Nightmare of the Northern Front
The Empire's first lesson began with the killing of premature infants and the disabled.
It was not born of pity.
Nor of hatred.
The Empire did not teach its children how to hate first.
Hatred was an emotion, and emotion did not last, and anything that did not last had no place in the Empire's way.
What the Empire taught its children first of all was calculation.
What could be used, and what could not.
The return on keeping something alive, and the cost of keeping it alive.
How to set both on the scale and choose, without hesitation, which side weighed heavier.
That lesson took place in a quiet room.
The walls were white, the floor was clean, and the sunlight through the window was ordinary.
The children stood in a line.
They were still too young to hold a sword properly.
Some clenched their fists. Some bit their lips. Some, not yet understanding the situation, simply stared at the instructor's face.
The instructor did not shout at them.
His voice was low and even.
"An empire is not built on emotion."
That was what he said.
"An empire is built on choice."
The children listened.
At first they did not know what it meant.
But soon they would.
What mattered in the Empire's first lesson was not the cut of a blade.
Even the act of killing someone was, to the Empire, little more than the outer shell of the lesson.
What they truly measured came after.
When something weak was placed before a child—did the child see a person?
Or a loss to the Empire?
That was the difference they were checking for.
If a hand trembled, the name was written down.
If a child cried, the name was written down.
If a child hesitated, the name was written down.
The instructor did not strike the children.
A beating hurt, and then it was over.
A record remained.
That record followed a child into military school, was opened again at officer examinations, and was quietly read whenever the quartermaster corps, the mage corps, or the administrative bureau chose their people.
The Empire did not discard failed children either.
Discarding was waste.
They went to the mines.
They scraped mud from the roads.
They shoved frozen wagons along the winter supply routes.
They cleared corpses.
In the Empire, there was a place for everyone.
It was only that some places were high and some low, some warm and some cold, some places where you lived long and some where you died quickly.
The children learned this quickly.
They learned to think before they cried.
They learned, before saying something was pitiful, to weigh what damage those words would cost.
They learned, before offering a hand, to calculate what that hand would bring the Empire.
And at some point, that calculation began to move ahead of conscience.
The lessons did not end there.
The next lesson was how to handle a starving village.
The one after that was how to compare the food it took to keep surrendered soldiers alive against the risk reduced by killing them.
The one after that was how to deliberately drive refugees toward the capital so they would gnaw away at the enemy's stores.
And after that, how to divide the villages to burn from the villages to leave standing.
Burn the fields, but leave the wells.
Cut the bridges, but leave the road markers.
Do not kill the craftsmen.
Do not leave alive the old who can incite resistance.
Children and women are sorted by circumstance.
If they can be taken and used, bind them; if they slow the march, reduce them.
Such sentences filled the manuals.
The manuals were always clean.
Sentences written on clean paper were colder than any blood-soaked order.
The Empire did not think of itself as cruel.
They believed they were precise.
They sneered at other nations for taking losses out of emotion, for dragging wars on out of pity, for wasting soldiers out of honor.
The Empire was different.
The Empire cut what needed cutting, took what needed taking, frightened when it was time to frighten, and burned when it was time to burn.
As a result, the Imperial army was strong.
Extremely strong.
Imperial soldiers did not easily waver on the battlefield.
A soldier who had finished his twentieth battle did not cry first when he saw a burning village.
He looked at the direction of the wind.
Those were the soldiers who survived.
Those were the officers who were promoted.
Those were the armies that gathered beneath the Empire's banners.
And on the Heireden front, that army was carrying out what it had learned with perfect fidelity.
Three fortresses had already fallen.
Heireden's defensive line had been torn like paper.
The Imperial army poured through the rips.
The remnant of the royal army retreated.
Even the word retreat felt too generous.
The ranks had collapsed, the commanders were dead or scattered, and the militia, trying to flee to their own villages, were run down by Imperial cavalry.
Refugee carts jammed among the soldiers and could not move, and the wounded were left behind in the mud.
To the Imperial army, it was cleanup after the battle was done.
An officer rode past and pointed with one finger.
"Bind that lot."
Where he pointed, young men still able to walk.
"Leave that lot."
Where he pointed next, the wounded and the old.
"Check the carts. Strip any food you find."
The orders were short.
The soldiers did not ask long questions.
