The Regressed Princess - Chapter 44

Chapter 44: Prelude to the End; Who is Going to Fight Andra?

In the days that followed, Eleanor felt like a spider crouching on a web, constantly capturing the vibrations of prey and the breeze.

There had been no movement from the Hetuya side for a long time, as if Andra truly intended to focus on good governance, leading her people to tighten their belts and focus on production.

But how could that be possible?

Maybe… should she write her a letter first?

Eleanor began to agonize over this the moment she woke up in the morning. She struggled with it for several days and nights, but in the end, she didn’t write a single word.

What was there left to write?

In her past life, she had written many, many letters to Andra. Each letter was very long, with pages that could trail from her hand to the floor.

Andra had also replied with even more letters; every long letter from Eleanor would be met with three or four enthusiastic responses from Andra.

The weather is hot, the weather is cold. I’ve collected some useful seeds and eaten some delicious fruit. How is your battle going? I had the doctor bring you some new medicine and a fluffed cotton quilt…

The leaves in the mountains are beautiful; I picked one and made it into a bookmark for you.

The stones in the water are interesting; wait until I return to drill holes in them and string a bracelet for you.

The clouds in the sky are so pretty; how about I draw them on paper for you when I return? Don’t laugh at me if the drawing is poor.

Information of this sort, mixed with a vast amount of sweet talk and sketches, would pass back and forth between them. It was no wonder their subordinates never felt anything was amiss about ferrying messages between the Emperor and the Empress.

They also frequently discussed politics, economics, and history. They debated viewpoints that didn’t fit the era, letting their thoughts collide in the air.

When Andra wanted to be eloquent, she was very eloquent indeed.

The two of them would eat delicious food while snuggling by the fireplace or under a warm quilt. They would sit head-to-head, hand-in-hand, leisurely discussing topics with their lover that others could not touch.

If Eleanor wished, she could still write a moving long letter in this life, decorating it with praises and sweet talk that Andra would definitely appreciate.

But when she actually raised her pen… she couldn’t write a single word.

What was the point of writing this letter?

What use was there in flirting with an enemy? If intercepted, it would be direct evidence of treason.

And even if she successfully sent it, what then?

In the past life, Andra had been her lover who supported her for decades, and yet she still hadn’t spared Nolanna.

Clack.

Eleanor, having sat at the desk at some unknown point, tossed her pen aside dispiritedly and slumped down.

“Your Highness, Your Highness!”

Just as she dropped the pen, Coral came rushing in from outside.

Coral looked at Eleanor, her eyes pausing as if she had bitten her tongue, and said softly, “It’s from that person… a letter sent by the King of Hetuya.”

“Sigh… let me see.” Eleanor let out an exaggerated sigh and reached out for the letter.

Coral released the letter, gave her a look, and walked away with light footsteps.

This letter was somewhat different from the letters Eleanor usually received.

In this day and age, nobles still preferred using parchment scrolls for letters, but over the last few years, she had popularized relatively higher-quality white paper, and some people had started using paper to write.

This letter from Andra was written on high-grade paper purchased from her; in terms of price alone, it was comparable to parchment.

My dearest Princess, I hope you still remember our agreement.

Following this sentence, Andra described some of the natural scenery of Hetuya. She focused on depicting the shimmering freshwater lakes and the towering Mount Eros. She also fantasized about scenes of raising lambs and small horses together with Eleanor after their marriage.

At the very end of the letter, Andra wrote:

My family members grow fewer and fewer; even my own sister has abandoned me. I personally carried my mother’s broken corpse to the foot of the snow mountain, letting her follow the wolf pack according to tradition.

Whenever I wake up startled in the night, I feel an endless loneliness and emptiness.

I am in such need of a clever and lovely wife, and I believe Nolanna and Hetuya also need precious peace.

Sincerly awaiting your reply, my dearest little Princess.

Ugh~

Eleanor couldn’t help but rub her forearms. Logically, the letters Andra wrote in the past life were even more mushy. But regardless, none of those letters brought such a strong sense of impact as this one.

Hypocrisy and sincerity were mixed together, converging into an indescribable lump of… something.

She grit her teeth and pulled a piece of paper from the drawer. Her pen tip hovered for a long time, but she couldn’t squeeze out a single word.

Eleanor stalled until that evening before she finally managed to squeeze out a short reply.

Her phrasing was not impolite; she sincerely expressed her blessings to the other party, but her words were full of euphemistic rejections. It was essentially writing “I’m sorry, I can’t marry you” three times in different ways.

This should do it, right?

Eleanor stuffed the paper into an envelope and had the attendants take it out.

She felt a false sense of mission accomplished; since Andra was willing to write a letter, she probably didn’t want to start a war for the time being, right?

An illusion, after all, is just an illusion.

The initial invasion of Hetuya went unnoticed by everyone. No one sent a declaration of war to the King, and no one deployed troops at the border.

They might have been a somewhat suspicious, massive merchant caravan, or perhaps a group of barbarians coming down the mountains to seek a living. They entered various city-states through different roads and then vanished like water droplets into the sea.

Did this count as an attack? It seemed not; no one made any reaction.

