Every morning for the past few decades, Tua had trudged through rice paddy fields to harvest their grains. His bare feet squelched in the muddy earth, his sickle rasping through the green stalks with their yellow pods. Over the years his feet had become calloused, gnarled things, his hands bent from ceaseless working of the sickle, his back buckled and stooped.
Still he smiled as he saw his sons and their wives working with him, alongside their own sons or daughters. Three generations of his line, doing honest labor for honest living.
Do you see us, mother? he asked himself. I hope you approve, father. Better they reap the land, and not death.
Tua heard it then.
The children pointed up the terraced hill, to the road beside their meager house. Curved bladed polearms spiked as wicked shadows against the rising sun. A rhythmic din of scraping boots and jangling metal chainlinks swaying with the movements of hundreds, thousands. They were a never ending line, until a section of the army broke to surround their house: at least a dozen men.
His granddaughter, Menghi, was racing down the hill towards him, a young woman ready to be married.
Breathless despite her age, she said, “Grandpa, the men wish to speak to you.”
Tua felt the coldness of the mud spread from his feet, to his chest, to his very heart. His sickle landed into the wet earth.
“I’ll go with you,” one of his sons said.
“No,” Tua said with as much force as he could summon. “The rest of you, stay here.”
Menghi helped him hobble up the makeshift earth path, the soldiers watching them. They all held steel gourd shields, hooked at each side to catch a blade, swords scabbarded to their hips.
“Are you head of this farmstead?” one man asked, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes dark beneath his pointed helmet, plumed with dyed purple tresses.
“I am,” Tua said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Officer Gen, of the Drogai legion to Viceroy Yan-Li. We represent the United Republic of Khanwei, Yaoden, and Fu-Shing. We require three bushels of rice.”
Tua’s gut tightened. Three bushels of rice was half a year’s harvest.
“We only have one, though if we harvest today’s crop, we’ll have two. We just need one for my family—”
“We will take the two,” Officer Gen said. “When can you harvest the next bushel?”
“Four months.” Tua’s knees trembled. “Sir. If you leave us with no bushels, my family will starve. This doesn’t follow the Emperor’s rule.”
“We’re the people’s army. And your Emperor has betrayed us all for too long. Didn’t you know? He’s dead. Your family,” his eyes flicked to Tua’s granddaughter, “must pay the price. Give us three bushels of rice, or find another way to feed the people’s army.”
“How can we live for another month without means for food?”
“Become fishermen.”
Officer Gen was a good man. He knew he was a good man, serving a just cause. Famine and drought had struck his province years ago, and what had the Emperor done for Qeita? Nothing. He’d been a farmer as well, just like this old man. Once he’d been with a wife, beautiful like the young woman standing with him, fresh-faced and smiling whenever Gen saw her. This woman didn’t smile, just gave him an empty stare, helpless and hopeless. Just like his wife before she’d died, long after their son was taken by brackenfever.
Gen turned away, walking with the men of his section, halting at the road. He watched the column of marching soldiers. They were the people’s army. An army needed to eat, and the land was plentiful here. Unlike his homeland, once rife with jinnto and lawlessness. Viceroy Yan-Li had brought order into the Province of Fu-Shing. Over the past decade, the jinnto were cut down, the barren earth brought back to life with dams and seeded. Order and prosperity was restored. The Viceroys wished to unify Qeita so that peace could be maintained. The people’s army was needed, and it needed to be fed.
Zuao, one of his men, said, “Should we take their women as payment?”
Gen gave a cold look. “They’re part of the people. We’re not the imperials.”
“Someone else will take them. You know this, captain.”
Gen beckoned Zuao. “When a man has a sword, he suddenly thinks his cock is as long as its blade. Give me your sword.”
The other men guffawed at his words. Zuao, eyes hard, gave Gen his weapon.
The officer stabbed him in the throat. The man’s eyes widened. He knelt and fell face first, blood blooming over a muddied puddle.
The column on the road halted, suddenly still and quiet, but the other officers murmured their sections to hold. Viceroy Yan-Li’s decree was spoken only to the officers for this purpose. He was fair to the people, and fair in judgment; they would all know that soon.
Gen raised Zuao’s sword and yelled, “Anyone who treats the people with such cruelty will be treated like the beast they are. By decree of Viceroy Yan-Li, they will be executed. We are the people’s army, and we will act as such! Do you all understand?”
“Dei!” the soldiers grunted in unison.
The officer rejoined the column with his men, leaving the dead man to lie on the grounds of the farmer’s house.
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Menghi ran for her life, and all of her family’s. Grandfather Tua had told her to light the pyre atop the sea cliffs. Her shoes slapped over the earth, the ground turning harder and sharper under the thin leather which separated her skin from being torn apart by exposed rock.
She forced herself to a slower jog, legs warming with familiar strain, bamboo woven clothing chafing against her movements. This land was her refuge, the sea crashing past the craggy white cliffs, the salt tang of the winds bursting with the warmth of the sun.
She’d had her first kiss in the coves below with the carpenter’s son, Yona. He’d promised to marry her one day, where they didn’t have to meet when the tides were low and fear for them to return. A great big house he’d make for them both, he said. Those moments seemed like a forgotten dream now.
The other Provinces were in rebellion against the Emperor, their armies – the ‘people’s army’, and needed all their harvest. Menghi’s family had been rice paddy farmers for over three generations. They’d starve if they gave in to their demands, or they’d be cut down, their harvest taken still in the end. Unless she could light the wood stacked pyre to warn the capital.
Perhaps the Emperor was dead. But the people, her people, weren’t. If the capital could be warned in time, maybe the imperial army could save them.
