Chapter 25: Alea Iacta Est (the die has been cast)

Gyousou had known going into this that, even with a counter-strategy, Asen would not make this easy on him. If he were going to split the defensive forces left behind to guard the Provinces where he retained influence then he would naturally position them in the fortresses that had the best defensive capabilities. The troops led by General Risai Ryuushi were already on the westernmost border of Ba Province, engaging the forces that were entrenched in the fortresses along the border of Ba and Zui, the capitol province of Tai. He himself and the air forces under his command had by-passed the border and headed strait across the sky of Ba Province to the sea, until they reached the cliffs where the sea-outpost that guarded the easternmost border lay. That fortress was built to withstand siege and it guarded the only flat bit of beach in the fjord ridden coastline of Ba Province. There was a harbor hidden deep within the clefts that the fortress overlooked and guarded access to. Ten miles out to sea, Gyousou's navy waited with the thousands of land-troops he had assembled for his campaign anchored of the coast of a nearby group of islands.

"A clear day with little wind, a fine day for a battle," the captain of the vessel remarked to his king as they both stared through their spyglasses at the battlefield that lay before them.

The day might be fine for a battle but the positioning was not. The opposing force possessed the high ground, being positioned up on the top of the cliff, and it would be very difficult to deploy the land forces at Gyousou's command. The soldiers would first have to climb the cliff and then even worse, position themselves for a siege. The usual strategy with such disadvantages would have been to leave the battle to be fought in the air but Gyousou's air forces were spread a bit thin, what with the contingent that he'd had to leave behind to defend the capitol. Fortunately he had a plan.

"That'll be the signal then Your Majesty," the captain said a short while later as a beacon-fire was lit down the coast to the south.

"Signal the other ships to sail for the cliffs," Gyousou commanded. "And make ready the trebuchets."

"Aye!" the captain said willingly.

The plan was not without risk, not the least of them being that using catapults on sailing vessels rarely ended up well, but the Ministry of Winter had made improvements on the loading and unloading mechanism's modifying them so that they could be used as offensive weapons. There was still the fire to worry about (fire and wooden ships generally being considered a danger) but in this case the weighted oil-soaked wicker was sent out unlit instead of courting disaster by doing it the way it was done on land and lighting the shot before it was launched. Instead, archers with oil-soaked arrow heads and pots containing embers waited on the aft of the ship and as soon as the shot was in the air, they sent a flaming arrow out after it, igniting it in mid-flight and letting the wind and flame do the rest. The center of the wicker shot was not only filled with lead to give it the proper weight for shot but also with many sealed bottles filled with high-grade sake. When the shot landed, it would not only crash into the wall while on fire, but the any fire would spread out via the swiftly igniting alcohol. For some reason the Royal Consort called it "The Ultimate Cocktail."

The archers made ready and the engineers readied the launchers, the soldiers assigned to the ammunition's rolled out the wicker wrapped weighted shot and began to carefully soak them with the flammable oil. The signal-men inhabited the crows nest to signal the other ships.

The opening volley was set up mainly to catch the fortress defenders off guard. Gyousou's ships, filled with a number of his land forces, moved forward until they were within range.

"We await your order," the head captain informed him once the ships were in position.

The fortress at the top of the cliff, called Kaitou (east sea) had been running with defenses manned for the last several days, ever since the ships that Gyousou had ordered assembled there had waited out off the coast. The skies were perpetually filled with kijyuu, patrolling the sky for attacks, and the walls defenses were manned by shifts of soldiers.

When they had reached the distance he wanted, Gyousou ordered the ships to slow and prepare for fire. When he received signals from all of the other ships that their weapons were fully ready and they were in position, he sharply gave the command to fire.

Truth to tell, it irritated him on many levels to give the command. Civil wars always troubled him deeply, and now so more than ever. he was the king of this nation, to have a nation that rebelled against him and the will of heaven was the same as saying that his countrymen had judged him unfit to rule. he knew, intellectually that these men and women who had arrayed against him were following the orders of a very clever and manipulative man who had convinced them all that Gyousou was somehow a false king, a usurper, but that did not alleviate the pain deep in his heart that he must wage battles against people he was supposed to protect.

:Not to mention that when I'm finished demolishing the fortress, I'm only going to have to rebuild it again later out of this kingdom's coffers,: he thought irritatedly.

Despite the relative economic stability of the north, Tai was still quite poor. Certainly they were no-where near the enormous prosperity known by the great kings of old.

:Thought the climate and land is harsh, Tai has been blessed by Heaven with everything it should need to bring great prosperity if the ruler is wise and does not squander its resources like the previous king did,: Gyousou thought to himself.

