The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,193

sort of petty rage, this sheer indignation, since Sinegard. This wasn’t about troops, this was about pride. In that moment they were schoolchildren again, pummeling each other in the ring, and he’d just laughed in her face.

Chapter 28

“What just happened?” Cholang demanded. “What was that?”

“He’s got a god.” Rin paced back and forth before the general staff, cheeks flushed with humiliation. They were supposed to be celebrating. She’d promised them resounding victory, not this embarrassing stalemate. “The Dragon of Arlong, the ruler of the seas. I’ve never seen him pull rain into a shield like that. He must have gotten stronger. Must have—must have practiced.”

She kept her voice low so it wouldn’t carry. Outside the tent, the Southern Army waited in baffled suspense, their disappointment tinged with a mounting fear.

She knew whispers about Nezha were spreading throughout the troops. The gods favor the Young Marshal, they said. The Republic called down the heavens, and they’ve granted them a power to rival our own.

“Then why are we just sitting around?” Venka asked. “We were thrashing them, we should have given chase—”

“If we give chase, we’ll drown,” Rin snapped.

Xuzhou lay only miles north of the Western Murui. Any follow-up strike would be futile. Nezha had certainly positioned himself along the riverbanks, and as soon as their troops attempted a crossing he’d wrap the rapids around them like a fist and drag them to the Murui’s muddy depths.

Rin remembered vividly how it felt to drown. But this time Nezha wouldn’t save her. This time, he might pull her to the bottom of the river himself, holding her still as she thrashed until her lungs collapsed.

I can’t beat him.

She had to face that stark, immutable fact. The Phoenix had made that abundantly clear. Right now she could not engage Nezha one-on-one and win. It didn’t matter how many soldiers she had; it didn’t matter that she now controlled twice as much territory as he did. If they met again on the battlefield, he could easily kill her in a thousand different ways, because in the end, the sea and its dark, swallowing depths would always conquer fire.

And she knew Nezha would only get stronger the closer she marched to Arlong. He’d created a shield thick enough to ward off bullets with mere rainwater. It terrified her to imagine what he might do in a river so vast it looked like an ocean.

Days ago, she’d held every strategic advantage. How had her momentum vanished so abruptly?

If the entire leadership weren’t watching her, she would have screamed.

“There’s no way around this,” Kitay said quietly. “We’ve got to heed Chaghan’s advice. Back to the original plan.”

Rin met his eyes. Silent understanding sparked between them, and instantly the pieces of the obvious, inevitable strategy fell into place.

It terrified her. But they had no other choice. They had only one path forward, and now it was a matter of working through the logistics.

“We’ll have to stick to land routes as long as we can,” she said.

“Right,” he said. “Get over the river. Head straight down the mountains to the capital.”

“And when we’ve reached the Red Cliffs—”

“We’ll find the grotto. Kill it at the source.”

Yes. This was it. She’d been stupid to think that she might win this campaign without touching Arlong, when that was the locus of power all along.

Nezha fell if Arlong fell. Nezha died if the Dragon died. Nothing short of that would do.

“I don’t understand.” Venka glanced between them. “What are we trying to do?”

“We’re going to the Nine Curves Grotto,” Rin breathed. “And we’re going to kill a dragon.”

Rin ordered everyone out of the tent but Kitay.

They both knew, without saying it out loud, that what came next had to be delicately and discreetly planned. There were many roads to Arlong, but only one route that got her army there intact. Altan had once taught her that amateurs obsessed over strategy, and professionals obsessed over logistics. The logistics involved now meant the difference between dozens of casualties and thousands, and they could not be leaked.

Rin waited until the footsteps outside the tent had faded into silence to speak. “You know what we’ve got to do.”

Kitay nodded. “You want a decoy.”

“I’m thinking several. All pursuing separate crossings, with no knowledge of the other crossings, just the rendezvous point.”

That was the only way this could work. Nezha controlled the entire river, which meant he had every advantage except one. He didn’t know where or how Rin would cross it.

Meanwhile, Rin’s problem was how to move a large