Niohuru Tie still dreamt of glory, but his first days as a bannerman were hardly getting off to a glorious start. It had been only a handful of days since he’d marched into the recruiting offices of the Eight Banners in Northern Capital, signed his name, and entered the emperor’s service. He’d been instructed to make his farewells to family and friends and report to the transport depot the following morning.

The ride down to Hangzhou by rail had taken the better part of a day, and Niohuru had taken the opportunity to settle his thoughts. His parents and brothers had been little more impressed by his decision to enlist than his tearaway friends had been, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, he now realized. But still he couldn’t help but feel a disappointed resentment that his own father, an officer of the court, hadn’t been able to muster something like pride for his son.

Instead, the old man had taken hold of Niohuru’s shoulders, looked into his eyes, and in a strangely quiet voice, said simply, “Try not to get killed, my son.”

Niohuru had puzzled over it during the jostling ride down from Northern Capital. Everyone agreed that the Mexic Dominion was a blight, and that the atrocities committed by its troops on the innocent colonists of Fire Star were an abomination. Niohuru had heard his own parents express precisely those sentiments for years, ever since the Mexic invasion when he’d been just a boy. But when the question arose as to what would be done about it, it seemed too often the answer was that the sons of some other family would be sent to make the Mexica answer for their crimes. Never did his parents consider that one of their sons might need to make any sacrifice.

By the time the train had reached its destination, Niohuru was cramped from the close quarters of the compartment, somewhat drowsy with the late afternoon heat, but no nearer an answer.

Along with the few hundred men who’d ridden in the train from the north, the depot was filled with hundreds more, even thousands, who had come from other parts of the countryside. From the south came men from Guangdong, Fukian, and Guangxi, from the west men of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Gansu. And not just men of the Middle Kingdom, either, but those who had journeyed by boat to the port of Hangzhou from Choson, Nippon, Annam, and even farther afield. There even bobbed in the crowd a few pale white faces, from Rossiya, perhaps, or even further west in Europa, or else from Vinland across the sea. Niohuru was surprised. While fairly common in the ranks of the Green Standard Army and on the ships of the Interplanetary Fleet, it was his understanding that natives of Europan nations and of Vinland were somewhat rare in the Eight Banners.

The depot was a mass of confusion, with countless men jostling this way and that, following the direction of the stern-faced bannermen who’d been waiting to receive them. The bannermen, all wearing the dark-colored fatigues of the Eight Banners combat dress, with carbines slung on their shoulders and sabers at their hips, shouted for the men of one classification to go this way, the men of another to go that. It reminded Niohuru of cattle being herded through pens, and what often became of them when they reached their destination. He tried not to dwell on any possible parallels.

As the light faded in the sky, the day slowly creeping onto night, they were ushered in their hundreds the short distance from the depot to the walls of the Hangzhou Garrison, facing out onto West Lake. Their shoes squelched in the mud underfoot where the ground wasn’t paved, and splashed in puddles where it was, while the slate gray skies overhead threatened even more rain. Finally, they reached the garrison, and the drill field near the Qiangtang Gate. Their bannermen escorts managed to get them into some sort of ragged order, and they were called to attention. The ranks were packed in so tightly together that Niohuru could scarcely draw a breath, the men on either side pressing in as closely as the men in front and behind.

The man standing atop the garrison wall passed his gaze over them as a child might survey an assortment of unwanted toys. He was dressed in the same dark fatigues as their bannermen escorts, but even at a considerable distance Niohuru could see something different about the way this man carried himself, something that set him apart from the others.

“Eight Banners Recruit Intake present and accounted for, General-in-Chief!” barked one of the escorts in a voice that echoed off the garrison walls like a gunshot. He snapped off a salute, standing to rigid attention.

The man atop the wall returned with a lazy salute of his own, and Niohuru thought he had recognized what it was that set this man apart from the others. It was a haughty quality, perhaps, but not an undeserved one. This was a leader of men, who knew his place and expected others to know theirs. When he spoke, his voice rang even louder than the escorts had done, booming like a cannon.

“Men! I am General-in-Chief Hao, commander of Hangzhou Garrison, and from this day forward your lives are not your own.”

