13 Day War (40 page)

“What will become of my men?” asked the general.

“They will be cared for,” answered the Knight of Alcea. “We have camps already set up for your men. I will not tell you the locations of the camps, but they will be fed. We will also heal any life-threatening wounds, but the number of healers is limited. When the war is over, they will be returned to their home countries.”

“That’s it?” asked Colonel Rotti. “There will be no retribution?”

“Those are my orders from King Arik of Alcea,” Rut-ki answered, a smile acknowledging the presence of the colonel. “We plan no retribution, but we will strictly enforce the imprisonment. If your men try to escape, they will be killed.”

“What do you want me to say?” asked the general.

“Tell them that you have surrendered,” answered Rut-ki. “Instruct them to abandon their weapons and use the chains to come to the left bank. If you wish to tell them about their treatment after surrendering, do so.”

“I will send the message,” declared the general.

Rut-ki turned and nodded to Colonel Wu-sang, and the Lanoirian colonel came over to stand next to Rut-ki.

“General Somma has agreed to send a message to his men,” Rut-ki said to the Lanoirian colonel. “I will leave him in your hands.”

The colonel nodded and led General Somma away. Rut-ki turned to Colonel Rotti and smiled.

“We meet again, Rotti,” she said.

“You do not appear to be the blushing bride I remember from my last journey here,” retorted Colonel Rotti. “You certainly fooled me. Now you order around colonels as if you were a general. Who are you actually?”

“I am Rut-ki, and I am a Knight of Alcea. I report directly to King Arik.”

“I am not sure what a Knight of Alcea is, but I can guess that I should be impressed. I certainly am impressed with the reception you prepared for us today. It shows a tremendous amount of planning, and I know that the Federation has spies in this land. The fact that you were able to hide all of this from them is a credit to your country.” The colonel hesitated and his mood became more somber. “What will happen to General Somma?”

“That I cannot answer,” Rut-ki replied. “He is to be kept separate from his men for now, but his ultimate fate rests in the hands of King Arik. I cannot speculate on what that might be, but know this: King Arik is a benevolent king.”

“May I request to stay with him?” asked Colonel Rotti.

Rut-ki gazed questioningly at the colonel. “Are you his son?”

“I am no relation to the general,” answered Colonel Rotti, “but I do care for his well-being. He is a good man who is here on no account of his own.”

“Would not every Federation colonel say the same about his general?” asked Rut-ki.

“No,” answered Rotti. “Most of the Federation generals have been eager for this war to begin. Somma was not one of them. In fact, the man should not be a general at all, and he knows it. Were General Franz still alive, those soldiers in the river would be trying to climb the banks to fight you Lanoirians. Certainly an easy surrender is worth something to Alcea?”

“I think the Federation soldiers should be glad that Franz is dead then,” Rut-ki retorted. “I was truthful when I said that we did not wish to kill your soldiers, but let me be clear here. We would have killed every one of you if that is what was necessary.”

“And you would have been right to react that way,” agreed the colonel, “but I still need to be kept with the general.”

“Why?” Rut-ki asked, the suspicious tone of her voice clearly evident.

“To protect him.”

“I said that we would not harm him,” replied Rut-ki. “Do you not believe me?”

Colonel Rotti fidgeted. It was not that he suspected that the Alceans would go back on their word that bothered the colonel. He was more concerned with what the Federation would do to him for surrendering, or even worse, what they would do if any of the other survivors saw Somma kill Franz, but he dared not speak of the other teams.

“I believe you,” declared Colonel Rotti, “but I still fear for his safety. Please allow me to remain with him. I will personally accept his punishment as my own if that is what is required.”

Rut-ki raised an eyebrow as she rolled the colonel’s words around in her mind. She knew there was something in those words to betray his meaning, but it took her a while to figure it out. When she did, she smiled at the colonel.

“You are worried about how your own people will treat General Somma for surrendering, aren’t you?”

“Something like that,” Rotti admitted with a frown. “Do you Alceans read minds? Is that how you discovered that we would be invading this way? Did you read my mind when I traveled this way last fall?”

