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"The Empire is not accustomed to losing wars. Even where territory that we once claimed is now ruled by someone else, the history textbooks I have studied have been loath to say that we lost; that our soldiers were routed on the field of battle; that the enemy rode them down and killed them all; that our generals agreed hastily to unfavorable terms; that it was defeat, and not inconvenience, that drew the lines where they stand today. It is easier to speak of our defeats if they are temporary. Everyone can concede the first battle of Gernlet Pass did not go well, because there was a second, and that the second did not, because there was a third. But in the third we were triumphant, and see the glorious fortress we have now carved into those hills, giving us control over all trade across those mountains! Setbacks we can acknowledge, if they are setbacks on the path to ultimate victory.
It has been said to me that this habit of thought is an Arodenite one. We are commanded to surpass our fathers, and so obligated to regard as temporary any setback that makes the Empire in our day weaker than it was in theirs. Perhaps it is salutary, to treat every defeat as momentary, to ascribe real import only to victory; perhaps it is by this habit we have won so many victories. I do not know how this habit has served our great Empire in other times.
But today it leads us to ruin.
Allow me to explain with a recent example. First, Vitoria-Gasteiz is lost to Tar-Baphon's forces, in a sneak attack at night, unexpected and impossible to prepare for even had it been expected, ten thousand of the Emperor's subjects dead and a battalion stationed there wiped out entirely. Two dozen men get out, escape pursuit with magic, arrive exhausted on dying horses to the next city over with the terrible news. The commander of the battalion stationed at the next city is alarmed; he needs more men; but he dare not speak of utter annihilation, of a defeat so final that nothing remains to retrieve, not of an Imperial city that was not even supposed to be on the front lines. He writes his commander that the forces retreating Vitoria-Gasteiz - he does not mention that there are only half a dozen of them - say that the enemy has struck on this front, and in force, and while this is good news on all the other fronts that the enemy has certainly weakened, Vitoria-Gasteiz is not a good place to mount a defense and it will have to be Sestao, and he will need a great many men for it. His commander imagines two battalions are amassed now in Sestao, and sends some men to reinforce them, and writes off Vitoria-Gasteiz as tactically abandoned, and tells his superiors that the defensive position on that front is now improved, though at some expense.
And so an Imperial city in land we thought was safe falls to the enemy without a single whisper reaching Oppara of the truth -
- which is, of course, that we are losing.
We have lost all of our settlements on the shore of Lake Encarthan. We have lost most of our settlements inland of Lake Encarthan. No one expects Canorate to endure two more years. The pace is relentless, and increasing. Our men are not cowards; they are not poorly trained, for the most part; they are richly equipped; they are loyal. But they are outmatched utterly, and we are facing an intelligent enemy, and he has turned his gifts towards taking the Empire piece by piece in a manner that makes us unwilling to admit that he is doing it. He denies us any battles to write home of; he is careful not to take any force large enough that it cannot through four layers of indirection become a story of having quite reasonably redeployed our forces; our generals die of what can only be assassination, but which rarely resembles it. And through this work he has gutted the northern army; he has conquered Encarthan province, he has conquered Moltuna province; there are more holy warriors of Aroden whose accursed skeletons fight for his side than holy warriors of Aroden who fight for ours. He has capably and intelligently defeated us, again and again, and there is no reason at all to expect this to change, when every man with the power to change it has not been told of it.
The Empire can win. I am sure of this because Tar-Baphon is himself sure of this. Were his victory assured he would not be putting so much care into ensuring that no one who will speak the truth about the war lives to speak of it. His careful game is the game of one who cannot withstand the full wrath of the Empire, one who would wither before the full strength of the Church. He is immortal; perhaps when Moltuna has fallen entirely he will wait until none yet live who remember when it was Taldane, before he takes Isger. But he'll take Isger. Then he'll take Cheliax. In bits and in bites, until we are so weakened it does not matter if we mean to fight him, and from that moment forward I expect it will happen very fast. He cannot abide it for the Empire to exist at all.
He abides it for a time because he does not wish to provoke us into fighting before it's too late. Were his victory assured he would take Canorate now, instead of allowing plague and internal strife to lay it low a few seasons so that its eventual defeat will not inspire too much outrage. He is attempting to avoid letting Oppara know the truth, and the best explanation is that when Oppara does know the truth, when it chooses to take the full measure of the enemy, when it realizes this is not another of the wars we fight every ten years but a war like we have never fought since we had Aroden to fight it for us - then we can win. He knows that we can defeat him; that is the best explanation of why he has taken so much care to ensure we do not know we should. And that is why I have left the front, because my oaths bar me from the convenient half-truths which repeated become quarter-truths and repeated again become not true at all, and because someone needs to tell you the truth. There have been no important victories in the north in ten years and there will be none unless something changes. The whole Empire is at stake; the whole world is at stake. With all of our strength, and not with anything less, we can destroy him; the alternative is to hear, vaguely, of inconclusive battles and unfortunate redeployments, for five more years, maybe for ten, and then to awaken too late with half the Empire dead and raised to crush the rest."
