The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,41

red flag. They wanted to negotiate.

Rin worked frantically through all the possible ways this could end, and couldn’t come up with one where both the civilians and the Southern Army were safe. The Mugenese would have to secure a guarantee that Rin’s troops would never come back.

They were going to demand a blood sacrifice. Most likely they’d massacre Rin’s troops, one for every civilian kept alive.

Rin didn’t know if she could pay that price.

“What’s going on?”

Kitay, at last. Rin turned toward him, trying not to slip into a panicked babble as she started to explain what was happening, but the moment she twisted around she saw Souji’s expression morph into horror as he lifted a finger, pointing, toward the village.

A second later, she heard an arrow shriek through the air.

The Mugenese flag-bearer dropped to the ground.

Instinctively she whipped her head around, searching the ranks for a raised bow, a twanging bowstring—who’d done it, which absolute idiot had—

“My gods,” Souji murmured. His eyes were still fixed on the village.

Rin turned back around and thought she was hallucinating. What else explained that great column moving out of the township gates, a crowd nearly the size of an army?

She raised the spyglass back to her eye.

Qinen. It had to be. He’d mobilized his resistance band—no, from the looks of it, he’d mobilized the entire township. The column wasn’t just the fighting men of Leiyang; they were the women, elders, and even some of the children. They held torches, plows, field hoes, kitchen knives, and clubs clearly made from legs torn from chairs.

They charged.

They knew their lives were the price of this battle. Rin’s attack couldn’t proceed so long as they were held hostage. They’d known the Mugenese would force her to choose.

They’d made this decision for her.

The Mugenese archers turned toward the township to commence the massacre. Their commander signaled an order.

Civilian bodies fell from the front of the column in a clean sweep. But the villagers kept marching over their dead, pressing inexorably forward like ants bursting forth. Another round of arrows. Another line of bodies. The villagers kept marching.

The Mugenese soldiers couldn’t shoot quickly enough to keep them at bay. This was a clash of steel and bodies now, an utterly mismatched comedy of a melee. Federation soldiers cut the villagers down as quickly as they came. They knocked the weapons out of their hands, pierced them easily in their necks and chests because their victims had never been trained to parry.

The villagers kept marching.

The bodies piled up on the field. Rin watched, horrified, as a blade went clean through an old woman’s shoulder. But the woman lifted her trembling hands and clenched the wrist of her attacker, held him still long enough for an arrow to find his forehead.

The villagers kept marching.

Souji’s hand landed on her shoulder. His voice came out a strangled rasp. “What are you waiting for?”

She reached into the back of her mind, through the channel of Kitay’s soul, to the god who lay patiently waiting.

Avenge this, she ordered.

Whatever you ask, said the Phoenix.

And Rin strode forward through the sorghum fields to rip the world open with fire. She killed indiscriminately. She turned them all to ash, civilians and enemies alike. Leiyang’s civilians welcomed her flames with smiles.

This was their choice. Their sacrifice.

Her troops surged forth around her, blades glinting in the fiery night. They’d broken formation, but formation didn’t matter anymore, only bodies, blood, and steel.

This is how we win the south, she thought as her surroundings dissolved into a blurry wave of heat. That made it easier to keep going. She couldn’t see faces, couldn’t see the pain. All she saw were shapes. Not with our blades, but our bodies.

They would take back the south with sheer numbers. The Mugenese and the Republic were strong, but the south was many. And if southerners were dirt like all the legends said, then they would crush their enemies with the overwhelming force of the earth until they could only dream of breathing. They would bury them with their bodies. They would drown them in their blood.

Chapter 6

After that, it was just cleanup.

Rin walked dazedly through the sorghum fields, razed now to a level sheet of dark gray ash. Smoke curled out of her clothes in lazy, indolent spirals. She hadn’t touched opium since they’d set out on this march. But she was high now on a familiar euphoria, an exhilarating buzz that started in her fingertips and thrummed through her chest to her heart.

In Tikany, summer season