Enlightened Empire

Chapter 368: Saniya's Longest Day (2)

That was too close.

Shivering from fear more than he did from the icy rain, Sami looked back at the soldier and policeman he had stumbled into by accident. When he saw that the two made no attempt to catch up with him, he felt his heart start beating again. Soon, they disappeared in the crowd behind him.

A sigh at least somewhat relieved his anxiety, though there was still some ways to go, and much could still go wrong. Thus, he clutched his robes tighter and forced his way ahead through the crowd. The faster he reached his goal, the better.

Once he had crossed all of Sillu Island and a second bridge across to Rapra, he didn’t proceed into the large square where the end of the festival would take place. Instead, he turned to one of the few buildings on the square.

Most of the space in front of Rapra Castle was left open, to facilitate the drills of the army, and to make the actual castle more defensible. There were only a few exceptions to this general barrenness, and the two-story building he was walking towards was one of them. On most days, it was used by the guards. Today however, it would house an entirely different group of people.

Two long, two short, two long.

Now he was used to the secret knocking patterns, so he executed his without thought. The people inside were also familiar with his face, so they didn’t ask questions and just let him in. With all the people in the square right now, it was better to be discreet and fast anyways, so Sami quickly slipped inside.

On most other days, this short building on the edge of Rapra Square was a guard post, meant to house the bridge guards when they were off duty, or when the weather was especially bad. Today however, the building had been repurposed through the financial and social power of master Ekkoko.

The guard post’s inside was much warmer than Saniya’s winter weather, though just as humid. About half a dozen people stood together in this tiny space and held conversations in hushed voices, which made the room’s air feel heavy. A few familiar faces nodded towards Sami when he entered, but no one came up to greet him.

They had met during many the secret meetings in Chanca’s yard, but no one had much to say to him right now. Everyone was too focused and too tense, so they stayed in their smaller, more familiar circles. Though since he still had important work to do, Sami didn’t really care about the lack of attention from his peers.

Instead, he went upstairs, just like Chanca had explained to him. The guard house had two floors in total. On the ground floor, all of Chanca’s fellow conspirators had come together to try and talk each other into courage. On the second floor was where they gathered all of the supplies they would need for their operation, whatever that operation may be in the end. To be honest, he didn’t really want to know the details of Chanca’s plan. He was already too deeply involved for his own good.

When Sami stepped into the room upstairs, he saw something he had expected, but he was still shocked by the scale. Various weapons were littered across several tables throughout the room.

Some were meant for close combat, others were ranged. Some were official weapons of the kingdom’s army. Others were completely improvised, like the farmer’s sickles that had been turned into infantry lances by turning up their blades. Of that type of weapon alone, there were at least a dozen leaning against the far wall of the room.

The reason that Sami could see the room’s far end so clearly was that there were not nearly as many people here as there had been downstairs. There were only two people present here, one was his friend Chanca, and the other was an unfamiliar face. At this moment, the unfamiliar, young man was in the process of unloading various small boxes of wood from his robes with careful hands. His tense face showed Sami that he was a fellow sufferer.

Only a few days ago, Sami had seen boxes like these hidden inside Chanca’s house. If the contents hadn’t changed, they were filled with paper cartridges from Saniya’s army. The unfamiliar face looked as nervous as one would expect with this much explosive gunpowder strapped to one’s body. Although Sami’s fellow would have surely liked for Chanca to relieve him of his cargo sooner, the master of the house interrupted his work as soon as he saw his friend enter.

“Sami, you’re finally here!” Chanca shouted and came towards him.

“What are you even doing here?” Sami asked, confused by the stocked arsenal before him. “You’re not really planning a rebellion, are you?”

“Who knows.”

“You can’t-” Sami shouted, but caught himself just in time. With a hushed voice, he continued. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s not our best plan. If I can, we will use the chaos of the festival to take out some of the big men who have been making all the trouble,” Chanca said, calmer and louder than his friend. “But if the best plan fails, we’ll be dead either way. We may as well try to fight back with everything we have then.”

Far too late, Sami regretted ever getting involved in this mess. The more he heard, the less he liked Chanca’s so-called ‘plan’. Wasn’t he just getting arrogant, now that he had a handful of proper weapons? Suddenly, his palms felt all slippery with sweat, and the objects tied to his body felt like they increased tenfold in weight.

“Please help me take this stuff off,” he said, his voice suppressed from the weight. “I really can’t stand it any longer.”

Eager to relieve himself of the cargo that made him so nervous, Sami removed his outer robes. Underneath, he wore a second, thinner set, so he was still protected from the cold. But more importantly, he wore six small-sized pistols of various forms between the layers of cloth. To make sure they wouldn’t be found, he had bound them onto various places all over his body with rope.

However, just as he wanted to touch the weapons, Chanca interrupted him.

“No, just wait,” he said. “You’re with your allies now. So don’t worry so much. I have to deal with the other stuff first, then I’ll come help you. And don’t touch the guns by yourself. They’re delicate things, and we don’t have a lot of them. We’ll need them later, for the best plan.”

Although he wanted to urge his friend to hurry up again, he knew that there was little point. Chanca rarely had ideas of his own, but when he did, he would stick to them no matter what. Not to mention that Sami wouldn’t want Chanca to rush with the gunpowder.

