"To the Last Syllable of Recorded Time"
-Chapter 4: Vis-à-Vis-
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The armies came home from the Tinto-Grasslands border the next day just as the sun was falling huge on the horizon, wrapped in the blood of twilight. It was the hour when buglers sounded the ceasing of hostilities for the day, the hour when soldiers withdrew to mourn their dead and lick their wounds, when those who supported the combatants had their true work to do.
However, even the presence of true work couldn't keep hundreds of them, thousands, from crowding the streets and alleys formed by the carefully planned city of tents, to watch what could very well be their salvation. And were they grand! Each one of them, from officers to infantry, clothed impeccably in blue and white, each marching or riding in perfect step. And at the head of them all, standing out in his singular lack of uniformity, rode the proud strategist, aloof, like nobility incarnate, like a god.
And if there were any among them who remembered a white-coated man who once rode among them like the eldritch among the earthly, who sat in council with Harmonians not seen as saviors, but barbarians, invading foreigners, who thought nothing of the lives of innocents – well, how could the two be the same? The enemy of five years before was a beast. This was a man to invite to a table set with the best flatware you possessed.
For his part, Caesar wished as he rode in that he was good with horses. He wished he were the sort of general who would insist on tending to his own mount, going with her, or him, or whatever, to the stable-tent and brushing it down and tending to its teeth and whatever else needed to be done for horses. He wished he were the sort of person who would hold an apple or carrot beneath its nose, and pat its neck, and mutter to it as he brooded.
He needed some time to brood.
But as he rode in, a small Karayan boy dashed up and took the reigns. Once he had slid off the thing, the boy tended to it expertly, and led it off. The kid couldn't have been more than twelve, thirteen, maybe, and had far more competency than Caesar could ever have hoped for.
Somewhere to the south, the Harmonians were setting up their own camp. He had no doubt that Albert would have to oversee his own tent's construction and make sure that there were enough creature comforts for him. His brother was disgustingly fond of luxury. Still, it was all for the good; he'd be able to confront Chris and Hugo about what they'd done without Albert there.
He was informed by a disconcertingly obsequious guard outside Chris's tent that the Captain was out at the moment, she was visiting one of her knights, but she'd be back in a matter of moments, so would he like to leave a message for her, or wait for her? No, thank you, he would not; waiting for her would be a horrendous anticlimax, and he'd be damned if he had any life taken out of what he wanted to say by some second-rate attendant. He'd prefer to rage at the Captain in person.
Hugo, however, was present just a few tents over, in the residence that had been set up shortly after the Zexen and Grasslands armies had set up camp in closer proximity. He had also placed a thick rug on the floor of the tent, which Caesar was able to stumble over as he came in. Fantastic; so much for the advantage of surprise. So much for the dramatic entrance.
Still, he pretty much made up for it with his opening salvo.
"What did you do?" he demanded. Hugo recoiled at the anger in his voice.
"What do you mean?" the Grasslander asked, uncertain. "I..."
"What would ever, ever make you think that it's a good idea to ally with Harmonians? They're deceitful, they're...Have you forgotten what they've done?"
Hugo collected himself and shook his head, rising from the cushion upon which he sat. "Of course I haven't, Caesar, but we need their help."
"Like you need a hole in the head! You can be sure they have an ulterior motive in this."
"They probably do, yes, but we can deal with that once Tinto's threat is no longer imminent." Hugo looked at that moment at once so earnest and so wise that Caesar couldn't help but think his own indignation vaguely ridiculous. He turned away, paced a few times, and shoved his hand through his hair, then swung back toward the future chief.
"You do realize who's leading them, don't you?"
"I do," Hugo said softly.
"And?"
"And...his hand is outstretched when we're flat on our backs, and it would be foolish not to take it."
"Except – " Caesar laughed – "except that it's outstretched because his accomplice doesn't have a good enough angle at our backs. He wants to lift us up so that the other traitor can have a good shot. You know? Albert has never cared for anyone but Albert. He's a dangerous man. He can bring nothing but harm to us. His ambition is, is, overpowering. There's nothing else for...him..." Caesar stopped when he saw that Hugo wasn't looking at him.
"Of course," came the half-expected soft voice from behind him, "that may well be a good thing. When you know a man's motivations, you can predict his actions."
Caesar turned to see Albert smirking there, a nervous-looking herald beside him. Evidently, the latter had been too intimidated by Caesar's tirade to interrupt him and keep him from making an ass of himself. Little bastard.
"Major Albert Silverberg of Harmonia," the herald muttered, and slipped away. Albert seemed all the more amused for the sad introduction, and walked boldly into the tent.
