Enlightened Empire

Chapter 291

After Llasto, the bearer of bad news, had left the king's study, the mood in the room was dire. While Sumaci and Fadelio looked awkward and confused, Corco sat there like a corpse, having lost all motivation to continue his enthusiastic speech from before.

“At least now we know where those Arcavian ships in the west were coming from,” Fadelio tried to right the mood. However, while his words managed to wake Corco up, they didn't make him feel any more optimistic.

“Yeah, from the worst place possible,” the king said in a bitter tone. As he tried to grasp the severity of their position, his mind began to race. He stood up and walked back and forth behind his desk to follow his frantic thoughts.

“Atau thought that maybe their ships were coming from the west, after a long journey of circumnavigating the continents. That would be fine, since they wouldn't be able to send their ships quickly that way. That journey is dangerous and long after all. In this case, their presence in the Verduic Sea would just be an accident, not something they can plan or properly take advantage of.”

As Corco continued to walk in circles, accompanied by his animated hand gestures, he talked himself into a frenzy, while the other two watched him with worried expressions. Though whether they were worried about the king's state of mind or about the enemy ships was hard to say.

“I thought that the Arcavians may have taken apart their ships on the east coast and carried them over the mountains piece by piece, only to put them back together in the west,” Corco continued. “That way, their actions would be a deliberate attempt to strengthen their presence in the Verduic Sea, but it still wouldn't be the end of the world. An operation like that takes too much time and effort, and it's too easy to interrupt if we know they're doing it. So their overall number of ships in the west would have still been limited, and disrupting their plans would have been no effort at all. But now we've got the worst of both worlds. Unlimited ships, deliberately built and sent, with easy access to our waters. And to top it all off, I ordered the shipyard to stop building battleships like a fucking idiot. They're already there, and they'll start their attacks any day. The fuck are we gonna do about this now?”

“Well, we can't change anything about reality either way, so knowing is still better than not knowing,” Fadelio argued again. This time, his words had some effect. Corco's feet stopped, and he stood in place for a few seconds.

“At least in that respect, you're right,” he said in the end.

Once Corco calmed down, he realized that now, anger and self-blame didn't help any. Instead. they should prepare to face the enemy attack that was bound to come. However, once he calmed down, he also realized that he had forgotten something even more important than their weak strategic position. With concern, he looked over to the couch arrangement in the room, towards his newly wed wife.

“How are you feeling?” he asked in a tone much softer than usual. Sumaci wasn't only his wife, she was also the green princess of the Verdant Isles. A sudden, unprovoked invasion from an enemy fleet within their waters would hit her much harder than him. All this time, he had only thought about himself, while she had sat there in silence, possibly in shock over the news, fretting over the fate of her family and her people. However, when she was addressed, she only looked stunned for a second, before she smiled the same way as before.

“I'm fine,” she said. “It's a bit of a shock, but the best we can do now is prepare for war at sea, to help my father's family and support our allies.”

“That's right, isn't it?” Corco nodded and tried to fake a confident smile. “Now that we're aware of this and focused on it, we'll solve this thing no problem. At least for now, nothing bad has happened, so we still have time to prevent their attacks and catch them off guard.” After he had reassured his wife and himself with empty words, Corco turned towards Fadelio. “The Arcavian invasion of the Verduic Sea is the first issue on our agenda from now on, every day until they have no more ships in that ocean.”

“Yes, master.”

At once, the mood in the room changed from depression to fervor. Corco returned back to his seat and took out his quill and ink, as well as a fresh piece of paper. It was time to plan again, once again time to give the Arcavian overseas ambitions another heavy blow.

“Okay, let's look at our issues from an objective point of view,” the king began while he scribbled down his thoughts. “First off, things aren't as horrible as they seem at first glance. Atau told me that the Bornish and Cahlians were building up a fleet back home several years ago. That means that there's a good chance they knew about this southern passage past Medala at least for a while. But they haven't done anything yet, which means there's probably limitations to what they can do. Considering it's called 'Eternal Ice', I won't believe that it will be gone completely forever, all the time. I mean, it's been there for centuries, a couple warm summers shouldn't be enough to completely get rid of it. Llasto's perspective fits that guess as well. He said that only a thin strip of sea is uncovered between the ice and the land. And that right in the middle of summer.”

Corco took a short break to look up and check that the others in the room were still following his thoughts, before he continued to write out his stream of consciousness and talk at the same time.

