s got information, we need to hear it.” Kitay nodded to Souji. “Go on.”

“Thank you.” Souji cleared his throat like a master about to deliver a lecture. “You’re both going about all this wrong. You can’t keep fighting like this is a war between two proper armies—open field combat, and all that. This isn’t the same. This is about liberation, and liberation means small-scale tactics and deception.”

“And those worked so well for you in Khudla,” Rin muttered.

“Got overwhelmed at Khudla,” Souji admitted. “Like I said. We couldn’t win on the battlefield. We didn’t have the numbers, and we should have resorted to smaller tactics. You’d better learn from my mistakes.”

“So what are you proposing?” Rin’s voice had lost its edge. She was listening now.

“Go through the forest,” Souji said. “I’ll get your precious supply carts through. There are hidden pathways all over that area and I have men who can find them. Then establish contact with Leiyang’s resistance leadership before you move in. Right now you don’t have the numbers.”

“Numbers?” Rin repeated. “I can—”

“You can burn a whole squadron down yourself, Speerly, I’m well aware. But you’re only useful in your radius, and your radius by definition can’t be too close to civilians. You need people to run interference. Keep the Mugenese off the very people you’re trying to save. Right now you don’t have the numbers for that, which is why I suspect you keep wincing every time you glance at your maps.”

Souji, Rin realized reluctantly, was extraordinarily astute.

“And you’ve got a magic fix for that?” she asked.

“It’s not magic. I’ve been to those villages. They’ve got underground resistance bands. Strong men, willing to fight. They just need someone to push them over the edge.”

“You’re talking a handful of peasants with pitchforks,” Kitay said.

“I’m talking an extra hundred men wherever we go.”

“Bullshit,” Rin said.

“I’m from this region,” Souji said. “I have contacts. I can win Leiyang for you, if you’ll both just trust me. Can you manage that?”

He extended his hand toward her.

Rin and Kitay exchanged a doubtful glance.

“This isn’t a trap,” Souji said, exasperated. “Come on, you two. I’m just as eager to go home as you are.”

Rin paused, then reached out to grasp his hand.

The tent flap swung open the moment their palms touched. A sentry stepped inside. “Mugenese patrol,” he said breathlessly. “Two miles out.”

“Everyone hide,” Souji said. “There’s tree cover for half a mile on both sides, have the men pack up and go.”

“No—what?” Rin scrambled to her feet, fumbling to gather up the maps. “I’m the one giving orders here—”

He shot her an exasperated look. “So order them to hide.”

“Fuck that,” she said. “We fight.”

The Mugenese had a single patrol group. They had an army. How was this a debate?

But before she could shout the order, Souji stuck his head out the tent flap, jammed two fingers in his mouth, and whistled thrice in succession so loudly Rin felt like knives had been driven through her ears.

The response astonished her. At once, the Iron Wolves got up and began packing their gear. In under two minutes they had rolled up their tents, bagged up their equipment, and disappeared completely from the campsite into the forest. They left no trace behind—their campfires were leveled, their litter cleaned. They’d even filled in the holes their tent pegs made in the dirt. No casual observer would ever guess this had once been a campsite.

Rin didn’t know if she was furious or impressed.

“Still going to fight?” Souji inquired.

“You little shit.”

“Better come with.”

“Please, I’ve got a god—”

“And all it takes is one arrow to shut you up, Princess. No one’s covering for you now. I’d follow along.”

Cheeks flaming, Rin ordered Zhuden’s men to clear their campsites and retreat into the trees.

They ran, pushing through branches that left thousands of tiny cuts in their exposed skin, before they stopped and hoisted themselves up into the trees. Rin had never felt so humiliated as she crouched, perched beside Souji, peeking through the leaves to track the incoming patrol.

Was Souji’s plan to just wait the Mugenese out? He couldn’t possibly intend to attack—it’d be suicide. This didn’t check any of the prerequisites for an ambush they’d been hardwired for in Strategy class—they didn’t have fixed artillery stations, they didn’t have clear lines of communication or signal visibility between the ranks. By retreating into the forest they’d only scattered and disorganized their numbers, while Rin was now trapped in a fighting zone where her flames would easily grow out of control.

Several minutes later Rin saw the Mugenese patrol moving down the main road.

“We could have taken them in the clearing,” she hissed at Souji. “Why—”

He clamped a hand over her mouth. “Look.”

The patrol came thundering into clear view. Rin counted about twenty of them. They rode on sleek warhorses, no doubt fed with grain stolen from starving villagers, moving slowly as they examined the abandoned campsite.

“Come on,” Souji muttered. “Move along.”

No way, Rin thought. Her men were efficient, but not that efficient. Ten minutes wasn’t enough to evacuate a campsite without leaving a single trace behind.

Sure enough, it took only a minute before the Mugenese captain shouted something and pointed at the ground. Rin didn’t know what he’d seen—a footprint, a peg hole, a discarded belt—but it didn’t matter. They’d been made.

“Now watch.” Souji stuck his fingers into his mouth again and whistled, this time twice in succession.

The Iron Wolves loosed a round of arrows into the clearing.

They aimed true. Half the Mugenese patrollers dropped from the horses. The other half bolted and made to run, but another round of arrows hissed through the air, burrowing into throats, temples, mouths, and eyes. The last three patrollers raced farther down the road, only to be felled by a final group of archers stationed nearly a mile from where Rin hid.

