There were two hundred men in the castle garrison. On that day, Mata slaughtered one hundred and seventy-three. The other twenty-seven were dispatched by Phin Zyndu, who laughed as he saw the image of his own father, the great Dazu Zyndu, reflected in the bloody young man fighting next to him.
Mata raised the flag of Cocru, a red field charged with a pair of ravens, one black and one white, over the castle the next day. And the chrysanthemum coat of arms of the Zyndu Clan was rehung over the castle door. News of his victory over the Xana garrison became a story, a legend, and then a myth, as it spread among the Tunoa Islands. Even children learned the names of Na-aroénna and Goremaw.
“Cocru has returned,” the men and women of the Tunoa Islands whispered to one another. They still remembered Dazu Zyndu’s tales of bravery, and his grandson compared favorably to him. Maybe there was hope to this rebellion after all.
Men began arriving at Zyndu Castle, volunteering to fight for Cocru. Soon, the Zyndus had gathered around them an army of eight hundred.
It was now the end of the ninth month, two months after Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin first saw the prophecy in the fish.
CHAPTER EIGHT. KUNI’S CHOICE
OUTSIDE ZUDI: THE NINTH MONTH IN THE THIRD YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.
The night before, Kuni Garu still had under his charge fifty prisoners — a few from Zudi, but most from far away, men who had committed some kind of crime and received sentences of hard labor in the corvée gangs.
The prisoners had been walking slowly because one of the men had a lame leg. Since they couldn’t make it to the next town in time, Kuni had decided to make camp in the mountains.
In the morning, only fifteen prisoners were left.
“What are they thinking?” Kuni fumed. “There is nowhere to hide anywhere in the Islands. They’ll be caught and their families will be executed or conscripted for hard labor to make up for their desertion. I treated them well and didn’t have them chained at night, and this is how they repay me? I’m dead meat!”
Kuni had been promoted to head of the Corvée Department two years ago. Ordinarily, escorting a team of prisoners was something one of his underlings would do. But he had taken this particular assignment himself because he knew that the gang would probably not get to their destination on time because of the man with the bad leg — Kuni was sure he could convince the commander at Pan to let it go. Besides, he had never been to Pan, and he had always wanted to see the Immaculate City.
“I just had to do the most interesting thing,” he berated himself. “Am I having fun now?” At that moment, he wished more than anything to be home with Jia, drinking a cup of herbal tea made from some recipe she was experimenting with, safe and bored.
“You didn’t know?” one of the soldiers, a man by the name of Hupé, asked, incredulous. “The prisoners had been whispering and plotting all of yesterday. I thought you knew and were letting them go on purpose because you believed in the prophecy. They want to join the rebels who declared war on the emperor and pledged to free all prisoners and conscripted laborers.”
Kuni did remember the prisoners whispering an unusual amount yesterday. And he, like everyone else in Zudi, had heard rumors about the rebellion. But he had been too distracted by the beauty of the mountains they were hiking through, and didn’t connect the dots.
Abashed, he asked Hupé to tell him more about what he knew of the rebels.
“A scroll in a fish!” Kuni exclaimed. “A fish that they just happened to have bought. That con stopped working on me when I turned five. And people believe this?”
“Don’t speak ill of the gods,” Hupé, who was very religious, said stiffly.
“Well, this is a bit of a pickle,” Kuni muttered. To calm himself, he took a plug of chewing herbs out of his waist pouch and put it into his mouth, letting it sit under his tongue. Jia knew how to make herbal mixes that made him feel like he was flying and caused him to see rainbow-haloed crubens and dyrans everywhere — he and Jia had fun with those — but she also knew how to make mixes that did the opposite: slowed things down and helped him see choices more clearly when he was stressed, and he definitely needed some clarity.
What was the point of bringing fifteen prisoners to Pan when the quota was fifty? He’d have an appointment with the executioner no matter how he tried to talk his way out of it. And most likely Jia, too. His life as a servant of the emperor was over; there was no longer any path back to safety. All the options he had were dangerous.
But some choices are more interesting than others, and I did make a promise to myself.
Could this rebellion finally be the opportunity that he had been seeking all his life?
“Emperor, king, general, duke,” he whispered to himself. “These are just labels. Climb up the family tree of any of them high enough and you’ll find a commoner who dared to take a chance.”
He got up on a rock and faced the soldiers and the remaining prisoners, all of whom were terrified: “I’m grateful that you stayed with me. But there’s no point in going any farther. Under the laws of Xana, we’re all going to be punished severely. Feel free to go wherever you want or to join the rebels.”
“Aren’t you going to join the rebels?” Hupé asked in a fervent voice. “The prophecy!”
“I can’t think about any prophecies right now. I’m going to hide in the mountains first and figure out a way to save my family.”
“You’re thinking of becoming a bandit then?”
“The way I look at it is this: If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.”
To his satisfaction but not surprise, everyone volunteered to stay with him.
The best followers are those who think it was their own idea to follow you.
Kuni Garu decided to take his band deep into the Er-Mé Mountains to minimize the risk of encountering Imperial patrols. The trail, winding slowly up the side of the mountain, was not steep, and the fall afternoon was pleasant. They made good progress.
But there was little camaraderie among ex-soldiers and ex-prisoners; they distrusted one another and were uncertain of the future.
Kuni wiped the sweat from his brow and stood still at a turn in the trail that gave him a good view of the verdant valleys below and the endless flat expanse of the Porin Plains beyond. He picked out another plug of chewing herbs from his pouch and bit into it with gusto. This one tasted minty and refreshing and made him feel like he should give a speech.
“Look at this view!” he said. “I had a pretty leisurely life”—those among the men who knew his history chuckled—“I never made enough money to rent a cabin up here and take my wife on a monthlong vacation hiking in the Er-Mé Mountains. My father-in-law was wealthy enough to do it, but he was too busy with his business. All this beauty was here, but neither of us ever got to enjoy it.”
The band admired the colorful fall foliage, a mosaic highlighted here and there by bunches of bright-red wild monkeyberries and late-blooming dandelions. A few of the men took deep breaths to fill their lungs with the mountain air, smelling of fresh-fallen leaves and loam that had been basking in the golden sun, so different from the air back in the streets of Zudi, which was dominated by the smell of copper coins and running sewage.