As I listened in silence to the hopeless briefing, I rubbed my dry face with both hands and let out a deep sigh.
I had been staring hard enough to bore a hole through the parchment map spread across the enormous table. When I raised my head again, not only the chief of staff, but every scarred general gathered in the conference room was watching me in heavy silence.
I cleared my throat once, then asked in as calm a voice as I could manage.
“……Then let me ask. Just how much military strength can our empire mobilize for this expedition against the Kingdom of Laurent?”
“The total strength of the regular army currently held by the Great Empire is approximately seven hundred and fifty thousand.”
The chief of staff explained, tapping the tip of his pointer across the vast expanse of imperial territory.
Seven hundred and fifty thousand. The number alone was overwhelming enough to choke the breath out of me, more than enough to trample the entire continent underfoot.
“However, it is impossible to keep an army of seven hundred thousand under arms at all times. In order to maintain such an enormous force outside of wartime, roughly half of those troops must be assigned to military farms, either cultivating the land or engaging in production such as livestock raising and land reclamation. On top of that, once we exclude the border garrisons needed to control the Northern Grand Duchy in the north and the various minor vassal states in the south, as well as the essential troops that must be left behind to maintain order in each territory……”
The chief of staff tapped his pointer toward the western plains route and delivered his conclusion.
“The actual expeditionary force we can mobilize for this campaign against the Kingdom of Laurent, concentrating all supplies and firepower, is expected to be roughly one hundred and fifty thousand men.”
“One hundred and fifty thousand.”
It was a reduced figure compared to the total force, but one hundred and fifty thousand regular troops advancing in a single direction was a truly terrifying scale.
“I seem to recall that our Kingdom of Sterling knelt before one hundred thousand men.”
“Hm? Wasn’t it three hundred? I heard it was shattered by a single cavalry charge from Her Imperial Highness.”
“…If you would, please make it one hundred thousand. Three hundred is a little embarrassing.”
Victoria, who happened to be passing by, abruptly shrugged and disappeared.
The chief of staff offered no particular reply beyond a twitch of his eyebrow, and I, feeling needlessly awkward, changed the subject.
“Then how large is the Laurent army we must face?”
“Laurent’s total strength is estimated to be between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand. But as I mentioned earlier, they too must keep a certain number of troops fixed along the defensive line in the northern highlands. Therefore, the main enemy force we will directly encounter along the western plains route will be around one hundred thousand.”
“Hm? Since that area leads to the Northern Grand Duchy, couldn’t they afford to reduce their forces there somewhat?”
“That is because, from the Kingdom of Laurent’s perspective, they cannot trust the Northern Grand Duke. From the Northern Grand Duke’s perspective, the best outcome would be to occupy the Kingdom of Laurent rather than the empire, produce food there, and then fight against the empire.”
“Ah…”
I rubbed my chin and quickly began turning the matter over in my head.
‘One hundred and fifty thousand against one hundred thousand.’
According to the common sense of ordinary military theory, when conducting a siege, I had learned that the attacking side needed at least three times, and at most over five times, the number of defenders to have a chance at victory.
And yet, with only one and a half times their numbers, we had to break through one hundred thousand diehards entrenched in layer upon layer within that insane double mountain fortress.
From the very beginning, the calculation yielded no answer whatsoever.
“A great army of one hundred thousand men will hole up inside those enormous walls, pour down hot oil and arrows, and fight a siege. Certainly, it would be difficult to deploy the cavalry the empire is so proud of…”
“No, Lord Harper.”
The chief of staff cut me off and firmly shook his head.
“They will not sit quietly inside the walls and shoot arrows at us. Rather, once the battle begins, they will fling the gates wide open, march out onto the plains, and face our imperial army head-on. Of the one hundred and fifty thousand, at least fifty thousand must be organized as cavalry.”
“I beg your pardon?”
My eyes widened in shock.
They would willingly throw away the terrain advantage of walls more precious than life itself and crawl out?
Onto the plains?
“They’re going to face the imperial army on flat ground? As far as I know, the empire’s cavalry strength is considered the greatest in the history of the continent. Unless the army of a mountain nation has gone mad, are you saying they would do something as stupid as fight an open field battle head-on against the empire’s heavily armed cavalry?”
At my perfectly reasonable question, Victoria, who had been standing silently with her arms crossed on one side of the conference room, let out a short, heavy sigh.
The chief of staff, who held the pointer, also clenched his molars and clicked his tongue with a bitter expression.
