Chương 108: 106. Laws and Customs of War

So. A perception event has occurred, Skyhope has been reduced to rubble, my mother, father, grandfather, and all my other relatives have been killed, my fiancé has been killed, the girl I love has been convicted of the crime of animancy before getting taken Watcher knows where, and as a result I have been under investigation as a potential witting or unwitting accomplice for the past three months.

I am Third Lady Penelope Vesuvius, and I must regretfully admit that I have rather inconveniently failed to stop a minor apocalypse. At this point, I'm tempted to turn it into a major one. They took Vita away before we could even celebrate my birthday together! It could be worse, I suppose. I have not been implicated for the crime of animancy, despite most certainly being guilty of it.

After Vita was arrested, I suspected that either Bently, Orville, or both would give an accurate account of Norah's death, so I preempted this and admitted it first. It was easy to claim that I had been ignorant up until then, as Bently and Orville have no idea that this is false, and so when their stories were sought they gave an accurate accounting to match my own. Oh no, Inquisitors! I had no idea, Inquisitors!

I would have told you, Inquisitors, but she killed my teammate and threatened to kill the rest of us as well! Oh Inquisitors, thank you for saving me, I'm such a helpless victim! Pah. I don't know if they can read souls like Vita can, but even if so I'm confident that mine would read as sufficiently cowed and honest. Vita's skill at lie detection makes her ideal practice for lying. They investigated my laboratory, because of course they did, but thankfully no evidence of wrongdoing was found.

Theodora and her slime clone must have gotten out safely and cleaned house before leaving it, bless them both. Unfortunately, I do not know where either of them are nor have I made any effort to locate them, because even with all available evidence pointing to my innocence I was put under observation for three months. I had a constant minder, a zealous thorn in my side that I just couldn't pluck out.

At least after the first month I convinced them that, if I was going to be having Templars following me around all damn day anyway, they should at least let me do biomancy work on them. I whiled away the next two months doing an absolute drudgery of healer's work, earning personal and political capital by not charging any actual capital for the services. After the constant, exciting research opportunities Vita supplied me, it was frankly quite unbearable.

I couldn't even sneak in experiments on anyone other than myself, which was just horribly inefficient. After the three month mark, I'd finally been cleared of suspicion. At least, cleared of official, legal suspicion. Which was wonderful! I finally had some breathing room. I took a day to visit Vita's family and continue my work on them, which was exactly the kind of therapy I needed. Then our border forts got smashed by Sigulda's army. Oh yes, did I forget to mention? The nation of Sigulda declared war on us.

I can hardly blame them, considering how thoroughly we trounced them forty years ago. It must've been quite embarrassing. But really, declaring war less than a tenday after our capital was devastated by a natural disaster is rather poor sportsmanship, if you ask me.... So my respect to Sigulda, really. War isn't a sport, for fuck's sake. I want to vomit whenever I hear people complaining about it.

I have rather vocally held the opinion, in fact, that the few remaining nobles need to not whinge about the unfairness of the situation, but create solutions to it. This is, perhaps, the mistake that led to me being in front of the King today.

"In the darkest hours of our war forty years ago," the young King Charon intones, "your grandfather, First Lord Havelock Vesuvius, won his status by ripping victory from each and every battle, no matter how outnumbered." King Charon sniffs in what he no doubt thinks is an imperious manner, his speech sounding like it had been memorized barely ten minutes before this meeting. Watcher's eyes, he is just so young and stupid. Our King is shorter than Vita, for goodness' sake. He can't be more than ten years old.

The 'throne room' in which I kneel before him is a hastily-constructed edifice, lacking so much of the previous royal palace's opulent wealth it reminds me more of the hunter's guild than the ultimate seat of power within the country. Reconstruction of Skyhope is proceeding with relative smoothness, but by necessity the focus is on practical, essential structures. No one has the assets to make anything for the sake of aesthetics. As Sky hoped, ha ha, the perception event has brought the rich low.

