Then it was a matter of waiting for two things.
The first thing came on the second day of waiting. The southernmost outpost notified him that their column had entered the valley and was moving briskly. This was no surprise--they had had a much easier trip than the two northern armies.
"They're not careful about probing ahead," said the general in charge of that contingent. "Raw troops, marching blind. As I watched them, I kept thinking, this must be an attempt to deceive us. But no--they keep passing, with large gaps in the line, stragglers, and only a few regiments that put out scouts. None of them came close to finding us. They haven't put a single observer on either ridge. They're lazy."
When, later in the day, the other two hidden contingents reported a similar story, Suriyawong relayed the information back to Ambul. While he waited for the next triggering event, he had his lookouts make a particular point of searching for any sign that Virlomi herself was traveling with any of the three armies.
There was no mystery about it. She was traveling with the northern-most Indian army, riding in an open jeep, and the troops cheered when she passed, moving up and down the line--slowing down her own army's advance in the process, since they had to move off the road for her.
Suriyawong heard this with sadness. She had been so brilliant. Her assessment of how to undo the Chinese occupation had been dead on. Her holding action to keep the Chinese from returning to India or resupplying when the Persians and Pakistanis invaded had been of Thermopylaean proportions. The difference was that Virlomi was more careful than the Spartans--she had already covered all the back roads. Nothing got past her Indian guerrillas.
She was beautiful and wise and mysterious. Suriyawong had rescued her once, and cooperated in the little drama that made the rescue possible--and played upon her reputation as a goddess.
But in those days, she had known she was just acting.
Or had she? Perhaps it was her intimations of godhood that had caused her to reject Suriyawong's overtures of friendship and more-than-friendship. The blow had been painful, but he wasn't angry with her. She had an aura of greatness about her that he had seen in no other commander, not even Bean.
The troop deployments she was showing here were not what he would have expected from the woman who had been so careful of her men's lives in all her previous actions. Nor from the woman who had wept over the bodies of the victims of Muslim atrocities. Didn't she see that she was leading the soldiers to disaster? Even if there were no ambush in these mountains--t
hough it was absolutely predictable that there would be--an army this ragged could be destroyed at will by a trained and determined enemy.
As Euripides wrote, Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Ambul, knowing how Suriyawong felt about Virlomi, had offered to let him command only that part of the army that wouldn't face her directly. But Suri refused. "Remember what Bean said Ender taught. 'To know the enemy well enough to defeat him requires that you know him so well you can't help but love him.'"
Well, Suriyawong already loved this enemy. And knew her. Well enough that he even thought he understood this madness.
She wasn't vain. She never thought she'd survive. But all her plans kept succeeding. She couldn't believe that it was because of her own ability. So she thinks that she has some kind of divine favor.
But it was her abilities and training, and she isn't using them now, and her army is going to pay for it.
Suriyawong had left plenty of room for the Indians to move down the valleys before they reached the ambush. They weren't traveling at the same pace, so he had to make sure all three ambushes were sprung at the same time. He had to make sure all three armies passed through the top of the trap in their entirety. His instructions to his men were clear: Accept the surrender of any soldier who throws down his weapon and puts up his hands. Kill anyone who doesn't. But let no one out of the valley. All killed or captured.
And Virlomi alive, if she lets us.
Please let us, Virlomi. Please let us bring you back to reality. Back to life.
Han Tzu went among his troops. There was no nonsense about an invisible emperor. The soldiers of the Chinese army had chosen him and sustained his authority. He was theirs, and they would see him often, sharing their privations, listening to them, explaining to them.
It was what he had learned from Ender. If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.
So Han Tzu explained, chatted, pitched in and helped, shared the meals of common soldiers, laughed at their jokes, listened to their complaints. One soldier had complained about how no one could sleep on ground like this. Han Tzu promptly took over the man's tent and slept in it himself, exactly as it was, while the man took Han Tzu's tent. In the morning, the man swore that Han Tzu's bed was the worst one in the army, and Han Tzu thanked him for his first good night's sleep in weeks. The story made its way through the army before nightfall.
Han Tzu's army did not love him any more than Virlomi's loved her. And there was no hint of worship in it. The key difference was that Han Tzu had worked to train this army, had made sure that it was as well equipped as possible, and they knew the stories about the last war, when Han Tzu had constantly warned his superiors about all their mistakes before they made them. The belief was that if Han Tzu had been emperor all along, they would not have lost the lands they conquered.
What they didn't understand was that if Han Tzu had been their emperor, there would have been no conquests to lose. Because Achilles would have been arrested the moment he entered China and turned over to the I.F., under whose authority he had been confined to a mental hospital. There would have been no invasion of India and southeast Asia, only a holding action to block the Indian invasion of Burma and Thailand.
A real warrior hates war, Han Tzu well understood. He had seen how devastated Ender was when he learned that the last game, the final exam, had been the real war, and that his enemy had been utterly destroyed by Ender's victory.
So his men trusted him as Han Tzu kept retreating, farther and farther into China, moving from one strong position to another, but never allowing his army to engage with the Russian invaders.
He heard what the men said, the questions they asked. His answers were honest enough. "The farther they come, the longer their supply lines." "We want them so deep inside China that they can't get home again." "Our army grows the deeper we move back into China, and theirs shrinks, as they have to leave men behind to guard their route."
And when they asked him about the rumors of a huge Indian army invading in the south, Han Tzu only smiled and said, "The madwoman? The only Indian who ever conquered China was Gautama Buddha, and he did it with teachings, not artillery."
What he couldn't tell them was that they were waiting.
For Peter Wiggin.