“My guess is that only in the summer does the ice clear up enough to traverse by boat, and only in hotter years. They'll have to travel single file, and some ships may still get stuck, or sunk by floating shards of ice. Not to mention the horrible conditions on board when trying to travel through a region that cold. That means no matter how many ships they have in the eastern sea, the number of ships they can bring through the passage will still be limited. They can't just use it as a stable trade channel. So if nothing else, we still have the upper hand in the western sea in terms of reinforcements.”

As he thought more about his enemy's limitations, a grin slowly spread over the king's face. Maybe their position wasn't quite as bad as he had first thought.

“Also, we are the ones who control the southern coast of Medala. Until now, they managed to steal their way past us because we weren't expecting them, but it's easy rectify our mistakes with some concerted effort. We'll distribute some cannons to Vallunaraju in the south-west and Rufalasta in the south-east. Have the warriors of Houses Queru and Llasto patrol the coastlines and put up some cannons there. Asiro, our local blacksmith, should run some tests with our current cannons in the ice house, make sure they fire well enough in cold weather. If they don't, we need to develop cannons that do. They've done so much material research in the foundry, that should be an easy task to complete within a couple weeks. Since Llasto could see them from inland, that means the ships have to sail through the ice close to the coastline, since the channel is narrow. At that distance, we can just bombard them from the land. That way, we cut off their supplies from the east and there's nothing they can do about it, not unless they want to try another land invasion. We don't even need to invest any of our ships there, and can fully focus on the Verduic Sea instead.”

“In all that time, they may have already brought many ships over though. Not only could they outnumber us by a lot, we don't even know where they are,” Sumaci argued.

“Nothing we can do about the ones that have already crossed, unfortunately,” Corco replied. “At least now, their numbers won't grow anymore. Without reinforcements, their plans are doomed to fail eventually. No matter how many ships they have right now, we can just slowly grind them down.”

“But there's always a chance that they start building their ships right on Medala's west coast,” Fadelio added in a cautious tone. “Huaylas in the central kingdom and Challwala in the northern kingdom both have big shipyards. With experienced Arcavian shipwrights at the helm, they could easily help modernize them and build their galleons right there. In that case, we'd be down on our potential battleship output and we'd lose the advantage of easier reinforcements and shorter supply chains as well. The war could drag on for years.”

“That's not a problem, I don't think,” Corco replied. At the same time, he leaned back and his tensed shoulders relaxed somewhat. The more he thought about their position, the calmer he became. For once, things weren't quite as bad as he had initially thought.

“I doubt the Arcavians want their ship designs to be copied by foreigners,” the king explained. “As far as they're concerned, their ships are core military technology. If they can, they want to conquer the entire world with them. They don't have high enough stakes in the Verduic Sea to give up such a big secret to some loose allies they barely know, let alone trust. And even if they did start to build their galleons here, they'd be lacking the materials to make them in the first place. Borna and Cahlia have similar climates to Medala, with similar trees.”

Corco looked around the room to make sure everyone was still following along.

“But the north's countryside is more developed than ours. The north doesn't have massive, untouched forests like we do. Most of their forests are, to some degree, explored and reigned in. Most importantly, they don't have many tall trees left. Those have long been hacked down to build ships or giant halls for the noble mansions in Arguna. But without those trees, they can't build a ship's keel that's long enough for a large battleship. If they want to build proper galleons of proper size, they need to import their trees from us, and let's just assume that we're not willing to supply our enemies with strategic resources. That only leaves them with imports from other countries around us. But whether it's the west or the east, they all have tropical or subtropical climates. Even if their trees are tall enough, they're entirely different from ours, and not something the Arcavian craftsmen know how to work with.”

“Wood is wood, right? They'll figure it out in time.” Fadelio insisted on his point, but Corco still wasn't worried.

“Maybe,” Corco said. “But only if they want to spend that much time and effort to research the properties of completely unknown materials. And even if they do invest that much, it'll take them years to get any results. Ships have a long production cycle. Import several types of wood, guess through intuition which one will work well on what part of the ship, then spend a year building it, then test it to see if it holds water, literally, or if it will rot away or what have you. With their unmethodical approach to... everything, it'll take them years to experiment out a decent result, and by then our war is hopefully over.”

Seemingly convinced, Fadelio nodded in agreement, before he moved on.