The center city was not merely residential and governmental, it contained the largest banks, the entirety of our minting system, the most expensive land, the vast majority of our metal… the degree to which this act of terror brought our country to ruin cannot be overstated.

"It is therefore to you," the King continues, "that I have decided to give the honor and duty of protecting our grand country on the front lines. You will be promoted to…" King Charon glances hesitantly at one of the Templars flanking him. Not Royal Guards, not even tactical officers, but Templars! Flanking the King! It's a disgrace, but of course the Royal Guards were in the castle when the perception event hit.

The Army, traditionally controlled by nobles, was argued to be a less neutral force in terms of guarding the young King, and for some fucking reason everyone actually fell for that. Now the Templars have the King's ear, acting as protectors and servants while dictating nearly every word that comes out of his mouth.

"Strategic Brigadier General, my King," the Templar whispers to him.

"... Strategic Brigadier General," he parrots, "and to be given command of three thousand troops with which you will meet the enemy army in battle, to achieve victory for Valka." Shit. Three thousand? Three thousand fucking troops? Is that all they can spare me? I've read the scout reports, the advancing army has at least four times that number.

"Victory will be yours," I promise, the words empty but necessary.

"How many tactical officers will be granted to me, my King?"

"Unfortunately, with our capital vulnerable, we have none we can spare." I very, very carefully keep my face blank. A lady does not whine, no matter how much this is obviously a ploy to get me killed. No tactical officers? This is nothing less than suicide. The worst part is, I can't even call it out for the lie it is. They have the appearance of a legitimate backing for this decision. Our army is effectively gutted, our fighting force either busy with keeping the peace in the city or busy being dead.

The majority of our officers, both strategic and tactical, lived in the center city, so it need not be said what ended up happening to them. The distinction between tactical and strategic officers in Valka's army is a noteworthy one: strategic officers are what you would normally think of when you think of a commander. Their primary purpose is to direct the assets under them, be those assets coin or men. They determine formations, troop placement, and plan the wars before, during, and after each battle…

although not all at once, of course. There are many of them with many different specialities, and together they make sure the grease gets on the wheels, so to speak. My newly-drafted position puts me in a position of complete power over all three thousand troops I will be given, but I have no capacity to make decisions on grand strategy, or determine where those troops will ultimately be deployed to defend.

The absolute highest commanding strategic officer is of course the King, but in practice the King rarely interferes with war other than to declare it. Tactical officer, conversely, is just a very fancy way of saying 'living weapon.' Tactical officers command troops, although generally only a very small number of troops assigned specifically to support them.

What a tactical officer is, in layman's terms, is a person with talent or skill so overwhelming that they can eliminate an enormous amount of the enemy's troops, sometimes in the quadruple or quintuple digits, before being taken out or forced to retreat. At least, in theory. Because of this overwhelming strength the primary job of the tactical officer in practice is to check the enemy's tactical officers, locking them down so that they do not obliterate entire allied battalions by themselves.

The enemy army is nearly guaranteed to have individuals powerful enough to deal with people on the level of a High Templar, and I will have none. We will be completely slaughtered. Damn this fool King. I've been very careful to play nice with the Templars, to actively oppose the rare voices that correctly call them out on the obvious power grabs they have been making.

The entirety of this perception event ended in their favor, suspiciously so, but without an actual means to check their rampant growth I believed it would be better to ride it higher. Yet still, they have it out for me. Why? How much of Vita and I did they observe without us noticing? Or do they have some other problem with me?

"I see," I continue, placing none of these thoughts on my face.

"If I may make a request, then, I would like to include as many standard troops in the brigade with skill in thermomancy or aeromancy as can be spared." Once again, the King glances at a Templar. They hesitate, no doubt weighing the lives of valuable mages against the threat of making it obvious how unreasonable this deployment is. They're not calling this a suicide mission, even though it is, so they can't justifiably deny me the assets I request unless they are needed elsewhere.

I picked thermomancy and aeromancy because of their particularly limited usefulness in the recovery efforts. In the end, the Templar nods at him.

