Up until 1681, that is. By then Saypur had built up its military and started to flex its muscles, and it was decided Ghaladesh could no longer tolerate such lax control over the Continent’s central city. A litany of severe laws were passed and the crackdowns began. Things escalated—first a protest, then a riot, and then municipal buildings were occupied and the clerks there held hostage—until by ’85 Bulikov was in a full-fledged revolt: the Bulikovian Uprising, they called it. And what started out as an uprising quickly evolved into an outright war.
It was to be the world’s first taste of modern warfare, of battle bereft of Divine intervention. Saypur had just scaled up its production of bolt-shots and other mechanized weaponry to the extent that common infantry could utilize them, and its forces were fresh and eager to fight, keen to prove to their old repressors that Saypur deserved to be a world power. But the Continent had numbers and territory on its side, and despite General Prandah’s claims that this would be a “lightning-fast war, a lot of noise followed by a long silence,” and the vigorous public campaign that all hostilities would merely last a summer—hence the name, which stuck—soon both Saypuri and Continental forces found themselves dug in two hundred miles east of Bulikov on the banks of the Luzhkov River, with no indication that either could break through the other’s fortifications.
Enter Captain Lalith Biswal, then twenty-three years old, a careful, bookish student of what few non-Divine wars could be studied. And, under his command in Yellow Company, a sixteen-year-old Turyin Mulaghesh who had run away from home, lied about her age, enlisted, and gotten her stupid ass promoted to sergeant without even realizing what was going on.
It was during the fifth Battle of the Luzhkov when Captain Biswal and Yellow Company were dispatched in an ambitious flanking maneuver, marching upstream, floating the river, and attacking the Continental positions from the north. It should have worked perfectly and caused massive disruptions in the Continentals’ lines…or it would have if the Continentals hadn’t been aware of the pending attack, right down to the minute it started.
The Saypuri attack was routed both quickly and brutally. The skiffs that had been used to float across the Luzhkov were captured and burned, leaving Yellow Company stranded on the wrong side of the river. All order and discipline collapsed, and the Continentals drove them mercilessly north, away from the battle and the Saypuri lines.
Yellow Company retreated through the night, a rambling, uncoordinated rush through the Continental countryside, pursued by forces far more knowledgeable about the territory than they were. The woods were filled with screams, sprinting horses, distant firelight. When the sun came up, the ragged Saypuri soldiers looked around and realized they did not recognize where they were.
They had never seen this particular set of hills before. Their scouts reported settlements nearby, but not fortifications: they were simple farms.
It took Biswal a moment to realize: “We’re past their fortifications,” he said, sitting atop his horse. “By the seas, we’re behind them!” Though Yellow Company could not have known, the Continental brigade that’d been dispatched to pursue them had been distracted by a full-frontal assault by General Prandah’s forces far to the south. Which meant Yellow Company no longer had any pursuers, no one to push them out of Continental territory.
It should not have happened. But it did.
Mulaghesh still remembers the evening of that first day, when Biswal approached her and took her aside. The mist gathering on the hills, the moaning and weeping from the scattered troops. Fires were forbidden—the smoke would give them away—so all of them clutched their arms and legs and shivered, eating dried meats. This had not been intended to be a far-ranging mission, so they had very few provisions, and many of those had been lost in the retreat.
He led her to a small forest clearing. “Lieutenant Pankaj died of wounds this morning,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Though I’ve heard a lot of sorries today. The word’s losing meaning.” He sighed. “We can’t find Niranjan, or Kapil, or Ram. Which means that I’ve lost nearly all of my officers overnight. I don’t have powers of promotion, but you’re more or less going to have to be my lieutenant, Mulaghesh, so that’s what I’m going to call you. And if we live to get busted down for that, I’ll be grateful.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re young, but I’ve watched you fight. You’re not stupid, and other soldiers listen to you. That’s a valuable thing.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Biswal turned to watch the hills. “So. It seems like we have three choices. We can return south, survey the enemy’s position, and try and flank them again when the time’s right, carrying out our original orders. Or, we can go east, try and ford the Luzhkov, circumvent the enemy’s position, and rejoin Prandah.” He paused.
“And our third choice?”
He looked at her, his pale eyes sharp. “What do you think our odds are of pulling either of those two options off, Lieutenant?”
“Minimal, sir.”
“And why’s that?”
“The Continentals aren’t stupid. At some point they’ll realize we’re still here. If they aren’t in pursuit by now, they’ll be ready for us to return. They’ll watch the river. That’s what they’ll expect.” She glanced, side-eyed, at the ragged, wounded soldiers sitting below the pines. “And I don’t think we’re in any shape for serious combat, sir. We don’t have any supplies. I’m not sure if we can last more than a handful of days.”
“I agree.” He looked at the hills surrounding them again.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“You mentioned a third option, sir.”
“I did.” He sucked his teeth. “Do you know what keeps the Continental forces on their feet, Lieutenant? What keeps their fortifications so firm?”
She was smart enough by then to know not to answer a superior officer’s rhetorical questions. “I don’t, sir.”
“Farms,” said Biswal. He walked to a tree, leaned against it, and watched a tiny hamlet nestled in a distant valley. “Food and farms. We’re in the middle of the breadbasket of the Continent, Mulaghesh. By complete and total accident, sure, but here we are.” He paused. “And there are lots of ways to win a war. A war isn’t between armies, it’s between nations.” He pursed his lips, sighed, shook his head. “But by the seas, what a way to fight.”
“Are you suggesting we…”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Go on, Lieutenant.”
“Are you suggesting that we make war upon the civilians here?”
“I’m saying one option is we destroy their farms, their infrastructure, their irrigation systems. Take what we need to survive, destroy the rest, then move to the next town, and do it again. We’d cut right through all of the Continentals’ supply lines. But it’s a damn bastard thing to do, that I’ll say.”
He looked at her, and she somehow understood that he wanted her to judge him, to say something, perhaps to approve. And what lay unspoken between them was the knowledge that they now made war in the nation of those who once enslaved them.
All Mulaghesh could manage was, “We’re dying, sir.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“We’re starving.”
“Yes.”
“I think we’re going to die here no matter what we do.”