Heaven's Mandate - 3
Among the anecdotes from the world I knew before my transmigration, there was one about a certain strategist who found his lord so thoroughly unreliable that he set out to recruit a new master from outside. The strategist discovered a lord who matched his ideals and, for that new master's sake, offered up a map. Whether the tale belonged to official history or mere folklore, I could no longer say for certain—but such a story existed all the same.
So what lesson was that anecdote meant to teach? The importance of maps? That in an age of chaos, one must also have the courage to switch masters?
Close, but no. The real lesson was something else entirely.
"These tribes here, here, and finally here are all being forced to move under the coercion of the vile enemy."
"I see. That makes sense."
If you were going to sell someone out, the lesson went, you had to sell them out thoroughly enough to earn yourself a place among the founding heroes. Join at the last minute and you would scrape the bottom of the barrel—but join early, with both hands full of gifts, and you would be treated with real respect. And if you dragged other people in along with you, your rank only climbed higher.
Chieftain Kaitana—no, Count Kaitana—was running a multilevel marketing scheme with the North as his territory.
This one's going places.
Looking at Count Kaitana, I found myself thinking it unbidden. No matter how you cut it, this man was the type who would make it. Even if the Emperor had chosen annihilation over recruitment, he would somehow have survived. Even if Kagan had won the last war, this man would somehow have carved out a position for himself.
He was a headache, yes—but provided you met his conditions, he was also the convenient sort. Fail to guarantee his rights and safety, and he would abscond with every scrap of valuables he could carry. Fill his desires, though, and he would become the most loyal and shrewd of allies, spending his life protecting his employer precisely so that those desires could keep being met.
Not bad at all.
The chieftain of a tribe that could field three thousand troops as a single force, the first among his people to bow to the Empire. I had already guessed he was reasonably capable, but this exceeded even those expectations.
At this rate, Count Kaitana looked set to become the man closest to the thirteenth marquisate. The only tribe we had contacted so far was Kaitana's, true—but I rather doubted anyone would turn up who could surpass this man.
Besides, wouldn't a world with several people like him in a single era be a little depressing? This wasn't a battle of underlings.
Thank goodness he's our underling.
If he had been someone else's, I would have clutched the back of my neck in despair.
"However, if it is not too presumptuous, there is something I wish to ask of Count Wiridia."
"Ah, yes. Please, speak freely."
Count Kaitana, who had been explaining with his finger on the map, opened his mouth with a serious expression.
"I have heard that an imperial count's seat is so glorious that even his retainers are considered nobles."
The moment I heard those words, I knew exactly what Count Kaitana was curious about.
"Yes, that's correct. Ordinarily, a count bestows titles upon retainers he judges will serve him faithfully, and His Majesty grants final approval."
So I gave him the answer he wanted, and Count Kaitana's eyes darted about busily.
And the words that emerged not long after nearly made me snort with laughter.
"So as long as both parties agree, it need not even be someone from my own tribe."
"…That's correct."
Looking at Count Kaitana's satisfied expression, I felt something approaching awe.
He had asked about the method of bestowing titles, then even extracted confirmation that the recipients need not belong to his own tribe. Which meant that clans under other tribes—or wanderers drifting about at clan-scale strength—could be brought into Count Kaitana's sphere of influence without ever becoming members of the Kaitana tribe itself.
He hears about titles and his mind jumps that far already?
Did he have a settled ancestor somewhere in his family tree?
Receiving Count Kaitana's enthusiastic send-off, we made our way back to the encampment.
"Um, Master."
"Hmm?"
Section Chief Four, who had been fretting with a serious face, carefully opened his mouth.
"Are the other nomads also… like that?"
Faced with a question so full of bewilderment, I could not bring myself to answer.
Say yes, and it felt like denying everything I knew about the world. Say no, and Count Kaitana's presence refused to leave my head.
From the moment Karl's party left for the Kaitana tribe, the nomads' offensives grew only fiercer. The nomads already active on the front lines moved as though they intended to fight to the death, and one by one, tribes displaying a warlike posture began appearing at the lines.
Reports of offensives arrived from every front. During a war—and against nomads, at that—aggressive assaults were only to be expected. And yet—
They're all acting independently.
Not every tribe on the front was launching an offensive. Tribes that, like the Kaitana, showed signs of intending to surrender to the Empire remained quiet as ever.
It was strange. If the nomad offensive had intensified, that meant orders had come down from the rebel who styled himself Khan. They would be moving to pressure our lines and force us to take losses.
But to force losses on an imperial army that held numerical superiority, the nomads would also have to throw their full strength into the assault. A bizarre front where some fought while others merely watched made that impossible.
Then the normal thing would be to deal with the traitors first.
The proper course was either to order the tribes squatting uselessly on the front to withdraw, or to purge them. Leave tribes that might switch to the imperial side at any moment sitting on the line, and the tribes pressing the assault risked being encircled.