"Granted," the King declares as if it was his own idea. I already hate this child. I wonder if any of the Templars are fucking him. Would they care if he doesn't even have pubic hair yet? I would bet money that some of them have been ordered to seduce him as part of their normal duties, or at least 'ordered' in that way where it is never said but it is made explicitly clear that it is expected nonetheless.

I'm nearly tempted to take that path to power, especially considering how pathetically easy it would be, but even I have some standards. That can be a concern for after I make it out alive, of course. I quell my furious thoughts, trying to plan a way to do that while the rest of the meeting washes over me.

I exit the temporary throne room with my mind ablaze, letting my feet take me over the still-shattered streets to where I have been told to report and meet my officers, all of whom have substantially more qualifications and experience for this position than I do. Honestly, who drafts a soldier directly into the rank of general? It's madness. I'm sure that they are none too happy about that, but if I'm lucky, the fact that the mission is obviously suicidal will give them someone to be angrier at than me.

Six days later, we march. Moving an army across Verdantop is a slow and messy business. The roads are not designed to hold three thousand people in formation, but advancing through the forest would be obvious suicide so the roads are the only option. Perhaps I could escape to the forest alone, live there as Vita enjoyed doing, but I doubt I would survive without her.

Sigulda's army has taken a relatively direct route towards the capital, smashing our border forts and leaving small garrisons in the towns along the way, nearly all of which surrendered immediately rather than putting up a fight. The distance between Sigulda and Skyhope is quite vast, but even if the Army marches straight towards us with a single force, they run next to no risk of being surrounded.

The forest acts as a natural barrier; we are stuck using the same roads they are, roads that they built before we conquered their lands. As such, I see no reason to run my brigade all the way towards their army. I take the first defensible clearing I can find, a large, broad hill about three days away from the capital that gives us an excellent vantage point of the natural chokehold that is the road. As places to make a last stand go, it really isn't bad.

If not for the lack of tactical officers, it might have even been a valid position from which to take on a superior force. Probably not, however. The drop in already-low morale hits with a physical weight when we see the army of twelve thousand approaching us. I've known from the start that we stand no chance if our forces clash, but the sheer volume of human bodies approaching us, all with the dark skin and white hair of the Siguldians, feels like the match being lit on my funeral pyre.

They stop, thank the Watcher, rather than immediately charge up the hill. I can only assume they are taking the time to decide on the optimal method of dismantling us. On the way over here, I thought of only two ways to survive the situation in anything approaching an acceptable outcome. One of them, however, would require that I deny the person I have spent so long ensuring that I become. That, I will not do.

I give my orders to the commanders under me, at least half of which involve methods of negotiating ideal terms of surrender in the event that I am unable to do so myself. Even if things go poorly, we can bring value to our country by burning our supplies, destroying our weapons, and allowing ourselves to be captured as prisoners, which must then be guarded, fed, watched… it's not a noble sort of value, but it is value. Then, I descend down the hill alone, bearing a flag of parlay.

This does not at all seem to surprise the Siguldans, as they have seen a lot of surrenders this campaign given the sorry state of our military. When I reach the bottom of the hill, a group of riders on what I believe are horses of all things move out to greet me. Horses are not often used in Valka, as while they are competent and intelligent beasts of burden, their speed is not suited to forests and their capacity to defend a rider against monsters leaves a lot to be desired.

Various giant insectoid creatures tend to be vastly superior, as while they cannot move as quickly they have both superior offense and defense, as well as the capacity to grow chitin, which can be harvested to provide valuable materials. The main rider's helmet plumage implies he is an officer of some importance, at least, so I suppose I can take solace in being taken somewhat seriously. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Hail!" the officer greets me from a distance, he and his guard stopping a respectful distance away.

"I am Ajith Sachdev, Speaker for the Great Siguldian Army."

"I am Third Lady Penelope Vesuvius," I respond, "Brigadier General of the Valkia Army and highest-ranking commanding officer of the troops behind me. I am here to negotiate terms."

