Jien was one of the last to arrive at Yalfen.
The retreat had nearly turned into a fiasco, with dozens of the soldiers staggering along the road with injuries, just barely making it to the next village where they could get the most basic of treatments. The whole while they’d practically been expecting for the Elerians to have caught up to them, but as the long hours turned to days, they started to meet small pockets of the less-severely wounded who’d manage to stagger away to the forests, and then to the city afterwards, reporting that the Elerians themselves had stopped to replenish and rest.
It was how the invaders replenished that shocked Jien: he’d called the first report a trick of the mind and sent the soldier straight to the city hospital, but the second and third time gradually began to transform this into horror, and then a grim acceptance: the enemy had begun to consume the flesh of the dead: specifically the inselni dead.
He looked out the window of the apartment he’d been quartered in. Below he could see civilians moving between the streets as if the bombings just days before had never happened, like they hadn’t watched a column of Elenrian soldiers of previously incredibly opposed Armies stagger into the city with one another in their arms, sharing in the anguish and pain of defeat. To them, this was just another day, in another week, in a month, of a year, of a decade where the sun continued to hide behind the dark leer of the mountains and a dark ocean’s horizon.
A part of him wondered if things were only marginally different in life, he’d be walking down on the streets there instead of standing on a balcony looking down with a cigarette in his mouth. He wondered what he’d be, what’d he do. How’d he feel to know, or perhaps sit in ignorance of everything unfolding around him. Communities were big after all. It wouldn’t be a stretch to stay ignorant and far away from a whole decades of constant wars with the Community absorbing most of the impact for him.
The Community. He wondered what his Community were doing back in Pelven. His two brothers, working on the fish farm somewhere near the river. His last letter had been late by four months. He hoped they’d forgive him. His parents would’ve chewed him out for taking so long when they were alive, and he’d probably worried the rest of his kin sick with the lack of news.
He tapped the cigarette and watched the ash flick off into the ashtray. It was burning to a stub now, and he briefly entertained the idea of smoking the rest of it. A crow perched on the opposing rooftop caught his eye: it was picking at a loose tile, probably knocked loose by the aerial attacks almost a week ago now. It struggled with the ceramic tablet, picking at it every few seconds only to glance at its surroundings. It was funny to think he’d been doing the exact same thing while running north just a scant few days ago. His gut twisted for those they’d left behind.
His heart ached for want of rest. He hadn’t slept in days. Their defenses were scant, sloppy. Any proper application of force, even basic artillery, would shatter the resolve of the defenses here. They couldn’t lose the city. They couldn’t defend the city. He was hungry. He was too tired to eat. He was too hungry to sleep. He was too stressed to think. People were depending on him to think. Where were his orders? He never wanted to follow orders again. He needed orders. Where were his orders? This was no position for a sergeant. He was the only senior NCO left. He blinked, and he tapped the cigarette again. The ashes dusted into the tray again.
And his mind wandered again.
Teng Bei had never taken a train before in her life. The metal ox huffed and wheezed as it crawled along its iron road, worming its way through the endless hills and plains of western Elenria, passing through towns and fields, over the toothpick wood trusses of bridges, between the narrow throats of mountain tunnels, coughing and expelling its dark acrid smoke into the cool air of the autumn sky. It was a split, or maybe a combination of impressive and intimidating, how it fearlessly, emotionlessly, slavishly pulled those unimaginably heavy iron-framed cars behind it along. She wondered if the native state for such machines was to be this polluting and filthy, loud and cumbersome in the Old World, and shuddered to think about how contaminated their cities and countryside must be from all the smoke.
She was not a young inselni anymore, after all. She’d witnessed the perpetual fires of cities burning down, and the red-black smog of the sun setting upon the ruins of an age passing not with a peaceful sigh, but with the blood and struggle of a fight, still gasping for air, still squirming even as its ichor poured from a thousand wounds.
It was a curious and wondrous thing that would’ve drawn her attention and fascination for the next four years for sure were she younger, but such was age, and such was life. Scenarios and make-believe worlds inquired at her mind, and she smiled at the pleasant thoughts of young curiosity still awake within her mind, but as the passenger car door slid open to her left, she gently set those thoughts away back behind the veil.
“Ma’am.” The attending soldier said the words nervously, regarding the seated inselni. Sharp eyes contrasted the aged scales upon Teng Bei’s face, and the soldier uncomfortably watched as the Inselni dissected his person with her gaze. “The conductor asked me to inform you that we’re due to arrive at Yalfen in five minutes.”
