13 Day War

by Richard S. Tuttle

  Colonel Rotti fidgeted. It was not that he suspected that the Alceans would go back on their word that bothered the colonel. He was more concerned with what the Federation would do to him for surrendering, or even worse, what they would do if any of the other survivors saw Somma kill Franz, but he dared not speak of the other teams.

  “I believe you,” declared Colonel Rotti, “but I still fear for his safety. Please allow me to remain with him. I will personally accept his punishment as my own if that is what is required.”

  Rut-ki raised an eyebrow as she rolled the colonel’s words around in her mind. She knew there was something in those words to betray his meaning, but it took her a while to figure it out. When she did, she smiled at the colonel.

  “You are worried about how your own people will treat General Somma for surrendering, aren’t you?”

  “Something like that,” Rotti admitted with a frown. “Do you Alceans read minds? Is that how you discovered that we would be invading this way? Did you read my mind when I traveled this way last fall?”

  The Knight of Alcea smiled broadly. “We do not read minds, Colonel. We knew you and Kerk were coming long before you stepped through the portals. Bin-lu and I were waiting for you to appear.”

  The colonel gasped. If what Rut-ki said was true, the Alceans had to have a spy deep within the upper echelons of the Federation. Neither he nor General Somma had any idea about the portals before he was ordered to go to Alcea. If they did have such a spy in place, would they not also know about the other teams? And how could he learn the answer to that question without betraying his fellow Zarans?

  Rut-ki interrupted the colonel’s thoughts. “I do not have time to play games, Colonel. Let me just dispel your fears. General Somma will not be harmed before King Arik determines his fate. He will not be harmed by us or by your people. I promise you that.”

  “You are not in a position to promise that,” retorted Colonel Rotti. “You cannot control what your enemy does.”

  “We cannot stop the enemy from attacking us,” agreed Rut-ki. “If we were able to control the armies of the Federation, you would not be here right now, but my promise still stands. Only the total collapse of Alcea would allow the Federation to get their hands on General Somma, and that is not going to happen.” Colonel Rotti opened his mouth to argue that point, but Rut-ki was growing tired of the games. “We know about the other teams, Rotti. They will be met with Alcean armies just like the 4th and 18th Corps were. In fact, there are one-hundred-thousand Federation soldiers already out of this war.”

  “Inconceivable,” scoffed the colonel.

  “Is this true?” asked General Somma.

  Rut-ki turned to see Colonel Wu-sang and General Somma returning.

  “It is true,” nodded the Knight of Alcea. “The 6th and 15th Corps were totally destroyed at Pontek, and all of Force Cordonia were sent somewhere where they cannot harm anyone. They will be dealt with when the other Federation armies are vanquished.”

  “You said that you didn’t want to kill Federation soldiers,” frowned the general. “Why is it that the armies of Gattas and Montero were totally destroyed?”

  “It was necessary,” answered Rut-ki. “While we wish to preserve the lives of as many Zarans as possible, your countries have sent a quarter of a million men to our shores. Our primary task is to win this war. If we can do so and still preserve the lives of Zarans, we will do that, but we intend to win one way or another.”

  “Why is it so important to the Alceans to save our lives?” asked Colonel Rotti.

  “The Federation is being used by evil forces,” answered Rut-ki. “While your emperor might think this war was his idea, it was not. The minions of Alutar are manipulating him, and the Great Demon seeks the tears of millions. King Arik wants to deny Alutar those tears by not killing all of your men.”

  “And you could not get General Gattas to surrender,” General Somma said with a nod. “I can understand that. Gattas was much like Franz. Neither of them could possibly fathom an enemy army more capable than their own. Their egos make them poor leaders of men.”

  Colonel Rotti turned and stared at General Somma. “Do you believe what these people are saying? I mean this nonsense about the Great Demon?”

