Lu Fang noticed the improvements before he reached the gate.
The fields were ahead of schedule again.
The fence line had been reinforced with iron fittings at the joints. Iron. A farming village with iron construction fittings. That was new.
He'd brought twelve soldiers this time and one cultivator, a hill clan fighter named Shan who hadn't spoken a word since Meishan. The larger force was justified. Hekou's grain quality from the last collection had raised eyebrows at the Prefect's compound. He'd been promoted since his last circuit to the second-best horse now.
This village had potential. The young men he'd seen during the last visit had been organized and fit. A settlement that could produce soldiers of that quality was worth more than grain to a Prefect fighting a two-front war.
Lu Fang was already composing the recruitment proposal in his head when he saw the banners.
Black field.
Red sigil.
His hands tightened on the reins.
Every tax collector in the Lord of Qinghe's service had been briefed on enemy markers.
The Shen Yue banner. Lord of the Western Reaches.
"Halt." The column stopped. Shan straightened in his saddle.
The banners were small. Mounted on the fence posts at regular intervals, fluttering in the morning breeze like festival decorations. Except these weren't festive. These were territorial markers. And they were planted on a village that belonged to Prefect Shen.
Lu Fang dismounted and walked to the gate. The younger brother was already there. Pei Liang. The fifteen-year-old who'd negotiated like a trade minister last time and who was now standing in front of flags that represented high treason.
"What is this?" Lu Fang's voice was tight. He pointed at the nearest banner. "This is grounds for the Prefect to send every cultivator in his garrison through your gate. Explain. Now."
"Western Reaches forces have been moving through this area," Pei Liang said. His voice was level like it had been during their first meeting. "We found evidence of their scouts on the eastern roads. The banners are a warning. If their patrols see their own sigil on our fence, they'll mark us as already processed and move on. It's camouflage."
Lu Fang studied the boy's face. The explanation was plausible. Villages in contested border zones had used enemy markers as deterrents before.
"You should have reported the Western Reaches activity to the Prefect's office," Lu Fang said.
"We're farmers. We don't have riders or messengers."
Lu Fang straightened his posture and proceeded. The banners were a problem for the Prefect's intelligence apparatus. His job was collection.
"Your quota has been adjusted," Lu Fang said, unrolling the scroll. "Fourteen shi. The Lord's eastern campaign requires additional provisioning from all productive settlements."
"Fourteen?" The boy's expression didn't change. "That's a significant increase from last cycle."
"Your fields suggest you can bear it. The Prefect has also authorized me to conduct a census of military-eligible males for potential recruitment into the eastern force."
Now the boy's expression changed. It was the first crack in an otherwise controlled facade.
"Recruitment," Pei Liang repeated.
"Voluntary first. Compulsory if volunteers are short." Lu Fang looked past the boy toward the commons where the older brother was standing with a group of men. Fit men. Men who moved like they'd been training, which was interesting because farmers didn't train. "Your village has clearly invested in its workforce. The Prefect believes that investment should serve the broader war effort."
The older brother was walking toward the gate. Pei Hao. That open, magnetic face, except today it wasn't open.
"We'll discuss the grain quota," Pei Liang said. "The recruitment census isn't something I can agree to without consulting the village."
"It isn't a request."
The boy looked at him. Those still, dark eyes. "Everything is a request until someone draws a sword. Let's discuss the grain first."
Lu Fang followed the brothers into the commons. His twelve soldiers filed through the gate behind him, spreading into the loose perimeter formation that was standard procedure for village assessments. Shan the cultivator dismounted and stood near the gate with his arms across, working as the rear guard.
The commons looked different than he remembered last time. It was even better maintained than before and he could tell that the villagers were well food and washed.
Stolen story; please report.
Something prickled at the back of Lu Fang's neck.
"Fourteen shi," Pei Liang began. "We can discuss the-"
"The recruitment comes first," Lu Fang cut him off. He changed the order deliberately. The boy had tried to steer the conversation toward grain because grain was negotiable. Bodies weren't. "I'll need every male between fifteen and forty presented for assessment. Beginning with your brother."
Pei Hao stepped forward. "Nobody in this village is going to the Prefect's war."
Lu Fang looked at the older brother, then at the men behind him who were positioned at careful intervals with their hands at their sides. Finally, his gaze returned to the younger brother, whose eyes had gone very still.
"That," Lu Fang hissed, "is not your decision."
He turned to signal Shan.
Then the gate closed behind him.
Wood against wood, the iron-fitted gate slamming shut. Lu Fang spun. Two men stood at the gate, spears leveled. Not wooden poles. Iron-tipped spears held by men trained to hold them.
Behind the Wei compound, a column of thick smoke punched into the sky. Someone had lit a pyre and it blazed like an inferno. The prepared pyre, stacked days ago, soaked in oil, positioned for maximum visibility from the surrounding hills.
Black smoke against blue sky, climbing fast.
He turned back. The commons had changed. The casually positioned men were no longer casual. They'd drawn weapons from underneath cloaks, from behind bins, from places Lu Fang's soldiers hadn't thought to check. Spears, knives, a line of armed men closing around his twelve soldiers in a half-circle that tightened as he watched.
