Chapter 17
The storm passed with minimal damage. One skimmer capsized—the force of the winds had ripped it from its anchor. Three men drowned. But the crew managed to salvage most of its supplies, and the drowned men had been only foot soldiers, so Jinzha wrote it off as a minor setback.
The moment the skies cleared, he gave the order to continue upriver toward Ram Province. It was one step closer to the military center of the Empire and, as Kitay anticipated, the first territory that would present a fighting challenge.
The Ram Warlord had holed up inside Xiashang, his capital, instead of mounting a border defense.
This was why the Republic encountered little other than local volunteer militias throughout their destructive trek north.
The Ram Warlord had chosen to bide his time and wait for Jinzha’s troops to tire before fighting a defensive battle.
That should have been a losing strategy. The Republican Fleet was simply bigger than whatever force the Ram Warlord could have rounded up. They knew they could take Ram Province; it was only a matter of time.
The only wrinkle was that Xiashang had unexpectedly robust defenses. Thanks to Qara’s birds, the Republican forces had a good layout map of the capital’s defensive structures. Even the tower ships with their trebuchets would have a difficult time breaching those walls.
As such, Rin spent her next few evenings in the Kingfisher’s office, crammed around a table with Jinzha’s leadership coterie.
“The walls are the problem. You can’t blow through them.” Kitay pointed to a ring he’d drawn around the walls of the city. “They’re made of packed earth, three feet thick. You could try ramming them with cannonballs, but it’d just be a waste of good fire powder.”
“What about a siege?” Jinzha asked. “We could force a surrender if they think we’re willing to wait.”
“You’d be a fool,” said General Tarcquet.
Jinzha bristled visibly. The leadership exchanged awkward looks.
Tarcquet was always present at strategy councils, though he rarely spoke and never offered the assistance of his own troops. He’d made his role clear. He was there to judge their competence and quietly deride their mistakes, which made his input both irreproachable and grating.
“If this were my fleet I’d throw everything I have at those walls,” Tarcquet said. “If you can’t take a minor capital, you won’t take the Empire.”
“But this is not your fleet,” Jinzha said. “It’s mine.”
Tarcquet’s lip curled in contempt. “You are in command because your father thought you’d at least be smart enough to do whatever I told you.”
Jinzha looked furious, but Tarcquet held up a hand before he could respond. “You can’t pull off this bluff. They know you don’t have the supplies or the time. You’ll have to fold in weeks.”
Despite herself, Rin agreed with Tarcquet’s assessment.
She’d studied this precise problem at Sinegard.
Of all the successful defensive campaigns on military record, most were when cities had warded off invaders through protracted siege warfare.
A siege turned a battle into a waiting game of who starved first. The Republican Fleet had the supplies to last for perhaps a month.
It was unclear how long Xiashang could last. It would be foolish to wait and find out.
“They certainly don’t have enough food for the entire city,” Nezha said. “We made sure of that.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kitay said. “The Ram Warlord and his people will be fine. They’ll just let the peasants starve; Tsung Ho has done that before.”
“Do we try negotiating?” Nezha asked.
“Won’t work—Tsung Ho hates Father,” Jinzha said. “And he has no incentive to cooperate, because he’ll just assume that under the Republican regime he’d be deposed sooner or later.”
“A siege might work,” said Admiral Molkoi. “Those walls are not so impenetrable. We’d just have to break them down at a choke point.”
“I wouldn’t,” Kitay said. “That’s what they’ll be preparing for. If you’re going to storm the city, you want the element of surprise. Some gimmick. Like a false peace proposal. But I don’t think they’d fall for that; Tsung Ho is too smart.”
A thought occurred to Rin. “What about Fuchai and Goujian?”
The men stared blankly at her.
“Fuchai and who?” Jinzha asked.
Only Kitay and Nezha looked like they understood. The tale of Fuchai and Goujian was a favorite story of Master Irjah’s. They’d all been assigned to write term papers about it during their second year.
“Fuchai and Goujian were two generals during the Era of Warring States,” Nezha explained.
“Fuchai destroyed Goujian’s home state, and then made Goujian his personal servant to humiliate him.
Goujian performed the most degrading tasks to make Fuchai believe he bore him no ill will.
One time when Fuchai fell sick, Goujian volunteered to taste his stool to tell how bad his illness was.
It worked—ten years later, Fuchai set Goujian free.
The first thing Goujian did was hire a beautiful concubine and send her to Fuchai’s court in the guise of a gift. ”
“The concubine, of course, killed Fuchai,” Kitay said.