"I am invested with the power to negotiate the terms of your surrender," the Speaker responds. I shake my head, letting the exhaustion I feel seep into my features.

"I have my pride," I tell them.

"I will negotiate with your commander." The Speaker glances at one of the men beside him, who gives a subtle signal with one hand.

"…The commander will not walk blindly into a Valkan trap," the Speaker dismisses.

"There is no trap," I say frankly.

"Even you can tell we are a token force. I have a matter to bring to your commander, one that a Speaker cannot guarantee. Allow me to parlay with him."

"You will tell me of this matter," the Speaker demands bluntly.

"If it is determined to be worth the attention of our commander, then I will relay it to him." I allow myself a small sigh.

"I am here alone because I do not merely seek surrender," I admit.

"I seek political asylum. I am willing to trade military intelligence for my personal safety." The Speaker sneers down at me, as if personally offended by my willingness to assist him.

"…I will inform the commander," he says simply, and the riders depart. After about an hour, the entirety of which I spend standing alone between two armies, riders once again come out to meet me. The Speaker glowers down at me as he makes his demands.

"You will consent to be put under guard by our warmasters. You will consent to being searched. You will consent to being bound. Then, you will consent to being taken to our camp, where you will speak to the commander." I grit my teeth, but nod. I can hardly blame them for not taking any chances.

"I consent." The warmasters, I assume, are their equivalent of tactical officers. Two men flank me, standing slightly behind me where I cannot see them without craning my neck. Then I am searched—quite intrusively, I might add, although at least it was done by another woman—and finally my hands are bound like a common prisoner to prevent me from casting spells.

Then I am led behind the horses towards the enemy's camp, wishing I had not introduced myself with my family name, as in retrospect it is likely not one that garners a lot of positive feelings from Siguldians. The command tent is large and relatively obvious, and the commander inside is surprisingly young, likely only a year or two older than my dear departed fiancé.

He's a plain-looking man, round-faced and beardless, whose most notable feature is his slightly narrow eyes, crinkled with crow's feet in a way that implies he does a lot of smiling. And indeed, he greets me with a wide grin as I enter the tent, introducing himself as Commander Khurshid Rao.

"Please forgive all the security," Commander Rao requests pleasantly.

"Your offer of intelligence is of the kind that tends to seem too good to be true, as I'm sure you understand. You nobles of Valka are many things, but prone to treason is not one of them."

"You would be surprised," I answer dryly, putting a quirk of a smile on my face and making sure to carefully adjust my seating position to best frame my body.

"Loyalty is not what it once was in my country. We have fallen far."

"So it would seem," the Commander agrees.

"Although I mean no offense."

"No offense is taken. I would be happy to give you whatever assurances are necessary. For my part, I feel it difficult to betray a country that worked so hard to betray me. I was sent here with a force that a single one of your warmasters could likely wipe alone. We have no defense against you, no capacity to even slow you down. The reality of my situation is that I am not here to fight you, Commander.

I am here to be assassinated by you, or at minimum to be captured and humiliated by you, and the three thousand men sent with me were considered an acceptable sacrifice to accomplish this."

"That is… heinously dishonorable, if what you say is true," Commander Rao agrees.

"And so in light of this realization, you have decided to abandon your nation?"

"A nation as corrupt as Valka does not deserve to exist," I say frankly.

"Is that not the very reason you are here, Commander?" He nods, slowly, and I take that as permission to continue. I lean forward as I speak, a genuine intensity reaching my face.

"Valka rots from within. Our capital has suffered the greatest humanitarian crisis in the history of our nation, and those that should be protecting our people are using it to squabble for power instead. I will have no more of it." He shows genuine interest at that, and I feel confident in pinning down his personality. The man is an idealist, one that truly loves his country not out of blind devotion, but out of love for principles that he works to uphold.

I spend the next three hours speaking with him, dripping enough relevant military information to prove my value while I spout agreeable platitudes relating to his personal philosophy between the occasional flirtatious pose or phrase. He then requests that we 'speak together privately,' as I both expected and dreaded that he would.