  “I do,” answered the general. “I have always felt that Emperor Jaar was being manipulated. He has spent our fortunes and our futures on conquest, and for what? Before this idea of expanding the Federation started, our people had food to eat and jobs to labor at. Now our people are starving and the only jobs available are holding a sword or a bow. You tell me why we are attacking these people, Rotti? To get their food? If we Zarans spent one tenth of our energy on cultivating fields as we do on war, we would have no food shortage.”

  “I guess I had not looked at it that way,” confessed the colonel.

  “Nor should you be expected to,” sighed the general. “A colonel’s task is the formation and training of his regiment, and you excel at that, but you will need to broaden your horizons when you are promoted to general.”

  Colonel Rotti shook his head. He wondered if the bump on the head the general had received had affected his reasoning. A defeated nation has no need for generals, and if the Federation won the war, both of them would probably be executed for surrendering.

  “I want to offer my services to King Arik,” General Somma said to Rut-ki. “I cannot command my men to fight against their brothers, and I will tell you now that they are unlikely to in any event, but I am willing to try to negotiate an end to the attacks in Lanoir.”

  “Can you do that?” asked Rut-ki.

  “Truthfully,” sighed the general, “I do not know. General Franz was the leader of Force Lanoir as well as leader of Team Chi. With him dead, I now lead Team Chi, but I am not sure about the rules regarding Force Lanoir. I might be able to talk Ruppert and Hanold into surrendering, especially if your armies can get them at a disadvantage, but General Kolling will be another matter. Being a Baroukan, I suspect he will consider himself the proper successor to General Franz as Force Leader. All four of the forces in Alcea are led by Baroukans, as if no other nation was capable of producing generals qualified for such a lofty position. That said, I will still try to get Kolling and Gertz to surrender.”

  “Have you gone mad?” scowled Colonel Rotti. “You will be committing suicide.”

  The general turned and stared at his colonel. “Why did you save my life today, Colonel?”

  “I probably shouldn’t have bothered,” retorted Rotti. “Had I known that you would just throw it away again before the sun set, I would not have wasted my energy.”

  The general smiled and when he spoke his voice was soft and caring. “You know that is not true, Rotti. Tell me the truth. Why did you go to such trouble to save me?”

  The colonel sighed and shook his head. “I see good in you, General, and I didn’t want to see that good go to waste. You might be ill-suited to your profession, but the world needs more men like you.” The colonel sniffed and his eyes watered. He turned away from the general before continuing. “I guess I saw in you the father I never knew. I had to do whatever I could to protect you.”

  “Even at the risk of your own life,” Somma said softly. “And you have no idea how much that meant to me, and still means to me. The point is, Rotti, you risked your life to save something that in your eyes was worth saving. I am proposing to do exactly the same. I am willing to risk my life to save forty-thousand Federation soldiers that are only here in Lanoir because the emperor sent them here.”

  “Those forty-thousand men don’t need saving,” countered the colonel. “Either one of those teams is enough to crush Lanoir. Why throw your life away for nothing?”

  Somma chuckled and Rotti looked at him with a puzzling expression.

  “Perhaps I am not so ill-suited for this job after all,” the general said jovially. “You and I seem to have very different expectations on the odds facing the other teams. You see two massive armies marching towards Ongchi fro
m different directions and crushing the Lanoirian capital between them like a vise. I see no such thing. I know the strategies of the Federation quite well, and I suspect that the Alceans do as well. The unknown part of this equation is the strategy employed by the Alceans. It should be obvious to you by now, that we Zarans do not have a clue. That dam was one of the finest traps I have ever heard of. If the Alceans were not intent on capturing the survivors, they could have pulled this off with less than one-thousand men. Our two armies would have ceased to exist. Do you really think these same Alceans have no plans for the other armies? Do you take them for incompetent fools?”

  Rut-ki and Colonel Wu-sang stood observing the entire conversation in silence. The Knight of Alcea watched both of the Federation officers closely, trying to peer into their minds based upon what she was seeing and hearing. When the last two questions were asked, Colonel Rotti turned to Rut-ki.