Jinzha looked baffled. “You’re saying I send the Ram Warlord a beautiful concubine.”
“No,” Rin said. “I’m saying you should eat shit.”
Tarcquet barked out a laugh.
Jinzha reddened. “Excuse me?”
“The Ram Warlord thinks he holds all the cards,” Rin said. “So initiate a negotiation. Humiliate yourself, present yourself as weaker than you are, and make him underestimate your forces.”
“That won’t tear down his walls,” said Jinzha.
“But it will make him cocky. How does his behavior change if he’s not anticipating an attack? If he instead thinks you’re running away? Then we have an opening to exploit.” Rin cast about wildly in her head for ideas. “You could get someone behind those walls. Open the gates from the inside.”
“There’s no way you manage that,” Nezha said. “You’d need to get an entire platoon to fight through from the inside, and you can’t hide that many men in one ship.”
“I don’t need an entire platoon,” Rin said.
“No squadron is capable of that.”
She crossed her arms. “I can think of one.”
For once, Jinzha wasn’t looking at her with disdain.
“Who do we send to negotiate with the Ram Warlord, then?” he asked.
Rin and Nezha both answered at once. “Kitay.”
Kitay frowned. “Because I’m a good negotiator?”
“No.” Nezha clapped him on the shoulder. “Because you’ll be a really, really bad one.”
“I was under the impression that I was receiving your grand marshal.” The Ram Warlord lounged casually on his chair, tapping his fingers together as he appraised the Republican delegation with sharp, intelligent eyes.
“You’ll be meeting with me,” Kitay said. He spoke in a perfectly tremulous voice, obviously nervous and pretending not to be. “The Dragon Warlord is indisposed.”
The Republican delegation was deliberately shabby. Kitay was guarded only by two infantry soldiers from the Kingfisher. His life had to seem cheap. Jinzha hadn’t wanted to let Rin come, but she refused to stay behind while Kitay went to face the enemy.
Their delegations had met at a neutral stretch along the shore. The backdrop made the meeting seem more like a competitive fishing match than the site of a war negotiation. This move, Rin assumed, was designed to humiliate Kitay.
The Ram Warlord looked Kitay up and down and pursed his lips. “Vaisra can’t be bothered, so he sends a little puppy to negotiate for him.”
Kitay puffed himself up. “I’m not a puppy. I’m the son of Defense Minister Chen.”
“Yes, I wondered why you looked familiar. You’re a far cry from your old man, aren’t you?”
Kitay cleared his throat. “Jinzha sent me here with proposed terms for a truce.”
“A truce should be settled between leaders. Jinzha does not even afford me the respect that he ought a Warlord.”
“Jinzha has entrusted negotiations to me,” Kitay said stiffly.
The Ram Warlord’s eyes narrowed. “Ah, I understand. Injured then? Or dead?”
“Jinzha is fine.” Kitay let his voice tremble just a bit at the end. “He sends his regards.”
The Ram Warlord leaned forward in his chair, like a wolf examining his prey. “Really.”
Kitay cleared his throat again. “Jinzha instructed me to convey that the truce can only benefit you. We will take the north. It’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to join our forces. If you agree to our terms then we’ll leave Xiashang alone, so long as your men serve in our—”
The Ram Warlord cut him off. “I have no interest in joining Vaisra’s so-called republic. It’s just a ploy to put himself on the throne.”
“That’s paranoid,” Kitay said.
“Does Yin Vaisra seem like a man inclined to share power to you?”
“The Dragon Warlord intends to implement the representative democracy style of government practiced in the west. He knows the provincial system isn’t working—”
“Oh, but it’s working very well for us,” said the Ram Warlord. “The only dissenters are those poor suckers in the south, led by Vaisra himself. The rest of us see a system that’s granted us stability for two decades. There’s no need to disrupt that.”
“But it will be disrupted,” Kitay insisted. “You’ve seen the fault lines yourself. You’re weeks away from going to war with your neighbors over riverways, you have more refugees than you can deal with, and you’ve received no Imperial aid.”
“That, you’re wrong about,” said the Ram Warlord. “The Empress has been exceedingly generous to my province. Meanwhile, your embargo failed, your fields are poisoned, and you’re quickly running out of time.”
Rin shot Kitay a glance. His face betrayed nothing, but she knew, on the inside, he must be gloating.
As they spoke, a single merchant ship drifted toward Xiashang, marked with smugglers’ colors provided to them by Moag.
It would claim to have run up from Monkey Province with illegal shipments of grain.
Jinzha had packed soldiers into the hold and dressed the few sailors who would remain visible on deck as river traders.