He takes me to his quarters, leaving the warmasters to vigilantly guard from the outside, and the entire time I act like I'm just as eager and aroused as he clearly is, despite not feeling the tiniest spark of attraction for this man. He has quite a fine bed for one that needed to be dragged all the way from battlefield to battlefield, so at least it will be nice to lie down on it for a while.

"It's going to be a little difficult to get my shirt off with my hands bound together like this," I comment, as jokingly as I can muster.

"Oh, but I like the bindings," Commander Rao responds with amusement, drawing a knife as he sits down next to me on the bed.

"Besides, you won't be needing your uniform if you're defecting." I refrain from protesting as he carefully draws the knife along my back, avoiding cutting me as he shreds my clothing piece by piece. This seems to be something he has quite a bit of practice with, so I can only assume I'm not the first prisoner he's used this particular brand of foreplay on. I'm no fool, after all: for all my social maneuvering, I am a prisoner, but it is at least the highest grade of prisoner that I could reasonably expect.

Better to be bound in Sigulda than dead on the road. Being trapped in bindings is the opposite of how I prefer to enjoy intimacy, but there was never any chance I was going to enjoy this in the first place so it hardly matters. The knife finishes divesting me of my clothes, and then he removes his own, taking his oh-so-annoying time, which obligates me to act like I'm interested while he does it.

The man opts to start slow, at least, sitting beside me and holding me in his powerful, toned arms while I just wish he was my scrawny little Vita. A dull thump sounds on the outside of the tent, quickly followed by a second one. Rao scowls, raising his voice to snap at his men.

"What's going on out there?" he demands. There's no answer. He gets up, knife in hand, and I watch with immense satisfaction as he peeks his head out of the tent, his dark face getting ever so slightly paler.

"Oh, thank fuck," I sigh.

"It's about time." He looks back in the tent, and I take a deep breath of satisfaction, doing my best to memorize the look on his face.

"What did you do?" he breathes.

"I slaughtered your army, obviously," I answer.

"You—" He tries to lunge for me, but stumbles, falling to the floor as the strength leaves his limbs. The knife clatters to the floor, and with some difficulty I manage to pick it up, hold it between my knees, and saw away at the bindings around my hands.

"It's funny," I comment idly, flexing my fingers.

"It took me quite a while to decide to try this. It's just so ingrained in my head that I can't use my talent on people, certainly not a communicable version of it." I pluck his coat from the floor, draping it around my shoulders for some basic modesty. It doesn't fit at all, but I like the style of it. Rao coughs, blood splattering out of his mouth. Smiling, I step past him, opening the flaps of the tent to let in beautiful sunlight and the agonized wails of the dying.

The Warmasters on either side of me are motionless on the ground, blood pooling in their mouths and leaking from the butt of their gambesons. There's not much to see, alas, as these particular variants do nearly all of their damage internally, but being able to gaze out at the mass of bodies curled up on the ground, screams of the dying snuffed out as their last breaths get drawn… it sends a shudder of pleasure throughout my body. It worked.

"Is this… what is this?" Rao moans uselessly.

"Disease, you fool," I chide.

"What, have you never been sick before? Anyway, as I was saying. It's been ingrained in me since I was a little girl to not do this. But then I realized something: this is war. You declared war. Don't you know what that means?" I grab Rao by the chin, twisting his head ever so slightly to face me. I must admit, now that he's paralyzed on the floor with blood seeping from between his teeth, I find myself substantially more aroused. Not that he's in any shape to continue where we left off, of course.

"It means I can kill as many of you as I want," I tell him, grinning because I no longer have a need to hide it.

"I can kill twelve thousand people and watch them die, and not a single person will hate me for it. They'll praise me. They'll actually praise me!" He responds by vomiting more blood, which is such a conversational non sequitur that I can't help but laugh at it.

"Come on," I taunt him openly, not bothering to pretend it's anything else.