  “What do you have planned for the other armies?” he asked. “Do you really have a chance of surviving the coming battles?”

  “I am not willing to share such information,” answered Rut-ki. “I will say this much, though. Generals Ruppert and Hanold will soon walk into a trap, and like you, they will have a choice to make. They will surrender, or they will perish. I hope that they choose to surrender, but either way, they will no longer be in this war. As for Kolling and Gertz, they are walking towards Ongchi. They have no horses. They have no food. They have no black-cloaks. Their foraging parties are constantly being harassed, and they are behind schedule. They will not arrive at Ongchi by the thirteenth day. I will say no more about it.”

  Colonel Rotti glanced at General Somma and found him grinning. He nodded at the general and smiled back before returning his eyes to Rut-ki.

  “I made a request of you a short while ago,” Rotti said. “You told me that the general’s life would not be in danger, but we both now know that those words are no longer true. I make my request once more.”

  “Do you suddenly agree with the general’s views?” asked the Knight of Alcea.

  “I do,” replied the colonel, “and I apologize to you for once more underestimating you. If those men can be saved by surrendering, I will endeavor to help General Somma talk them into it.”

  “While you keep him safe?” grinned Rut-ki.

  “While I keep him safe,” echoed the colonel.

  * * * *

  General Ross looked up as the tent flap moved aside. He motioned the black-cloak forward and waved him towards a chair across the table. Baku silently walked to the chair and sat down.

  “Have you discovered anything useful?” asked the general. “Are we any closer to discovering where this Cordonia is that we are in?”

  “No,” reported the black-cloak, “but there are developments to report. We have lost three more mages, one from the 19th Corps and two from the 20th Corps.”

  “Are you sure that they are dead?” asked General Ross. “Is it possible that they found something and decided to stay there and investigate it?”

  Baku frowned. “Anything is possible,” he sighed, “but I am growing concerned. That is now nine of my people that are missing. I could understand one or two of them doing something stupid, but not nine of them. I think something is hunting them.”

  The general’s forehead creased as he considered the words used by the mage. He found it curious that Baku used the word something rather than someone, and the reference to being hunted signified a creature of some intelligence. The general had no idea what kind of power it might take to slay a black-cloak, but he knew that Baku was upset, and that concerned Ross.

  “Perhaps you should start having your people patrol in pairs,” suggested the general.

  “I have already issued that order,” replied Baku.

  “What else do you have for me?”

  “There have been people in this land before,” answered the black-cloak, “although it may have been years ago. One of my men was searching beyond the West Mountains and found some old stone fire rings. There were also trees with obvious hatchet marks on them, but the marks were overgrown. He thought they might be as much as twenty years old.”

  “Nothing more recent?” asked General Ross.

  The black-cloak shook his head.

  Far to the east, among the peaks of the West Mountains, two Alcean Rangers sat in the shadows, gazing out over the vast plains of land known as Cordonia in their Universe.

  “The black-cloaks are traveling in pairs now,” reported the corporal. “That is going to make it impossible to continue killing them without being detected. I think we need to start teaming up ourselves. No one man can get off two arrows quickly enough to kill two black-cloaks.”

  Captain Steffen nodded silently as he watched the sun sliding towards the distant horizon. When he eventually spoke, it was with a tone of contemplative hesitancy. “The problem is much worse than that Kojar. In this sector, they have not only paired up, but one of them remains high in the sky while the other swoops down to investigate. No archer will be effective against such a wary stance as the higher one will be beyond an archer's range. We have hurt the black-cloaks considerably, and they are not used to feeling vulnerable. Killing the remaining fifteen mages will require new tactics.”

  “What are you thinking?” frowned the corporal. “Surely, you do not plan to raid their camps at night while they are sleeping? There are only ten of us.”

  The captain shook his head, but his eyes sparkled as if a sudden thought had come to mind that pleased him. “We still have the dragon. If the attack was timed correctly, a Ranger could kill the black-cloak who swoops down to investigate, while the dragon snares the mage flying high in the sky.”

