LIGHTNOVELONLINE 32 – The One-week War
There had been precisely one time when a foreign power plunged into the heart of the steppe and touched its heart. It had been that man, the one who called himself the Sage of Fog, one who spoke of lands afar greatly similar to those regaled as home by the First Fog-sailor. He, who had led naught but a caravan of a few dozen men, who convened with the merchant clans and asked for naught but peaceful cooperation, for exchange of knowledge and technology.
Yet, the traditions of her culture would not permit an alliance so quickly forged, even if the clans had come to an agreement in negotiations. It would take decades of limited cooperation to build up rapport, yet the Sage made it clear that he and his had no such time. It was through this search for a faster method that a plan was devised, one agreeable in the eyes of tradition through naught but a loophole.
War, immediately succeeded by peace.
It was perhaps a help that Kargarians understood war to be a business deal brokered in violence.
Declarations of war were drafted, battlegrounds prepared, and preparations for peace accords made on the very same day, by the same people, in the same room where salted meats and fine smoking herbs were served by the finest of Kargaria’s golems, built around the bones of its finest servants from centuries prior. In this manner the honored dead were immortalized, mannerisms and small slivers of personality able to bleed through the arcane machine even when the soul had gone to rest in the Sea of Fog in earnest.
The aptly-named “One-week War” played out as a festival, a tourney, the death toll in the single digits and entirely from accidents. More people died when Kargarian caravans took root in a city than did during that war. It was a showcase for the weapons and combatants of both nations, and despite their small numbers, the Ikesians had pulled out some true wonders.
Two of their weapons stood out most to the four Clan Elders - the so-called “Compound P-T” which they claimed to be for breaching obstacles, which all but begged to be used to enhance explosives. The second was a strange metal golem, despite the fact steel was known to be a poor golemancy material due to its low aetheric conductivity, and the thing certainly didn’t sound like it was made entirely from cold-iron.
It just stood, motionless, hunched over - Ezaryl remembered it like it was yesterday, for her younger self had been present at the very event right by her mother’s side. She couldn’t have conceivably gotten a better view. There was a huge metal box on its back, and she knew from her mother that the Clan Elders had thought it was like the rare treasurer-golems that wear vaults like backpacks.
The Sage of Fog, that implacable man - lithe of build, black of hair, kind of eyes, and gaunt of face - came up to the metal golem. He stepped in front of it, speaking something in Ikesian to the Council of Elders. She understood the language now, but not then, and so remembered not a word of what he had said.
What she did remember was what he did, what happened, what had changed the course of Kargarian history forever - what had led to this, to one of Kargaria’s Four Great Merchant Clans mustering its economic might for a thinly-veiled relief mission to Ikesia.
The Sage stepped before his metal golem, reaching up for a handle and pulling down a plate on its chest to the horrid screeching of metal against metal. It was hollow inside, and he climbed into this hollow space, shutting the plate behind himself before a half-minute of audible struggle.
Then, a command phrase. A few words in that foreign language, and the golem made clear to all that it was no golem at all.
A wave of heat had emanated from the machine and thick smoke black as pitch had billowed from its backpack, and its mechanisms screeched against one another as it rose to an upright stance. With great noise, click-clacking and scraping and clanging, with beast-like growling and billowing of smoke from its engine, the armor had walked over to a nearby boulder that had been used as a target. Its fist reared back and the whirr of a flywheel there echoed, rising to an ear-piercing pitch. Then there issued forth a thunderous impact and the armor had unleashed a punch that resounded with thunder and shattered the boulder to myriad tiny pieces.
It had returned to a resting stance, its right arm covered in white dust, and turned to face the Four Elders. From within the machine, the Sage had proclaimed a single sentence in perfect if archaic Kargarian, his voice amplified to a booming volume that kicked up dust and overwhelmed the machine’s great cacophony. If anything, the old-fashioned wording had served to bestow weight to what he said.
“Thou shouldst know that with our shared knowledge of automata, works tenfold this one’s superior might be wrought in great number.”
Her memory of the One-week War waned after that point, only a few standout details clear enough to reminisce on. She remembered gawking at the Ikesians’ strange contraptions, shielding her ears from the gross clacking of their devices. She remembered one of the Ikesians who was particularly interested in Kargarian culture, in the music of her people, who went as far as to stumble through a couple ceremonies just for the chance of learning basic throat-singing methods. The man’s face bore cross-hatched scars and he had a beautiful automaton leg that moved more smoothly than a real one, one which sang as it moved.
The Peace Accords which were subsequently drafted went on to, on legal terms, outlaw the use of CP-T in weapons. In reality, the ban was a single paragraph written in weasel words and, deliberately, did nothing but ensure the availability of the substance under the moniker of an obstruction-breaching tool. Both sides went through great pains to ensure that the Accords were filled with such backhanded agreements, malicious at a glance but specifically written to end up beneficial.
