The plains beyond the mountains trembled with the footfall of many men. Banners filled the horizon like a forest of writhing cloth—Takeda's black-and-crimson, riders glittering in the sun. Dust rose in great waves, swallowing the low hills and marching toward the valley like a hungry sea.
Eugene stood on the highest watchtower of the Iron Fortress, the wind whipping his cloak. Below him, the valley was an intricate machine: hidden caches, signaling fires, squads in ambush positions, scouts slipping through tree-lines like otters. Villagers armed themselves with sharpened poles and hidden bows; smiths counted out blades with careful fingers. The fortress was no longer merely his shield—it was now a sword he could use to cut at Takeda's flanks.
[Status]: Enemy host estimated 18,000. Your consolidated strength including defectors: approx. 8,250. Supply advantage: Takeda (initial). Terrain advantage: strong for defenders. Recommended strategy: protracted attrition, supply interdiction, selective counter-attacks to fracture cohesion.
Eugene's breath fogged in the morning air. "They come in numbers," he murmured, "but numbers are slow to think."
Hiroshi, standing close with an iron spear resting at his shoulder, grinned. "Let them think slowly. We will move quicker."
—
Takeda's army shivered to a halt on the outer ridge. At their center rode General Ishida, draped in a cloak darker than his banners. He dismounted before his council and addressed his commanders with a voice like a blade.
"Banners," he commanded. "We do not charge the mountain like cattle. We secure the passes, we crush their outposts, and we starve them into dust. Block every valley, burn every cache, and take the field only when Eugene's men are too hungry to march."
Around him, commanders nodded; a great offensive would be a blunt instrument, but issued with the weight of many spears it could break a fortress. Yet Ishida's eyes were focused inward, thinking of the Crescent Lord's audacity, the way peasants rallied, how one boy had unraveled mighty lords.
—
Eugene watched the enemy marshal itself. The first days were a chess of scouts and scouts' corpses. Takeda's light cavalry struck forward in probing raids and were met with disciplined Spear lines hidden in gullies, then with pits and barbed traps. A cart of barley rolled off a road into a ditch, smashed by a falling log. Takeda shepherds found stone barricades blocking their paths where yesterday had been none.
"Divide and delay," Eugene told his captains. "Force them to ration. Force them to distrust their own men."
Captain Inoue, now wearing Eugene's colors, nodded. "We strike supply lines, and we shadow their flanks. We will not hold the field; we will hold their stomachs."
—
The first clash came on a rain-slick afternoon. A Takeda advance column—six hundred strong—pushed into a narrow defile, convinced they had caught a small raiding party. Hidden ashigaru and Spears waited under the wet ferns. When the column was halfway through, ropes released a timber barrage. Horses shrieked; men fell. Arrows rained down from the ridges. The defile became a slaughter.
Takeda's commander cursed and sent reinforcements; Ishida's army tightened, but every attempt to crush Eugene's detachments turned into a test of patience. The Crescent Lord's men melted away into the forests, leaving captured banners and broken drums as their reply.
"Good," Eugene said later, standing among captured armor and splintered spears. "They will fear every path they walk."
—
But attrition is a double-edged sword. The valley's stocks dwindled. Fields could only be plowed and harvested at so fast a rate. Villagers worked until their hands bled, but more mouths consumed. Eugene felt the weight of every hungry child and every aching veteran. He had turned starvation into a weapon; now he must never let it cut his own.
The AI whispered numbers into his thoughts—supply curves, foraging yields, projected attrition on both sides. Eugene listened like a general attuned to the heartbeat of the land.
[Projection]: Sustain current campaign for eight weeks with current reserves if no major external resupply occurs. Probability of Takeda supply disruption via allied interference: moderate. Recommendation: secure coastal access for trade and supplies; accelerate diplomacy with Imagawa.
He sent riders south two at a time: one to press the Imagawa for trade rights, another to scout for coastal fisherfolk willing to trade salted fish for Takeda's food stores. The valley could be replenished—if he could hold the passes long enough.
—
Takeda's pressure intensified. Ishida hammered at forward posts, burning villages suspected of harboring Eugene's caches. The boy-lord answered in kind with surgical strikes: an elite team cut the rope bridge behind a Takeda cavalry regiment, leaving it pinned on an island of mud while archers picked men off like drying flowers.