“Thank you, lieutenant.” The House Guardswoman replied, rising from her seat. The chainmail under the plate chestpiece audibly rustled as she glanced out the window, while a hand absentmindedly fixed the sword sheathed on her hip.
“How long will it take for this engine to be resupplied?”
“About an hour, ma’am. Then it will depart back the way we came to pick up another load of soldiers.”
The Imperial Martial nodded, reaching into the deep pockets of her robes, retrieving a folded letter. The seal was broken: she’d read the worn paper just minutes ago, but she scanned the document again, and the soldier awkwardly stood at attention before her, wondering if the old soldier had forgotten his presence. But she looked up again as they passed through the walls of Yalfen’s eastern gates, frowning at the sight of the old gates themselves aside the trestle that inelegantly stilted over the ancient moat surrounding the city.
“Be it far for me to question the choices of a past I am not a part of,” Teng Bei asked, turning back to the lieutenant. “But I cannot help but feel that drilling an actual hole through our ancestors' precautions makes for a considerably simple access to the city’s interior, instead of being forced to breach through the walls or gates properly. This road goes through the entire city?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The officer was quiet for a moment, then nodded at the lieutenant. “I see. Thank you, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed.”
Imperial Martials were legendary.
Legends frequented the pages of books, of cold-faced reliefs, or of vast murals that wrap the exterior of lovingly regularly washed shrine walls. Legends fill the ice-touched memories of frozen ruins, parched abandoned monuments, forgotten temples. They were in museum exhibits to be gawked at, under tarpaulin covers to be held in storage within old vaults, covered in dust within someone’s attic or basement for years, unknown.
Over time the legend changes. The details distort, even in a relatively short period that spans from the minute it was made to the week it is told, to the month it is written, and the year it is recorded. It is hard to remember what was once the truth, and to be frank, the truth is not always as memorable as the novelization.
The Imperial Martials were once the tireless watchmen of the Sanshan Empire, simultaneously admired and feared as the Empress’ direct visible hands. It could strike with a whip or a sword, but it could also mend wounds and mold callow flesh and earth to magnificent things too. Elenria’s cities could never have reached their current sizes without the coordination and resources commanded by the Imperial Martials to heave the vast pools of resources from the continental south into Elenria by road, nor could the ever encroaching threat of corruption, decadence, and stagnation be delayed and pushed back unless by regular keen-eyed acknowledgement of problems by competent Imperial Martials who could muster the reforms necessary to keep the pulse of the Empire pumping.
But that was centuries ago, before their numbers were decimated by the collapse of the Empire, then crippled by civil war, and finally ended by the Kumo annexation, clawing and fighting their demise to the last. It was said an Imperial Martial had founded the FNCAE in the remote pockets of Elenria, and for the longest time their office insignia was denoted by the immediate surveillance, if not persecution, of TAKPOE.
That they were back, and that one was actively on their way to meet them personally after all this time was suffice to say, more than a slight shock to the assembly of disparate military officers gathered around the smoking room of a local Yalfen gambling house-turned-army-headquarters. Among them was every single senior officer of any remaining battalions that had managed to make it to the city. The smell of smoke was already a bit pungent in the room— even the inselni of those present had partaken at least two from the stress— but now they looked awkwardly at one another, straightening out their uniforms, feebly adjusting the bedraggled fatigues hanging on their bodies.
“Should we put out our smokes?”
“Not sure. It’s not illegal to smoke, right?”
“Well, they’re the manifestation of Imperial will, though? We’re supposed to treat that like the Queen herself is physically here?”
“Isn’t that a quote from the old erotic novel—”
“Quiet, quiet. We’ll know if they’re here. We’ve got time to think about this rationally—”
The door clicked, and the whole roomed jumped. One person hurled their cigarette straight out the window in a panic, while someone else dunked it into a nearby mug. All snapped to attention, to the best of their ability with tired bones and sleepless eyes.
A messenger peeked his head in. “Uh… Sir’s? The ah…” They glanced behind themselves.
“Spit it out!” A major hissed. “What is it?”
“The Imperial Martial’s here, sir.”
A shadow moved behind the messenger, saying something quietly that drove the messenger into a hasty salute before ducking away. Its form blocked out the gaslamp in the hall, and the door’s angle blocked most of the light that could reach the doorway before the Martial pushed the door open.
