Chapter 77: The Grain-Borrowing Order

Another small Cretan force scattered before our eyes, and our army moved into a village called “Baber.” In the month since we entered the Greenleaf Plains, this was already our eleventh victory over the Cretans. Although winning a victory could not be called a bad thing, hidden under the surface of this success was a worrying truth.

“Still the same?” Fred asked me.

I nodded. “The granary is empty. All the reserve supplies were shipped away over ten days ago. The grain left in the village is only enough for the villagers to last one month.”

Fred gave a long sigh. “Just as I feared… the thing I worried about most has happened.”

Every village we recaptured was like this. The grain in the villages had been “precisely plundered,” leaving at most only enough grain for the villagers to survive one month. According to what the villagers told us, whenever the Cretans occupied a village, they issued a “Grain-Borrowing Order,” “borrowing” away most of the village’s surplus grain and leaving only enough food for one month, claiming that they would return grain to the village on schedule and in fixed amounts every month. Looking at it now, this scheme had worked quite well:

Because they had not wiped out the villagers in the occupied lands all at once, this “Grain-Borrowing Order” did not provoke large-scale armed resistance, and in just one month the Cretans obtained enough supplies from the occupied territories to last them through the winter. The most critical point was that the Cretans had never planned to hold these lands for long. When our main army arrived, we were often faced with garrisons of no fewer than three to five hundred and no more than one to two thousand. After a symbolic fight, they fled in an orderly retreat, leaving us towns and villages that had been stripped bare. Out of the position of our own army, and also to calm the hearts of the people in the rear, we could not sit by and watch the villagers run out of food. This greatly increased the pressure on our supply lines.

“They want to wear us down on our own land!” Dakla threw down his helmet in hatred.

“Fred, we can’t go on like this anymore.” I held the supply allocation list in my hands. The information it revealed was distressing. “At least within a month, we cannot recapture any town with a population of more than two thousand. Otherwise, there could be a gap in our grain supply.”

“But we can’t stop attacking either. Right now the Cretans are not firmly established on our land. The fall of Silver Shield Castle gives us a chance to catch them off guard. If we give them plenty of time to stabilize their lines, every battle from now on will be harder than the last.” Rodrick said seriously. “According to intelligence estimates, their army is nearly half again as large as ours. The longer we drag things out, the more advantageous it becomes for them.”

I said no more. I knew Rodrick was right. Now was the best time to recover lost territory and strike at the Cretans. Once these powerful foreign invaders gained a firm foothold on the Greenleaf Plains, it would be difficult to drive them out in one determined push.

This was probably the Cretans’ purpose: to use this “Grain-Borrowing Order” to stop our advance, consolidate their rule over the occupied areas, and prepare for a long war of invasion. The one who had come up with this strategy must have had quite excellent strategic vision.

“Staying still and doing nothing won’t work. This isn’t only a strategic problem. Although most of them are in the Eastern Route Army, there are also many southern nobles in our army. If we just stay here without moving, they may become dissatisfied…” Fred analyzed this way.

“…Then, there may be only one way left.”

“What?” we asked in unison.

“Push deep with an isolated army, find the main force of the Cretans, and fight a quick decisive battle!”

“You’re crazy!” Red Flame shouted. “Do you know how big the Greenleaf Plains is? Tens of thousands of men scattered in here would not be any easier to find than a few peppercorns.”

“Red Flame is right,” I said. “That method won’t work.”

“It’s not as difficult as you imagine, my friends.” Fred revealed a confident smile. “The Cretans cannot abandon all the residents of the occupied territories. They must deliver the monthly grain to every village and town on time. So, I think the place where they store grain must be a transportation hub, not too far from the front lines, and with enough warehouses to hold the grain. The only place that can satisfy all these conditions is…”

Fred spread out the map and pointed at one spot.

“Chamela Town. It is not very far from us. This is our chance.”

