Chapter 8: Declaration of War (last part)

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There was a group watching that portrait of hell unfold from up among the trees

on the mountain slope. That group were all clad in black painted armor, carried

bows and magic wands, and had black cloth wrapped around their faces.

This group was a commando unit from the kingdom Amidonia had just attacked.

There were perhaps 2,000 of them. The central figure of that black-clad group was of

slight build, but her proportions made it clear she was a woman, even through that

outfit.

She was the leader of the commando unit.

The people down below were making no attempt to help their comrades who had

sunken into the bog. If anything, the Amidonian forces were stepping on them as

they retreated.

When she thought that humans could become this cruel in order to survive, it

made her shudder a little.

There are times when a king must give cruel orders, she thought. However, when he

shows so little hesitation, I find myself disliking him as a person rather than as a king.

As she was thinking that, one of her subordinates came to her with a report.

"Lady Canaria, the lead group of the principality's forces has made it through the

valley. Should we give pursuit?"

In response, the leader shook her head. "Not necessary. Our mission is to disrupt

and stall the enemy. Besides, we're only 2,000 strong. Even if we pursue them, we

can't expect better results than we've already achieved. We've done plenty. Prepare

to withdraw."

"Yes, ma'am!" he called.

Once the subordinate who had brought her the report left, she removed the cloth

wrapped around her face.

At just that moment, the clouds covering the moon drew back, the moonlight

shining down on her beautiful blue hair.

Beautiful even in the simple act of brushing her hair back, this was the kingdom's

lorelei, Juna Doma.

When she'd appeared before Souma, she'd been the lorelei Juna who worked at a

singing cafe, but in the Navy she had become Canaria, the leader of 2,000 marines,

the sole unit intended to fight in amphibious operations.

Yes, the true identity of this commando unit was the Marine Corps, which

reported to Excel Walter.

Juna was relieved to have successfully accomplished her task.

Grandmother handled her part well, she thought. I can't be the one to screw this up.

By "Grandmother," she meant the Admiral of the Navy, Excel Walter. In addition

to being a lorelei and Canaria, Juna also had her face as Excel's granddaughter. Of

course, with Excel's long life and many loves, she had birthed many children, and if

she were to count all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren... well, she had

enough relatives to populate a small village.

With a family that big, it would be possible to overthrow the kingdom using only

her own blood relatives. That was why, to avoid needless suspicion, Excel had kept

the "Walter" name to herself. When her children reached maturity, she would

disown them and send them off to marry into other houses. Juna was the child of one

of Excel's sons who had married into the Doma family of merchants.

Juna, who had inherited Excel's beautiful face, looked at the cruelly abandoned

corpses of the Amidonian soldiers and frowned. "...If we leave them be, the local

beasts might develop a taste for human flesh. That would be a problem. Let's rescue

the survivors and take them prisoner and bury the rest."

"You're going to help Amidonian soldiers?" her subordinate asked.

"After being abandoned by their own king, His Majesty King Souma, the king of an

enemy state, will save them," she said. "It could improve His Majesty's reputation,

and it can't possibly hurt it."

"I see."

Like the aura she exuded, Juna's thought process was mature, as well. After

giving the orders to her subordinates, Juna looked towards the north-northwest.

That was the direction she expected Souma and the others were heading in right

now. After this, Souma and the others would be entering the final battle with the

Principality of Amidonia.

Juna placed a hand on her ample bosom, closing her eyes in meditation. Your

Majesty... Please, stay safe.

That she prayed for his safety, not his victory, was due to her feelings as Juna

Doma, Souma's lorelei, peeking through.

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The ambush in the Goldoa Valley largely killed the Amidonian forces' marching

speed. When they tried to reorganize themselves into ranks after leaving the valley,

the 30,000 troops had been reduced to 15,000. This indicated that, in addition to

those that had been lost to the ambush and those that had been trampled when

they'd sunk into the swamp, there had been a considerable number of soldiers who

had fled, too.

Furthermore, because the wagons had had no choice but to drop their supplies

and run in the chaos, the forces of the principality were now stricken with both

exhaustion and hunger.

The soldiers' stress had reached its peak and they were ready to blow at any

moment. Even if they made it to Van with 15,000 troops, and then managed to

launch a pincer attack with the defenders, it would be difficult to win against the

Elfrieden Kingdom's force of 55,000.

In response to this situation, Gaius VIII first had the captain of the wagon teams

take responsibility for the loss of their provisions. He decapitated the man in order

to pacify the other soldiers.

Next he gathered provisions from the nearby villages and towns, drafting their

people into service to bring his total troops up to 25,000. Of course, this caused

some resentment, but with the very existence of his country on the line, Gaius didn't

care.

