The Advance
The history of the grasslands was written in blood.
After Kaiser III died young, the empire that had lost its center of gravity began to wobble. The natives only truly felt it about fifty years ago.
The soldiers who had once held the imperial borders grew soft and thin. The dreaded wyvern knights dwindled in number, and the army’s equipment and quality collapsed, again and again, in a vertical drop.
To their eyes, the empire was no longer a force that could trample the great steppe—the land that held a mother’s grace. It was a pack of weaklings.
And in that season of weakness, three tribes began to rise.
Borkan. Aikamad. Serelkis.
The strongest and most brutal peoples of the great plains, they expanded with terrifying speed. There had always been feuds among the tribes of the plains—but this time was different. Anyone who refused to submit would be swept away without mercy.
It took roughly fifty years of terror to fold countless tribes under their banners. When the political weather of the plains at last settled into something like order, they turned their gaze toward the empire.
"The great plains are a gracious and merciful land, but they are far too narrow for a people whose numbers grow with every year."
"The rise and fall of nations is a current no one can stop. For a thousand years the empire has ruled the continent—now it is their turn to fall, and ours, who have wandered the great steppe for a thousand years, to rise."
"Stable ground. Stable homes. It is time to end a life spent drifting with the sky for a blanket."
The three most powerful tribes found common ground almost at once. They formed a joint council for policy and began preparing to name a leader who would unite the nomads. It was a pattern that had played out more than once in nomadic history—but this time something was different.
This time, there was no empire strong enough to stop them.
The empire could no longer push deep into the steppe. The new Western Grand Duke, Charles, showed some interest in punitive expeditions, but only along the edges of the great grasslands, never into their heart.
"Before the year is out, we will elect a new leader—and when the chance comes, we will sweep the empire away."
They waited for that chance.
The first opportunity was the war between West and South. In a struggle that was all but an imperial civil war, the South began invading the West. The three tribes answered at once. The longer the fighting between South and West dragged on, the weaker the western border would become—that was their calculation.
But the first chance vanished in an absurd flash. In a single week the western army was annihilated, and a week and a half after the war began, Porvin had already fallen.
"Those western fools."
Deciding they needed a clearer picture of what was happening in the West, they took a step back.
The second chance arrived soon enough. A large portion of the western wyvern knights rebelled against the new regime and left the West. The corrupt nobles who had held the border were purged and replaced, one after another.
"Perhaps now is the moment."
So they judged—and sent proposals to every western domain. Offer tribute, and we will not attack. The reason was simple: to test whether the empire still had the strength to stop them.
If those domains accepted such a humiliating demand, they had no power left, and the tribes would strike. If they refused even after a few domains were torn apart, the tribes would wait for a later chance.
Several large tribes, including the Temerkan, stepped forward. Until then, they never doubted their victory. The South had intervened, but only on a small scale—a few thousand men at most. What could an army of that size possibly do?
…And then came a report no one could believe.
"We’ve had no word from the Temerkan!"
"What?"
"Not a single courier has returned with a battle report. From the circumstances, we assess… total annihilation."
One of the strongest tribes to ever make a name on the great steppe had been wiped out. Soon after, the tribes that had been pressing the western domains were annihilated one by one. Most of them had been third-rate powers, but it was still a shock. An empire they had thought toothless had done this?
A tribal council was convened at once, and a handful of soldiers who had survived the field were summoned. Every one of them looked as if his soul had left his body.
"We will not hold you responsible for fleeing the field. Tell us what happened on the western border."
An older soldier among them opened his mouth slowly.
"You must never face them. They… they command thunder and fire! Our warriors who touched their fire fell as if their strength had been cut away, and every time we heard the thunder, a vast explosion followed!"
To the chieftains at the council, the words made no sense. Thunder and fire? Did he mean magic? Meeting mages was nothing new. And the shamans’ arts should have worked—why were these men so terrified?
"Thunder and fire—you mean their mages?"
"No. It was… something other than a mage’s magic. Even the mages’ spells were never that cruel, that catastrophic."
"Go on."
"Warriors struck by the fire they spat—arms and legs torn free and flung. Hundreds of warriors melted away in a single minute, and everywhere… everywhere was filled with corpses that no longer had a shape…"
The chieftains who heard him all thought the same thing. These soldiers had lost their minds.
"Mm. That will be enough for now. You may go."
The survivors had no clear idea what weapons the enemy used, and the barbarian chieftains who had never faced the power of guns and cannon dismissed their words as simple exaggeration. Misunderstanding soon became misjudgment.
"So the western dogs have cooked up some new trick."
And misjudgment hardened into baseless confidence.
"It hardly matters. Our shamans will break it soon enough."
Besides, even if the enemy invaded the great steppe, there was nothing to fear. The history of the grasslands was a history of struggle. For centuries the empire had cast greedy eyes on the steppe and launched invasion after invasion.
They had been driven back many times, and the cost in lives had been heavy—but in the end, the ones still standing on the great steppe had always been them.
Even when word came that the southern army was preparing to invade the West, they felt no fear.
"This time will be no different."
Thinking so, the chieftains issued their orders.
"Prepare for war. This is a holy war to defend our mother steppe."
Since the modern age, a nation’s war of conquest has always cost staggering sums of money. The consumption of arms in the age of spear and sword and in the age of gun and cannon simply do not belong to the same order of magnitude.
The trouble was that, given the nature of nomadic peoples, recovering the costs of war was difficult. Natives living near the western border who had long since mixed with the West were one thing.
They had become almost sedentary, which was what had allowed Charles Raymonds to extract tribute from them. But deeper into the great steppe, the story changed. There, recovering even half the cost of a campaign would count as good fortune.
That is, if you only count the goods you can see.
A successful expedition would make the people of the West friendly to the South—and that was a far larger prize than it first appeared. Look no further than the wyvern knights left in an awkward position after the war between West and South.
After the Western Grand Ducal house was destroyed, the wyvern units that had held the border split. Those who had served under the old corrupt nobility fled to the imperial center; those loyal to the grand ducal house itself also left the West. But not everyone departed.
Of six hundred riders, roughly two hundred still remained in the West—men loyal less to any noble house or grand duke than to the West itself. For now they sat only in the border castles, bracing for barbarian raids. Once that problem was settled, it would be well worth trying to bring them over.
Even a handful of knights would have an enormous effect.
Guns and powder weapons might have advanced, but the power of magic had not vanished. Without military aircraft, wyvern knights remained the only air force—and an air force that could wield magic would be an immense help, especially for the navy, especially in anti-submarine work. Hand them depth charges and use them as anti-submarine aircraft, and the results would be excellent.
There was another advantage as well.
We wouldn’t even need to build a carrier class.
Wyverns could take off and land without a runway. Vertical takeoff and landing, free maneuver in the air, and the superior skill of their riders remained valuable even on a modern battlefield. Stick them on a roughly converted merchant ship, and you had a seaplane tender on the spot.
And later, when an air force is properly stood up, we can shorten the whole messy process of training pilots.
Talent that could endure several G of acceleration without special training, already at home in the air, with better dynamic vision and judgment than ordinary men? They were far too tempting not to want.
Winning western hearts, stabilizing the border, establishing a clear chain of command—the staff had already listed those conditions countless times. What we stood to gain from the expedition far outweighed the money we would spend.
So he signed the final authorization without hesitation. The orders written on that paper spread through the entire army.
And so, on the twenty-seventh of September, when the blazing summer had finally burned itself out, the allied forces of South and West faced the cool autumn wind and began their march beyond the border.