She raced uphill to the pyre at the top. Long grass up to her knees, wilting under her weight. Small yellow flowers dotted their ends. Yona had gathered a sprig of them for her. He’d said his love was like the flowers: measly to some, but found wherever Menghi could see. She just had to reach out and meet it.
Tears slipped away from the sides of Menghi's face with her momentum. Yona lived in the neighboring village, and the rebels were marching towards it. They would see the pyre, and light their own – as would the next village, the next town, across to the capital. So would the ‘people’s army’ see the signal. Menghi knew what men with power could do to those who possessed none – she’d heard grandfather Tua’s stories.
Her shoes slid over the wet grass as she stooped over the six foot stack of wood, taking down the leather tarp to keep the tinder inside dry, a pile of hay and timber up to her chest. One side was open to allow her enough space to kneel, taking two sparkstones on the ground and striking them together.
Snik. Snik.
She struck the stones together again, cursing for them to spark. After the fifth strike a flame kindled, spreading as quick as taking a step back. Smoke soon rose with the crackling fire – the signal raised. Menghi knelt down and covered her face, weeping.
“Pa!” Yona burst through the door. “They’re all here.”
His father gazed at him with a strange look: grim, determined, yet beneath the grizzled sternness a soft-eyed sadness Yona last saw when his mother had left them.
“Good,” his old man gruffed. “We’ll keep them out of the meeting hall for as long as we can.” He hefted a hammer and wooden buckler. “You get up there and light the signal. Hopefully Mashu, the old codger, will see it in time to light his. Go.”
“Pa—” Yona said. “It’s not your fault ma left us. You're the best man I’ve ever known.”
His father smiled. “I love you, son.” He turned away. “Go, now.”
Yona left his home he’d lived for over twenty years, wiping back the tears and holding out the ache in his chest. Some of the men had answered the call, a few dozen, less than a hundred. Hoes, staves, hatchets they held with some hands steady, some trembling. Yona tried to fight his own hands from shaking.
One of the men, blacksmith Tarui, nodded to him. “Light the fire, Yona. Make sure it stays lit.”
The sound of swishing chainmail and stomping boots was faint, growing louder with each moment. Yona dashed towards the meeting hall. Two lines of buildings funneled into the empty village square, the meeting hall at its end, a watchtower over its roof. Men he knew all his life were willing to give their lives to grant the other towns a chance to light their own signals.
They’d barely had enough time to gather after seeing the smoke from the coast. Lighting it before would only bring them here, until it was too late. Now the order was given, and Yona was terrified. He wanted to see Menghi again, and needed to see her again. He’d promised to marry her – but they had to survive.
The sound of hundreds strong marching continued, heard even when he was inside the hall. Still his heart hammered in his chest, beating his blood into a frenzy as he scrambled up the stairs to the highest point of the building. He opened the door, thirty-feet overlooking the village. The watchtower was built for the sole purpose of the signal fire, a brazier of dormant timber and charcoal that Yona stoked to light once more with pitch and torch.
He turned to watch his father and the others below. The signal was lit, smoke snaking up the sky, telling the world of what was to come. Yona saw the column of soldiers, an endless line of gleaming gray metal and bannermen of the other three Provinces: purple, turquoise, and orange in color. The purple heraldry of Fu-Shing was at the forefront, less than a mile away – headed towards them.
Yona stared at his father and the other villagers below, a thin line compared to the mass of men marching closer. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to the Allmother for her mercy and Allfather for his strength, that their shared judgment would save them. For the first time he truly meant his prayers, as he had nothing left to give his faith to.
The army reached the village, blocked by his father alongside the other men. There was a moment of quiet. A man shouted to them, but Yona couldn’t hear his words in the distance. The soldiers withdrew to the sides of the square. Lines of crossbowmen appeared behind them.
“No,” Yona whispered in horror. “No.”
The villagers charged. The crossbowmen loosed their bolts. Some men fell, dead. Others screamed, limping or trying to crawl away. He spotted his father with blacksmith Tarui and a few more with shields, still holding. The soldiers advanced, a formation of bristling pikes that speared anyone in their path.
Someone crashed against the barred door behind him, breaking away his numb shock, muted yelling and splintering wood. Yona turned to face the sound.
Gatekeeper Huo peered over the ramparts of the capital, walls fifty-feet high encircling the miles long city. The sun was out, lending its heat to the summer winds for a pleasant warmth. A flock of birds fluttered overhead.
“The sky is blue, the birds fly high, and the gates still hold. Besides the bird shit, this is a blessed day,” Huo chortled.
Qong, his right hand man, smiled, glancing up. “Every day is blessed for you, captain. What delicacy is your wife cooking today?”
“That’s a mystery Fan bears only. You should come by with Ye-en. It’s been too long since we broke bread.”
“I must—”
“You must do nothing. Simply stay and eat. Fan misses good company, cooped inside like a hen with no eggs, she says. I swear, I'll hear no end of it until you and Ye-en visit.”
“Alright. Why not call for an early rest?”
“Our watch doesn’t end until the next shift,” Huo said. “You know this. When you become Gatekeeper, you’ll understand. It’s our duty to protect the people.”
The men were silent. Huo stared at the sweeping landscape, crop fields and towns… and smoke, though there was no fire. He knew what it meant: a signal that an enemy was approaching. In his twenty years post as Gatekeeper, Huo had never seen the signals, pillars of black fumes lining the sky.
Before he could utter a word, a sharp pain stabbed through his neck. Huo turned in dazed confusion, groping the dagger jutting out below his chin, warm blood trickling down his throat. Qong was the only one standing beside, the blade in his hand. He took a step back as Huo stumbled towards him, then fell, reaching out.
The other guards watched in silence as the Gatekeeper slumped against the wall, gurgling.
“Open the gates,” Qong said.