The Knight of Alcea smiled broadly. “We do not read minds, Colonel. We knew you and Kerk were coming long before you stepped through the portals. Bin-lu and I were waiting for you to appear.”

The colonel gasped. If what Rut-ki said was true, the Alceans had to have a spy deep within the upper echelons of the Federation. Neither he nor General Somma had any idea about the portals before he was ordered to go to Alcea. If they did have such a spy in place, would they not also know about the other teams? And how could he learn the answer to that question without betraying his fellow Zarans?

Rut-ki interrupted the colonel’s thoughts. “I do not have time to play games, Colonel. Let me just dispel your fears. General Somma will not be harmed before King Arik determines his fate. He will not be harmed by us or by your people. I promise you that.”

“You are not in a position to promise that,” retorted Colonel Rotti. “You cannot control what your enemy does.”

“We cannot stop the enemy from attacking us,” agreed Rut-ki. “If we were able to control the armies of the Federation, you would not be here right now, but my promise still stands. Only the total collapse of Alcea would allow the Federation to get their hands on General Somma, and that is not going to happen.” Colonel Rotti opened his mouth to argue that point, but Rut-ki was growing tired of the games. “We know about the other teams, Rotti. They will be met with Alcean armies just like the 4
^th
and 18
^th
Corps were. In fact, there are one-hundred-thousand Federation soldiers already out of this war.”

“Inconceivable,” scoffed the colonel.

“Is this true?” asked General Somma.

Rut-ki turned to see Colonel Wu-sang and General Somma returning.

“It is true,” nodded the Knight of Alcea. “The 6
^th
and 15
^th
Corps were totally destroyed at Pontek, and all of Force Cordonia were sent somewhere where they cannot harm anyone. They will be dealt with when the other Federation armies are vanquished.”

“You said that you didn’t want to kill Federation soldiers,” frowned the general. “Why is it that the armies of Gattas and Montero were totally destroyed?”

“It was necessary,” answered Rut-ki. “While we wish to preserve the lives of as many Zarans as possible, your countries have sent a quarter of a million men to our shores. Our primary task is to win this war. If we can do so and still preserve the lives of Zarans, we will do that, but we intend to win one way or another.”

“Why is it so important to the Alceans to save our lives?” asked Colonel Rotti.

“The Federation is being used by evil forces,” answered Rut-ki. “While your emperor might think this war was his idea, it was not. The minions of Alutar are manipulating him, and the Great Demon seeks the tears of millions. King Arik wants to deny Alutar those tears by not killing all of your men.”

“And you could not get General Gattas to surrender,” General Somma said with a nod. “I can understand that. Gattas was much like Franz. Neither of them could possibly fathom an enemy army more capable than their own. Their egos make them poor leaders of men.”

Colonel Rotti turned and stared at General Somma. “Do you believe what these people are saying? I mean this nonsense about the Great Demon?”

“I do,” answered the general. “I have always felt that Emperor Jaar was being manipulated. He has spent our fortunes and our futures on conquest, and for what? Before this idea of expanding the Federation started, our people had food to eat and jobs to labor at. Now our people are starving and the only jobs available are holding a sword or a bow. You tell me why we are attacking these people, Rotti? To get their food? If we Zarans spent one tenth of our energy on cultivating fields as we do on war, we would have no food shortage.”

“I guess I had not looked at it that way,” confessed the colonel.

“Nor should you be expected to,” sighed the general. “A colonel’s task is the formation and training of his regiment, and you excel at that, but you will need to broaden your horizons when you are promoted to general.”

Colonel Rotti shook his head. He wondered if the bump on the head the general had received had affected his reasoning. A defeated nation has no need for generals, and if the Federation won the war, both of them would probably be executed for surrendering.

“I want to offer my services to King Arik,” General Somma said to Rut-ki. “I cannot command my men to fight against their brothers, and I will tell you now that they are unlikely to in any event, but I am willing to try to negotiate an end to the attacks in Lanoir.”

“Can you do that?” asked Rut-ki.