“And that’s the last of them.” Souji dropped from the tree and extended a hand to help her down. “Was that so bad?”

“That was unnecessary.” Rin batted Souji’s hand away and climbed down herself. Her left arm buckled from the strain; she let go, dropped the last few inches, and nearly fell flat on her bum. Hastily she recovered. “We could have taken them head-on, we didn’t have to hide—”

“How many troops do you think they had?” Souji inquired.

“Twenty. Thirty, maybe, I didn’t—”

“And how many do you think we shot?”

“Well, all of them, but—”

“And how many casualties do we have?”

“None,” she muttered.

“And do the Mugenese back in the Beehive know we’re coming?”

“No.”

“So there you go,” he said smugly. “Tell me that was unnecessary.”

She wanted to slap that look off his face. “Hiding was unnecessary. We could have just taken them—”

“And what, given them an extra day to muster defenses? The very first thing that Mugenese patrol teams do when they sense a fight coming is send back a designated survivor to report it.”

She frowned. “I didn’t know that.”

“Course you didn’t. You would have burned most of them where they stood, fine. But you can’t outrun a horse. None of us have steeds faster than what they’re riding. You slip up a single time, and you’ve given up all advantage of surprise.”

“But that’s absurd,” she said. “We’re not going to keep ourselves concealed all the way until we reach Leiyang.”

“Fair enough. But we should try to keep our numbers concealed at least until we attack our next targets. Tiny strategic adjustments like this matter. Don’t think about absolutes, think about the details. Every day, every hour that you can maintain an information asymmetry, you do it. It means the difference between two casualties and twenty.”

“Got it,” she said, chastened.

She wasn’t too stubborn to admit when she’d been wrong. It stung to realize that she had been thinking about strategies in terms of absolutes. She’d gotten so used to it—the details had never seemed to matter much when her strategies boiled down to extermination by fire.

Cheeks burning, she brushed the leaves off her pants, and then uttered the words she knew Souji was waiting to hear. “You win, okay? You’re right.”

He grinned, vindicated. “I’ve been doing this for years, Princess. You may as well pay attention.”

They made camp two miles south of where they’d seen the patrol, under tree cover so thick the leaves would dissipate the smoke from their campfires before it could furl higher into the air. Even so, Rin set strict limits—no more than one fire to every seven men, and all evidence would have to be tamped down and thoroughly concealed with leaves and dirt before they picked up again to march in the morning.

Dinner was measly, baked cornmeal wotou and unseasoned rice gruel. The Monkey Warlord hadn’t let Rin take anything but the stalest provision sacks out of Ruijin, arguing that if she failed on this expedition then she at least shouldn’t starve Ruijin at the same time. Rin hadn’t pressed the point; she didn’t want to push her luck.

But the Iron Wolves were eating suspiciously well. Rin didn’t know where they’d found the ingredients, but the steam wafting from their bubbling cauldrons smelled good. Had they stolen extra rations from Ruijin? She wouldn’t put it past Souji; he was enough of an asshole.

“If it’s bothering you then just go ask them,” Kitay said.

“That’s stupid,” Rin muttered. “I’m not going to make a fuss—”

But Souji was already walking toward them, carrying stacked bamboo steamers in both hands. His eyes alighted on their rations. His lip curled. “Looks appetizing.”

Rin curled her fingers possessively around her wotou. “It’s enough.”

Souji sat down across from them and set the steamers on the ground. “You haven’t learned to forage for yourselves?”

“Of course we can, there’s just nothing edible on this stretch—”

“Really?” Souji lifted the steamer lids. “Look. Bamboo shoots. Freshly killed partridges. Cook all this up with a little salt and vinegar, and you have a three-course meal.”

“But there’s none of that around here,” Kitay said.

“Right, we picked it up on the march. There was a bamboo grove right at the base of Ruijin, didn’t you see it? Lots of baby saplings. Whenever you see something edible, you put it in your sack. First rule of march, no?”

The smell of partridge meat was making Rin salivate. She eyed the steamers with envy. “And how’d you catch the birds?”

“Simple. You can rig up a trap with next to nothing as long as you’ve got some cornmeal for bait. We can set some overnight and wake up to crackling partridge wings. I can teach you how.”

Rin pointed to something yellow and mushy buried under the bamboo shoots. “What’s that?”

“Bajiao bananas.”

“Do they taste good?”

“You’ve never eaten these before?” Souji gave her an incredulous look. “They grow everywhere in these parts.”

“We thought they might be poisonous,” Kitay admitted. “They gave some men at Ruijin a bad stomachache, so we’ve stayed clear of them since.”

“Ah, no, that’s just when they’re not ripe. If you can’t tell from the color—darkish brown, you see?—you can peel it open and tell from the smell. If it’s sour, put it back. None of your men knew about that?”

“None at our camp.”

“Incredible,” Souji said. “I suppose after a few centuries you start to forget the little things.”

Rin pointed to a bowl of what looked like black, crispy, oversize beans. “What’s that?”

“Bees,” Souji said casually. “They’re very tasty when you fry them up. You’ve just got to make sure you take all the stingers out.”

She stared. “I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not.”

“I’m not kidding.” He picked one up and showed her the husk. “See? The legs are the best part. They soak up all the oil.” He popped it into his mouth and chewed loudly. “Incredible. You want?”