Chapter 50: Stage Set (1)
On a hill, just before a slope, a white tent was blinking with yellow light; a large black eagle with a resolute expression was sitting on top of the steel pole protruding from its top.
Light.
Darkness.
Light.
Darkness.
Again and again in complete silence.
A youth in iron armor stood in front of the entrance to that tent, hesitation on his youthful face.
"Young Master in a bad mood… Isn't he, Se?" Said Feng with his gaze on the eagle. The bird completely ignored him.
"I wish I was an eagle…" The boy shook his head full of slightly longish black hair and entered the tent. Immediately it blacked once more, and he started blinking in the darkness.
"Who dares to disturb this lord's work?" Sounded intimidating but somehow tired voice.
"Young Master, it's me."
Light, and once again Feng had to close his eyes, now because of brightness. When he opened them, he saw a quite disturbing scene considering that cleaning has always been his task. Many papers were lying on the ground, some in good shape, some crushed, some with not very appropriate pictures drawn on them. Very inappropriate.
A young man in a brown shirt and pants but in heavy copper boots was sitting behind a table, playing with the controller of illumination formation.
"So, what the General has to say?" Asked Li Song not even turning to him.
"He…" Feng slightly hesitated, then said:
"The general said that you shouldn't hurry, he can allocate one more day if needed..."
"What a sweet geezer." Li Song leaned on his chair, his head looking at the ceiling.
"Ha… Does he really think I am that irresponsible? Great general my ass, his motivations discourage even a dead man."
Feng lowered his head. It was a long time since he last saw his young master in such a bad mood; he had a very hard decision to make. What will a good servant do in such situation?
"Young master, can I help you?"
"Yeah, say what would you prefer, death and desolation across New Lands or chance of losing an army and even greater death and desolation. Giving you five seconds, one, two, three, four, you lost."
"..."
He was in a very bad mood.
"Agh!"
Li Song disheveled his short brown hair and stood up.
"Sorry Feng, I just, really angry at myself."
"You aren't in fault, young master."
"No, I am. I thought it was such an opportunity: to lead an army, to show that I wasn't just messing around with my ambitions. It was a step to a dream and what now? Shaking like some fucking kid."
"I have two choices Feng, the beasts army is incoming, and they will be here very soon. We can either met them just frontally and have a clash before they will start devastating New Lands, or let them come in, let their greed consume them, make then ran wild across the region, and then round them and cut their path back. In the first case, we will save the land and people, but high chance most of them will run away and we also can lose. In the second, we will sever an entire generation of these animals, pacifying the border, dissolve that Empire of theirs and make the first step toward a new colonization campaign. However, how many will die."
Li Song turned his face toward Feng.
"You know the most pathetic thing? General Du Fu proposed the first plan, me the second. Then the old man just said that I'm the formal leader and it is up to me to decide which one we should follow. That shitty grin of his, he said he'll give me seven days to decide, and it's already the deadline, and now he's mocking me."
Slowly, he once again sat down; his limbs limp to the sides.
"What do you think of this, Feng?"
Feng looked up. Then down. Then scratched his nose and then said:
"You were right young master; Du Fu is a great general."
"What are you about?"
"Well, don't you see it, Young Master? He gave you the reigns of command and so willingly, obviously no self-respecting general will just leave it like that. He gave you seven days to get you in doubts, to pressure you. It also the reason he interacted so little with you all this time and only now reminded you of the deadline. So not to annoy you with his opposition. Basically…"
He breathed in.
"He wants you to resign. To make you think that you are unsuitable for leading an army, something like that…"
"…" Li Song looked at him for some time with his head over the chair.
"So you were just pretending to be stupid all that time?"
"…I wasn't pretending but there's nothing clever about what I have said, I mean, surely you noticed as well Young Master, it's just your mind is too clouded to consider it thoughtfully."
Said Feng feeling embarrassed.
"You right, I was thinking so much about the war that I didn't notice something so obvious."
Li Song sighed.
"However, it changes little. The old man is right about me, I'm just a brat. If I was in my room in the city, making a tactical choice, I would've surely gone with the second, but when it comes to the real life, I just can't do it. Still..."
"Crash!"
Suddenly the table in front of Li Song cracked in two.
"Like hell I will resign now, knowing that this bastard tried to manipulate me."
"Surely you won't young master!"
A wide smile spread across Feng's face.
"He hoped that I will be so soft that I won't be able to go with my plan, give up and give him the control of this army. Well, hell to him, I am soft but I'm also a proud bastard."
He took a brush from the remains of the table and wrote something on the white sheet of paper found on the ground, then on another.
"Go deliver him that, and the second send to these two."
He said giving the papers to Feng.
He glanced over the content, not the move of a good servant, but he simply couldn't resist his curiosity. His expression immediately changed.
"Young Master, this is…"
"Yes, this is it. Ha-ha, wanna see the geezer's face when he'll read it. Now go, wash off that grin he probably has now."
"Yes, young master!"
Feng immediately ran out of the tent. The next second a cheerful laugh reverberated through it so loud that the eagle almost fell down.