Long questions generally meant insufficient training.
The Imperial army moved.
Blades moved, spears came down, ropes were tied.
A surrendered royal soldier shouted something.
Whether it was a plea for life, a name of family, or a god's name—it could not be properly heard.
The Imperial soldier did not listen to the end.
There was no need.
There was already no information worth having.
He tightened the leather strap on his wrist once and moved on to the next person.
The soldiers around him laughed.
Not the wild, frenzied laughter of madness.
The laughter that comes when work is going well.
The laughter of packing the last load before the rain.
The laughter of a tedious procedure cut short.
The laughter of a result that came out exactly as calculated.
That laughter was the more nauseating of the two.
"Kingdom dogs always talk too much."
One soldier said.
"That's why they lose."
The man beside him answered.
They traded jokes like that while they killed people.
To them this was, before it was a massacre, a job.
Because it was a job, their hands were practiced; because it was a job, they could laugh.
Behind them, the village was burning.
The Imperial army did not set fires at random.
First they chose what was useful.
Grain.
Medicinal herbs.
Horses.
Scrap metal.
Smithing tools.
Maps.
Serviceable winter clothes.
Only then did they put the torch to it.
Flame that began at the edge of a thatched roof leapt quickly to the next house.
The wind blew at the Imperial army's backs.
A time the officer had chosen.
The fire spread well through the village; the smoke blinded the people trying to flee; almost none of it drifted toward the Imperial line of advance.
"Good."
A young mage of the mage corps said, brushing residual sparks from his fingertips.
"We can handle the next village the same way."
"Leave the wells."
The officer beside him said.
"We may need them ourselves."
"Yes, sir."
Even through that conversation, the screaming continued.
But they did not let the screaming into their talk.
Cardan Valt, commanding the vanguard of the Imperial Fourth Legion, looked down on all of it from horseback.
He regarded his army with satisfaction.
The ranks were holding.
The looting was proceeding under control, the sorting of supplies was finishing quickly, and the pursuit detachments had not overextended and lost the main body.
Excellent.
The Heireden Kingdom's army had fought on emotion.
For the homeland. For the king. For family.
Such words could heat a soldier for a little while.
But what is hot cools.
Cardan valued more highly an army that did not cool.
The Imperial army was not hot.
They were cold.
Cold things last.
What lasts, wins.
"Some have fled into the woods on the left."
His adjutant said.
Cardan did not even look that way.
"Numbers."
"Between thirty and forty."
"Armament."
"Militia mixed with refugees."
"Send ten."
"Confirmed."
The adjutant relayed the order.
Ten cavalry peeled off into the trees.
Soon came the crack of breaking branches and short screams.
Cardan still did not look.
That calculation was already finished.
He looked ahead.
Heireden's capital was still far.
But the road was open.
The defensive line had ceased to function, and though the royal army would scramble to gather forces, it was already too late.
What was needed from here was a rapid advance and the spread of terror.
Before the rumor that the Imperial army was coming reached the capital, the rumor of what the Imperial army had done had to arrive first.
Then the grain inside the walls would dwindle faster, the nobles would begin to distrust one another, and the king would have to manage his people's despair before he ever managed a fight.
That was the Empire's war.
A war won by the sword alone was lower grade.
A war that made the enemy believe, before fighting, that they would lose—
that was higher grade.
Cardan had broken many cities by that method.
This time would be no different.
Then the sound of the battlefield shifted, just a little.
At first it was very fine.
Hoofbeats, the crackle of fire, soldiers' laughter, people's weeping, the clash of metal—
all of it still there, and yet somewhere among them a thin seam had opened.
Cardan felt that seam.
Men who had lived long on battlefields sometimes noticed the moment when sound thinned.
It was never a good omen.
He turned his head.
Beyond the burning village and the shattered carts, at the far edge of the field, a woman in a black robe was walking toward them.
She was small.
Far too slight a frame to stand alone in the middle of a battlefield.
No armor. No shield. No escort.
The black robe dragged across ground mixed with mud and ash, and from beneath the hood a little silver hair had slipped free.
She did not run.
She did not hide.
She simply walked.
Thud.
Thud.
A pace utterly mismatched to the battlefield.
And because of that pace, she stood out all the more.
People who fled did not walk like that.
