The landscape shifts slowly beneath the marching boots of the vanguard, leaving behind the dark, starveling iron mines and the brutal slave-labor estates of the north. Here, the central valleys of the Southern Garden Belt open wide and green, revealing soil so rich that it blackens a man's hands with pure fertility. The microclimate is warm and gentle, sustaining multi-hectare orchards that have grown heavy with fruit for generations, their trees standing in long, perfectly ordered rows across the rolling hills. Private stone press-houses stand along the roads, their heavy masonry walls still holding the warmth of the last fruit pressing. Sturdy brick cottages sit nestled behind low, carefully maintained garden walls, surrounded by flowering beds and clean stone paths. The master tenants and smallholders of Upper Fluane have lived for decades under special trade charters granted directly by the Duchy. They have lived comfortably. They have accumulated savings in locked iron boxes beneath their floorboards. And they do not want Aleksandr Volkov's revolution.
A quiet breeze stirs the leaves of the wild walnut trees bordering the highway, but the usual birdsong of the valley is entirely absent. The air grows heavy, carrying a faint, unnatural heat that has nothing to do with the sun.
As the forward ranks of the Free Proletariat Solidarity reach the outskirts of the village of Verdant Rise, no cheering crowds emerge from the cottages. No red flags snap in the wind above the doorways. Instead, the sky above the settlement is marred by thick, greasy columns of black smoke that rise slowly and deliberately into the pale blue air. The breeze shifts, pushing a heavy stench across the road—the sharp smell of burning grain, the acrid odor of scorched fruit, and the thick, sweet-rotten stench of milk cows slaughtered where they stood in the pasture.
The wealthy freeholders have set fire to their own granaries. They have taken knives to the throats of their own livestock, leaving the animals lying in the dirt. They have poured sacks of raw lime into the communal stone wells until the water inside turned milky white and lethal. Across the terraced hillsides, hundreds of acres of prize wine vineyards have been torched before the owners fled en masse along the western road toward the fortified county seat of Pormarensis. The grapevines, once thick with leaves and heavy fruit, now stand as blackened, twisted skeletons, their leaves curling into fine grey ash that drifts on the hot draft like winter snow.
A young FPS Vanguard Scout comes running down the dirt track toward the head of the column. His face is heavily streaked with dark soot, his breathing ragged and shallow, his voice raw from inhaling smoke. He stumbles to a halt, his hand gripping his chest as his eyes wide with distress look up at the leadership.
"Comrade Volkov! The fields… they're burning! The local farmers burnt the wheat to the roots! They filled the irrigation canals with rot!"
Volkov does not answer immediately. He steps past the breathless scout, his heavy boots crushing a cluster of wild clover that has been coated in falling soot. Beside him walk Irina Sokolova and Masha, their feet moving in silent rhythm as they enter the smoldering ruins of a wealthy tenant's homestead.
The brick walls of the farmhouse still radiate intense heat into the narrow lane. Inside the roofless structure, charred wooden beams have collapsed across what was once a polished oak floor, sending up occasional bursts of orange sparks as the timber settles. Near the gateway, a scorched wooden sign has fallen into the dry dirt, its painted lettering still clearly legible beneath a layer of black soot: Better ashes than your collective poison.
The painted words hang in the hot air like a final, bitter spit of defiance from the departed owners.
Volkov stops before the fallen sign. He slowly lowers his massive frame, kneeling in the dark soil at the edge of the path. He uncurls his gloved fingers and scoops a handful of hot, blackened earth directly from the ground. The ash is fine, light, and bitter. It clings to the dark leather of his glove, sifting slowly through his fingers as the wind catches it. Beneath his ushanka, his jaw clenches tightly, the muscles along his cheek working once, hard and rigid.
Around them, the ruined apple orchard stretches out in perfectly straight, desolate rows. Tree after tree has been reduced to twisted charcoal, the branches bare and brittle. The ground beneath the trees is littered with the burst, blackened remains of fruit that will never feed a single hungry child. Nearby, the narrow stone irrigation canals run thick with a stagnant, green-black sludge that gives off a sour, chemical stench. The stone wells along the lane stand wide open, their rims crusted with thick white deposits of lime.
"Why would they burn their own bread?" Volkov's voice is low, quiet, almost lost against the distant crackle of smoldering timber. "Why would they destroy the food that could feed their own neighbors?"
[How can a man look at a field of wheat and see only something to destroy?] Volkov's dark eyes remain fixed on the pile of black dust in his palm. [To kill the land simply so no one else may eat...]
Irina walks up beside him, her footfalls firm and unhurried on the scorched earth. Her steel-blue eyes sweep across the ruined orchard, cold and entirely devoid of sympathy or surprise. With a single, smooth motion, she unslings her Matchlock musket from her shoulder, her gloved fingers sliding over the stock until they rest on the original Mikhland slave tag welded into the wood. The cold iron tag feels familiar under her touch, a heavy reminder of a world built on iron and bone. Her white fur coat is already lightly dusted with grey ash along the hem. The red star pinned to the front of her ushanka catches the flickering orange light of a nearby burning granary, reflecting the flames without softening.