The first thing the room illuminated was the armor that the Martial wore: The broad chestpiece, heavy greaves, and wide pauldrons emblazoned with the Queen’s surname and hardmark all indicated a member of the House Guard, but the inselni themselves was fairly short for a member of her race, though still a head taller than most in the room. Her face was wrinkled, old: you’d see her more with the other elderly on the streets at the break of dawn making breakfast for the grandchildren, or sweeping the front doorsteps.
The only things that spoke ‘Imperial Martial’ about the inselni’s entire clothing nor hardmark was the emerald green jade badge emblazoned with a silver seal of the Queen’s surname wrapped in concentric rings of clouds, mountains, and rivers. That and a pair of piercing amber eyes that fixated patiently on person to person, first picking apart the forms of each person from their shoes to their eyes.
“At ease, soldiers.” The Martial called out to the saluting officers, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “I am Teng Bei Zhuoying, Acting Imperial Martial of Her Majesty’s House Guard. Her Majesty has charged me with the task of investigating news of invasion from our southwest.”
She nodded at them. At least one of the younger soldiers reflexively glanced down at their uniform, like the sweat stains were going to net a demotion, but the Imperial Martial’s gaze shifted away from him and towards the maps haphazardly thrown around at the center of the table.
“Now then.” She calmly announced. “You will inform me of this situation. Her Majesty has commanded me to take the threat of invasion seriously, but I urge you to remember: your Communities hang in the balance here. Failure to inform me of the situation will beget punishment, while your cooperation and assistance will be rewarded.”
Yalfen as a city was made up of nine constituent districts, themselves by technicality small fortified cities, interconnected by ancient stone roadways, villages, small towns, irrigation systems and aqueducts, and of course, endless miles of agriculture and livestock pastures upon and between the rolling hills and forests that make up the landscape.
Surrounding each of the districts are massive stone brick walls constructed millenia back: at the base they spanned some impressive fifteen meters or so, and being sloped, tapered more thinly the higher one went, reaching a minimum thickness of seven meters, and a minimum height of fifteen meters, discounting the towers. Despite the flying eaves of the massive watchtowers and barbicans, the walls were not solely decorative, armed with modernizations from the time of the Elenrian Civil War: on the top of the walls were curved and angled barbettes with space for a heavy sixteen-pound cast iron cannon, replete with crews mustered from the city’s Communities within.
The city itself was not new to siege. Despite being rightfully among the heartlands of Elenria, Yalfen geographically spanned over a range of low hills and forests, but was surrounded by much larger hills whose barren grounds were only good for the coal and bauxite beneath them, and otherwise served as a platform for sieging armies to build their trebuchets. Once a district was attacked, it was possible for the other districts to mobilize their own forces and the city garrisons themselves to rally and break a siege, and so over centuries the enemies of the Sanshan had learned to inundate the Elenrians with a larger army and methodically assault every district one-by-one in an intentional battle of attrition that would buy time for the alarm to be raised to the rest of the Sanshan Empire, and relief brought.
This specific doctrine, and as a result of being the city closest and most exposed to the border made Yalfen the target of many invasions, sieges, battles, and raids in centuries past, leaving the inhabitants with a sturdy grasp on the importance of being prepared for the failures of diplomacy. Resultantly, Yalfen boasted impressive subterranean wells and cisterns, as well as grain silos and storehouses that were well-maintained and regularly cleaned to the point the city’s seasonal festivals consisted of using up all of a Community’s siege food reserves to be consumed during the celebrations so as to not waste anything.
Teng Bei was herself a member of the Daibeng Community within the easternmost district of the city, a fact that she guessed was why Her Majesty had chosen her to take charge of the City’s defense. And she knew the validity of the soldiers’ claims: they’d caught a few prisoners who’d marauded a little too far and a little too alone to more able-bodied militias, and unsurprisingly been taken prisoner after their friends were subsequently burned alive. She’d had the chance to interview, interrogate these foreigners, and now that she was aware of the existence of the problem, her newfound subordinates of a newly unified army were pleading at her feet to see the sheer intensity and severity of the problem.
She looked out over Yalfen’s towering southern walls, at the long fields ahead of her, and then down at the long blank piece of paper she’d had brought up here along with a pen whose brush was both tiny, metal, and shaped like a leaf. In all honesty she’d missed home, being away for so long, and all, but she knew better to dally now.
