“You are stuck behind this river,” said Irjah. “Your troops stand in a prime position for a ranged assault, but your main column has run out of arrows. What do you do?”
Most of their class suggested raids on the enemy’s weapons carriages. Venka wanted to abandon the ranged idea entirely and pursue a direct frontal assault. Nezha suggested they commission the nearby farmers to mass-produce arrows in one night.
“Gather scarecrows from the nearby farmers,” said Kitay.
Nezha snorted. “What?”
“Let him talk,” said Irjah.
“Dress them in spare uniforms, stick them in a boat, and send them downriver,” Kitay continued, ignoring him. “This area is a mountainous region notorious for heavy precipitation. We can assume it has rained recently, so there should be fog. That makes it difficult for the enemy forces to see the river clearly. Their archers will mistake the scarecrows for soldiers, and shoot until they resemble pincushions. We will then send our men downstream and have them collect the arrows. We use our enemy’s arrows to kill our enemies.”
Kitay won that one.
Another day Irjah presented them with a map of the Wudang mountain region marked with two red crosses to indicate two Federation battalions surrounding the Nikara army from both ends of the valley.
“You’re trapped in this valley. The villagers have mostly evacuated, but the Federation general holds a school full of children hostage. He says he will set the children free if your battalion surrenders. You have no guarantee he will honor the terms. How do you respond?”
They stared at the map for many minutes. Their troops had no advantage, no easy way out.
Even Kitay was puzzled. “Try an assault on the left flank?” he suggested. “Evacuate the children while they’re preoccupied with a small guerrilla force?”
“They’re on higher ground,” said Irjah. “They’ll shoot you down before you get the chance to draw your weapons.”
“Light the valley on fire,” Venka tried. “Distract them with the smoke?”
“Good way to burn yourselves to death.” Irjah snorted. “Remember, you do not have the high ground.”
Rin raised her hand. “Cut around the second army and get onto the dam. Break the dam. Flood the valley. Let everyone inside drown.”
Her classmates turned to stare at her in horror.
“Leave the children,” she added. “There’s no way to save them.”
Nezha laughed out loud. “We’re trying to win this simulation, idiot.”
Irjah motioned for Nezha to be silent. “Runin. Please elaborate.”
“It’s not a victory either way,” said Rin. “But if the costs are so high, I would throw all my tiles in. This way they die, and we lose half our troops but no more. Sunzi writes that no battle takes place in isolation. This is just one small move in the grand scheme of the war. The numbers you’ve given us indicate that these Federation battalions are massive. I’m guessing they constitute a large percentage of the entire Federation army. So if we give up some of our own troops, we lessen their advantage in all subsequent battles.”
“You’d rather kill your own people than let the opponent’s army walk away?” Irjah asked.
“Killing isn’t the same as letting die,” Rin objected.
“They’re casualties nonetheless.”
Rin shook her head. “You don’t let an enemy walk away if they’ll certainly be a threat to you later. You get rid of them. If they’re that far inland, they know the lay of almost the entire country. They have a geographical advantage. This is our one chance to take out the enemy’s greatest fighting force.”
“Sunzi said to always give the enemy a way out,” Irjah said.
Rin privately thought that this was one of Sunzi’s stupider principles, but hastily pulled together a counterargument. “But Sunzi didn’t mean to let them take that way out. The enemy just has to think the situation is less dire than it is, so they don’t grow desperate and do stupid and mutually destructive things.” Rin pondered for a moment. “I suppose they could try to swim.”
“She’s talking about decimating entire villages!” Venka protested. “You can’t just break a dam like that. Dams take years to rebuild. The entire river delta will flood, not just that valley. You’re talking about famine. Dysentery. You’ll mess with the agriculture of the entire region, create a whole host of problems that mean decades of suffering down the line—”
“Problems that can be solved,” Rin maintained stubbornly. “What was your solution, to let the Federation walk free into the heartland? Fat lot of good the agricultural regions will do you when your whole country’s been occupied. You would offer up the whole country to them on a platter.”
“Enough, enough.” Irjah slammed the table to silence them. “Nobody wins this one. You’re dismissed for today. Runin, I want to have a word. My office.”
“Where did you come by this solution?” Irjah held up a booklet.
Rin recognized her scrawling handwriting at the top.
Last week Irjah had assigned them to write essay responses to another simulated quagmire—a counterfactual scenario where the Militia had lost popular support for a war of resistance against the Federation. They couldn’t rely on peasants to supply soldiers with food or animal feed, could not use peasant homes as lodging without forceful entry. In fact, outbreaks of rebellion in rural areas added several layers of complication to coordinating troop movements.
Rin’s solution had been to burn down one of the minor island villages.
The twist was that the island in question belonged to the Empire.
“The first day of Yim’s class we talked about how losing Speer ended the Second Poppy War,” she said.
Irjah frowned. “You based this essay on the Speerly Massacre?”
She nodded. “Losing Speer during the Second Poppy War pushed Hesperia over the edge—made them uncomfortable enough that they didn’t want Mugen expanding farther into the continent. I thought the destruction of another minor island might do the same for the Nikara population, convince them that the real enemy was Mugen. Remind them what the threat was.”
“Surely Militia troops attacking a province of the Empire would send the wrong message,” Irjah objected.
“They wouldn’t know it was Militia troops,” she said. “We would pose as a Federation squadron. I suppose I should have been clearer about that in the essay. Better still if Mugen just went ahead and attacked the island for us, but you can’t leave these things to chance.”
He nodded slowly as he perused her essay. “Crude. Crude, but clever. Do you think that’s what happened?”
It took her a moment to understand his question. “In this simulation, or during the Poppy Wars?”
“The Poppy Wars.” Irjah tilted his head, watching her carefully.
“I’m not entirely sure that’s not what happened,” Rin said. “There’s some evidence that the attack on Speer was allowed to succeed.”
Irjah’s expression betrayed nothing, but his fingers tapped thoughtfully against his wooden desk. “Explain.”
“I find it very difficult to believe that the strongest fighting force in the Militia could have been annihilated so easily. That, and the island was suspiciously poorly defended.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Well, I’m not certain, but it seems as if—I mean, maybe someone on the inside—a Nikara general, or someone else who was privy to certain information—knew about the attack on Speer but didn’t alert anyone.”
“Now why would we have wanted to lose Speer?” Irjah asked quietly.
She took a moment to formulate a coherent argument. “Maybe they knew Hesperia wouldn’t stand for it. Maybe they wanted to generate popular support to distract from the Red Junk movement. Maybe because we needed a sacrifice, and Speer was expendable in a way other regions weren’t. We couldn’t let any Nikara die. But Speerlies? Why not?”