While this had let him secure the number of troops he would need, his forces

were gathering provisions and soldiers as they advanced, so they moved slowly. It

had been some days since the retreat had begun, but they still had no idea when

they would arrive at Van.

After spending yet another day, the Amidonian forces finally came close enough

that they would likely reach Van within the day. However, the Amidonian forces had

been making a fatal mistake all this time.

They'd rushed their advance too much.

You may question what's wrong with that, or you may even think that Sun Tzu

himself said that "Soldiers value haste."

However, when Sun Tzu speaks of a "soldier," he means "war." In the original

text, it says, "Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has

never been seen associated with long delays."

What he means by that is: "War (because it's a thing that exhausts countries) is

most beneficial when resolved quickly, and there is no country that has benefited

from a lengthy war."

That was why the principality's armies should have paid heed to the following

words in The Art of War's chapter "Maneuvering":

"Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude,

most dangerous. If you set a fully-equipped army in march in order to snatch an

advantage, the chances are that you will be too late. On the other hand, to detach a

flying column for the purpose involves the sacrifice of its baggage and stores."

"Maneuvering" is the competition between two forces over which will claim

strategically important locations first.

In the case of the Battle of Yamazaki between Hideyoshi Hashiba and Mitsuhide

Akechi, that had been Mount Tennouzan, while in the Russo-Japanese War, it had

been 203 Hill.

Certainly, if you can secure those important points before your opponent, the

battle will be to your advantage.

However, Sun Tzu says developing a fixation on those points and competing with

your opponent over them is dangerous. If you send your entire army, you'll likely

arrive too late, but if you send a fast unit ahead to do the job, they'll end up leaving

the team that carries their supplies behind.

If that happens, even if you do capture the point in question, it's pointless.

Furthermore, Sun Tzu says that if you march one hundred li while maneuvering,

only one-tenth of your army will reach their destination, and the leaders of all three

of your divisions will fall into the enemy's hands. If you march fifty li, only half of

your army will reach the destination, and the leader of your first division will be

struck down.

In other words, if you exhaust your soldiers trying to seize strategically

important points, and you lose your supplies in the process, there's no point.

If you look at what the armies of the principality had done, you'll see that they

had grown overly fixated on the strategically important capital city, Van, abandoned

their supply wagons, and needlessly exhausted their soldiers.

In other words, they'd done exactly what Sun Tzu cautions against.

What the army of the principality found when they reached the open plain ten

kilometers south of Van was a fresh army from the kingdom waiting for them.

When Gaius saw the forces arrayed before him, all of the power left his body and

he nearly fell from his horse. "This is absurd... You can't mean to tell me Van has

already fallen...?"

There was no one who could respond to his mutterings.

◇ ◇ ◇

To jump straight to the conclusion, no, Van had not yet fallen at this point.

When the forces of Elfrieden under Souma arrived a day before the Amidonian

forces, they didn't do anything stupid like try to attack the 5,000 elite soldiers holed

up in Van. They split off 10,000 troops to monitor those soldiers, while the main

force moved to the open field ten kilometers south of Van, waiting for the main force

of the principality's army which would no doubt be coming.

Souma's target had been the main force of the Amidonian army from the very

beginning. This was why he had told Gaius the target of their attack, something that

should normally be kept secret.

By first saying he would attack Van, he would lie in wait for the principality's

forces to rush there, and then he would destroy them.

It was a plan that fell under Thirty-Six Stratagems's sixth stratagem, "Make a

sound in the east, then strike in the west," but he was also reenacting the Battle of

Maling, from which the words of the second stratagem, "Besiege Wei to rescue

Zhao," came.

This was the strategy that the second Sun Tzu, Sun Bin, had used to defeat his

rival Pang Juan. Gaius had never stood a chance of seeing through it.

While he did have 25,000 troops at his command, in comparison to those

exhausted troops which had lost most of their supply wagons, the kingdom's forces

had enough rations from Poncho to feed the whole army, and had spent the day

resting on the field and waiting, so they were eager to fight.

55,000 kingdom soldiers in top condition vs. 25,000 exhausted principality

soldiers.

The battle had been decided before it even began.

In the main camp in the center of the Elfrieden Kingdom's forces which had taken

the crane wing formation, Souma rose from his camp stool, raised his right arm high,

then swung it down towards the forces of the principality.

"""Yeahhhhhhh!""" A victory cry rose up from the forces of the kingdom.

With that as the signal, the final battle between the Elfrieden Kingdom and the

Principality of Amidonia began.

[MISTERLP]:

"Let them attack the countryside to take the

capital."

Type: Proverb

Meaning: To accomplish something with minimal effort.

Origin: During the One Week War, Souma used the country town of Altomura as

bait, then used the opening that created to enable an attack on the capital of the

Principality of Amidonia.

Synonyms: "Lose the battle to win the war."