"What is this?!" Lu Fang roared.
"This is a village that isn't giving you its sons," Pei Liang said.
Shan moved.
The cultivator surged forward from the gate, driving toward the younger brother with immense speed. He covered three meters in a heartbeat, fist cocked, qi flooding his limbs in the brute-force style.
Pei Hao intercepted him.
The collision shook the air and rattled Lu Fang's teeth. Shan's fist met Hao's forearm and the impact threw dust outward in a ring. Shan pressed, driving forward with the raw power that had broken shield walls on two fronts. Hao gave ground. One step. Two. His feet carved furrows in the packed earth.
Then Hao pressed his palms together into a prayer sign.
Lu Fang didn't know what it was. He saw the boy's hands come together, saw his eyes close for a fraction of a second, and then felt something change in the air.
Hao opened his eyes and hit Shan in the chest with an open palm.
The cultivator flew backward. His body left the ground and traveled four meters before hitting the earth and skidding another two. He lay there wheezing, trying to rise, and Hao was already on him with his knee on his chest and a hand wrapped around his throat. Shan's wild thrashing slowed, then it stopped completely.
Around them, the ambush collapsed inward. Lu Fang's twelve soldiers found themselves in the chokepoint, the fence on two sides, the gate behind them, and armed villagers closing the open ground ahead.
Lu Fang screamed orders. "Fall back and Form up in a Defensive square!"
The words came automatically, drilled into him by three years of observing military operations.
His men couldn't hear him. The first soldier caught a spear through his breastplate. The iron tip punched through leather and the man beneath it.
A second soldier died trying to draw his sword. The third made it three steps before two militia men hit him from either side. Some dropped their weapons in surrender because the ones who kept fighting didn't fight for long.
Lu Fang stood in the center of the commons and watched his column die around him.
Through the smoke, through the noise, through the screaming and the iron and the bodies hitting the dirt, he saw Pei Liang walking toward him.
The boy moved through the chaos without hurrying. Men fought and died on either side of him and he passed through it like water through rocks, his eyes fixed on Lu Fang, a short blade in his right hand that hadn't been there during the negotiation.
Then the boy disappeared.
That was the only word for it. One moment he was ten meters away, walking. The next he was inside Lu Fang's guard, the dagger driving toward his chest in a thrust that covered the distance faster than any fifteen-year-old body should have been able to move. Lu Fang twisted on instinct and the blade missed his ribs by a finger's width and sliced through the outer layer of his tunic as he threw himself sideways.
He hit the ground and scrambled backward, staring up at the boy who stood where he'd been standing a heartbeat ago.
How did he...?
Then it hit him.
A cultivator.
This farm boy was a cultivator too?!
The northern road thundered.
Hooves. Dozens of them. The gate shuddered as something heavy struck it from the outside and a voice cut through the chaos.
"Western Reaches expeditionary force. All combatants stand down."
The gate opened from the outside. Eight mounted soldiers in dark uniforms poured through, the red sigil on their breasts matching the banners on the fence. They moved through the commons and quickly separated the Prefect's soldiers from the militia, establishing control over the space in seconds.
Behind them, on a grey horse, rode an older man that Lu Fang had seen in the records...Administrator Wen. He dismounted, surveyed the commons, and walked directly to where Pei Liang stood.
"The signal was seen," Wen said. He pulled a ledger from his case and began writing.
Lu Fang lay in the dirt and watched the Western Reaches soldiers pin his remaining men.
The signal was seen...?
The fire.
The black smoke climbing behind the Wei compound.
The boy had arranged a response force before the first spear was drawn.
The banners. The contract. The flags. The signal fire. Every piece of it had been a trap built in layers so deep that Lu Fang was still finding new ones while he lay on his back watching his life flash before his eyes.
Lu Fang ran.
He broke through the thinnest point in the militia line, shouldering past a Tongshan man who was too slow to bring his spear around, and sprinted for the gate. His soldiers were done. Shan was pinned. The mission was over and the only thing that mattered was reaching the road and reaching Meishan and telling Prefect Shen that a farming village on the river fork had declared war.
Then a spear hit his right leg just below the knee.
The pain was blinding. His leg buckled and he went down hard, face in the dirt, the spear shaft vibrating where it had punched through his calf and into the ground beneath. He screamed, grabbed at the shaft, and then looked back.
It was a girl that couldn't be any older than fourteen, she stood twenty meters behind him with her arm still extended from the throw.
Lu Fang crawled. Dragging his pinned leg, tearing flesh against the spear shaft, hauling himself toward the gate with his fingernails in the dirt. Blood trailed behind him in a dark smear.
"Treacherous filth!" he spat. "The Prefect will burn this village to ash! Every house! Every field! Every man, woman, and child in this--"
A hand gripped his hair and pulled his head back, and he was staring directly at Pei Liang's cold black eyes.
N-No...
Not like this...
"C-Curse you-"
The blade sliced his throat open.