The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

Author:R.F. Kuang [Kuang, R. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Nezha ordered a squadron to walk through the surrounding square mile with torches held low to the ground until the ice and snow had melted enough that they could see what had happened.

The snow peeled away to reveal an entire village of people, frozen perfectly where they lay. Most still had their eyes open. Rin saw no blood. The villagers didn’t appear to have died from anything except for the cold, and perhaps starvation. Everywhere she found evidence of fires, hastily constructed, long fizzled out.

No one had given her a torch. She was still shaken from the experience, and every sudden movement made her jump, so it was best that she didn’t hold on to anything potentially dangerous. But she refused to go back to camp alone, either, so she stood by the edge of the forest, watching blankly as the soldiers brushed snow off yet another family of corpses. Their bodies were curled in a heap together, the mother’s and father’s bodies wrapped protectively around their two children.

“Are you all right?” Nezha asked her. His hand wandered hesitantly toward her shoulder, as if he wasn’t sure whether to touch her or not.

She brushed it away. “I’m fine. I’ve seen bodies before.”

Yet she couldn’t take her eyes off of them. They looked like a set of dolls lying in the snow, perfectly fine except for the fact that they weren’t moving.

Most of the adults still had large bundles fastened to their backs. Rin saw porcelain dishes, silk dresses, and kitchen utensils spilling out of those bags. The villagers seemed to have packed their entire homes up with them.

“Where were they going?” she wondered.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kitay said. “They were running.”

“From what?”

Kitay said it, because no one else seemed able to. “Us.”

“But they didn’t have anything to fear.” Nezha looked deeply uncomfortable. “We would have treated them the way we’ve treated every other village. They would have gotten a vote.”

“That’s not what their leaders would have told them,” said Kitay. “They would have imagined we were coming to kill them.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nezha said.

“Is it?” Kitay asked. “Imagine it. You hear the rebel army is coming. Your magistrates are your most reliable sources of information, and they tell you that the rebels will kill your men, rape your women, and enslave your children, because that’s what you’re always supposed to say about the enemy. You don’t know any better, so you pack up everything you can and flee.”

Rin could imagine the rest. These villagers would have run from the Republic just as they had once run from the Federation. But winter had come earlier that year than they’d predicted, and they didn’t get to the lowland valleys in time. They couldn’t find anything to eat. At some point it was too much work to stay alive. So they decided with the rest of the families that this was as good a place as any to end it, and together they lay down and embraced each other, and perhaps it didn’t feel so terrible near the end.

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