"Hugo," he greeted with a nod. "How is your mother?"
"Do you know her?" Caesar was slightly mollified to see that for all his talk of accepting help from any source, Hugo still looked askance at Albert.
Albert, however, chose to utterly ignore the lack of enthusiasm for his presence. "By reputation only, I'm afraid. My grandfather always spoke quite highly of her."
"She's doing the actual job of governing, while I'm out here playing at war." Both Hugo's response and his subsequent laugh sounded rather canned.
"Ah. Well, it's nice to meet you face-to-face." Caesar was tempted to point out that they'd met face-to-face before, under decidedly different circumstances, but he wouldn't want anyone thinking him tactless. "And Caesar," Albert greeted. "I haven't seen much of you lately."
For a man who prided himself on subtlety, Albert's jibes were quite broad. "Some of us had things to attend to on the ride over. Some of us didn't have time to just look impressive." Not too bad.
"Some of us can multitask," his brother shot back. Asshole. Hugo coughed.
"In any case – it's nice to hear that you're both here," the young man said. "Perhaps if you want to continue this conversation..."
"Oh, no. As delightful as I find my brother's banter, I have other things to discuss. May I?" Albert asked, gesturing at a cushion.
"Of course," Hugo replied, putting away the papers he had been studying before Caesar had come in.
"We need to discuss the overarching strategy for your forces," Albert said as he sat down. "As it stands, there seems to be none."
Hugo nodded, then called, "Elli!"
A page popped his head inside. "Yeah?"
"Look to see if Chris is back, okay?"
The page nodded and popped back out.
Hugo shrugged at Albert. "Lady Chris should probably be here for this meeting."
"Naturally," Albert agreed. He looked over at Caesar, who suddenly felt singularly uncomfortable, standing as the others sat. So he made his way as unobtrusively as he could over to a pillow and sat down. His back complained as he did so. It was a mystery how so ill-furnished a people could have established themselves as a power in the world.
"So, tell me, then, both of you. What were your observations on the Tinto army?"
Caesar looked over at Albert, who was watching him from the corner of his eye. "Well," Caesar said at last, "there are a lot of them."
"That much, I've heard."
He tried to organize his thoughts into a coherent whole before speaking again. "There's – "
"Lady Chris Lightfellow," said someone from the tentflap, and the woman herself walked in. She looked tired and a bit ragged, but smiled.
"Your page found me just as I was passing the tent," she said. "Terribly convenient."
"Particularly for us," Hugo said. "We only just started. Please, sit."
"Captain Lightfellow," Albert greeted. "An honor."
"Of course," she replied. Caesar was quite glad to see that she too looked less than overjoyed at their new strange bedfellow.
Albert didn't dwell on the less than decorous greeting. "I've been studying the information you sent me over the past days. Most of it is quite useful and insightful. Commend who's responsible for that." Caesar hated Albert fairly considerably at that moment. "There are, however, a few misconceptions that this latest battle has made clear."
"Please, enlighten us," Caesar said. The ensuing silence made him wish he hadn't. Sadly, it was Albert who saved him from his own childishness, turning toward him with a smile.
"That's what I plan to do. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the situation is more dire by far than it originally seemed. All evidence pointed toward the fact that the Tinto forces would be ill-trained and barely armed. The opposite now seems to be true. You had been working under the principle that even if you were outnumbered, you still stood a fighting chance because of your superior training and coherence. Yes, your forces are superior, but only marginally. It has become evident that you would most likely need, if luck stood, about a four to five soldier to soldier ratio.
"However, reports of their hundred thousand have been exaggerated. At the moment, they probably only have fifty thousand mobilized. It'll probably be about three weeks before the others finish training, and then you're in deep water.
"Obviously, you're not going to get an additional forty thousand soldiers, even given three weeks. So conventional fighting – honest fighting, if you will – is out of the question."
"So what do you propose?" Hugo asked.
"My first impulse would be an assassination, but it would be seen as..." Albert chewed at his lip. "Cruel, basically. It would really play quite poorly in the international forum: the man wants his daughter back, so we kill him."
"I don't much care for the idea of assassination, either," Chris said.
"Some people find it immoral," he agreed. "Maybe..." He nodded shortly. "We should assemble a force. Take the city of Tinto."
Caesar spluttered. "I'm sorry? You seem to be suggesting that we..."
"Invade, yes."
"This isn't a..." No, that wasn't right. "We're not a...We're defending ourselves!"
"And let's see you defend yourself when Tinto is able to call upon every resource available to it. Let's see you defend yourself once they're no longer hemmed in by mountains. We can defend ourselves now; in three weeks, we won't be able to. So we exploit our advantage. We destroy their capacity to attack us."
