407 - Strategic _chiravesa_

I stood silent. The fire crackled and hissed. Their eyes shone in its light, flickering likewise, some full of chalk, some full of charcoal. They saw me looking, reading. They put out their hands.

“You are not the only ones who should get a vote on this,” I said. “What I do affects so many more.” I saw lips thin. But no one argued. How could they?

“This war is almost over anyway,” I said. “I thought we’d be fighting at Delmenik, but they’re not amassing there after all, but at Fispur.” This had been amazing to me, that they’d let slip a chance to hold against us in a mountain pass, until I’d thought about it. “We will fight there, and after that once more at best, I think—their last stand for the city. Other than that it’s going to be this harassment they’re doing, and maybe less of that as we go, since the harassers are going to want to muster with the main armies.”

“Unless there’s another city behind us that turns again,” said Perha. “Just our luck it would be Osijitz or somewhere else way kyashin away.” I had already counted myself lucky that it had been at Minkemmenik, so close.

“Not if they have half a brain, after what we did to those child-rapers,” said Alaecha. Crush him like an insect, so none of the others will. This wasn’t quite what Arzaktaj had been talking about—no leader who had surrendered to us had been among the rebels, by choice—but I had not told Hurai he could not be harsh on their leaders, and he’d interpreted Arzaktaj’s advice broadly. Gods… this war can’t be over too soon.

But… I’d be Imperator—a Yeoli. There might be all manner of rebellions. They hadn’t thought of that, in the Assembly debate. I’d thought of it, but only in a distant sense, as something I’d read in a book. Not as I knew it now. Gods… All-Spirit…

I brought my mind back to where I was. “If it does happen, what would you have me do?” I asked. “Take myself away from the advance on Arko?” Lots of pursed lips and charcoal signs. “For the close ones, then!” someone said, and others took up.

I stood in a state that a chakrachaseye should never be in: silent for not knowing what to say. “I love you all, but kyash on your lives if the mission’s not important”? “If I get killed, the war is over and we are dog-meat, but I’ll forget that just for the few of you?” I tried to put a look on my face as if I was considering. They didn’t even want to hear what I really should say: “I have to balance this.”

The inevitable happened: as indecision causes decision to be taken out of your hands, silence does likewise with conversation. Someone hissed, “You can’t ask this, sheep-eaters,” and they were in full-scream argument again, until I threw up my hands again and yelled “Chen!” in my battlefield voice, though I wasn’t sure to what purpose when I still didn’t know what to say.

“I have to balance this,” I said. Chiravesa… But if I asked chiravesa of them, they’d ask it of me. “Best to use greatest strength against greatest weakness; I will consider which missions my weapon-sense will be most useful for, and they are the likeliest I will lead. But their importance to the entire war must be a consideration also.”

A majority were not satisfied, I knew, by the faces, and then the words. I wasn’t satisfied myself; there was no satisfactory solution to this. I felt like slinking away, like a traitor. I stayed, so as not to seem a coward. I laughed and wept and got drunk for Evi and the others, like everyone else. No wonder so many generals, I thought, are driven to drink. There was still a distance between them and me that had never been there before, and would be there from now on. I had set myself above them, so we could no longer be siblings in arms, as usual. I drank and wept in mourning for that, as well as the dead. I think some of them did, too. I remember embraces that felt like goodbye. When I think about it, I was actually fortunate that it happened so late in the war.

I had read about it, not only in Yeoli and Enchian books, but older Arkan ones: the dilemma of the fighting commander who, through his fighting, becomes too important to risk, eliminating the advantage of his fighting. Give this war another year, I thought, and they’d want me off the field entirely… thank the Gods it won’t go that long. But there were the wars I might have to fight once I was on the Crystal Throne. Again, no solution satisfied. I decided not to think about it further until I was there.

Incidentally, the matter of warriors voting had taken an interesting turn in my army. Among the Yeolis, about as many commanders were voted out by their units as you’d expect in that length of time. But then warriors among the allies had caught wind of the notion.

The first sub-commander wanting to depose his commander—a Lakan—had come to me back in Yeola-e, around Michere, if I recall rightly, asking me if that was allowed under me. It was unheard of among Lakans, of course, but he also knew I outranked the highest-ranking Lakan.

What I had done from the start was tell everyone that discipline would be according to their own customs unless I gave standing orders that overrode them—such as, for instance, the death penalty for looting—pretty much a standard way of leading allies. So he knew it was possible, if he could talk me into it.

I took it to the allied generals, of course. After they got over looking at me as if foam were dribbling out of my mouth, and heard me out, they allowed that there might be merit in it. Bad sub-commanders are a general’s curse, but he always finds out much later who they are than the warriors under them do.

What I did was let them make their own choices, and the result was that some nationalities adopted the practice—the A-niah, for instance, seized on it, since they are already a voting people—while others didn’t, and still others adopted it with modifications, such as any impeachments had to be approved by a general or some combination of higher-ranked officers. The least likely to adopt it were those who had strong cultural traditions of caste—including, unfortunately for that first man, the Lakans—or those who were simply conservative in their ways, such as the Schvait.

Things happened that you’d expect, such as warriors moving to vote out a commander just because they didn’t like him, and the other generals and I had to arbitrate a number of cases, but it settled out in time. Perhaps, being Yeoli, I am biased, but in my opinion, it strengthened us.

Why the Arkans were not mounting a huge defense at Delmenik pass, where by every instinct of strategy I’d ever learned from anywhere, they should be, I understood in part by doing strategic chiravesa. (Aspiring generals: if you are not willing to learn to do this, resign back down to common rank.)

First of all, they were remembering how well that sort of thing had worked for them against us before. We’d found some sort of way around or—as they now knew—over it, every time. As well, their generals were no longer disbelieving that we had the wing. They can attack us from the air—but they can still only take ground with a ground army, since the wing-demons, like ships, must have a base, and you can only keep ground with a ground army, anyway. We can count on no walls or gates to protect us, and we are safer from fire from above if we are out of doors. There is only one way to both be strong enough against the wing and destroy Shefen-kas’s barbarian army, and it’s something that we are strong in.

Numbers.

That was what they were gathering, in part by ship, at Fispur.