Chapter Seven
Bloodletting and its Begetting
The full moon was still setting behind them, and daybreak was yet a dim promise beyond the ridge. Despite having so many recent reasons for exultation, Jia felt little of the old excitement, the anticipatory thrill of battle, as she led her warriors on their latest mission of slaughter. A bit sickened by the necessity rather, she cursed the self-destructive idiocy of her subjects.
It was bad enough they had to be constrained by imperial decree not to hoard their bounty while others starved, nor to destroy such productive habitat with rapacious overexploitation. Could no one exercise simple foresight? That some were so misguided as to choose the far quicker suicide of attacking their protectors however, of attempting military rebellion against