Besides.
Her Community were happy to have her back, tearful, happy, astonished she was alive. But she was also a member of the House Guard, and now an Imperial Martial too, to boot. She could not be touched, not for a while, and neither could she touch anyone unrelated to her work. It was like a divorce in her heart to look down sadly at the great-great-great-grandchildren staring up at her with big eyes, and stand there unable to pick them up, and dote over them: look how you’ve grown! Look how all of you have grown! You have dimples now, and the thin bones we had from the famines are now a forgotten memory— look how you’ve all grown!
Admittedly she’d had to hope her helmet covered her face enough to not let her family see her tears, even if they were held inside her eyes with all the discipline she’d ever had.
But such was life. Such was life. And she looked up and tried to move on.
They needed soldiers. The five thousand soldiers she’d brought with her from the East were not going to be enough. She’d need to conscript more soldiers to man the walls, fill empty ranks. No time, not time at all. Peace and prosperity were bought with the blood of generations. Kumosenkan’s overlordship had bought them reprieve for one human lifetime, roughly. Now this generation had to pay the toll. By law the Queen could order the Communities to muster levied citizens and peasantry for war. An unpopular move. A necessary move. The soldiers were mustered alongside the Community leaders: an able-bodied man or woman from every third household in their Community was to report for army duties and training. Her Majesty Wills It.
The marauding invaders could not be allowed to resupply. Their infrastructure and their agriculture, the pride of their ancestors: it had to be culled. It had to be destroyed. The porcelain dove of Elenria belongs to Elenria alone, and even though Kumosenkan may use it, even they could not have it. The roads and bridges would be rigged with explosives and blown up. The fields and paddies would be flooded, the dikes broken open. Orchards would be burned. A starving army cannot march. A starving army can be killed. The soldiers went out on horseback with the peasants to carry out the orders. She saw an old man crying on the street. He must tear up the roads he’d maintained for his whole life. She looked away. Her Majesty Wills It.
The city was not fortified enough, not by her standards, not by the soldiers’ standards. There were not enough guns, not enough bullets. Walls could not possibly survive against the horrifying modern exploding cannonball she was told of. The Communities needed to contribute again. Dig rings of trenches and obstacles before the city. The forges were woken with coughs of smoke and ash. The factories and their idle workers jumpstarted with pay wired straight from the coffers in Aundui Yio by the strange tapping machine in the shed by the train platform. Beep-beep-beep. A whole sector of industry off their feet, and going to work on turning out steel and concrete for guns and concrete. A protesting bureaucrat turned white in front of her, stammering about policy and directive. She threatened to remove his jaw if he didn’t shut up. She smiled when they did. Her Majesty Wills It.
There were Kumo in the city. She’d never met one before. They didn’t want to work, but they were better-qualified. The Communities didn’t like them: “Too much.” They didn’t say what, but she had an idea why. She made them stay anyways, put them to work, save the children, who were put with the elders and sent north to Vono if their parents wanted. They needed able hands. They already had two hands, two feet, and two hands, two wings, two feet, and a tail. Eight legs and two hands would have to do too. There were complaints. “You’ll hear from Fuyonouso!” Fuyonouso wasn’t in Yalfen. “You’ll hear from the Governor!” The Governor wasn’t in Yalfen. She told the soldiers to take the spider people outside and look at the refugees if it made them feel better. She could care less. Her Majesty Wills It.
A beautiful thing is fragile. A beautiful thing must be guarded. The beautiful thing must die.
Order Of Battle.Surviving Forces From Crossroads Engagement:
1030 Light Infantry
30 Standard Infantry
60 Carabiners Cavalry
0 Conscript InfantryImperial Martial’s Reinforcements:
20 Field Guns
300 Special Infantry (Inselni Firetroop)
3000 Standard Infantry
1000 Light Infantry
750 Dragoons
250 CarabinersThese Infantry forces were pooled into a concentric ring of defenses that surrounded the southern approaches to Yalfen, while the artillery was mounted on the barbettes of the outer district city walls in batteries of four guns each. The city’s Communities further mobilized largely unarmed city militias to aid the fortification of the city, digging trench lines, and adding earthworks to shore up the outer defenses outside the city walls. While the cavalry units were primarily used to patrol the city’s outskirts for sign of the enemy, the Martial organized several troops in units of twelve to travel down south and conduct some kind of evacuation effort.