“Of course, as you say, if we speak only of the destructive power of cavalry charging across the plains, there is no force anywhere on the continent that can withstand our Great Imperial Army. However…… Lord Harper. Earlier, that intelligence officer over there said that the Kingdom of Laurent boasts tremendous productivity within that narrow basin, did he not?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“What that means is not merely that they can produce a great deal of food. Iron ore also comes out of the ground there in absurd quantities.”
The chief of staff raised his eyebrows in irritation.
“Using that immense capital and iron ore as their foundation, those bastards wrap their soldiers from head to toe in chunks of metal so thick it borders on idiotic.”
“My God.”
“They are masters at lining up those trained heavy infantrymen in tight, overlapping ranks on the plains and forming massive anti-cavalry squares. With long, thick pikes bristling densely like a hedgehog and thick steel shields building a wall, they are quite literally walking fortresses of metal.”
The chief of staff tapped the broad plain in front of the walls with his pointer.
“Their tactics have always been the same for the past two hundred years. Once an open battle begins, they crawl out onto the plains, form infantry squares, and clash head-on with our imperial cavalry as it charges in, shaking the earth.”
“……”
“While the imperial cavalry dies crashing against their steel wall, they also suffer tremendous losses and die in droves. Once they have bled alongside us and shaved down our cavalry strength to a suitable degree… they immediately withdraw behind the gates. And only then do they finally begin a defensive siege.”
“……You mean they deliberately induce a war of attrition, even at the cost of their own blood, in order to wear down our cavalry?”
“Exactly.”
The chief of staff ground his teeth in fury.
On the faces of the generals standing around us, the bitter rage of those who had lost comrades over the past several decades flashed and vanished.
“Think carefully. Between cavalry and infantry, which do you suppose is more difficult to raise?”
“…Cavalry, of course.”
“Indeed. Cavalry, the greatest pride of the imperial army, takes an enormous amount of time and tremendous cost to produce even a single rider. We must breed and raise warhorses of fine bloodlines, train those horses not to be startled by the blades and screams of the battlefield, and if we want rider and horse to become one as they sweep across the battlefield, it requires at minimum three to five years. Once a cavalry unit is shattered, restoring its strength is a hardship in and of itself. And even this is only possible because the empire’s roots lie with nomadic peoples, so the supply of horses and men is smooth.”
The chief of staff pointed at the Kingdom of Laurent on the map and raised his voice.
“But infantry is different. They are truly cheap!”
“……”
“Their heavy infantry are simply strong serfs taken from the fields, dressed in sturdy, expensive steel armor stamped out with money, then trained only to hold spears and maintain formation. In one or two years at most, a fine, seasoned soldier who can be sent straight into battle and do his part is finished just like that.”
“…Still, even if they are infantry, don’t they need to learn at least basic weapon techniques?”
“They do not need weapon techniques either. The infantry entering those squares require exactly three forms of training. Training to march in step. Training to raise and lower their shields and spears according to signals. And training not to panic and flee the formation when they see charging cavalry. The first two can be done in a month, and the last one takes roughly half a year. Then that is the end of it! One infantryman is produced just like that.”
As I listened to the chief of staff, all I could think was that it was unreasonable.
“They use precisely that difference in troop production capacity to force the empire into a dreadful exchange ratio and war of attrition.”
They receive the cavalry’s overwhelming destructive power and mobility head-on with thick armor poured from their formidable wealth and dense hedgehog formations.
They force an unreasonable exchange by wearing down the empire’s most expensive resource, its cavalry, with low-skill soldiers, then hide behind the absolute terrain advantage of the first wall and buy time.
And during that time, they restore their lost infantry strength at terrifying speed.
That was the reason the Great Empire had failed to destroy this cramped little kingdom for two hundred years.
“Haa……”
The more I listened to the explanation, the higher the difficulty seemed to climb.
So much so that even my will to survive was beginning to fade.
If I wanted to think about the future, I first had to win here before there could be anything after.
Perhaps the emperor had not given me an opportunity, but was trying to kill me without earning Chloe’s hatred.
Seeing my dazed reaction, the chief of staff set his pointer down on the table with a tap and gave a bitter smile.
“Now do you understand why the empire has failed to overcome them for two hundred years? We are not being beaten because we are fools and idiots, Lord Harper. You know how strong our imperial army is on the plains, do you not?”
The chief of staff planted both hands on the map and looked straight at me.
“If the Kingdom of Laurent were merely an easy opponent relying on nothing but its terrain…… our imperial army would have smashed those paltry walls long ago, even if we had to fill them with blood and corpses, and erased the nation itself from the map of the continent.”
The final trial the emperor had given me was a problem that even the countless genius tacticians and famed generals of the empire had failed to solve for two hundred years.
Inside my head, now so complicated it felt as if it might burst, desperate calculations for survival began to spin madly.