And they could not, for the enemy's mages were flooding the front lines with hundreds of entirely specious visions of troop movements. By the time the Imperial mages figured out which were the false visions and which' were the reality, it was too late; the attack was usually over.
In a way, he had to admire the mind that was behind that particular plan. There was nothing easier to create than an illusion which existed nowhere except in the mind. It was an extremely efficient use of limited resources—and an effective one as well.
Whoever he is, I wish he was on my side.
The only way of combating such a tactic was to keep the entire army in a combat-ready state at all times, day or night.
And that is impossible, as my enemy surely knows.
Try to keep troops in that state, day after day, when nothing whatsoever happened, and before long they lost so much edge and alertness that when a real attack did come, they couldn't defend effectively against it. They would slip, drop their guard, grow weary—and only then would the attack come. There was no way to prevent such slips, either; people grew tired.
The enemy wasn't using mages to predict when troops had gone stale; he didn't have to. The very children playing along the roads could do that.
Perfectly logical, a brilliant use of limited resources. The only problem was, it fit the pattern of a country that was well-organized, one with people fiercely determined to defend themselves against interlopers, not a land ravaged by its own leaders and torn by internal conflict.
He turned away from the tactics table and faced the window, staring into the teeth of the storm. We never move in until and unless conditions inside the country we wish to annex are intolerable. The arrival of our troops must represent a welcome relief—so that we can be seen by the common people as liberators, not oppressors. King Ancar certainly created those conditions here!
In fact, if half of what he had read in the reports was actually true and not rumor, Ancar would have had a revolt of his own on his hands within the next five or ten years. When Imperial troops had first crossed the border, in fact, they had been greeted as saviors. So what had happened between then and now to change that?
It can't be the tribute, we haven't levied it yet. Imperial taxes amounted to sixty percent of a conquered land's products every year—and the conscription of all young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. But none of that had been imposed yet; it never was until after all of the benefits of living within the Empire were established. By the time the citizens had used the freshwater aqueducts, the irrigation and flood-retention systems, the roads, and most of all, the Imperial Police, they were generally tolerant of the demands the Empire made on them in return.
The taxes were adjusted every year to conform to the prosperity (or lack of it) in that year—the farmer and the businessman was left with forty percent of what he had earned, instead of having all of it taken from him—and he didn't have to worry about the safety of his wife, daughter, or sister. Women could take the eggs to market and the sheep to pasture without vanishing.
Which is definitely more than can be said for the situation during Ancar's reign.
If there was any grumbling, it was generally the conduct of the Imperial Police that changed the grumbling to grudging acceptance of the situation. Imperial citizens and soldiers lived under the same hard code as conquered people. Even in the first-line shock troops, the Code was obeyed to the letter. The Imperial Code was impartial and absolutely unforgiving.
The Law is the Law. And it was the same for everyone; no excuses, no exceptions, no "mitigating circumstances."
Assault meant punishment detail for a soldier, and imprisonment with hard labor for a civilian. A thief, once caught, was levied fines equal to twice the value of what he had stolen, with half going to the ones whose property he had taken, and half to the Empire—if he had no money, he would work in a labor camp with his wages going to those fines until they were paid. If the thief was also a soldier, his wages in the army were confiscated, and his term lengthened by however long it took to pay the fine. Murder was grounds for immediate execution, and no one in his right mind would ever commit rape. The victim would be granted immediate status as a divorced spouse. Half of the perpetrator's possessions went to the victim, half of the perpetrator's wages went to the victim for a term of five years if there was no child, or sixteen years if a child resulted. If the child was a daughter, she received a full daughter's dowry out of whatever the perpetrator had managed to accumulate, and if the child was a son, the perpetrator paid for his full outfitting when he was conscripted. That was a heavy price to pay for a moment of lust-anger, and rape was much less of a problem within the Empire than outside of it. The second Emperor had determined that attacking a person's purse was far more effective as a deterrent to crime than mere physical punishment.
And once again, if the perpetrator was some shiftless ne'er-do-well, who did not have a position, he would find himself in a labor camp, building the roads and the aqueducts, with his pay supplying the needs of the child for which he was responsible. And that responsibility was brought home to him with every stone he set or ditch he dug.
And if a perpetrator were foolish enough to rape again—then he underwent a series of punishments both physical and magical that would leave him outwardly intact but completely unable to repeat his act.
Tremane brooded as lightning flashed outside the window. Compared to life under Ancar, all this should have been paradisiacal. So why the revolt and resistance now?
Perhaps Ancar had not been allowed to operate freely long enough. There may still be enough people alive who recall the halcyon days of his father's rule. They may be the ones behind the resistance.
He grimaced. Too bad they didn't have the good taste to die with Ancar's father and spare the Empire all this work!
He would have to revise his plans to include that possibility, though. Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to counter their influence.
Perhaps if I fortify and protect select cities, and bring in the Police and the builders... no matter how golden the old times are said to be, the reality of Imperial rule will be right in front of these barbarians as an example. With Imperial cities prospering, and rebellious holdings barely holding on, the equation should be obvious even to a simpleton.
But what about Valdemar? The more he looked at it, the more certain he became that they were as much behind the resistance as these putative hangovers from an earlier time. But what could he do about them, when he knew next to nothing about them?
Then he gave himself a purely mental shake. Stupid. I may know nothing now, and it may be very difficult to get current information out, but I have other sources of information. He was a great believer in history—he had always felt that knowing what someone had done in the past, whether that "someone" was a nation or an individual, made it possible to predict what that someone might do in the future.