  Corporal Kojar shook his head vigorously. “Dragons are forbidden to eat humans,” he protested. “King Arik would not be pleased if we ordered Kinelli to abandon that directive. The dragon is here solely to scare the Federation soldiers.”

  “Kinelli would not be attacking a human,” Captain Steffen replied with a slight smile. “She would be attacking a bird. Besides, she need not devour the black-cloak. All she has to do is kill it.”

  The corporal thought for a moment, but he still appeared to dislike the idea. “There is only one dragon,” he pointed out, “and ten of us. That would require Kinelli to spend a great deal of time in the air traveling from one of us to another. She would surely be spotted and tracked, and her travels would eventually reveal our locations.”

  “We would have to abandon all of the other posts and concentrate on one area,” replied the captain. “As wary as the black-cloaks are now, they will start plotting where their people go missing. They will then spend more efforts investigating that particular sector.”

  “Yes, they will,” agreed the corporal, “but that may not be to our advantage. They may end up sending more than just two mages to investigate. Remember, while we can kill the black-cloaks easily in their bird forms, just one of those mages in human form could kill all of us quickly. We have no mage of our own.”

  “Then we must choose the battleground carefully,” replied Captain Steffen. “We will need a steep canyon with ample hiding spots among the vertical cliffs. We will lure the black-cloaks down into the canyon so that even if some of them remain high in the sky, they will be within range of our arrows.”

  “That just might work,” mused Corporal Kojar, “and if one remains even higher, Kinelli can take care of him. I will search the West Mountains for just such a location.”

  “No.” Captain Steffen smiled with a sparkle in his eyes. “Find us a spot in the Boulder Mountains. The black-cloaks continue to search ever farther from their base camps. If we can lure them far enough away from the Federation soldiers, they will not have time to return to camp each day. At that point, they will be forced to set up their own camp for the night.”

  “Leaving us with an opportunity to sneak into their makeshift camp and finish them off,” grinned the corporal. “Either we lure them into a canyon of no return, or we strike wh
ile they are sleeping. Either way, they all die. I like it, Steffen.”

  Chapter 26

  No Rest for the Weary

  Night had fallen over the Lanoirian camp on the banks of the Chi River, and General Somma sighed wearily as he turned away from the sight of the last prisoner wagon leaving the banks. It had been a long and harrowing day for the Spinoan general, and he was ready for some sleep. He made his way to the command tent of Colonel Wu-sang. He opened the flap and paused as he glanced around the room. Colonel Rotti sat at a large table with Colonel Wu-sang. Both men were eating the evening meal, and the general crossed the room and sat down. Colonel Rotti rose immediately and dashed off to get food for his general.

  “You look tired, General,” Colonel Wu-sang said sympathetically. “You should have gotten some sleep hours ago.”

  “It was my duty to make sure that all of my men were treated well as they were sent off to the prison camps,” answered the Federation general.

  The Lanoirian colonel nodded in understanding. He could have retorted that the Alceans had no intention of harming the prisoners, but he knew that the Spinoan general was aware of that. General Somma was merely trying to fulfill his obligation as a general, and Wu-sang admired him for that.

  “They will be safe,” the colonel said reassuringly. “I have had mats set up in this tent for you and Colonel Rotti. If you need anything, you only have to ask. My men have been instructed to extend to you every courtesy possible.”

  “You have been a most gracious victor,” General Somma replied as Colonel Rotti entered the tent and placed a plate of food before the general. “I know that my men will be cared for properly.”

  Colonel Rotti sat down, and the room lapsed into silence as the general ate his meal. Several minutes later, the flap moved again and Rut-ki entered the tent carrying two sheathed swords. She handed one to Colonel Rotti and placed the other on the table near General Somma. The general nodded his thanks wordlessly and continued eating, but Colonel Rotti stared at the sword suspiciously and then glanced at Rut-ki questioningly.