The Occupying Army Approaches
With some five hundred prisoners secured—including the Archduke of the South himself—we moved on to the Southern Gate, which happened to sit practically under our noses, and set about repairing the rails.
The South had thrown every resource it had into revenge rather than cleaning up the wreckage, so the place still looked exactly as it had when Gustav reduced it to ash: untouched by so much as a single recovery crew.
We had already dispatched Gustav’s support trains back to the heart of the West to haul in as many hands as they could carry, and the area was now swarming with several times as many demi-humans as before.
After hearing how the Orc minigun squad had wiped out the Southern army, they burst into roaring laughter and strolled past the captured Archduke and his men with open mockery.
“All right, then—let’s see what you can do!”
Dozens of master Dwarf craftsmen and hundreds of their apprentices gathered at the Southern Gate. Rondar, the finest among the chief artisans, rolled up his sleeves and snorted a plume of breath.
The Dwarves put their talents as combat engineers on full display, restoring the rails at a blistering pace. Barking swift orders to Orcs, Elves, beastmen, and their fellow Dwarves alike, they spliced the shattered track back together; once the golems joined in, the line began to reconnect at a speed no one would have believed if they hadn’t seen it themselves.
The battle had begun and ended that morning. By the time the sun was ready to set, the wrecked rails at the Southern Gate had already been restored.
“Nngh… Haven’t done work like this in ages. Shoulder’s killing me. Guess I’m getting old after all.”
Rondar and a host of other Dwarves were pouring sweat. I praised their efforts as they rolled their shoulders and worked the knots from their muscles.
“You all did outstanding work. Once we push through, I’ll have the Archduke’s manor and the surrounding barracks cleared out—rest there tonight. Anything you’d like to drink?”
“Heh heh heh! Our Chief never pinches a coin—I love that about him! Soft dark ale with a head of cream, if we’re choosing. Throw in some smoked sausage and a steak still dripping with juice, and a man couldn’t ask for more in this world!”
The Dwarves’ menu choice drew a great cheer from the other demi-humans.
“Kahaha! Those bastards know how to eat and drink, all right!”
“I want some too! Me too!”
“Chief, may our kin join as well?”
At their words, I turned to Lumina.
“Lumina. Pull a separate budget so everyone who fought and repaired the rails today can have a proper feast.”
“As you wish.”
The moment the Chief and his secretary gave the word, the demi-humans erupted in an enormous roar of celebration.
“Then let’s enter the South! Let’s show them their master has changed—and that the age has changed with him!”
“Uoooooh!”
Gustav heaved its massive bulk onto the freshly mended rails and rumbled forward. Our destination was the Archduke of the South’s residence, still dozens of kilometers beyond the gate. And following the iron road that far meant we would inevitably pass through a number of Southern cities along the way.
“Slow us down!”
When the first major city appeared ahead, I deliberately ordered Gustav and the support trains to reduce speed. Gustav was so enormous that even the noise of its passage was thunderous, and its size made it impossible to miss. From a long way off, citizens began gathering one by one as the colossal black train approached.
People crowded right up to the restricted rail zone and stared up at Gustav’s impossible bulk. To make certain the Southern citizens understood that their world had changed, I had the captive Harth hauled up onto the roof.
“Six minigun-armed personnel only, for escort and contingencies. Birdmen for overwatch as well.”
“Guarding the Great Chieftain is my job—of course I’m going! Leave it to me!”
“I’m going too, Lord Isaac!”
Kraktore, the Orc Great Warrior, and Abella, leader of the Birdmen, both volunteered. Five more Orc minigun troopers climbed up after them, and my preparations for the announcement were complete.
At my signal, one of the Birdmen seized Harth and rose into the air so that everyone could see him clearly. Southern citizens who recognized his face recoiled in shock and began to murmur.
“Th-th-that’s His Grace the Archduke, isn’t it?!”
“Those are Birdmen and Orcs! What the hell are those savages doing here?!”
“Invasion—it’s an invasion! The Westerners have started a war!”
“Quiet!!!”
My voice, amplified by Lumina’s magic, crashed over the crowd like a thunderclap. The agitated citizens flinched and shrank back. I addressed them.
“I am Isaac, Chief Administrator of Western Demi-Human Affairs! Four years ago, Archduke Harth of the South attempted a negotiation laced with threats, seeking to swallow the West’s rare resources at a bargain. When I refused, he sealed the Southern railways that connect us to other nations and began collecting illegal tolls!
I petitioned him repeatedly to end the extortion. The Archduke of the South ignored me. Judging that I could endure no more, I made plain that I would not shrink from the use of force!”
The Southern citizens already knew about the blockade of Western trains and the tolls; none of them looked particularly surprised.
“The answer I received was laughter. So, determined to save a West that was choking under Southern injustice, I attacked and destroyed the Gate! In response, the Archduke of the South led a force of fifty thousand—including two thousand of the Iron Vanguard—into the West itself! Look well! This is the result!”
After Archduke Harth, Birdmen lifted other officers of command rank into the sky. The sun was sinking, but it had not yet set; the crowd could see them all with perfect clarity.
“The South’s fifty thousand have been annihilated at Western hands! Save the five hundred or so survivors taken prisoner, every last one of them vanished for the Archduke’s greed alone! There are no soldiers left to defend the South! We of the West have judged that a man like this can no longer occupy the seat of Archduke—and from this moment, we will govern the South ourselves!”
