Conquest of the Steppes
Yesterday’s battle had struck the soldiers of the Western territories like a thunderclap.
The barbarians who had plagued the West for centuries had been annihilated that easily. And they themselves now carried the same firepower that had done it.
Among the Western troops, not a single man remained who still resented taking orders from Southern officers.
Thus, roughly three days later—
Before news of the Aikamad tribe’s destruction could even reach the tribal council, the allied army arrived at the gathering place of the remaining two tribes.
For the Borkan and Serelkis tribes, the situation was nothing short of absurd.
“What is the meaning of this? How have they reached the heart of the Great Steppe so swiftly, and why has there been no word at all from the Aikamad?”
Both tribes had already heard of the Southern-Western allied invasion of the Great Steppe. They had called for a council of the three tribes, as they always did, to decide how to resist.
Yet not a single envoy sent to the Aikamad settlement had returned. In truth those envoys had been discovered and cut down by Western scouts, but the two tribes had no way of knowing that. To them it was enough to drive a man mad.
“Summon the tribes at once.”
One fact, however, was unmistakable. Imperial forces had driven deep into the center of the steppe, and silence from the Aikamad could only mean they had been broken—somehow.
“It has been only a few days since contact was lost. Even the Imperial army could not have wiped out every Aikamad warrior in a single stroke.”
“Then?”
“We hold here. Call every tribe on the steppe.”
To enemies who still knew nothing of the Southern army’s new weapons, the decision sounded reasonable.
“Part of the Imperial force must still be engaged with the Aikamad. If we strike them now and open a second front, we can drive them out.”
“In that case we will send envoys and buy time.”
The empire the barbarians had always known was a timid foe—one that tried to seize territory while avoiding open conflict at all costs. Soft. The empire had never possessed the strength to conquer the steppe; for generations it had been forced to placate the tribes instead.
“This time will be no different.”
So the tribes believed as they prepared to dispatch envoys, planning to feign interest in a treaty while they gathered their full strength, just as they always had.
This time, they never got the chance.
Before the envoys could even mount their horses—
—Rumble…
Thunder rolled over the ridge. An answer faster than any messenger.
Moments later the temporary camp where the two tribes had gathered for their council vanished under a storm of artillery fire.
The blood feud between the West and the nomadic tribes ran deep. That very hatred had become the force that kept the West standing even after the empire’s conscription system collapsed.
In the peaceful, corrupt empire, conscription had become a hollow formality. Anyone with a little money simply paid the recruiters and walked free. The imperial army that remained was filled with the penniless lower classes—uneducated men who barely knew how to fight.
The West was different.
People living along the western borders carried bitter grudges against the barbarians. Roughly half of them had suffered directly at tribal hands. They enlisted of their own will—to protect their families, or simply to settle personal scores.
The expeditionary force was full of such men. Recruitment had deliberately favored volunteers. Soldiers with families had little desire to join a dangerous campaign into the steppe. Those who came forward of their own accord nearly all had something to repay the tribes.
They were already itching to join the fight before the bombardment even ended.
“Haha, look at that barbarian camp! Burning nice and clean!”
“They never dreamed their own tents would go up when they torched our villages, did they?”
“It’s satisfying, sure… but aren’t the gunners going to snatch every kill before we get any?”
Shell after shell kept raining down—so many that even the Western soldiers began to worry their enemies were dying too fast. The artillery under the eight combined divisions, forty thousand strong, had opened fire at noon and kept it up for a full thirty minutes. Not a single intact structure remained.
Only when the settlement had been reduced to utter wreckage did the order come down.
“Third and Fourth Divisions, clear the interior. The rest of the army will prepare to meet the barbarians who will soon come pouring in.”
There was a reason they had chosen open daylight battle instead of another night assault.
“Any tribe that still rides here after seeing this is an enemy with whom we can never coexist. Men who think only of plunder are not human—they are monsters.”
In effect it was an order to take no surrenders. For Western soldiers who had long nursed their hatred, it was an order they welcomed with open hearts.
“Three o’clock! Large enemy cavalry force!”
All the rage that had piled up through years of raids, and the restless frustration of watching an hour of continuous shelling without being allowed to act—everything the Western soldiers had kept bottled inside now found its target: the tribes bold enough to defy the empire outright.
This time the Southern officers made no move to restrain them.
“All units—fire!”
“Pay them back for everything you’ve suffered!”
Without a moment’s hesitation the Western troops squeezed the triggers of their machine guns. The cavalry that had charged so proudly simply melted away.
The shamans’ spells that once inspired such dread, the thunder of barbarian horsemen, the blades they swung—none of it was frightening any longer. A shaman’s magic meant nothing. Feeling no pain did not stop a body from being physically torn apart. A cavalry charge?
The overwhelming firepower of the machine guns erased the riders before they ever reached the line. Hit-and-run tactics, herding maneuvers—none of it appeared. Against firearms with an effective range of two kilometers, cavalry tactics were nothing more than a spectacular way to die.
“Enemy is falling back!”
That day the Western soldiers saw barbarian cavalry turn and flee for the first time in their lives.
“Victory was… this easy?”
“We barely did anything…”
“Southern weapons are unreal.”
Compared to the old days of swinging hammers until their arms went numb against barbarians who kept charging even with spears through their skulls, this was an almost shamefully comfortable victory.
Machine guns might be heavy, their recoil savage, their noise deafening—yet sitting and pulling a trigger was still overwhelmingly easier than fighting hand-to-hand.
And the sheer destructive power of the artillery that had simply erased the tribal camp was something hard to believe could be handled by men who could not cast magic.
A handful of ordinary people operating machines that every ten seconds unleashed the firepower of a fourth- or fifth-circle mage…
“How in the world does something so ordinary produce power like that…?”
To Western soldiers whose homeland had barely begun to modernize, it was nearly incomprehensible. Awe in the face of the incomprehensible quickly became yearning—yet a yearning different from the one they felt toward mages.
A mage was a chosen being. Without mana, without talent, no amount of effort could ever make one a mage. That tower was forever beyond the reach of ordinary men.
The artillery units were different. The power was wielded by people no different from themselves. That simple fact captured the Western soldiers’ imagination.
An age in which ordinary people can become great.
The catchphrase the South had put forward took hold of them at once. When these men returned home carrying the stories of what they had seen and done on the steppe, they would become the most effective speakers imaginable in favor of union with the South.
In that moment the true purpose of the Western expedition was achieved.
It did not take long for every tribe on the steppe to submit.
The Borkan, Aikamad, and Serelkis tribes were all swept away; the places they had occupied remained only as ash upon the grassland.
A few tribes refused to the end?
“This is for my family!”
“This is for the friends you murdered!”
They were erased by Western soldiers burning with vengeance. Chieftains who witnessed those scenes with their own eyes abandoned any thought of challenging the bright sun that was the empire.
In the months to come these tribes would be absorbed into the empire through cultural infusion, marriages between leading houses, and every other available means—so that they would never again dare to raise arms against it.
The goal was to fold them into the imperial body quickly, even by harsh methods if necessary, before a new chain of hatred could form.
Several months after the steppe had been pacified, the railway was finished and factories rose. Western public opinion reversed almost overnight.
“Lucilla, how does Western opinion stand now?”
“Quite favorable, my lord. The fruits of modernization are beginning to show, and the barbarian problem that so long tormented the Westerners is being resolved.”
“Then… I suppose it is time we prepared.”
The declaration that would end a false peace that had not even lasted a year.
“For the annexation of the West.”