People who came to beg for their lives did not walk like that.
Even people who came to die were, as a rule, not that quiet.
The woman in the black robe passed between the fallen.
A soldier face-down in the mud.
A child crying beside a broken wheel.
An old man collapsed under a burning roof.
The kingdom's banner, crushed under iron boots.
Her gaze moved slowly over them.
And then it turned toward the Imperial army.
The laughing soldiers.
The infantry rifling through a burning cart.
The cavalry binding prisoners.
The mage corps checking their results after setting the fires.
Cardan on his horse.
She took in all of it.
Cardan felt an odd chill at the nape of his neck.
There was no fear in those eyes.
It was not that there was no anger.
But it was not the anger that shouted.
Nor the anger that flared up like a blaze.
It was quieter than that.
Like a blade sunk in deep water.
"Stop her."
Cardan said.
Four infantry nearby stepped forward.
Shields came up; spearpoints leveled at the woman in the black robe.
Two archers behind them nocked as a matter of course.
Trained movement.
"Halt!"
One of the infantry shouted.
The woman in the black robe stopped.
Neither late nor early—exactly where she stood.
"State your affiliation."
She did not answer.
Instead she slowly raised the staff in her hand.
An old wooden staff.
Its tip pointed at the Imperial army.
Not at Cardan alone, precisely.
The infantry with the shields.
The archers with the bows.
The mage who had set the fires.
The soldier who had been laughing beside the bound prisoners.
The cavalry with the burning village at their backs.
And the long column of Imperial forces stretching behind them all.
She pointed at every one of them.
For a moment a quiet air settled over the battlefield.
And then laughter burst out.
"Is the witch laying a curse on us, then?"
"Careful. Your dreams'll be rough tonight."
One soldier clutched his chest on purpose and pretended to collapse.
The men around him laughed.
Even the young mage of the mage corps snorted.
"So the kingdom's putting madwomen on the field now."
Cardan did not laugh.
He was still watching the woman in the black robe.
She heard the laughter.
She heard the mockery.
But she did not lower the staff.
She said something, very softly.
The distance was too great for it to be heard.
And yet Cardan read the shape of her mouth.
"You don't have to hold back."
...Hold back what?
In that instant, the sky roared.
At first he thought it was thunder.
But there were no clouds.
Only low-hanging smoke and ash.
The next moment, the Imperial horses reared as one.
Neeeeigh!
The horses' screams broke out ahead of any human's.
Seasoned cavalry hauled on the reins, but the horses would not obey.
Some trampled the soldiers beside them; some crashed into the carts; some kicked out with their hind legs and shattered the formation.
"Hold the horses!"
"Hold the line!"
"Shields up!"
Orders poured out.
But the soldiers' eyes were already on the sky.
A black shadow was descending.
It had not yet touched the ground, and already the shadow of its wings covered the Imperial ranks across the field.
One by one, soldiers' mouths fell open.
Someone cursed. Someone recited a prayer. Someone, unable to understand what they were seeing, laughed.
Cardan went rigid in the saddle.
It was flying.
Two wings spread as if to tear the sky; its scales shone like blackened iron that held fire; the head at the end of that long neck was large enough to bite a city gate clean off.
Its eyes were gold.
Those golden eyes looked upon the battlefield.
They looked upon the people.
They looked upon the flames.
They looked upon those who fled and those who killed.
And they smiled.
That monster was enjoying itself.
Grrrrrrrrr.
A low cry fell from the sky.
The sound was louder than every noise on the field, and yet somehow closer to laughter than to a roar.
The sound a child makes when, after long restraint, it finds a pile of toys.
The sound a starving predator lets out looking down on a herd of prey.
The Imperial army knew by instinct that the cry was aimed at them.
"Mage corps!"
Cardan shouted.
"Grand aerial barrier!"
The mages moved.
They were the Empire's elite.
They had brought down fortress walls, torn open the kingdom's defensive formulae, frozen rivers across the line of march so the legion could cross.
They were shaken.
But they did not break.
A blue barrier unfurled toward the sky.
Dozens of circles layered, lines connected, characters rose into the air.
Imperial magic was fast and precise.
The dragon did not wait for the barrier to finish.
There was no reason to wait.
One wingbeat.
That was all.
The wind fell.