This was a plan of insane recklessness. If Fred’s judgment was wrong, then we—all of us, including the twenty thousand soldiers and the noble lords following us—would be buried in this endless green sea.

“Too crazy.” Poirot shook his head with a wry smile. “Leading nearly twenty thousand people across the boundless grassland to look for a main force that might not even exist—this is truly too crazy.”

“Yes, it is indeed crazy. I will leave three thousand men as a reserve. Friends, I hope all of you will be there. This risk should be taken by me alone…”

“The craziest part…” Poirot suddenly interrupted Fred, “is that I know perfectly well this is an absolutely stupid idea, and yet I’ve still decided to go with you.”

The same cheerful, open smile appeared on everyone’s face, showing the same feeling in our hearts. Yes, I would follow Fred, no matter how dangerous the place he was going. I trusted him so much that I felt placing my life under his command was safer than keeping it in my own hands.

“Anyone might end up in your reserve force, but that will never include me,” I answered firmly.

…

After brief preparations, this raiding army set off: each person carried food and water for only five days, abandoned all baggage and carts, and advanced quickly across the vast enemy-occupied land. To avoid alarming the garrisons in various towns, we made wide detours around every village and hid our tracks as much as possible. If we had been discovered at that time, we would surely have been caught in a pincer attack from all sides and utterly annihilated. But the thing we worried about did not happen. What we had originally feared had now become the condition we relied on: the Greenleaf Plains was too vast. Hiding an army of fewer than twenty thousand here was not difficult. To avoid drawing the enemy’s attention, Fred ordered that no fires could be lit for cooking; they could only eat dry rations and drink cold water. The young nobles in the army complained bitterly, but they were not stupid enough to joke with their own lives, so they gritted their teeth and carried out Fred’s orders.

Chamela was the largest town on the Greenleaf Plains. Calling it a town was already not quite accurate. Not only was it surrounded by a ring of city walls almost five men tall, but it also cleverly used the course of a tributary of the Mayne River, taking advantage of a natural river bend to build a moat around more than half of it. I had never seen what it usually looked like there, but from this afternoon when we observed it from the distant forest, the town had seemed unusually quiet.

The gates on its north and east sides stayed tightly shut from noon until late at night. We could not see the other two gates, but its strange silence made us believe that the scene there was about the same. This made me feel a little uneasy in spite of myself: if this really was, as Fred had guessed, the place where grain from nearby villages and towns was gathered, then we should have been able to see convoys coming and going to transport grain.

The same uneasy feeling was spreading among my companions. All the elite troops of the Central Route Army had been brought by us to this land far away from the rear supply areas, and the food we carried was only enough for one more day. If, as we feared, Fred had made a mistake in his judgment on this matter, then what we would face was an irreparable collapse.

Staring at the closed gates, I could not help wanting to voice my worries. But an indescribable fear seized my throat and made me swallow back those restless thoughts. This fear seemed to come from a stubborn superstition—I was afraid that if I spoke the words, they would become real. I glanced at Fred. A thin layer of glistening sweat stood on his forehead, his fists were clenched, and his eyes stared at the gates without blinking. I could not guess what he was thinking at that moment, but I knew that my friend was bearing enormous pressure that ordinary people like me could hardly imagine. What he was responsible for was not only his own life, but an army of nearly twenty thousand, a battlefield soaked in blood and flesh, and even the fate of a nation and millions of people.

Even so, his gaze remained firm, unshakable like a mountain, just like the impression he had always left on us. That gaze made me feel at ease.

“They’re right here…” Fred said in a voice that was quiet but just loud enough for us to hear. When these words drew the eyes of all of us, a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“We found the right place. They’re right here.” Fred repeated what he had just said in an even firmer tone.

“How do you know? They—they haven’t even opened the gates at all.” Red Flame asked, with a bit of frustration and curiosity.