When he finished reconquering Ba, Ie, Bun and Jou Provinces, he planned to seize most of the ill-gotten assets that the corrupt shuukou had lined their own pockets with and put the wealth toward repairing the damage he was going to cause on his march through the rebel provinces.

The flaming spheres arced almost gracefully through the air, like comets, bursting into immolation upon contact with the walls. It was a shame that such destruction looked so beautiful. The way the flame seemed to hover in the air like setting suns, should not have looked beautiful. The catapults mounted on the walls of the fortress returned fire but, as Gyousou had expected, they used a heavier form of ammunition, a simple orb of rock or lead designed to go right through hulls and sink ships. Gyousou's ammunition was wicker wrapped around a core of lead (and flammable containers) making it lighter and able to travel greater distances.

:I feel almost bad for them,: Gyousou thought upon a moments reflection as the commanders at the top of the cliff impotently returned fire against a foe that was out of their range.

The flaming shot that Gyousous forces fired at them sailed up into the air then burst apart flooding the walls and sometimes the interior of the fortress with rippling sheets of fire. Of course it was not long before the commanders got smart and stopped trying to sink their vessels with ammunition that would not reach them. A mass of aerial troops took to the skies and swooped like kingfishers down the face of the cliff racing out along the sea with their riders possed of bows and ammunition to attack the ships directly. Gyousou gave another signal with his fan and the archers who were not set to set the flame-shot alight turned their arrows to the forces coming up fast on the ships prows. The air was soon filled with the whistling shriek of arrows as his forces moved to rid themselves of the threat of attack and the kijyuu riders tried to fell as many soldiers as they could before they were shot down. The whistle of arrows was occasionally punctuated by the scream of a soldier as arrows connected and fighters on both sides fell into the sea.

Soldiers rushed on decks with purposeful but unpanicked energy to put out the fires from the tips of enemy arrows before they could spread. The Imperial Army was well-trained and efficient, they had trained for years, some of them for decades, for this and they were eager the prove to themselves and the rest of the kingdom that Heaven graced them with a worthy king.

One of Gyousou's kuukoshi, hovering off to the left and using another spyglass, waved a purple flag to signal that the next phase of the operation was ready for deployment. Gyuosou in turn ordered his own captain to signal the other ships to deploy their first wave of fighters. Boats with five soldiers each and a large number of dummies dropped down the sides of the ships. They were decoys of course, something for the enemy to concentrate its attention and fire on. He'd left orders with the soldier who were manning the boats not to be heroes about this, if it looked like any of the enemy fire might hit, they were to abandon ship immediately and save their own skins. Even though it looked like it, those soldiers were not actually there to try to climb the cliffs and lay siege to the fortress, they were decoys. The real attack was going to come not from the air, nor from the beaches (at least not until later). Gyousou's forces had been divided in half, with the cavalry riding up from the southern border of Ran Province to attack and lay seige on the fortress Kaitou from the landward side.

:The fortress is built to withstand attacks from the air and by land but it is weaker on its seaward side. The troops are trained to fend off land-ward sieges and aerial attacks, but I'm betting they don't have a strategy in place for when a general attacks from all three directions,: Gyousou thought a little smugly.

Indeed there were shouts and the sound of a clarion bell ringing out a warning when his aerial scout sent up the red flag reporting that his cavalry was charging the landward gate of Kaitou fortress. Gyousou sent up his kuukoushi to assist in the attacks, mainly firing down flaming arrows into inconvenient locations within the fortress (and staying out of return-fire range) and keeping the siege-cavalry busy while they made ready to break down the gate.

The forces manning Kaitou fortress spent most of their attention now on the landward side but there were still enough soldiers manning the catapults to take out the remaining row-boats that he had sent as decoys. Dummies and real soldiers alike bobbed on the waves and slowly started swimming toward the harbor.

Gyousou ordered his navy to keep up the bombardment from their relatively safe purchase and waited patiently. His Kuukoushi scouts sent him regular reports on the progress of the siege from the landward side, though they risked a lot in doing so for the kuukoushi attached to kaitou Fortress were skilled and numerous, though most of their attention was now concentrated on the enemy a their gate.

Now came the hardest part for every general... the wait. He had yet to meet a general who really liked being so far away from all of the action. Tucked safe behind thier lines a general was responsible for the over all flow of the battle. The generals of either side were much like the two opposing players of shogi, each keeping constant track of their own strategy and the enemy's moves. Gyousou knew that these were not merely pieces on a board that every maneuver and counter-maneuver, that every strategy, whether successful or a failure meant lives lost.

As a general he could not afford to mourn them in the midst of this opening ploy but later, he knew, later as both general and king he would sorrow for them all.