“Truthfully,” sighed the general, “I do not know. General Franz was the leader of Force Lanoir as well as leader of Team Chi. With him dead, I now lead Team Chi, but I am not sure about the rules regarding Force Lanoir. I might be able to talk Ruppert and Hanold into surrendering, especially if your armies can get them at a disadvantage, but General Kolling will be another matter. Being a Baroukan, I suspect he will consider himself the proper successor to General Franz as Force Leader. All four of the forces in Alcea are led by Baroukans, as if no other nation was capable of producing generals qualified for such a lofty position. That said, I will still try to get Kolling and Gertz to surrender.”

“Have you gone mad?” scowled Colonel Rotti. “You will be committing suicide.”

The general turned and stared at his colonel. “Why did you save my life today, Colonel?”

“I probably shouldn’t have bothered,” retorted Rotti. “Had I known that you would just throw it away again before the sun set, I would not have wasted my energy.”

The general smiled and when he spoke his voice was soft and caring. “You know that is not true, Rotti. Tell me the truth. Why did you go to such trouble to save me?”

The colonel sighed and shook his head. “I see good in you, General, and I didn’t want to see that good go to waste. You might be ill-suited to your profession, but the world needs more men like you.” The colonel sniffed and his eyes watered. He turned away from the general before continuing. “I guess I saw in you the father I never knew. I had to do whatever I could to protect you.”

“Even at the risk of your own life,” Somma said softly. “And you have no idea how much that meant to me, and still means to me. The point is, Rotti, you risked your life to save something that in your eyes was worth saving. I am proposing to do exactly the same. I am willing to risk my life to save forty-thousand Federation soldiers that are only here in Lanoir because the emperor sent them here.”

“Those forty-thousand men don’t need saving,” countered the colonel. “Either one of those teams is enough to crush Lanoir. Why throw your life away for nothing?”

Somma chuckled and Rotti looked at him with a puzzling expression.

“Perhaps I am not so ill-suited for this job after all,” the general said jovially. “You and I seem to have very different expectations on the odds facing the other teams. You see two massive armies marching towards Ongchi from different directions and crushing the Lanoirian capital between them like a vise. I see no such thing. I know the strategies of the Federation quite well, and I suspect that the Alceans do as well. The unknown part of this equation is the strategy employed by the Alceans. It should be obvious to you by now, that we Zarans do not have a clue. That dam was one of the finest traps I have ever heard of. If the Alceans were not intent on capturing the survivors, they could have pulled this off with less than one-thousand men. Our two armies would have ceased to exist. Do you really think these same Alceans have no plans for the other armies? Do you take them for incompetent fools?”

Rut-ki and Colonel Wu-sang stood observing the entire conversation in silence. The Knight of Alcea watched both of the Federation officers closely, trying to peer into their minds based upon what she was seeing and hearing. When the last two questions were asked, Colonel Rotti turned to Rut-ki.

“What do you have planned for the other armies?” he asked. “Do you really have a chance of surviving the coming battles?”

“I am not willing to share such information,” answered Rut-ki. “I will say this much, though. Generals Ruppert and Hanold will soon walk into a trap, and like you, they will have a choice to make. They will surrender, or they will perish. I hope that they choose to surrender, but either way, they will no longer be in this war. As for Kolling and Gertz, they are walking towards Ongchi. They have no horses. They have no food. They have no black-cloaks. Their foraging parties are constantly being harassed, and they are behind schedule. They will not arrive at Ongchi by the thirteenth day. I will say no more about it.”

Colonel Rotti glanced at General Somma and found him grinning. He nodded at the general and smiled back before returning his eyes to Rut-ki.

“I made a request of you a short while ago,” Rotti said. “You told me that the general’s life would not be in danger, but we both now know that those words are no longer true. I make my request once more.”

“Do you suddenly agree with the general’s views?” asked the Knight of Alcea.

“I do,” replied the colonel, “and I apologize to you for once more underestimating you. If those men can be saved by surrendering, I will endeavor to help General Somma talk them into it.”

“While you keep him safe?” grinned Rut-ki.

“While I keep him safe,” echoed the colonel.

* * * *

General Ross looked up as the tent flap moved aside. He motioned the black-cloak forward and waved him towards a chair across the table. Baku silently walked to the chair and sat down.