"The wolves are clever," Hiroshi said one night, watching the smoke on the ridges. "But we have learned to be crueler clever."
Eugene's smile was cold. "Cruelty breeds enemies; calculation breeds victory. Use both when necessary."
—
The high point of Ishida's spring offensive came three weeks after he crossed the mountains. He ordered a pincer movement: feint the eastern ridge, then force a crossing at the southern gorge, flanking Eugene's stronghold and cutting off retreat. For a moment, it seemed as if Takeda's weight might crush the valley.
Eugene waited.
He had anticipated this. Under the southern gorge, men had been placed like teeth beneath the ice. Men from Kiso and trained ronin—mercenaries paid by secret purses and persuaded by promises of land—lay in wait, ready to spring at the flanking column. When Ishida's southern corps moved, ropes entangled their feet; the concealed men rose from the grass and struck with brutal speed. The flank collapsed into confusion.
From the ridge Eugene signaled with a banner, and archers—rotating in staggered volleys—rained down on Takeda's exposed columns. Horses reared, command forms broke, and the coordinated pincer failed as units became isolated. Ishida's generals sent for reserves, but reserves were costly and slow.
"Do you see?" Eugene called across the map as he addressed his captains that evening. "We do not need to win by strength. We win by making their victories impossible."
—
Still, the war dragged on. Takeda adapted. Ishida called in more banners; he bribed coastal lords to deny Eugene direct access to sea routes; he increased the size of raiding parties. The Crescent Lord's men fought with desperation, but shortages bit deep. Hunger makes soldiers meaner and captains less obedient; the fabric of Eugene's rapidly grown force frayed in places.
Then the tides shifted—subtle and decisive. A fleet of small coastal traders, persuaded by Imagawa envoys and Eugene's gifts, slipped into a hidden cove at night and dropped salted fish, rice, and sacks of barley. A convoy from Kiso, newly allied and rewarded by Eugene's promises, forced a mountain track and delivered carts of grain. Each resupply was a pulse of life into the fortress.
Eugene stood on the wall when the first supply caravan arrived, watching men unload sacks with dull faces turning to amazement. "Now they have no excuse to despair," he told Hiroshi. "Hunger cannot be a weapon if we turn its teeth."
—
The spring offensive became a war of wearing down and stubborn resolve. Ishida committed more men to the valley, and Eugene bled them with ambushes, traps, and cunning. Takeda's casualties grew; so did supply difficulties. The valley, once assumed to be a soft prize, had become a mortifying sink for men and treasure.
One night, as the moon cast silver upon the tracked earth, a Takeda courier found his way to Ishida and returned with a single line: The boy is not merely clever. He makes allies and feeds men. This is disgraceful. Withdraw or be consumed.
Ishida read the line and laughed—short and sharp. "They think threats will topple us. Send more banners. Crush the spring-field rat."
Eugene's reply—a brief, blood-dry note to the same courier—was a single sentence: Try. I am already deeper than your reach.
—
Winter had been knives; spring had been the wolves' bite. Yet Eugene stood, wider in influence, steadier in resolve. The valley had held. His army had grown in skill and heart, not only in numbers. Supply lines flickered but endured. And for every Takeda column that fell into a pit or an ambush, his legend grew further: Crescent Lord, boy-bringer of food and hope, strategist who made mountains sing his tune.
He did not dance in triumph. He knew the campaign was far from finished—the wolf had many teeth. But for the first time since Ishida had descended upon Kai, Eugene felt not merely survival—he felt momentum.
"Hold fast," he said to Hiroshi and his captains that night, voice steady with command. "Let them break themselves. Let winter's knives blunt against our armor, and spring's wolves tire on our fields. We will strike when their hunger and pride meet in the middle—and when they do, we will take everything."
The AI hummed its final note for the night:
[Projection update]: Enemy attrition rising. Strategic advantage: narrowing toward favorable if resupply continues. Probability of long-term success: increasing. Continue diplomacy and tactical interdiction.]
Eugene watched the fires of the valley flicker, its people alive despite the storm. Beyond the ridge, the Takeda banners still bristled—many, and proud. But the Crescent Lord had begun to teach them calculation, patience, and fear. He would need all three in the wars yet to come.
Spring had come. The offensive had begun. And the age of the Crescent Lord was learning, step by methodical step, how to survive—and to conquer.