Yet no such measures were taken. The tribes launching the offensive showed no interest in the quiet ones, and the reverse was equally true.
Of course there were defecting tribes that had withdrawn from the front—but rather than falling back for fear of the warlike tribes' eyes, they had withdrawn with the same ostentatious flair as the Kaitana, as if inviting someone to come visit their territory. It was a situation I simply could not understand.
Have there ever been traitors this brazen?
It was bewildering. I had lost count of how many times common sense had collapsed during this war. Internal strife among the enemy? Possible. A strong expression of intent to surrender? That, too, was possible.
But traitors strolling about openly, and everyone else simply leaving them alone—that was not possible.
Could someone else be the Khan?
The thought crossed my mind before I could stop it. The idea that Udesr Dorgon had long since died, and some other ambitious man was impersonating him.
Otherwise, there was no explaining this bizarre cohesion and behavior. Dorgon was the Heaven-Defier's only blood and heir—a figure with more than enough stature and ability to serve as a rallying symbol for the nomads. The Empire itself had rated his danger high enough to pursue him for three years. And yet the capability of such a dangerous man amounted only to this?
If Dorgon had shown incompetence in the last war, perhaps—but he had mediated between anti-imperial tribes that had been at each other's throats. Weighing competence against incompetence, he fell closer to the former.
Had I not witnessed the sky itself being torn open, I would have seriously believed that someone other than Dorgon was the Khan.
"Your Grace. The inspector has returned."
Forcing down my confusion as I updated the front-line situation, I nodded at the report of the knight who had entered the tent.
Judging by the knight's demeanor, at least, Karl had not come back injured. That meant the negotiations with the Kaitana tribe had concluded smoothly.
And the moment I saw the map Karl had brought, I realized just how far from "smoothly" things had gone.
"The regions marked on the map are the territories of tribes considering surrender."
"I see."
There were many. Not every tribe would be several thousand strong like the Kaitana—but even accounting for that, there were many.
"There are also many tribes that have yet to make up their minds, and among them, I am told, is a tribe that once performed the role of high priests."
That a neutral camp still remained was surprising in itself. The number of tribes with clear intent to surrender was already considerable—and more than that number might yet come over?
High priests?
Moreover, I could scarcely believe that a high priest of a trampled faith was sitting among the neutrals.
To prevent a second gathering of the nomads, the heretical faith they had followed had been a thorough target for eradication. The Heaven-Defier who had also served as grand high priest, along with the other high priests, had been tracked down and killed, and countless temples destroyed. The Empire had crushed that heresy thoroughly.
And yet a high priest of that crushed faith was claiming neutrality.
Ambiguous.
Had the high priest been a hardliner, nursing a grudge over the trampling of his faith, or a dove who had lost everything and fallen into despair, I could have accepted it.
But sitting in neither camp—claiming neutrality—meant that tribe had a great deal of its own to wrestle with.
"The name is the Barandiga tribe. Their scale is not large, but their history is long, and they were once among the representatives of the tribes that refused to follow the Heaven-Defier."
Karl's words only deepened my deliberation. The sole remaining focal point of the faith, now that every high priest was dead; a long and storied history; a record of rejecting the Heaven-Defier.
With that much, even if they had been hardliners, they were a tribe we should have made contact with. All the more so in a situation where we had to worry not merely about suppressing nomads, but about conquest and long-term control.
The one thing that truly stuck in my craw, however, was this—
We would have to recognize the heresy.
You could not bring a faith's focal point into the fold and then tell them to abandon that faith. Embracing the Barandiga tribe meant embracing not only their influence, but the heresy as a whole.
A difficult matter. How could an empire that received Heaven's mandate recognize a heresy?
This is not something I can decide.
There is a saying that a general on campaign need not heed even his sovereign's orders. Of course, genuinely ignoring them makes one a traitor—but the saying means that a commander active in the field can often make more accurate judgments than a sovereign sitting in the rear. For that reason, the imperial army tends to respect the judgment of its on-site commanders.
Even so, this was not that. Deciding a matter of this magnitude on my own authority, even as a duke, was far beyond my station.
"You have brought valuable intelligence. Well done. Rest until I call for you separately."
"Yes, Your Grace."
Watching Karl bow and withdraw, I let out a small sigh.
A tempting grail had fallen into my hands—and the grail was full of poison.
…I will have to report this to His Majesty.
Regrettably, this was not a matter that could be handled in the field.
A report from the Duke of Victory had arrived.
A tribe already fielding forces in the thousands had surrendered, he said, and numerous other tribes were expressing their intent to do the same.
Furthermore, a high priest of the heresy—whom everyone had believed dead—was still carrying on the line, and was taking neither a hardline nor a dovish stance, but an ambiguous position.
…
What in the world is this.
I found myself furrowing my brow without meaning to.
Had the situation in the North… been this much of a mess?