“That’s exactly the point. This is a large town, a major road junction. What kind of situation would make them cut off all traffic and be unwilling to open even the city gates? If it were to defend against an attack, that would be understandable—but right now, the nearest enemy to them is still four days’ march away.” Fred pointed out to us with a smile.

“If it’s not defense against an outside enemy, then the only possibility is keeping secrets on the inside. Think about it—what secret other than hiding military grain would make the Cretans so cautious that they would even completely seal off a town?”

Fred’s analysis lifted our spirits, but he had not completely convinced us.

“This is only a guess,” Dakla said in a muffled voice. “Even though it makes sense, I still can’t fully believe it.”

As if to prove the accuracy of Fred’s guess, the moment Dakla’s words ended, a creaking sound of gates opening came through the air from the direction of the city gates. The sound was dull and hoarse, but at that moment, to us it was no less wonderful than the singing of the legendary divine birds of heaven. Following the opening sound came the cries of livestock. Then, line after line of oxcarts loaded with bundles of grain poured out of the city gate, moving slowly along the crisscrossing roads toward the distance. Just as we had learned from the recaptured villages and towns, all the oxcart drivers had their faces covered with black cloth covers, leaving only their eyes, nostrils, and mouths exposed. As they moved, the escorting officers shouted roughly from time to time, forbidding them from making any sound.

A huge wave of joy surged into my heart. Everything happening before my eyes powerfully proved that Fred’s judgment was correct. Dakla cheered in a low voice and hugged Red Flame beside him. Kelsey and Eliot, beaming, clasped each other’s hands tightly. Poirot also happily slapped my shoulder, showing his joy. But while we were dancing with excitement at the sight of hope, Fred had already moved past his excitement and was seriously thinking about the next problem.

“Finding where the grain is stored is only a minor victory, friends. More important is how we seize it. Chamela Town is the meeting point of five roads leading in different directions. From Bunor, the nearest town, it takes less than half a day to reach here on foot. Within a day’s journey, no fewer than ten villages and towns can get here. That means we have at most one day…” My dear friend stopped our celebratory movements and said calmly.

“…Although the garrison in the town is currently less than four thousand, a day later, reinforcements coming from all directions will exceed twenty thousand. By then, we will be in the disadvantageous position of being attacked from front and rear. Time is not very abundant—that is the most unfavorable point for us.”

“But one thing to be thankful for…” He pointed at the many grain transport carts hurriedly entering and leaving the city gates under cover of night, and added: “Our guess was correct. This is exactly where the Cretans stockpile grain. Our guess was correct. As long as we capture Chamela, we can win a decisive victory on the central battlefield and shake off the passive situation in the war against Crete.”

We calmed down and carefully observed the surroundings. It was not just time—the terrain here was equally unfavorable to us. Around Chamela Town stretched a vast plain, and the town sat at the top of a gentle slope, holding a very advantageous position. In the daytime, as soon as we stepped out of the forest where we were hiding, the guards standing on the city walls would see us clearly. Even if we attacked at night, as long as the weather was clear enough, an army of nearly twenty thousand could not sneak close to the city walls without the enemy noticing.

“Any suggestions, friends?” Fred’s eyes stared straight at Chamela City. His gaze seemed to peel away the city walls layer by layer, wanting to see clearly the layout of the city behind those high walls.

“I can’t think of a better way,” Rodrick replied, his smile fading as he frowned. “A night raid might be the best chance we can seize, even though it doesn’t seem like much.”

To such a proposal, I could only express my agreement. We were now an isolated army deep in enemy territory, and we had artificially created a situation of extreme food shortage. The current situation had completely taken away our right to refuse a less-than-ideal battle. In this battle about to break out within a day, apart from the courage of desperation and the strategy of surprise, we truly had nothing in our hands.

Fred used his eyes to ask everyone present. The answers he received were all affirmative. He shrugged slightly, with a hint of helplessness, and said: “Then it’s decided. The attack will begin at this time tomorrow!”