“It’s time that I was finally told about my true destiny,” he said. “My entire life has been leading up to this moment. How is it that I might ever hope to accomplish all that you need from me?”
As if to tell Tristan that he understood theJin’Sai ’s frustration, Mashiro gave him a compassionate look.
“As you already know,” Mashiro began solemnly, “the War of Attrition must be brought to an end. We understand that you find it impossible to believe, but only theJin’Sai can do it, for thePon Q’tar has no wish for peace. Even so, it is our wish that the two countries be unified under the rule of your supremely gifted blood. But what you have yet to learn are the other deeds that must be accomplished as well if your destiny is to be fulfilled. The world must be reunited as it was before the outbreak of this terrible and costly war and the sudden rising of the Tolenka Mountains that separated it.”
“What deeds are these?” Tristan asked.
For several moments Mashiro looked down at his hands. When he finally lifted his face he looked first at Wigg, then Tyranny and Tristan. When his gaze met theJin’Sai ’s it was stern, resolute.
“What I am about to say will no doubt shock you,” he said quietly. “Nonetheless, it needs to be heard.”
When Tristan did not respond, Mashiro drew a deep breath. As Tristan waited for Mashiro to answer, the silence became deafening.
“With your help,” theInkai leader said at last, “we mean to destroy the Tome and the Scrolls of the Ancients and dismantle the craft as we know it.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
WHILE DESPERATE FIGHTING RAGED IN THE DISTANCE, Vespasian stood in his war tent. Looking down at the table before him, he tensely consulted the freshly updated war map that Lucius Marius had supplied to him only moments ago. Alongside the map lay several beeswax diptychs that had been rushed from the front by hand- picked centurion messengers. The map displayed the Imperial Order’s progress in taking the next Shashidan riverside town, while the diptychs held detailed information about enemy soldiers and civilians killed, casualties suffered among the Rustannican forces, and tallies of supplies, food, and arms both used and still flowing to the front from the safety of Rustannica.
Vespasian was pleased with the progress of his war. So far his casualties had been surprisingly light and great areas of Shashidan land had fallen to his legions, causing many of his tribunes to believe that a great victory lay at hand. Even so, the same concerns that worried Vespasian when he first conceived this campaign had started to surface again, and the Shashidan gold mines still lay many leagues away.
Like previous Rustannican thrusts through the Borderlands and into Shashida, the distances to objectives of real importance were vast and immensely difficult for so great an army to traverse-even with the help of the azure portals. Should the Shashidans somehow negate the use of his portals, his entire invasion force would become stranded in enemy territory. Worse, it would take many years of marching to reach the Borderlands, then cross them and return home. And because the Borderlands could not be summoned without killing his own troops as they crossed them, Shashidan forces could harass them every step of the way, killing them off little by little.
Therefore it was imperative that Vespasian’s overland escape route be fiercely protected. This meant that the lands already taken had to remain in Rustannican hands for the duration of the campaign, forcing valuable troops and materiel to remain behind in strategic places along the way. The sands in the hourglass of war were falling quickly, he knew. If the Shashidan mines were to be seized and held long enough to send at least some of their prized contents home, Vespasian’s advance must not only take the entire area surrounding the Six Rivers and the lands between them and the mines, but also hold them for as long as possible.
Lifting his gaze from the map, Vespasian looked out the tent entrance and toward the horizon. The sun was starting to rise, bringing with it the promise of good weather. It will be a fine day for killing Shashidans, he decided.
Gracchus Junius, Lucius Marius, Empress Persephone, and Julia Idaeus stood by his side waiting to hear his daily orders. After the Twenty-third Legion’s Blood Stalkers had secured the staging area near the headlands of the Vertex Mostim, Imperial Order legions and armed barges had arrived by way of hundreds of azure portals. They then advanced south and subdued the first few Shashidan towns along the banks of the Six Rivers. Soon they had reached the strategic place where the Six Rivers joined to form one huge, rushing current known in the Shashidan dialect as the Togogawa, or Abundant River. From there the Togogawa led to the gold mines.
Surprisingly, few Shashidan troops had been met, and the meager enemy forces trying to resist Vespasian’s monstrous invasion had been swiftly overcome. While thePon Q’tar and most of the tribunes saw that as a good omen, Vespasian and Lucius Marius found it unnerving. Surely theInkai knew by now that Vespasian’s advance was no brief incursion to be taken lightly. So why hasn’t the full weight of their armies rushed north to meet us? Vespasian wondered. As he looked back down at his war map, that worrisome question and others like it gnawed greedily at his self-confidence.
The Shashidan riverside city to which his forces currently lay siege was much larger than those already in his hands. This was yet another hindrance to his war plan, for as his forces advanced to the south, the cities became far larger and therefore more problematic to conquer. Because so few Shashidan troops had been met, the first few riverside cities had been taken easily. But this next city was protected by far more Shashidan troops than the others had been, and taking it was chewing up more time than Vespasian had planned on.
Such delays might significantly lengthen his timetable and supply the Shashidan forces with precious time to reinforce their troops that protected the gold mines. That was a turn of events that Vespasian could not afford, for his plan depended on reaching and surrounding the mines with lightning speed. At the same time all the captured lands north of his current position must remain firmly in his hands should his forces need to retreat without benefit of the enchanted portals. Of added concern was that given the specific direction of Vespasian’s advance downriver and its markedly narrow east-west line of attack, the emperor’s goal would soon become clear.
If he was to take the mines, he must reach them soon, before the entire Shashidan army arrived to stand in his way. Yet another worrisome possibility was that the enemy might postpone an outright confrontation and instead flank his narrow thrust on its eastern and western sides. This would allow them to at first avoid his forces, then turn and march directly toward each another. If they could link up, they would split his forces in two and sound their death knell.
Moreover, with every step south, his supply lines became farther stretched. Food, soldiers, and materiel from Ellistium still poured through the portals, but given the ever-increasing distance from home, the supply situation might soon grow dangerously tenuous. Time was of the essence in this campaign, as Vespasian had known from the moment he first proposed it to the Suffragat that fateful day in the Rectoris Aedifficium.
Raising his gaze from the map, Vespasian turned to look at Lucius. “The battle for the next town still rages?” he asked.
“Yes, Blood Royal,” Lucius answered.
Vespasian shook his head. “We are moving too slowly,” he mused. “There are few prizes worth taking this far north, but to secure our route home, it must be done. And that, my friend, is the confounding part of this war! We must capture and hold thousands of leagues of useless grasslands before reaching objectives of substance. The best plan would have been to use the portals to take our forces straight to the gold mines. But should the Shashidans somehow render them useless, without having first secured an overland escape route home we would become hopelessly surrounded in a matter of days.”
“That is true,” Lucius answered. “But we had no choice. If we don’t hold those lands and the Shashidans negate our portals-”
“I know, I know,” Vespasian interrupted. “I have had enough of running this war from charts and reports. I will visit the battle firsthand.” He turned to look at Persephone, Gracchus, and Julia. “Wait here,” he said. “I will return shortly. Lucius, come with me.”
After grabbing up their helmets, Vespasian and Lucius left the war tent to become part of the riotous scene outside. In the entire history of Rustannica there had been no greater invasion force than this, and even now Vespasian remained awed by its sheer size and ferocity.
The empire’s colorful command tents stood atop a rise overlooking a gently sloping valley. Through the rich green valley snaked the mighty Alarik River, or the Togogawa, as the enemy called it. In some places the huge
