The moon hung low and swollen—a pale coin tossed into the black sea of sky. Fog coiled through the trees like restless ghosts. In the eastern forests, the Satomi host slept under half-burned watchfires, bellies hollow, eyes heavy with exhaustion. Their drums lay mute. Their banners drooped. Their pride, once thunderous, had been whittled to brittle timber.
Eugene stood on the outermost wall of his fortress, wrapped in a dark cloak. He watched the horizon like a man reading a page of fate. Below him, the Fifty Spears and the hidden detachments bunched in silence, cloaked and gloved, faces painted in mud. Hiroshi moved beside him like a shadow twin.
[Situation update]: Satomi army fatigued, supply lines burned, officer morale unstable. Defection probability among mid-commanders: elevated. Recommended action: execute calibrated strike to fracture command cohesion and present defectors a safe avenue.
Eugene's mouth curved. A strike that doesn't merely wound, but makes choice inevitable.
—
He divided his force into three ghost-units. Unit Alpha—archers and trail-cutters—would move to sever the Satomi rear and silence their watchfires. Unit Beta—the Spears—would cut the supply wagons and capture a targeted command tent. Unit Gamma—Hiroshi's blade squad—would stage the false retreat to spark panic and to drive shaken captains toward the waiting hand of mercy.
The plan hinged on timing and a single human variable: a Satomi captain named Inoue, known for his pragmatism and secret resentment toward Yoshihiro. Eugene's spy had fed Inoue whispers all week. Tonight, Eugene would hand the captain a choice visible to his peers.
"Remember," Eugene told the men in a hushed rasp, voice like steel against linen, "we will not annihilate them tonight. We will make them see that continuing with Yoshihiro equals ruin, while turning to us equals survival. Kill only if necessary. Capture, and leave a banner of hope."
The Spears answered with the silent choreography of men who had bled together.
—
The forest swallowed them. Alpha crept along ridgelines, cutting the thin ropes that held watchfires, scattering embers into the damp earth. Shadows collapsed—men snuffed like candles. The air filled with the soft thump of ropes falling and the quiet curse of unused bells.
Beta slid into the supply road, hidden behind a waist-high wall of brush. The wagon drivers snored, their horses dozing, feed bags piled like sleeping dogs. A whispered signal; iron hands pried, tarpaulins surged, and the first wagons were quieted. No flares were thrown; the thieves moved like wind. Soon, several wagons were lashed and dragged toward the waiting lee of the valley—spoils not for plunder but for proof.
Hiroshi and Gamma struck at the flank just as Alpha let fly its first arrow, causing confusion and pulling watchmen from their posts. Men stumbled, cries rose. The forest erupted with sludgy panic.
Eugene himself rode with Beta, moving like a ghost behind the wagons. The targeted command tent—a dark-green pavilion near the supply line—was ripped open in a flash of action. Spearpoints chased one another, shadow against shadow.
Inside, the tent's occupants fought like cornered animals. One fell, then another. A captain shoved a sealed letter into his breast and attempted to flee—Eugene blocked him with a single step, katana poised at the throat. The letter's seal bore Satomi ink; Eugene broke it and read the curt sentence aloud to the men who had crowded the tent flap.
Yoshihiro's directive to the rear: "Leave any slow companies to die. We march with the swift."
The line of faces outside—drivers, clerks, junior officers—went pale. Even in chaos, the kernel of it cut: the lord had ordered sacrifice. The letter, true or forged, did not matter now. In that moment of terror, the appearance of abandon birthed the real thing.
Eugene did not shout triumph. He stepped onto the tent's lip and unfurled a captured Satomi small banner, then raised a white pennon—an old symbol used by peasants when offering surrender to a just commander. Men froze as the pennon fluttered.
"Men of Satomi," Eugene's voice rang low and steady, carrying through the clearing and like a hammer into tired hearts, "your lord leaves you to die. He calls you expendable. I offer a different path. Turn your banners, keep your lives, and you will be given land, food, and positions in my force. Follow Yoshihiro, and you will starve upon a mountain of his pride."