:There are some days that I long for the times when I was a mere captain,: he thought slightly self-deprecatingly.

He'd always been an ambitious man, but now that he was a successful general, he often looked back and thought he should have enjoyed the time when he'd been a lesser ranked officer a little bit more than he had when he'd been going through it. In retrospect, things seemed so much simpler then. Certainly, when he'd been a captain, he had wished to gain greater rank and authority (and recognition) but every victory had truly been a victory back then. Now that he was a general and a king his view of victory and defeat changed. He always counted it a greater victory the fewer lives were lost, but every victory came with a taste of defeat, knowing that the lives lost were those of his countrymen who would never plow a field, or row a boat, or build a home, or raise a family. He wanted stability and prosperity for Tai, not bloodshed.

:It cannot be helped,: he thought regretfully as he carefully and closely monitored the situation.

He needed to win his kingdom back so that he could bring Tai into the light of Heaven once again. If there were those who denied his rightful appointment as ruler of this land then it was his job to bring peace and unity to the nation by defeating them and showing them that they were in error. He hated that he had to fight his own people, but it was either that or let Tai slide into chaos, and that he would never allow while he yet held the throne. To do anything less would allow his dear taiho to court death.

:And that Royal Consort of mine...: he thought. :She has waited just as long and hopefully for me to bring peace and prosperity as Taiki has.:

He would be an ungrateful man indeed if he failed to show her the peaceful, prosperous nation that she and his taiho had worked so hard to attain.

:A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and as single steps go, this one is not a stumble so far.:

The kuukoushi of his and the enemy camps continued their aerial skirmishing while Gyousou's ships continued to bombard the sea-wall of the kaitou fortress and the troop stationed at the landward gates and the day dragged on. Soon the sun slipped slowly beneath the horizon and Gyousou signaled to his aerial messenger that the land-troops should withdraw from the siege proper ostensibly to wait until morning.

:It was a daymoon today so the moonlight will not last for the whole night,: Gyousou thought.

Indeed, as the twilight faded to full night the moon was already at its zenith in the sky, the light of it filtering down through the sea of clouds. A very very light dusting of snow drifted down from the misty-sparse cloud cover and the temperature continued to drop. Gyousou could see his own breath and it reminded him of other seemingly interminable winter campaigns he had waged in other provinces all over Tai. The light of the moon was not the only light in the sky, the wicker-soaked catapult shot burned golden, arcing through the sky toward the fortress like miniature suns to flash outward on impact. Burning tails of fire flowed out behind them, lingering in the air before their final landing.

As the moon continued to drift toward the western horizon the kuukoushi broke of their sorties against one another due to waning visibility. There was no starlight filtering down through the Sea of Clouds and the sea was a dark mirror. There was no moonlight dancing on the surface of the water to tell one from the other so if it were not for the golden arcs of the fireballs then it would have felt like they were floating suspended in dark space.

A cover scout kuukoushi, one with a black mount with its rider dressed in black, flying the imperial flag, flew in low to the water, its wingtips flicking the crests of wavelets as the wind picked up a little and the flier was forced to adjust its course to correct for it. The archers kept their weapons trained on it but did not fire, even as it alighted in the clear space on the army's flagship. He spoke the necessary pass codes to confirm his identity and came before his general and knelt to make his report.

"The Army of the Left is delaying their true final push as you commanded, Your Majesty."

Gyousou nodded once in acknowledgment.

"Complications?" he inquired.

"The walls are sturdier than we had thought they would be, as is the gate," the scout messenger reported.

"It seems the shuukou of Ba Province is not a complete fool,"Gyousou replied. "Or Asen has had a stronger foothold here than we had originally assumed. I noted what looked like new capstones and facing on the walls. The reinforcements have been reinforced, a wise decision for a commander. Are there any obstructions to the harbors?"

"You mean aside of the two harbor cliff walls on either side being booby-trapped with boulder-falls and ringed with archers besides?" the messenger replied.

Gyousou noticed that he was a very young one, so he graciously let the tone and commentary slide. He could ask his commander to say a word to him later on, not an official reprimand of course, but just a polite notice about it.

"Besides that," Gyousou agreed.

"The ramp-way is slicked with ice and the sleds have been brought up to the top so there will be no easy troop movement that way."

"I had assumed such and included that in my plans," Gyousou nodded. "Have you anything further?"

"The camp received this for you earlier."

The aerial scout and messenger extended a scroll tube sealed with the seal of the Army of the Right under General Risai. She was currently in the mountains on the other side of Zui Province, laying a delaying siege to the forces at those heavily armored fortresses there.

