Heaven's Mandate - 1
It was true that the Empire had coughed up blood and staggered through the last Great Subjugation War. It was also true that Kagan had threshed their souls to the edge of ruin.
Thanks to that tear-soaked ordeal, the Empire's wariness of the nomads had reached its absolute peak. The moment word arrived that a Khan had appeared, they foamed at the mouth and hurled two hundred and fifty thousand troops into the fray. Victory or not, the journey had been so brutal that PTSD had taken root.
But if even the victors were in this state, how much worse must it have been for the defeated nomads?
Bankrupt.
Honestly, the Empire had gained nothing from the war, yet it had held on to what it already possessed. Had it not demonstrated the dignity of the continent's strongest nation and the unshakable firmness of the Mandate of Heaven? Even after taking a savage beating from Kagan, they had still won. If that stuck in anyone's craw, they were welcome to come back from hell and complain.
The nomads, however, had lost everything—honor, hope, and practical gain alike.
The higher you climb, the harder the fall.
A hundred thousand strong had gathered. An exceptional hero named Kagan had risen. For the first time in history they had formed a single power. And still they had lost. They had held every advantage, and still they had lost.
If the Empire had developed a phobia of nomads, the nomads had more than enough reason to develop a phobia of the Empire. Before, they could console themselves with the thought that being scattered made it natural to get picked off one-sidedly. But if they could still lose after uniting under Kagan, the only thought left was, Were we just trash all along?
Of course the nomads had never been trash. They had been monsters. Facing Kagan, the Empire had seriously stared defeat in the face and fallen into panic at the nightmare possibility of a Kagan Nation being born.
In the end, though, they collapsed.
Fortunately for the Empire—and regrettably for the nomads—the nomads had failed to cash out when the Kagan coin hit its all-time high.
They had driven the Empire to the brink? Victory had been within reach? War has no participation trophies, no silver medals, not even a second place. It is pure winner-take-all. No matter how spectacular the process, defeat means it is over. The nomads who failed to sell their Kagan coins in time were instantly cast into the abyss. The symbol of hope had detonated along with the nomads themselves and become a symbol of despair.
And in that moment, Kagan's own blood had proclaimed himself Khan.
That must feel like absolute garbage.
To put it in the most extreme terms, Kagan had scraped money together from every corner and dumped it all into the coin, only for it to crash to zero. From the suddenly bankrupt nomads' perspective, the son of the guy who blew up had shown up yelling, "This time it's for real!"
Any normal person would have "Shut the hell up and get lost" rising all the way to their throat, but with the Khan's spicy punches floating before their eyes, who would dare open their mouth? Better to swallow the garbage feeling and bow your head than die for one wrong word.
Sadly, all the nomads had left now was their lives.
"Maintain the standoff. There is no need to approach first."
"Yes, Your Grace."
I finished sorting my thoughts and looked up. The Duke of Victory was breaking the silence with an order to hold the status quo.
Only then could I read the emotion behind the Duke's expressionless face.
He figured it out.
This strange standoff and the North that had exploded so spectacularly. There was no way the Duke of Victory would miss something even I had managed to deduce. He knew this was not a battle but a kind of display—an interview—and was simply rolling with it.
An interview, huh.
The seal in my breast pocket suddenly felt heavy.
Whether the Kaitana tribe flaunted their absurd presence or not, the war continued. We had come to fight the Khan, not some single tribe.
As time passed the front gradually widened, and more nomads kept popping up here and there. On top of that, tribes capable of fielding a thousand troops on their own began to appear one by one, so the fighting naturally grew fiercer.
But we were not scrapping with every tribe that showed its face.
"The Kirgia tribe is prowling the Chagaria front. Scale is two thousand. No contact yet."
"The Birs tribe that had occupied Keruta territory has withdrawn. They used shamanism during the retreat, but our casualties were negligible."
Ever since the Kaitana tribe kicked things off, multiple tribes had started acting like second and third Kaitanas. They would show themselves on the front line without fighting, or trade a few perfunctory blows and pull back. With their entire bodies they were broadcasting that they had no intention of fighting.
"The Kaitana tribe has turned their horses. They are leaving the front and moving northwest."
The original even vacated the room entirely. They had given up on even the minimum performance.
The staff officer making the report used "turned their horses" instead of "retreated" or "withdrew" for a reason. No matter how you looked at it, these were not people who had come to fight.
"Moreover, unlike other tribes they are not dispersing. They are moving as one body, and their speed is relatively slow."
I almost barked a laugh at that. Nomads were already ghostlike when they appeared; when they retreated they became even more spectral.
The only place they could return to was their own territory. If they crowded together in plain sight and revealed their route, the elderly and children living there would be in danger. That was why, during the last war, retreating tribes had gritted their teeth and slipped away like shadows.
Yet the Kaitana tribe was moving as if they wanted the whole world to watch—as if they were begging to be seen, as if they were announcing, This is where we live.
