Breaking an Empire Read Online Free PDF Page A

merits.
    “We’d survive the battle with more men, and hurt Niam Liad besides.”
    “And all the supplies, the food, the wealth. You want to throw that away?”
    “Dead men eat no food, spend no coin. I want to stay alive as long as I can, and dying in a city engagement isn’t going to help that. No, we burn the Lianese and let them starve. We’ve got enough supplies, and foraging to add to them. Break them at this city and we’ve got them for the rest of the campaign, too scared to fight.”
    “And if it makes the Lianese too angry to flee, to surrender? Then we fight against the desperate, for they will trade life for life until annihilation, and here they have more lives. Bloody streets are better than burned ones.”
    The argument raged into the night, until Rhyfelwyr gestured for them to go to bed. Rhocas had passed out long ago, the pain in his wound deadened by the herbs. Gwyth rolled over and fell asleep, unmindful of the cuts he had taken. The others followed suit, although Llofruddiwr had not returned. He was a dark one, but the best fighter Rhy had ever seen, and so was permitted his quirks.
    ***
    Trumpets called to meet the dawn. Groggy and mealy-mouthed, the soldiers of Glanhaol Fflamboethi stretched themselves, veterans all this day. To the sound of burning logs and popping joints, a warm breakfast was served, and the army gathered itself into march formation, outriders spread wide. There was no fear of an ambush, only precautions against the unlikely possibility of one.
    In the eyes of soldiers who had fought but once, this was to be an easy campaign, where the enemy would flee and the cities crumble in surrender. Older heads worried, for it was an ill sign to them that the campaign had begun easily. They preferred difficulty, even disaster, in the first battle, for from them on, the situation could only improve. Not this. This meant a stiffening of the spine, a reorganization, a building antipathy, and so the veterans feared Miath Mhor, and all that it meant.
    On the morning of the third day from battle, the army paused on a ridge overlooking the city they had come to reclaim. The officers gathered on the highest point and discussed the strategy to be used in taking this bastion of Lianese strength. Some spoke in favour of soldiers, others for torches. The conference mirrored that of Rhyfelwyr and his squad, but these men came to a conclusion, and so it was the skirmishers of Bhreac Veryan bound rags to their javelins and brought forth burning brands. Ringing the city, they charged, shields held high to ward away arrows fired from the outlying buildings. Dashing through the streets at a full run, torch after torch sailed into warehouses, apartment towers, mansions, hovels, any building that looked as if it might burn.
    Miath Mhor was a city made of wood, and as the skirmishers fled the burning in ragged numbers, the rest of Glanhaol Fflamboethi could see the flames licking higher. Soon the fires became an inferno that swallowed Miath Mhor, devouring the heart of the people within. Citizens fled and the Veryan army let them go, their hungry mouths a burden on the Lianese. Men who looked like soldiers, or even of fighting age, were cut down by battalions positioned about the city. Others fled into the fishing boats, and white sails filled the harbour as they sought to flee the sparks and the smoke. In their haste, many ran aground or crashed, and wrecks filled the harbour. It was a day of carnage for the Lianese, their city destroyed, their livelihoods stolen, their families broken.
    The Veryan soldiers had taken losses, more than the commander had hoped, but a paltry few compared to the brutality of street combat. And so after witnessing the destruction of Miath Mhor, the path of the war turned the army south, their next goal the city of Horaim, the last major point of defence before Niam Liad itself.
    It was smiling soldiers who led the way, striding down the road towards glory and spoils.
    ***
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