“What about the ships that are already in the west then?” he asked. “Should we send our own fleet to disrupt their actions early? Wouldn't that be better?”

“What fleet?” Corco asked with a cramped face. “Two years ago, I ordered the stop of battleship production in favor of more merchant and fishing vessels. Back then I thought we'd be safe in the west, so I wanted to focus on industry and do things slowly and orderly. Now it's coming back to bite us.”

“Ships or no ships, we can't blindly rush into combat either way. Not without knowing about our enemy's positions, numbers and plans. Anything else would only get our sailors killed,” Sumaci joined in. As far as naval warfare was concerned, she was much more knowledgeable than Corco or Fadelio. “Battles at sea are often all or nothing affairs. Either your ship sinks, or you get away with a few dead sailors and a few broken planks. If there's no critical damage to the mast or the keel, a broken ship can often be repaired in a few days, and then you've taken almost no losses from your battle. In many cases, the winning side boards the loser and ends up with even more ships than they started with, so attacking without knowledge is the worst choice we could make. Even if we had an advantage in numbers, one bad engagement could spell our doom.”

While Sumaci's words made sense, Corco was sure that she was also trying to take some of the burden from his mistake off him. After all, his mistake of scaling back battleship production would weigh less heavily if it wouldn't impact the war as much. Although he wouldn't shirk his responsibilities, he still gave her a grateful smile, before he continued.

“In that case, we should be careful before we blindly throw the dice in the west. For now, we have no idea how many ships they have over there, so we should assume the worst case scenario.”

“And what's the worst case?” Fadelio asked in a bland tone that sounded as if he was asking about the weather, rather than a crucial security question. In response, Corco shrugged and tried an equally more casual tone.

“Hard to say. They can't move many ships through the passage at once, but we really don't know how long they've been sending them. They had around thirty ships along the east coast three years ago. Since then, judging their numbers has become hard, because of how little control we have over the eastern sea. But they've been building a lot of ships at home, and our spies in eastern Medala assume from the arrivals in Porcero that the overall numbers have increased by a lot. Since we know so little, but know that they've been working hard for these plans, let's assume that they've been extra busy and now have at least thirty, forty battleships in the Verduic Sea. If we work with those numbers, at least there won't be any nasty surprises waiting for us. We've already sent out one of Atau's ships as a scout. Until they come back with some news, we can't do much attacking. But we should still get combat ready here, to react to any new developments.”

“So there's a need to contact the merchants and fishermen, to transform them into warriors,” Fadelio guessed Corco's idea.

“That's the plan, transform the civilian vessels into battleships, and their crew into soldiers. In the first place, I decided to focus on civilian ships first because we didn't have enough sailors who knew how to operate a larger, more modern ship like a galleon. By now, many of them have gotten some experience on their own ships, so we already have decent crews for our fleet. Add some experienced officers from our navy to make up for their lack of military experience and to properly guide and monitor their actions. On top of that, we'll put some cannons on their ships and do some drills to get the common sailors familiar with their use. That's enough to at least put up some opposition to the Bornish and Cahlians, even if they're only brigantines, and not galleons. This way, we can at least retain a presence at sea, while we build up our navy with proper battleships.”

“Now we just need the civilians to cooperate,” Fadelio nagged. However, Corco already had an answer for his attendant's problem.

“That's the easy part. They've all bought their ships with loans from our treasury, right? If they cooperate with us in this war, they get to keep the ships for themselves, with no further pay. Minus the cannons, of course.”

“A large financial loss for the kingdom,” Fadelio sighed.

“Consider it a stimulus package. Long-term, it's gonna be worth it, even if we don't consider the importance of this war. And that, I'm pretty sure, we should do.”

“Understood. I will get to work as soon as possible. Lord Llasto also needs to be debriefed more thoroughly, in case he failed to remember important details before.”

Thus, Fadelio packed up his notes and made his way out of the room, to implement Corco's loose plans. Once again, the husband and wife were alone.

“What a mess,” Corco said. He thought about Sumaci's family, which sat in the eye of the storm at this moment. However, the queen seemed to have no interest in talking about serious topics. Instead, she flopped onto the couch in an unladylike manner

“This was much better than the boring paperwork everyday... Hey,” She twisted her head to look at Corco. “Now that things are happening, do you think things will always be this exciting here?”

“God, I hope not.”

Much the king's Corco's misfortune, his prayer would go unanswered.