The Hetuyans were simply doing business in a very ordinary way, selling animal hides and dried mushrooms. Even if the Nolannans refused to sell them salt and iron, and other things were sold at very high prices, the Hetuyans didn’t lose their tempers or draw their blades to snatch items from the merchants’ stalls.

This didn’t look like a war; there were no galloping cavalrymen crashing through your front door in the winter night to burn, kill, and pillage. The Hetuyans didn’t stay in any particular city; they just moved forward, constantly forward.

The first person to notice something was wrong was a minor manager at a post house.

She summarized the information sent in by her colleagues and discovered that the frequency of Hetuyans staying at the post houses had increased significantly over these past few months. Where did so many Hetuyan caravans come from?

Because the Princess had popularized paper and made notebooks a standard office supply for the post houses, the people below had more or less developed the habit of keeping work notes.

This manager went to the office, opened the work notes, and compared them page by page. She discovered that the number of Hetuyan caravans coming through for trade had surged in these months. This phenomenon was extremely abnormal because Hetuyans did not like frequently entering and leaving the grasslands.

They had no good feelings toward Nolannans, and their legends even fabricated stories about Nolannans tricking Hetuyans out of all their money and turning them all into slaves. They viewed Nolanna as a kingdom full of liars and thieves, only coming over to trade because they needed Nolanna’s salt, food, and various daily necessities.

Thus, to minimize contact as much as possible, the Hetuyans always elected a few caravan leaders who were best at long-distance travel and communication to handle centralized trade on behalf of various tribes. The Hetuyans trusted the wisdom of these leaders and preferred to let their own people take large profits; conversely, if a Nolannan went to the grasslands to do business, it was very difficult to gain the recognition of the locals.

Because they had such characteristics, the managers of the post houses and these Hetuyan merchant moguls were very well-acquainted, which was why they could quickly notice something was wrong.

If it were the slave of some other lord’s subordinate, they would surely feel this was an ordinary matter—why bother reporting it?

But the staff of the post house held a small meeting and reported the matter upward. Similar reports converged toward the same destination like a flowing river.

When Eleanor saw the detailed summary of the intelligence, cold sweat poured down her back.

She hurriedly pulled out her self-drawn map and began circling points. As the circled patterns became clearer, her expression grew worse.

This move of Andra’s—it seems she learned it from me?!

She still remembered Andra’s style of leadership from her past life.

In the beginning, Andra liked straightforward cavalry charges; she was no different from a traditional Hetuyan general, preferring the thrill of killing. Later, Andra “refined” her skills in Nolanna and learned some indirect tactics, but even those were very basic.

Whether it was siege engines or weapons and equipment, the Moon Mist Continent was very primitive. The various countries generally had no sophisticated tactics. The scenes of national warfare often resembled the descriptions of ancient times in Earth’s history books. Two countries would exchange declarations of war, agree to advance at a fixed time and place, and then fight to the death.

Although there were siege and defense battles, the awkward part was that most countries were based on a city-state or tribal system. When one country attacked another, it was hard to tell if it only wanted to seize the specific city it was attacking or if it intended to engage in total war until the bitter end; all such information relied on the declaration of war to be judged.

In the past life, Andra had learned the tiniest bit of the “Art of War” from Eleanor. She directly applied it with her own “I-Think-So” tactics, playing all the other countries like fiddles.

Eleanor could bet her life that she did it out of a sense of playfulness. Andra loved using different methods to achieve victory in every war, much like a player grinding for achievements. Those poets portrayed Andra as a flexible, prophetic, and miraculous leader in their songs, believing those brilliant moves were sparks of inspiration born under the pressure of war.

Only Eleanor knew that she had enjoyed the game and was preparing to play even more “pleasurably.”

And what about this time? Was she still playing?

Andra hadn’t sent a declaration of war. Instead, following the method Eleanor used to help Miscella seize the throne years ago, she had sent her elite troops to lie in wait within various city-states in batches. She seemed to want to wait until the very end to assemble her forces and launch a general offensive against the capital or some other important target.

Isn’t this courting death?

Eleanor’s first thought was guerrilla warfare, but guerrilla warfare has a very important prerequisite: the support of the locals. Who fights a guerrilla war on enemy territory? Wouldn’t your vital forces diminish the more you fight?

She quickly thought of the differences between the two worlds.

First, their city-states were very fragmented. Andra only needed to persuade one or two city lords to be able to station a large number of troops in their cities. As long as the benefits she promised were large enough, these city lords would have absolutely no sense of patriotism.

Second, this world was still under a slave system; the number of slaves even accounted for more than half of the total population. Once the two countries started fighting, there was a very high probability that local slaves would either stay neutral or even rebel against their masters.

Third, the combat power gap between elite warriors and ordinary people was simply too vast.

Eleanor’s face was cast in shadow.

The current situation seemed clear: Andra’s forces were spread out and had not yet begun to assemble. She “only” needed to dispatch a very powerful force—one slightly stronger than Andra’s main force to eat up her scattered units one by one before they could assemble, and she would win easily. She could even use precise intelligence to concentrate her strength and attack the unit personally led by Andra.

Once that unit successfully defeated Andra, the Hetuyans would retreat in disarray, and perhaps even be backstabbed by city lords eager to prove their loyalty, falling entirely into Nolanna’s pocket.

Now here was the problem who is going to fight Andra?

Me?

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