A hundred eyes fixed upon the tent like a tide pulling at a cliff. The words—simple, blunt, human—fell into the open wounds already made by hunger and cold.
—
That night's maneuver was not a massacre but a staged revelation. Eugene ordered no killing of prisoners who showed willingness to change. A handful of hardened officers spat and refused; they were made examples of—stripped, bound, and left to the forest as a message. The rest were herded quietly toward safe grounds under the fortress shadows, escorted by Spears who acted less like conquerors and more like custodians.
At the campfires beyond the first ridge, rumors traveled faster than horse-hoofs. By the time the dawn smeared blood-orange across the sky, three Satomi captains had slipped through the trees and arrived at the fortress gate under the white pennon. They pushed through guards, breathless, faces carved by sleepless nights. Inoue walked among them—older, his beard graying at the chin—but his eyes were practical, not cowardly.
"Eugene," Inoue said simply, voice hoarse. "You offered life. My men have none left. If you keep your word, we will turn. If not—" he stared into the rising sun like a man peering into his own last day. "Then we die."
Eugene saw the weight in Inoue's shoulders—the decision already made in the quiet calculus of hunger and hope. He nodded once. "Bring your men within the walls. We will feed and re-equip them. Those who prove willingness will be given command posts. Those who betray us later will find no mercy."
—
Word spread like a new dawn. Satomi drums fell silent not because the lord had roared but because his captains, the sinews of his army, had been plucked away. The march stalled. The Satomi vanguard, gored by hidden traps and bereft of supplies, saw their rear turn and falter. Splinters of desertion snaked through the host.
In Ishida's war room, the kettle did not boil. News arrived as if tossed like a jagged stone: Three captains defected to Eugene. Supply wagons captured. Morale—fractured. The general's face, always composed like a coin, tightened into something raw and animal.
—
Back at the fortress, Eugene walked among the new men in the feed sheds. He saw gaunt faces transform under hot soup and clean blankets. He saw old captains straighten into officers once more as they accepted new insignia and new belts. He did not flinch at their hands—callused, scarred—they were the hands that would one day hold banner and plow alike for his realm.
Hiroshi watched the scene with a quiet pride that edged into worry. "They will call us traitors," he said, half to himself. "To Takeda, to the old order."
Eugene smiled without humor. "Let them call us names. Names are winds. This valley will feed men, not slogans. Soon, more will walk in these paths—soldiers, captains, merchants. They will join for food tonight and for the future tomorrow."
The AI's soft, inevitable voice threaded into his thoughts:
[Event outcome: defection cascade initiated. Satomi cohesion decreased by 49%. Estimated days until mass collapse: 4–7 without direct intervention. Strategic advantage: maximal. Recommend immediate diplomatic outreach to other wavering commanders.]
Eugene's eyes turned eastward where smoke still rose in ragged plumes. "Prepare riders," he said. "Send word to the Kiso and Imagawa. Tell them the harvest begins already; tell them to come if they want pieces of a new order."
—
By afternoon, the Satomi host had begun to break. Instead of one thunderous march, it splintered into knots of men looking for food, bargaining for survival, bargaining for life. Some ran for the hills; others crept toward Eugene's blown-open gates carrying white pennons of their own.
In Kai Castle, Ishida sat rigid as a spear, his mouth a thin line. He had marshaled wolves and yet, within a week, many had become stray dogs. The campaign he had dreamed of to crush the boy-lord had become an unraveling knot.
Eugene did not rejoice with oaths and wine. He moved like a man who had planted a field and waited for rain—calm, relentless, already measuring the yield. He had lit the night, not with mindless fire, but with a lantern that showed men a choice.
As dusk fell on the day of his gambit, the valley echoed not with the trample of an enemy host but with the murmur of new voices—men who had been enemies hours before, kneeling at long tables, eating rice, and listening to the quiet words of a leader who could feed them and dream for them both.
The night had taken fire. The morning had returned men. And the game—Eugene's game—had changed irreversibly.