A registered conscription slot wasn't unchangeable — the bailiffs would screen out the crippled and dismiss the plague-stricken. Crippling had some room for tolerance; plague, none at all. The county yamen's bailiffs would never let a plague-carrier slip into the ranks of able men — in Great Wei, spreading pestilence to the army was a beheading crime. So rich sons who didn't dare maim themselves would mostly report plague to escape service.
Of course there was a price: the family of the man being replaced had to settle the substitute themselves, which cost a great sum. Zhou Yuan never imagined Ergou's father would put up the family's ancestral field to buy out Ergou's slot.
With that, apart from going to the city to make a living, Ergou's family truly had no way back. They no longer even counted as farmers now — at most drifters, their social standing plunging straight down, from near the bottom to rock bottom. Perhaps this grave illness had changed their thinking; now they'd rather bear some risk to keep the family's only male heir. Only — going to the city with no one to lean on, who could say if it was good or ill, whether they'd find any peace.
"Ergou, don't flash your wealth. Wherever you go, while you're a stranger in a strange place, better to live plainly."
"I know, Brother Shitou. My pa says I'm to apprentice in the city; Old Luo from the east village introduced me to a carpenter master. I can eat bitterness — so long as the master doesn't beat me to death and teaches me the trade, I'll see him to his grave."
"All right. If I make a name for myself and you get bullied, use my name."
That Ergou dared gift a flawless pearl moved Zhou Yuan somewhat — giving such a gift carried risk. Had he been a vicious man, the lives of Ergou's family would have hung in the balance.
"Brother Shitou, can you get your family's field back? You could take the field-for-service route too — we brothers could go to the city and make a living together, look out for each other."
"That road's closed to me. You know it — the deed says in black and white I only get the field back once I've taken a wife."
Before his predecessor's father left for the army, fearing he wouldn't return and that the village would seize the chance to kill off the heirless boy and swallow the estate, he'd put the private field in the village head's name. That arrangement let his predecessor grow up safe, drawing a ration from the village head each year — but getting it back now was hard. With his predecessor's reputation as a half-wit, respectable families and disreputable ones alike scorned the lone-household simpleton.
"True. You'd find a wife even harder than I would, and your field's most likely already become the village head's private property. He'd never agree to let you use his field for your service."
"Cough, cough... Right, Brother Shitou — that thing from a few days back, just forget I said it. As for getting an heir, I'd like to put in the effort myself."
After a brief farewell, Ergou's family left in a great hurry, reaching the city two days before the county bailiffs entered the village. The man who replaced Ergou was called Li Dazhuang, whose household had a full five males — the classic case of too many people and too little land.
Zhou Yuan saw it clearly: when the bailiffs called the other conscripts they drew a circle, but when they called him they drew a horizontal stroke. That meant his household was heirless; so long as he didn't return, Qiaoxi's service and grain levies would henceforth be reckoned on sixty-six households. Ergou's family, though they'd lost their field and gone to the city, still kept their Qiaoxi registry, so their household would still count among future service candidates.
"Quiet down, lads, let me say a few words. This conscription is the court's law — not us brothers deliberately bearing down on you. Look at these conscripts — some young, some old. We brothers will simply pretend your household has no able-bodied man and let it pass for you. We act with feeling; we hope you'll act with honor. Once out of this village, no fleeing, no trouble — or when the yamen pursues it, your families will suffer.
I'll say no more. Pick a man to lead the team. We'll pass a dozen post-stations but not enter county towns, heading straight for the commandery seat, Jing'an City."
That the conscripts wouldn't enter county towns made sense — all of them fellow villagers merely passing through; one stir of bad intent and they might ravage the townsfolk. Amusingly, the bailiffs also accepted old men standing in for the able-bodied. Likely Great Wei had few wars, and routine conscription was to maintain the system rather than urgently fill the ranks.
"Why's no one choosing? Choose, or I'll just point at random."
For corvée the men would surely scramble to be team leader, but this was military service — the leader would most likely be picked as a regular fighting soldier, and the men didn't want that bitter duty.
"I'll do it."
Under the gaze of villagers and bailiffs, Zhou Yuan — hatchet at his waist, a baton in hand — stepped forward.
"A fine fellow. Young men have drive. Good — you'll be squad leader of Qiaoxi's conscripts."
Zhou Yuan's aims differed from the villagers'. They mostly thought of returning home to farm; he thought of leaving labor behind to train and strengthen himself. So the squad-leader post the men shunned was, to him, a starting point worth seizing.
What he hadn't expected was that the road-rations for the journey had to be prepared by oneself. Village head Old Li clutched Zhou Yuan's hand, urging him over and over to guard the village's wheelbarrows well — lose anything, but never the grain.
And so, led by the bailiffs, the men set off pushing wheelbarrows loaded with hatchets, clay pots, straw mats and other odds and ends. As squad leader, Zhou Yuan didn't have to take turns pushing; instead the bailiffs placed him in the middle of the column to manage the twenty-three village men.
The party started and stopped, first joining another batch of conscripts at Qiaodong Village, then gathering a hundred men at Shashi Village and Dalin Manor before pressing on toward Jing'an City. With bailiffs who knew the road leading, the conscripts reached the post-station before nightfall. There was lodging here — a big communal bunk, no quilts, but at least shelter from the wind, and no charge to the conscripts. Eating, though, cost money; even the few bailiff leaders ordered only hot soup, fishing flatcakes from cloth bundles to soak in it.
Men with service experience mattered now. At their call, several half-grown boys ran out to gather firewood and dry grass and boiled water outside the station. Watching all this at first, Zhou Yuan felt rather like a camping expedition. Only when Zhao Dahuang handed him a cold flatcake did he break from the romantic fancy and return to the reality of rough travel.
"Sweet — not bad, Uncle Dahuang, you even got hold of sugar."
"Nonsense. It's jujube-paste cake, dry rations steamed from red dates and broomcorn millet. In past years' corvée we got no such treatment — half-dead on arrival was fine. But military service is different; arrive in too poor a state and the camp sends you back, then we have to make up another able-bodied man. You're in luck, boy — eat this jujube cake and you'll reach camp lively as a fish."
After a noisy supper, the village men needed no direction from Zhou Yuan; they gave the communal bunk to the old and weak of their own accord and lay down on straw mats on the floor. In this moment, Zhou Yuan truly felt the bitterness of service and the worth of fellow villagers.
"Shitou, pick a few men to watch the grain carts — no mistakes."
"No mistakes. Don't worry."