The Imperial banners tore at once; the front-rank soldiers were driven backward, shields and all; the ropes binding the siege engines snapped with a series of sharp reports.
The outermost ring of the barrier shuddered.
One mage coughed blood.
The dragon saw it and roared as if even more delighted.
KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
A sound that could not hold its joy back.
At that cry, several soldiers simply sat down where they stood.
Cardan clenched his teeth.
"Archers—aim for the eyes!"
Arrows rose.
Hundreds of shafts flew into the blacked-out sky.
They were accurate.
Trained fire.
A Heireden knight would have been knocked from the saddle; an ordinary great beast would have screamed.
The dragon turned its head slightly.
The arrows struck scale.
Ting.
Tiding.
Tididing.
A sound lighter than rain against a windowpane.
The heads bounced away; a few, not even catching between the scales, simply broke.
The dragon did not so much as close its eyes.
Instead it looked toward the archers.
Those golden eyes turned on them.
A few archers dropped their bows.
They felt that those eyes had recognized them.
And that feeling was correct.
The dragon came down.
To call it a landing was too violent.
The instant its claws stamped the field, the earth heaved and sank like a wave.
The front-line shield-bearers went down all at once; horses toppled sideways; several carts leapt into the air, wheels and all.
The dragon did not wait for the Imperial army to regain its balance.
Waiting is a hunter's courtesy.
The dragon had no such courtesy.
A foreleg swept.
Infantry in iron plate vanished in a single stroke.
They flew into the neighboring ranks without retaining the shape of people.
The tail moved.
A siege tower shattered like a toy, and its fragments rained down on the supply train behind.
The dragon looked at that and lifted its head.
Grrrrr.
It was enjoying itself.
Cardan saw it.
That monster liked all of this—killing soldiers, breaking iron, the screaming of horses, people scattering.
That fact turned something cold in Cardan's gut.
The Imperial army massacred as well.
He did not deny it.
But Imperial massacre had a purpose.
Plant terror, cut supply, reduce resistance, lower the cost of occupation.
There was calculation in it.
In that dragon, he could see no calculation.
It killed because it could.
And that was pleasure.
"Left wing—disperse!"
Cardan shouted.
"Center, fall back! Mage corps, hold the barrier—cavalry, peel off to the flanks!"
The orders were precise.
Ordinarily the Imperial army would have moved to them.
But the ordinary was over.
Before the left wing could disperse, the dragon sprang.
That enormous body moved with unbelievable lightness.
Earth burst, flame mixed through it, black wings skimmed low as it passed.
Soldiers touched by the wing's edge went down in a line.
The dragon did not even properly look at them.
It had only gone by.
And still people died.
"Barrier!"
The mage corps commander screamed.
The blue barrier unfurled again.
This time on the ground.
Dozens of layered membranes stacked to block the dragon's path.
The dragon stopped.
Only for a moment.
Then it tilted its head.
As if examining a toy it had never seen before.
The next instant, the dragon lifted a foreleg.
Crash.
One barrier broke.
Crash.
The second broke.
Crash.
The third—before it could break, the mages behind it went to their knees first.
The dragon pressed the barrier under its foreleg and rumbled low.
Grrrrrrr.
As if it were interesting.
Only then did the mage corps commander understand.
It was not breaking through the barrier.
It was stepping on it to see.
How long it held.
What sound it made.
How it broke.
The dragon was enjoying that.
The last barrier shattered.
The dragon's foreleg fell into the middle of the mage corps.
The light went out.
People vanished.
And the dragon lifted its head.
Slowly, it drew in a breath.
In that moment Cardan saw every flame on the battlefield seem to be sucked into the dragon's maw.
The air grew hot.
Eyes dried. The inside of the throat scorched.
Soldiers screamed.
"Down!"
"Shields!"
"Run!"
Orders and screams tangled together.
Under the dragon's throat a red light flared.
Firelight leaked between the scales.
Flash.
And a flicker.
And then, racing after it—
KRAAAAAAAAAA!!!
A wave of crimson flame came surging in.
On the burning field, the Imperial army saw for the first time the end of the efficiency they themselves had taught.
Reduce what is weak.
Clear away what is useless.
Break resistance.
Every one of those sentences came back upon them beneath the dragon's claws.
The dragon had not learned them as doctrine.
From the moment it was born, it had known.