"Official conscription! Prepare the border defenses against the Tatars! Leave the pass to build a fort! This is corvée labor for the imperial court! Listen well! Anyone who dares flee corvée will be dragged back and given one hundred strokes of the rod, and his labor penalty will be doubled! His family will receive thirty strokes of the rod and be implicated into service! The lijia will be implicated too, and made to pay the labor fine!"
"?! In weather this frozen solid, you want us to leave the pass and build a fort in the wind and snow? Fort Chief Song, in past years you've never conscripted men at a time like this!"
"That's right! Uncle Song! In past years, even when men were conscripted, it was always in the early spring, the third month, after the weather warmed. Doing heavy work at a time like this, with no food, no clothes, and no firewood—how many people will die?"
"Master Song! Please show mercy."
"Cough, cough! All of you, shut up! This is a military order from the guard post. With the camp soldiers watching, where do you lot get the right to run your mouths?!"
The fort chief of Songjiapo Fort had changed into a gray padded jacket, covering the whip marks on his shoulders and back, and had put on thick cloth shoes, with the square kerchief that symbolized his status on his head. Dressed like this, before the assembled villagers of the fort-town, under those pairs of uneasy eyes, he clearly had a bit more of the bearing of official authority. Of course, what truly propped up that official authority were the two runners in pale-blue livery behind Fort Chief Song—the yamen officers the villagers feared most—as well as the dozen or so Border Army camp