Hugo frowned thoughtfully. "How does it make us look?"
"We'll be fine, as long as we handle it the right way. We don't go scorched-earth, we don't allow pillaging, and we back off as soon as Gustav promises to respect our borders." Albert leaned back a bit. "Simple."
"How many people would we kill as a result of that?"
The elder brother raised an eyebrow at the younger. "I'm no seer, Caesar."
"So there is something you're incapable of!"
"I would guess...It would be a strike force, small, well-trained. We'd probably only send in five thousand to take the capital. We'd probably lose, of that, a thousand. Maybe more. Tinto would lose a good part of their forces in the immediate area."
"And civilian casualties?"
"It depends on whether they resisted or not. There's going to be casualties with this, okay?"
"I don't like it," Caesar declared.
"I'm sorry," Albert responded.
"We're fighting this war to maintain our sovereignty, but you think we should invade another country? It's a touch hypocritical, don't you think?"
"Do you have another suggestion?"
"We use the mountains to our advantage. There are enough narrow passes that we can compensate for our inferior numbers."
"And?"
"And what? We hold them off."
"Until what?"
"Until we find Lilly."
Albert nodded; clearly, he had expected this answer. "You won't."
"Albert thinks that she's dead," Caesar explained to the other two. Chris looked as though that sounded about right to her; Hugo looked pale. "I think Albert's full of crap. I met Gustav once. He was devoted to his daughter."
"You think Gustav was behind Lilly's disappearance?" Chris asked Albert.
"I do. He moved far too suddenly. Besides, if he had thought she was still alive, he certainly wouldn't have acted so suddenly or violently."
"He wouldn't have killed her," Caesar insisted.
"Sometimes, Caesar, you're a bit too..." Albert squinted a bit as he searched for the appropriate word. "Sappy," he finally managed, with a half-shrug that was probably apologetic for the banal language rather than the harsh sentiment. "The only way Gustav could get a war in the Grasslands would be to – "
"And why would he want a war in the Grasslands?"
Albert shrugged casually, but he sounded a bit irritated. "I couldn't tell you for sure. Land, probably; the population of Tinto has been expanding precipitously in the past few years, and it's a country of limited size."
"If they wanted land, they could have asked for it," Hugo pointed out. "There aren't any tribes in the southwest. I'm sure none of the tribes would object to them establishing a few farms or the like."
He shrugged again. "Popularity, then, maybe. There are few things like a war to make a nation rally around their leader."
"You're actually proposing – " Caesar forced a laugh. "You're actually proposing that Gustav – hid, or murdered, or whatever – his daughter to increase his popularity?"
"The people elect him. He needs popularity to stay in power. Men have done less for power."
"He would never do that. It's vile. It's absolutely vile."
His brother fixed him with a green gaze laden with contempt. "It's governance."
"Well, I guess if anyone in the room were going to suggest something like that, it would have been you, wouldn't it? It takes someone like you to come up with the murder of family," Caesar sneered, barely even paying attention to what he was saying. Despite the inanity of the attack, Albert actually, physically jerked back a bit. Still, it took but a moment before the elder brother came back with his own salvo.
"There's no need to be a child, Caesar. Personal attacks are hardly called for, just because you're incapable of grasping the real world."
"You know what?" Caesar said, standing up. "I'm done. I'm done. This isn't the time, or the place, and I can't – I'm done."
He didn't notice whether any of the others said anything or made any motions for him to stop and sit down and talk over his issues like a big boy. He was too busy trying to think of a place to sit, and brood.
He needed some time to brood.
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Whoo. Long chapter. And I was going to include another section, but ultimately decided against it, since I want to maximize the number of chapters in this story, because I really enjoy coming up with chapter titles.
Poor Caesar. I'm getting pretty annoyed at how I can't stop myself from portraying him as childish. He'll grow up, though. It's a coming-of-age fanfic, dammit!
Anyway. In response to a few inquiries:
I am going by the Luc rather than the Ted model of "whoops, we silly game designers forgot that True Runes grant agelessness, so let's make crap up to cover for it." So Hugo did age a bit, because he hadn't reached full physical maturity. So, physically, he's probably about, ohh, seventeen, rather than the twenty he would be.
Speaking of which – the story is five years after the end of Suikoden III.
And yes, Geddoe is the FC.
Oh, and to Jonathan – I have to agree that Mathiu was the best strategist, and probably would have been my favorite, were I not, you know, shallow and fangirl-y. Cough. Oh, and I left out Budehuc as an ally because I figured they wouldn't have any sort of real army to reckon with. They're sort of more of a country manor castle than a fortress castle.