The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,182

forced her to get more and more creative with how and when she deployed shamans. In half her battles she didn’t send in Pipaji or Dulin at all, relying instead on conventional military means to break the opposition. More often than not she was the only shaman in action, since she had a higher opium tolerance than the rest; she could withstand close to twenty minutes of smoke, during which she could do incalculable damage before she was forced to retreat.

The fighting turned vicious. The defenders weren’t so quick to surrender anymore; more often they fought to the death, taking as many southerners with them as they could. Her casualty rates, once in the dozens, climbed to triple digits.

But Rin was also blessed by the fact that Nezha’s troops were so fucking slow. They weren’t mobile in the least. They were stationary defenders—they stuck behind city walls and protected them as best they could, but never did they attempt the roving strikes that might have put the Southern Army in real trouble.

“It’s likely because they’re weighed down by tons of Hesperian equipment,” Kitay guessed. “Mounted arquebuses, multiple fire cannons, all that heavy stuff. They haven’t got the transportation support to take it on the road, so they’re always tethered to one place.”

That turned Nezha’s troops into sitting targets and offset the technology imbalance somewhat—Nezha’s troops were committed to their trenches with their heavy machinery, while Rin’s squadrons were quick and agile, always on the offensive. They were fighting like a turtle and a wolf—one retreating into its ever-shrinking shell, while the other paced its boundaries, waiting for the slightest weakness to strike.

That suited Rin just fine. After all, she, Kitay, and Nezha had all been taught since their first year at Sinegard that it was always, always better to be on the offensive.

Despite the increased resistance, week by week they continued to gain ground, while Nezha’s territory crumbled.

Rin knew Nezha’s losses weren’t entirely his fault. He had inherited a Republic fractured and riddled with resentment toward his father, as well as a massive, unwieldy army that was tired of fighting a civil war they’d been promised would end quickly. His inner circle was getting smaller and smaller, reduced now to a Hesperian attaché who did little more than make snide comments about how Nezha was on his way to losing a country, and a handful of Vaisra’s old advisers who resented that he wasn’t his father. She heard rumors that since Mount Tianshan, he’d already had to quash two attempted coups, and although he’d swiftly jailed the perpetrators, his dissenters had only increased.

Most importantly, he was losing the support of the countryside.

Most of the Nikara elite—aristocrats, provincial officials, and city bureaucrats—remained loyal to Arlong. But the villagers had no entrenched interests in the Republic. They hadn’t benefited financially from Nezha’s new trade policies, and now that they’d tasted life under Hesperian occupation, they threw their support behind the only other alternative.

The upshot of this was that as Rin moved south, she stumbled into a remarkable intelligence network. In the countryside, everyone was tangentially connected to everyone else. Market gossip became a hub for crucial information. It didn’t matter that none of her new sources were privy to high-level conversations, or that none of them had ever seen a map of troop placements. They saw its evidence with their own eyes.

Three columns crossed this river two nights ago, they told her.

We saw wagons of fire powder moving east this morning.

They are building temporary bridges across the river at these two junctions.

Much of this ground-level, eyewitness intelligence was useless. The villagers weren’t trained spies, they didn’t draw accurate maps, and they often embellished their stories for dramatic effect. But the sheer volume of information made up for it; once Rin had reports from at least three different sources, she and Kitay could piece them together into a mostly accurate composite image of where Nezha had arranged his defenses, and where he intended to strike next.

And that, again, confirmed what Rin had believed since the start of her campaign—that Nikan’s southerners were weak but many, and that united, they could topple empires.

“Nezha can’t be doing this on purpose,” Kitay said one evening after yet another city in Hare Province had tumbled into southern hands with barely so much as a whimper. “It’s like he’s not even trying.”

Rin yawned. “Maybe it’s the best he can do.”

He shot her a wary look. “Don’t get cocky.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She knew she couldn’t really take credit for their