Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [126]
Whoever he is, I wish he was on my side.
The only way of combating such a tactic was to keep the entire army in a combat-ready state at all times, day or night.
And that is impossible, as my enemy surely knows.
Try to keep troops in that state, day after day, when nothing whatsoever happened, and before long they lost so much edge and alertness that when a real attack did come, they couldn’t defend effectively against it. They would slip, drop their guard, grow weary—and only then would the attack come. There was no way to prevent such slips, either; people grew tired.
The enemy wasn’t using mages to predict when troops had gone stale; he didn’t have to. The very children playing along the roads could do that.
Perfectly logical, a brilliant use of limited resources. The only problem was, it fit the pattern of a country that was well-organized, one with people fiercely determined to defend themselves against interlopers, not a land ravaged by its own leaders and torn by internal conflict.
He turned away from the tactics table and faced the window, staring into the teeth of the storm. We never move in until and unless conditions inside the country we wish to annex are intolerable. The arrival of our troops must represent a welcome relief—so that we can be seen by the common people as liberators, not oppressors. King Ancar certainly created those conditions here!
In fact, if half of what he had read in the reports was actually true and not rumor, Ancar would have had a revolt of his own on his hands within the next five or ten years. When Imperial troops had first crossed the border, in fact, they had been greeted as saviors. So what had happened between then and now to change that?
It can’t be the tribute, we haven’t levied it yet. Imperial taxes amounted to sixty percent of a conquered land’s products every year—and the conscription of all young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. But none of that had been imposed yet; it never was until after all of the benefits of living within the Empire were established. By the time the citizens had used the freshwater aqueducts, the irrigation and flood-retention systems, the roads, and most of all, the Imperial Police, they were generally tolerant of the demands the Empire made on them in return.
The taxes were adjusted every year to conform to the prosperity (or lack of it) in that year—the farmer and the businessman was left with forty percent of what he had earned, instead of having all of it taken from him—and he didn’t have to worry about the safety of his wife, daughter, or sister. Women could take the eggs to market and the sheep to pasture without vanishing.
Which is definitely more than can be said for the situation during Ancar’s reign.
If there was any grumbling, it was generally the conduct of the Imperial Police that changed the grumbling to grudging acceptance of the situation. Imperial citizens and soldiers lived under the same hard code as conquered people. Even in the first-line shock troops, the Code was obeyed to the letter. The Imperial Code was impartial and absolutely unforgiving.
The Law is the Law. And it was the same for everyone; no excuses, no exceptions, no “mitigating circumstances.”
Assault meant punishment detail for a soldier, and imprisonment with hard labor for a civilian. A thief, once caught, was levied fines equal to twice the value of what he had stolen, with half going to the ones whose property he had taken, and half to the Empire; if he had no money, he would work in a labor camp with his wages going to those fines until they were paid. If the thief was also a soldier, his wages in the army were confiscated, and his term lengthened by however long it took to pay the fine. Murder was grounds for immediate execution, and no one in his right mind would ever commit rape. The victim would be granted immediate status as a divorced spouse. Half of the perpetrator’s possessions went to the