Hearing that their own land had fallen into Western hands, the citizens began to stir again.
“The Archduke of the South marched fifty thousand troops into our territory intending to slaughter every living soul in the West—but unlike the South, we do not slaughter! I ask only one thing of you! That you refrain from discriminatory words and deeds against the people of the West, who hold the same clear rights as citizens that you do!
Keep that one condition, and I guarantee your lives will be no different from before. I also promise there will be no unjust levies!”
Pretty words, all of them—but from a Southern perspective, this was still an invader advertising that he held their Archduke prisoner in midair. Accepting it on the spot was never going to be easy.
Lumina seemed to share the thought; she leaned in and murmured.
“The citizens do not appear to be letting their guard down.”
“Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t speaking for applause. What matters is that they understand the Southern army has been shattered beyond recovery in the fight against us, and that we will rule here from now on. All right—we keep moving!”
And so, all the way to Harth’s manor, we stopped briefly in every city along the route and raised the captive Harth and his officers into the sky like trophies on parade, making sure the whole population saw them.
Then came the last city before the manor. This one was different from the rest.
Glass shards carpeted the streets. People rushed about in a frantic hurry, desperately searching for healers; everywhere, men and women clutched their heads, complained of ringing in their ears, or said they could barely hear.
“This place is…”
“Parabella. A city thirty point five kilometers northeast of the Southern Gate, and…”
Lumina consulted the map as she answered.
“…only one point five kilometers from the military installation that vanished from the map today.”
“Lord Isaac! That’s where the base was!”
Abella, circling overhead, pointed farther northeast. Even after all this time, black smoke still boiled high into the sky, and fires that had never been extinguished still raged.
“Ah… aah…”
Seeing with his own eyes, at close range, that a single shell had truly obliterated the military facility, Harth let out a moan of pure despair.
The people of Parabella, who had been frantically clearing glass from the streets and carrying the injured, tensed at the approach of the colossal black train far more than the citizens of other cities had, and kept a considerable distance.
A little more theater, then.
Determined to drive the fear in deep, I gave Rondar an order.
“Rondar. Lower the barrel and aim at the city.”
“Hm? You’re not actually planning to fire, are you, Chief? If we put a Gustav shell into downtown from here, we die right along with the city.”
“Do I look like an idiot? Of course I’m only scaring them.”
“Heh heh heh! Our Chief’s playing dirty again! I like it!”
Whether that was praise or censure, I couldn’t tell.
A moment later, Gustav’s barrel—which had been angled high toward the heavens—swung down to fix the city and its people in a threatening aim. Citizens who felt the raw danger of it on instinct screamed and milled about; some bolted at once.
“I am Isaac, Chief Administrator of Western Demi-Human Affairs!”
I delivered the same speech I had given in every other city—and added a small variation at the end.
“This morning, you experienced a roar and a shock violent enough to split eardrums and shatter every pane of glass. Did you not?”
The crowd seethed. I deliberately redirected their fury onto Harth.
“Had the Archduke of the South not indulged his worthless greed, we would never have fired this railway gun called Gustav! Look at the Archduke who, knowing full well we possessed the power to destroy the Southern Gate, still mustered fifty thousand men and sent them to a pointless death!
Because he refused to the end to accept reality and chose to ignore us, we had no choice but to erase that military installation with this gun! We could have aimed directly at the city you live in—and the reason we did not was to show you that we are not the Archduke of the South, who sought to massacre the West!”
We had been the ones who fired, but with a little careful agitation pinning the blame on the Archduke as the root cause, the citizens’ anger swung toward Harth, who dangled in Abella’s grip high above.
“We have no wish to see the city you live in reduced to the same state as that base! But if you ignore our just anger, attempt retaliation, or continue to scorn and discriminate against the sovereign people of the West—then the next place Gustav targets will not be that military installation. It will be Parabella itself! I sincerely hope you will not force us into so devilish a choice, and I make it known that we expect your cooperation with our rule!”
Given the situation and the setting, there was no eruption of cheers—but neither did the fury of Parabella’s hard-hit citizens turn on us.
Elves with keen ears overheard what the townsfolk were saying among themselves at a distance, and Lumina whispered the substance of it to me.
“Aiming Gustav at the city appears to have been effective. They don’t realize that firing from here would destroy us as well. They’re heaping every curse they know on the Archduke of the South for starting this.”
“Good. They’re moving as intended. Now then—shall we go occupy the Archduke’s manor? Park Gustav near the rail depot here. To prevent any sabotage, four men from the minigun squad, one Birdman, one Leopardfolk, and one Elf will rotate on guard duty. And…”
I had the thoroughly broken Harth set down on the ground and delivered a warning.
“Archduke. I want you to make certain that the people in your manor don’t try anything foolish and cooperate with us without a fuss. We can talk at our leisure after that.”
We seized Harth’s great manor and bound the principal administrators who worked there.
The day after the Western forces held a light victory banquet…
I summoned Harth, along with Leon—his right-hand man, who had been captured at the manor—and various others into the great conference hall and sat them down.
“Well then. Shall we have a thorough discussion of how exactly you intend to compensate us for the material and psychological damages we have suffered these past four years?”