“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 4th and 18th 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 6th and 15th 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?”