Niohuru had expected a stirring call to action, a valediction. The commander’s words were that, if only in part.

“The proudest day of your lives was the day you decided to enroll in the Eight Banners. That decision set you apart from the sons and younger brothers, those who quail at home, afraid to take up the yoke of imperial service. But know this. Though there is no finer creature in all the world than a bannerman, your hearts, your bodies, your very lives are no longer yours to own. Each man enrolled under the Eight Banners should consider himself a slave. A highly trained, highly valued slave, but a slave nonetheless. He is not free, and he is not rich, and never will be either. The emperor is his master and benefactor, and a slave does not serve his master for money, or for glory, but because his master wishes it.”

Many around Niohuru began to shift uneasily, appearing perhaps to question their decision to serve.

“There is no greater civilizing force in all the world than the Eight Banners of the Dragon Throne. When the great Manchu leader Nurgaci founded the Banners, it was with the intent of uniting the various people under one rule. In the year the corrupt Bright Dynasty finally fell, giving way for the Clear Dynasty, it was the bannermen who helped liberate this very city of Hangzhou, and in that same year that the Hangzhou Garrison was established. By that time, the Eight Banners had already led the way to victory over the Chahar Mongols, and over the kingdom of Choson. In time, the emperor would dispatch the Eight Banners to help pacify New Dominions, west across the great lands, and east across the seas. And in all that time, the Eight Banners have fulfilled their purpose, uniting the people under one rule. Eight Banners, one world, one emperor.”

From his studies of history, Niohuru knew it was hardly as simple as that. Having begun as eight Manchu banners, more were added in later years, until there were at one point some two dozen in all. His boy tutor, an old Nipponese bannermen named Etsuko, had told him that, by the time of the Xianfeng Emperor, the Banners had become a confusing mess, ill-organized and inefficient. The Tongzhi Emperor had changed all that, reorganizing the militaries along more rational lines, making the Banners once more eight in number, each of them a force large enough to subdue and secure an entire region on its own. His successor, the Guangxu emperor, had put this newly restructured Eight Banners to good use, leading it to victory over the Mexica in the First Mexic War, over a century and a half before. For a brief time, just as General-in-Chief Hao had said, it was one world under the Dragon Throne, united by the Eight Banners.

But within a generation, the Mexica had expelled the forces of the Middle Kingdom in a bloody uprising, establishing the Mexic Dominion, and beginning the long cold war that led, finally, to the present troubles.

“Once united under one rule,” Hao went on, voice booming, “the nations of the world will be united again. This time, though, our battlefield is not the streets of Hangzhou, or the plains of Vinland, or the mountains and forests of Fusang. Now the field of battle is to be found on the red sands of Fire Star. And it will be you, proud bannermen and new-made slaves of the emperor, who will help achieve that victory.”

Niohuru felt a swell of pride, the sting of his parents’ lack of enthusiasm beginning to fade. Still, he couldn’t help but recall the muttered conversations he’d overheard on the troop train from Northern Capital, other recruits discussing rumors they’d encountered, wondering if they were true. Rumors that some within the Eight Banners argued that the leaders of the emperor’s militaries in the Second Mexic War were still fighting old conflicts, trying to wage war on a new world with tactics better suited to another.

Standing in the muddy drill field Qiangtang Gate, packed close with thousands of bannermen recruits, Niohuru felt sure that those voices of dissent were wrong. The Eight Banners were guided by centuries of tradition, and by the tactics handed down by brave men who had conquered the world in the Dragon Throne’s name. What chance was there that those traditions and tactics would not win the day again?

---

PREVIOUS CHAPTER: Hexagram 7
The Army
Below Water Above Earth
The Earth holds water within itself. In the same way, the noble man cherishes the common folk and so brings increase to the masses.


NEXT CHAPTER: Hexagram 9
Lesser Domestication
Below Heaven Above Wind
Wind moves through the Heavens. In the same way, the noble man cultivates his civil virtues.

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Chapter 8 of Three Unbroken by Chris Roberson. Copyright © 2007 Monkeybrain, Inc. For more action from the Celestial Empire don't miss The Dragon's Nine Sons.

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