As he looked at the poor guy who had been forced to smuggle the ammunition, he realized that he didn’t have it so bad. Thus, he just nodded to signal understanding and moved towards the windows in the room. While he waited for Chanca to finish unloading his predecessor and move on to him, Sami nervously spied out into the open space below, to make sure no one was watching them.

From the second floor of the guard post, Sami had an excellent view across the entirety of Rapra Plaza. The people that used to walk the streets of the city during the day had now all crowded together underneath giant tarps in this small space in front of the castle. The endless rows of heads were impossible to count, but Sami guessed that there had to be tens of thousands of people.

They had come from within Saniya, and from all other parts of the Medala Empire to experience the festival, and now they were all here. Although the tarps they were stuck underneath covered most of the space, the mood didn’t seem horrible. Even now, there were still entertainers plying their trade among the crowd, and in several places, government agents were serving the waiting crowd with various hot foods and mulled wine.

Although it was a lively, and happy image, Sami only felt melancholic when he looked at it. Maybe today would be the last time these people would feel this way. Whatever Chanca or his father-in-law Ekkoko had planned, it would lead to irreversible changes.

However, he understood that they couldn’t just call off their rebellion either. In the face of more and more aggressive supervisors, they didn’t have a choice. If they wanted to survive beyond the festival, they had to resist. The league of lords certainly wouldn’t give them any breathing room even if they showed enough servility. That much, the nobles already demonstrated.

Still, even now, Sami was hoping for a turnaround that would make their plans unnecessary. All throughout the festival, their king and his servants hadn’t shown up at all. This was much unlike King Corcopaca, who often seemed very eager to interact with his people and never left out a chance to hold a speech. Wasn’t he planning to appear this time, in an attempt to resolve the problems of the kingdom? Although there was still hope, Sami felt it less and less likely, the longer the festival went on.

Maybe, Sami thought, the king had tried to regain the hearts of the people when he had planned this lavish festival. Yet when he had seen the strong presence of the lords and priests in the city over these days, he had given up his resistance to avoid the embarrassment of a direct defeat.

However, despite his better judgment, Sami was still hoping that the king would finally show up to save the day, like he had done so many times before. After all, the new construction in front of the castle’s entrance had to be good for something, right? In the past, the king had often used Rapra plaza to build stages for ceremonies. Although the stage in front of the entrance looked a bit weird, maybe this time he had something special planned, so he needed a special stage?

As he continued to watch, Sami noticed that the eyes of many people in the crowd down below also seemed to be drawn towards the ‘stage’, just the same as his own. Maybe they were all hoping for the same as him.

“There, done. Now it’s your turn,” Chanca interrupted his thoughts, and reminded Sami of the six burdens he was still carrying.

“Good. These things feel like they weigh more than an ice block,” he said as he turned back around.

“No they don’t. They’re pistols, they’re light,” Chanca argued, as dull as usual. With how sharp his edges had been ever since their reunion, Sami sometimes forgot that his friend’ usually wasn’t the brightest. Somehow, the familiar moment calmed him down.

“Just help me get rid of this stuff,” he said, rather than argue. In response, Chanca began to tear off the pistols with all the finesse of an apprentice on his first solo work. In that case, what was the point of him waiting? Sami could have done that himself. Though again, he didn’t argue.

“Well, it’s good that you got the guns here on time,” Chanca said while he worked. “We’ll need these for the best plan.”

Once again, Sami’s friend hinted at something Sami assumed to be an assassination of the lords and priests in the crowd, but he really didn’t want to know any more than he already did.

“So with these six, how many guns do we have in total?” he asked instead.

“Here? About twenty, if I had to guess. No pistols though, these six are the only ones. But there should be more in other places in the city. With everything put together, we should have close to a hundred rifles and pistols, and a lot more infantry weapons.”

“That’s… disturbing.” While Chanca was still working on the pistols, Sami’s eyes returned to the crowd outside again. Somehow, he felt like sharing his previous thoughts. “Just look at them. They’re still celebrating, and they have no idea that their entire world is about to end.”

In complete defiance of Sami’s low mood, Chanca laughed as he removed the last pistol.

“You can say that again,” he gloated and pointed the weapon out of the window. “You see those guys in the middle? They’ll never know what hit’em, not until they get hit by the lead.”

When Sami followed Chanca’s aim, he realized that even during a festival, under the heavy rain, and in Medala’s freest city, the different classes still weren’t equal. While most people in the square were squished together so they could all fit under the tarps, only one central area was different. Even from this distance and through the rain, it was easy to tell who the people underneath were. Their bright red and blue robes stood out like flowers in a grassy field.

If Sami’s guess wasn’t completely wrong, inside sat all the foreign dignitaries, southern lords and priests who had come to carve up the city among them, no doubt celebrating their imminent victory with another one of their endless banquets. Somewhere underneath that tarp, Sami guessed, he would also find the two arrogant masters he had served with wine earlier in the day.

For all their indulgence, the day of reckoning was truly upon them. Somehow, the thought was pleasing to Sami. Without his notice, his nervous mood calmed all on its own.