"Don't you have better last words than that?"

"This… is not war…" he chokes. I scoff.

"You're here to kill us all. You don't get to complain just because you don't like how I killed you back."

"You're… inhuman," he manages to get out. I grin. Even in death, he's a flatterer.

"Not yet, I don't think," I tell him.

"But I'm working on that." I can still barely believe I pulled it off. This plan was rife with points of failure, but I am, after all, a genius. A desperate genius, but nonetheless. I stalled long enough to spread my creations, they went undetected despite my heavy guard, and no one tried to cure them until it was far too late. It's a modern army, so they have biomancers, but they're just rank and file novices that learn how to regenerate limbs and then consider themselves experts.

When I seed the area with airborne diseases the likes of which no living person has ever seen, when I order my aeromancers to subtly alter the wind just enough to keep the plague contained and spread it through the camp, when I turn every living person into a carrier of the deadliest creations I can imagine, each asymptomatic until enough time has passed to infect every last soldier twice over… well, it doesn't matter how quickly the biomancers can grow your finger back, at that point.

This army held men and women powerful enough to fight toe to toe with Galdra the Annihilator, with Braum the Ubiquitous, with every last tactical officer that may have survived the Mistwatcher's wrath. But no matter how strong they are, they can't brute force their way through a cocktail of plagues that they don't even know exists.

Rao succumbs to paralysis without further comment, and I indulge myself for the next five minutes by waiting around to watch him die, scanning his body with spells to absorb the full experience of his agony as my creations burst his insides piece by piece, organ by organ. It's over far too soon, but at least I'll get to enjoy the memory later. Now, however, I must get back to work. There is an important second phase to my plan, which is not getting killed by the undead that are about to spawn due to it.

I walk about the camp, admiring my handiwork and double checking that none of the healer's tents managed to squirrel away a survivor. Then comes the frustrating work of counter-diseases, plagues designed to target plagues and wipe them from an area so that my army can come in and destroy the zombies. When I finish, I beat a quick escape, sending a signal to the sky. I'm cutting it close, far too close, as any moment now undead will start to rise from the beautiful slaughter I have committed.

Thankfully, I have thermomancers. They advance, hurling fire around the camp. Only the supplies are spared, which we capture and sterilize. It's enough food to feed twelve thousand soldiers for a month, and though that's a lot, it is honestly less than I was hoping. I suppose we can try to raid the supply lines that they have no doubt set up behind their advance force, but that will be a job for someone else, if I have anything to say about it. Which I will.

All three thousand of my troops watched me walk into the middle of an enemy army and be the only one to walk out. We positively identified five known High Templar-level threats, all of whom are now dead. It's unprecedented for a person to have the level of power I just displayed. Watcher's eyes, I wish I could just keep using it. I wish I could slaughter the entire Church the same way. And technically, I can.

I would just need to kill all of Skyhope in the process, because the great weakness of disease is that it is rather indiscriminate. For the right price, I could lay the Church low... but the price of my entire city is not one I'm willing to pay. My duty demands that I stay my hand, and now that I have shown it my enemies will inevitably develop countermeasures regardless. In fact, I will likely be ordered to develop them myself. Still, it was worth it.

I take a deep breath, letting my nostrils bask in the scent of burning corpses. Just for today, I am a goddess. Today my mask served the will of my true self, not the other way around. I didn't just survive, I lived. It's time to begin my own plots. I will not let the church have their way. I will not let them keep Vita from me. When I return to Skyhope, my army untouched and my coffers full of plundered weapons and rice, I am declared First Lady Penelope Vesuvius.

Cognomen are not granted to true nobles the way they are to High Templars; we gain family names instead, each one pulled from ancient mythology about mountains that belch molten stone. I, of course, already possess a second name, so my title is not added to. Still, after a few rumors I helped to bolster, I informally gained an additional moniker, one that I am quite fond of. To my enemies, it is a warning. To me, it is an aspiration. Vesuvius the Inhuman.