Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">A homely, pleasant race, skilled in the kitchen and the garden. They will make good house-serfs,</span> he thought, helping himself to more pancake and sap-honey.
Richer fare Yang Wuhan had eaten; far rarer and costlier, dismissed untasted. How strange, then, that a simple flour-cake made by slow, old hands, hot off the griddle, should so satisfy. Four had gone, now two more grace his plate.
Perhaps it was because he was a child now; perhaps it was because he had presented himself a recent orphan. But harsher had he seen dealt to such in his own world than here, and his present body was not of the race of his hosts.
<span class="mu-i">The fraud philosopher that said "Man is born with Good Inherent", spoke not of Man, but of Rheas, who attain their dotage with souls unstained.</span>
The Blade Emperor never asked the names of those unequal to shedding his blood, but now he learned the names of two:
The Husband was Clettennoak, the Wife, 'Telda, Haybarrows of the Everdote Haybarrows.
The land had been an inhospitable wild when their forebears were granted it of the Humans, themselves granted it of the Faerie; the land rejected those that fed without tending, that wrung without feeling.
Under Rhean care, the rockfast trees gave way, the hookbrambles withdrew to grass, then meadow country. The Rheas made a welcome home, loving the soil; in return, the line of Human Border Dukes gained a par-share of tea and tobacco of good quality two years of every three (the third was for fallow; the Rheas insisted strenuously, withholding work and yield under fines and hard detention, until even Greed stood rebuked), and exemption of all corvee.
The Myrmids, seeing such expanse so fruitful and succulent, declared it within their bounds by virtue of ancient hives new discovered, an Ur-Myrmid civilization flightless and underground. The locations of these were not disclosed, purportedly for fear that other Races would destroy them to deny the Myrmid claim.
Counterclaim by appeal to historic Human records containing no report of Myrmid presence during the Human tendmanship of Everdote is rejected outright by the Myrmid Host: the Mammalian supremacy shakes hands to defraud the Right and Just Insectid Interest, to thwart and contain Our Inevitable Ascendence!
The Dwarven intervention purports to be for peace while acting in the interests of commerce.
In such circumstances a Rhean Underground has begun to operate, drawing their numbers from the displaced, sabotaging the Myrmid nestholds in the forests across the battlefield.
Both sides boast of having Faerie sympathy and historic claim; neither have an interest in truth. Both are of dubious repute: one side as invasive infesters, the other as swindlers and wanton thieves.
<span class="mu-i">Is it a wonder if some wish both to kill each other.</span> he thought.
"Slow down dear! Or you'll have no space for chowder toasties with mulberry marmie!"
Yang Wuhan smiled rare happy smile.
<span class="mu-i">I have decided. I will never kill All of them.</span>