What the hell are these bastards…
It was so blatant it actually made me suspicious. Were they trying to lure an imperial envoy out and then bury them for real if one actually came?
The odds of that were extremely low, of course. Betting their own territory just to eliminate a single envoy would be the act of a madman. For a nation, it would be like implementing scorched-earth tactics in the capital itself.
"…Continue surveillance. We cannot ignore the possibility that they will join other tribes and return to the front."
Even the Duke of Victory seemed to have taken cultural damage from this insane behavior; his reply came a beat late.
I understood. When the common sense you had lived by was getting shattered every single day, staying perfectly composed would have been the stranger reaction. That talk about rejoining other tribes was probably the last scrap of stubbornness—the refusal to admit that his own common sense had already collapsed.
"Inspector."
"Ah—yes, Your Grace."
"Step outside with me for a moment."
At the Duke's words I quietly rose from my seat. Reports had lulled for the moment, so there was time to leave, and the fact that he specifically wanted the two of us alone meant he had something important to say.
And at this timing, what the Duke of Victory wanted to discuss was obvious.
"You will need to move soon, Inspector."
Once we reached a place free of people, the Duke spoke in a voice heavy with every emotion at once. The feelings I was carrying were probably not so different.
"I did not expect us to move this quickly."
I answered while forcibly suppressing those feelings. The sentence was cut short front and back, but both of us knew exactly what subject we were discussing.
The Emperor's goal was the absorption of tribes. When a tribe was this passionately requesting to be absorbed, an inspector carrying the Emperor's order could hardly sit still. From the Duke of Victory's perspective as well, having a tribe capable of mobilizing three thousand men surrender would make everything far more convenient.
I never thought contact would come this soon.
Still, I had not expected a tribe with such clear absorption potential to appear already. I had assumed we would have to crush them hard once before any defectors showed up. Instead, barely after crossing the border, defecting tribes had emerged—and more than one of them.
Were these simply tribes with an especially strong tendency to run, or was the entire North in complete chaos? Or both? Either way, it was terrifying in its own right.
"We have not yet located the Kaitana tribe's territory, but we will know soon enough."
I could find no proper answer to the strange bitterness in his voice.
Intelligence obtained not through our own scouting but through the enemy's voluntary disclosure. As the man leading the army, how absurd and hollow must that feel?
"Among the tribes that have so far shown willingness to surrender, the Kaitana are the largest, and they were also the first to display the signs. The Empire must therefore show corresponding sincerity."
"The moment their location is confirmed, I will move at once."
The Duke nodded at my prompt reply.
As he had said, the Kaitana were the first tribe to signal their intent to desert and, at present, the strongest desertion ninja on the board. Passing them over to contact another tribe first could only breed displeasure and anxiety among the Kaitana.
That would be a problem. We could not afford to waste the chance to remove three thousand troops without spilling a single drop of blood.
"Take as large an escort as you require."
"Yes, Your Grace."
A considerate warning, since I would be heading into the middle of enemy territory.
Unnecessary, of course. I already had the Mukgwangdae. Adding more escorts would simply be overkill.
The Kaitana tribe had withdrawn from the front.
"Fast, aren't they."
I let the corner of my mouth lift slightly. The keshik who had reported the situation on the front immediately bowed his head, as though the Kaitana's desertion were somehow his personal fault.
"Raise your head. I already expected this."
I spoke gently to him. Who could hold a warrior who had fought bravely responsible? And who could resent a chieftain searching for a way to save his own tribe?
If anyone bore responsibility for this situation, it was the sinner who still lived shamelessly after failing to achieve the North's collective will.
"How are the other places?"
"Kaitana remains the only tribe that has deserted so far."
"Hah. Truly. Is this really the same tribe that dragged its feet during the last war? They are overwhelmingly fast."
I tossed out a light joke, but the keshik only bowed his head even lower.
Damn it. Am I just getting old? My sense of humor is shrinking.
Their market value went up, so they turned passionate.
I dismissed the keshik who still stood with his head bowed like a criminal and let out a long sigh. The Kaitana tribe, which had lived as quiet as the dead both during the last war and after the defeat, had gone completely mad the moment they grasped their own value and charged south as if they could not bear to lose first place.
I had expected it, yet honestly it still rankled. If they had shown even half that passion earlier, things might have been different.
Those bastards.
But what could I do? The fault lay with me for failing to provide proper profit and trust to people who moved according to market value and the safety of their tribes.
Resenting the seller when you yourself failed to pay a fair price was simply ugly.
…I just hope they do not get too far ahead of themselves.
Then another worry struck me. These bastards were fast—too fast. Pulling off a full front-line desertion before the other tribes had even begun to move was some kind of absurd speed.
That would only make the other tribes frantic, and I had to wonder whether their market values would be assessed properly.
I will have to move more strongly.
In the end, then as now, the manager was always the one who suffered most.