Gyousou had asked that she not order her troops to attempt to actively engage, but to be just enough of a nuisance to keep those forts occupied with the bulk of ba Province's forces. Tai's former general had reasoned that Asen had figured that Gyousou would march on those heavily defended fortresses that were nearest to Zui Province (and thus to the capitol city of Kouki) first in order to eradicate some of the martial threat closest to Zui Province. Gyousou had instead sent a portion of his troops to create a ruse that he was playing into Asen's plans while he and the majority of his forces circled around to take Ba Province from the coastline using the navy. Kaitou fortress was the first move in that. He planned to quickly take the fortress , set up a small peacekeeping force to secure it then march inwards to take the next two strategic locations in the next week, then it would be on to the provincial capitol to depose (and possibly decapitate) the Provincial Governor if he proved obdurate in wearing out his stay when Gyousou had specifically commanded that he should leave.

The letter was the first of her reports to him, it detailed that her armies had arrived at the gates of the three fortresses that Ba Province had set up to guard the only three mountain passes in the range that separated Ba and Zui Province (and hence the only ways through for either side). She was besieging the first of the fortresses, the one closest to Kouki, and her two most competent captains were besieging the other two fortresses. They had plans to keep them busy for as long as their king needed them to, though Risai was a bit saddened that she would not be taking place in the reconquista proper.

:Oh don't worry General Risai, you'll get your chance to bring your sword in the fight before all of this is through,: Gyousou thought with a bit of grim resignation.

This was only the starting maneuvers after all. They hadn't reached mid-game and were no-where near endgame. Unless Asen (or, Heaven for fend, he) should make a fatal error that would give away a game-winning advantage, there was still a great deal of time.

Gyousou paced the bridge a little to keep his body warm while he waited. At about three hours after moonset, he ordered that the trebuchets should fire one of the special shot prepared for the occasion. Instead of flaming ans spreading flames on impact, these one were made only to create a lot of smoke. As they hit Gyousou watched the air around the sea-ward side of the fortress fill with smoke, bringing an already uncertain visibility right down to zero. The smoking artillery was the signal for the soldiers to man the real boats and drop quietly into the water and row for the harbor.

Under cover of smoke and moonlight Gyousou mounted Keito, who had under duress and with a great deal of protest allowed herself to be dyed fully black, a flew low over the sea toward land. Boat after boat filled with soldiers rowed to teh harbor. An advance team of scouts on kijyuu went ahead and shot out the guards stationed to give warning to the fort when the harbor defenses were breached. Gyousou heard no warning bell as he landed on the beach-head so he and the others of the advance party set to triggering the net and boulder traps to that his men would not have any unpleasant surprises when they rowed the bulk of Gyousou's land forces into the harbor to come up from the other side.

He should have been staying back on the ship and leaving the frontal charge to his captains and other frontlinemen but this was his kingdom too and he wanted to at least be part of the opening battle. Besides his men would take greater heart if their king was fighting alongside them.

:And perhaps the opposition will realize that they are making a colossal mistake and surrender once they know it is me,: he thought hopefully.

He didn't really put any stock in that hope however, Asen had had too much time to spread misinformation and brainwash his troops while Gyousou had been asleep.

He and his troops strapped on their cleats and started up the ramp that would take them up to the main flatland and the backdoor of the fortress. He could hear the sound of the siege renewing itself as he had ordered them to on the land-ward side of the fort. Flaming artillery continued to pound from the seaward side and the darkness and smoke were too thick for the fortress scouts to see him and his men creeping around to the harbor gate until it was too late. His archers took out the poor sods manning the sentry posts and they fell without a noise to warn of Gyousou's approach.

The king gave the signal and a volley of grappling hooks sailed up through the smoke to take purchase on the wall. Ground archers laid in cover fire against what few forces belatedly realized that ther flank was now being attacked as well. His troops scaled the walls like particularly voracious carpenter ants and made mincemeat of the forts inner defenses while a spacial strike team fought thier way around the walls to the gate-tower, slaughtered the guards inside, and opened the gates for to let his landward cavalry in.

The surrender was a mere formality after that.

I'd like to thank all of those who have reviewed and stuck with this fic despite the fact that I am perhaps the worlds laziest poster. I hope this chapter was worth waiting for, it was fun to write and I hope you enjoyed it.

Its a little off-topic but has anyone else ever mentally cast the cast of Twelve Kigdoms with actors from movies and TV? Well, I would like to put forth my nomination for the role of Naotaka Komatsu AKA the Ever-King of En AKA Fuukan...

Drum Roll Please...

Robert Downey Jr. ! (Chosen for his excellent portrayal of a careless yet brilliant billionaire genius playboy philanthropist)