The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,120

the corpses. She hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon, and she was starving. She had a ration of dried shanyu roots in her pocket, but it felt wrong to chew on it while the air still crackled with the scent of roasted meat. Only when the corpses had shriveled into pitch-black lumps and the air smelled of charcoal instead of flesh did she feel comfortable enough to pull the rations out. She chewed slowly on the coin-shaped root slivers, working her tongue around the starchy chunks until her saliva softened them enough to swallow, while the last remains of Souji and Gurubai puttered into bones and ash.

Then she rose and joined her army in their march.

After they emerged out the other side of the mining tunnels, they continued along the forest with the mountain to their rear. She told the southerners they were moving north to rendezvous with the Dog Warlord and his rebels to form the last organized holdout against the Republic left in the Empire. They would fare better with their numbers combined. She wasn’t lying. She did intend to seek the Dog Warlord’s aid. If the rumors were true that he had swords and bodies, she’d be a fool to ignore them.

But she didn’t tell anyone but Kitay about their plan to climb Mount Tianshan. She’d learned now that she always had to assume someone in her ranks was spying for the Republic. The Monkey Warlord’s coup had proved that point. The last thing she wanted was for the Hesperians to raid Mount Tianshan before she reached it.

She also withheld the truth for a more fundamental reason. She needed her soldiers to believe that they mattered. That their blood and sweat were the only things that could turn the wheels of history. She intended to win this war with shamans, yes, but she couldn’t keep her hold on the country without the people’s hearts. For that she needed them to believe that they wrote the script of the universe. Not the gods.

The skies above were clear and silent. Nezha and his airships had held off for now, and perhaps indefinitely. Rin didn’t know how long their grace period would last, but she wasn’t going to sit and wait it out.

Her nerves were on edge as they moved along the foothills. Her troops were too exposed and vulnerable, and they moved at a frustratingly slow pace. It wasn’t due to poor discipline. Her soldiers, already weakened by months under siege, were weighed down with wagons carrying weapons arsenals, medical equipment, and their scant remaining food supplies. And the relentless rain, which had started that afternoon as a drizzle and quickly turned into thick, heavy sheets, turned their roads into nothing but mud for miles.

“We won’t make ten miles today at this rate,” Kitay said. “We’ve got to offload.”

So Rin gave the order to dump as many supplies as they could bear to lose. Food and medicine were invaluable, but almost everything else had to go. Everyone chose two changes of clothes and discarded the rest, largely light summer tunics that would offer no shelter from the mountain snow. They also got rid of many of their weapons and ammunition—they simply didn’t have the men to keep lugging along the mounted crossbows, chests of fire powder, and spare armor that they’d dragged all this way from Ruijin.

Rin hated this. They all hated it. The sight of so much sheer waste was unbearable; it hurt to watch the weapons piled up in stacks ready to be burned just so that the Republic couldn’t find and repurpose them.

“When the final battles commence, it won’t come down to swords and halberds,” Daji told Rin. “The fate of this nation depends on how quickly we get to Mount Tianshan. The rest is inconsequential.”

Their marching rate sped up considerably after they had shed their supplies. But shortly thereafter, the rain shifted from a heavy shower into a violent and torrential downpour that showed no signs of ceasing throughout the afternoon. The mud became a nightmare. On parts of the road, they waded through black sludge up to their ankles. Their flimsy cotton and straw shoes couldn’t keep it out; none of them were dressed for such a wet climate.

Rin’s mind spiraled into panic as she considered the consequences. Mud like this wasn’t just a nuisance, it was a serious threat to her army’s health. Few of them had boots; likely they were all going to get infections. Then their toes would rot and fall