"Do not grieve for them, Aleksandr," Irina says, her voice steady and flat, cutting through the hot draft. "You are seeing the true face of the kulak class. They are comfortable slaves who have grown fat on the scraps falling from the Duke's table. They do not measure their freedom by human dignity—they measure it by their private property."
[They would rather see the world starve than share a single loaf with the man who tilled their soil,] Irina thinks, her eyes narrowing as she looks toward the smoke rising over the distant valley. [They have made their choice.]
Masha stands a few paces behind them, her hands resting tightly against her coat. Her eyes move slowly from the scorched stone walls of the press-house to the bodies of the slaughtered dairy cows lying in the nearby pasture, their broad flanks still steaming faintly in the ambient heat. Her face is pale, her expression carrying the lingering softness of someone who had once hoped that small comforts and modest holdings might be shared peacefully rather than reduced to cinder.
"Irina, these were smallholders," Masha says softly, her voice barely carrying over the hum of the fire. "Some of them only had five or six acres—"
Irina turns sharply on her heel. The movement is precise and sudden, like a rifle barrel snapping onto a target. Her chin lifts, and her voice cuts through the smoldering lane like a blade of ice.
"It does not matter if they owned five acres or five thousand, Comrade Masha!" Irina's words ring out, sharp and unyielding. "Anyone who burns food to prevent it from feeding a liberated worker is a counter-revolutionary collaborator! They are bourgeois sympathizers, utterly brainwashed by feudal propaganda! They fear equality because equality strips them of their petty superiority over the landless serfs!"
The words linger in the narrow lane, hanging heavily alongside the thick smoke drifting from the collapsed roof.
Volkov pushes himself up from the dirt, standing to his full height. He brings his gloved hands together, dusting the black ash from his palms with slow, deliberate strokes. The open, hopeful idealism that had once filled his posture is still present in his frame, but his face now wears a cold, hardened layer of revolutionary realism—clear, unbending, and stripped of illusion. He pulls his heavy red coat around his broad shoulders, settling the wool firmly as he straightens. The broken piece of the iron slave collar still resting against his throat catches a single drifting flake of grey ash and holds it against the metal.
"She is right, Masha," Volkov says, his voice deep and dark, echoing against the stone walls. "We offered them brotherhood and collective peace. They chose to burn the earth to starve the people's army. We march onward to Pormarensis. We will take the grain from those who still hoard it."
[The time for gentle words ended when they poured poison into the wells,] Volkov thinks, staring down the long, empty road leading deeper into Upper Fluane. [If they demand fire, we will give them the forge.]
Behind them, the long column of the vanguard moves through the smoldering center of Verdant Rise in disciplined, absolute silence. Vanguard scouts walk ahead, tying strips of bright red cloth around the wooden frames of the poisoned wells to warn the marching ranks behind. Other fighters move through the half-collapsed outbuildings, hauling out the last remaining unburned sacks of rye and barley from half-collapsed sheds. The air across the entire settlement remains thick with the greasy, suffocating stink of intentional destruction. Among the marching men and women, no one speaks of mercy for the freeholders who fled. The ruined land itself seems to hold the record of the choice that was made: better ashes than equality.
Later that evening, as dusk settles over the scorched valley, a makeshift wooden field desk is set up near the edge of an unburned pasture. Brass oil lamps are lit, casting long, stark shadows across the scarred wood and the papers laid upon it. Sitting at the desk, Commissar Sokolova holds a dipped pen above a clean sheet of paper. Her hand is steady, writing in a clear, sharp, unhesitating script as she drafts Agitprop Field Memorandum #04.
The text takes form rapidly under her pen:
To the fighters of the Free Proletariat Solidarity:
Do not be deceived by the tears of the petty-bourgeois landowners. Their burnt fields are not acts of tragedy, but acts of class war. The property owner who destroys bread to spite the hungry is as much an enemy as the knight who wields the sword. Forward to Pormarensis!
As the ink dries under the lantern light, the sheets are copied and distributed from hand to hand among the squad leaders before the column prepares to advance once more. Fighters stand in small groups, reading the memorandum once beneath the flickering oil lamps, folding the paper carefully, and tucking it into their coats before taking up their weapons.
Behind them, the black plumes of smoke from Verdant Rise continue to rise slowly into the night sky, marking the place where comfort chose fire over shared bread. Ahead, the dark road to the fortified county seat of Pormarensis stretches through more orchards, more stone press-houses, and more valleys that have grown fat under the Duchy's special charters. The red wave does not pause. It simply adjusts its course, moving forward—colder, clearer, and entirely without pity for those who preferred ashes to the collective table.
The morning sun breaks over the ridge of Upper Fluane not with brilliant gold, but with a dull, copper haze filtered through the lingering smoke of the burning valleys. The dew that normally settles on the wild grass is mixed with fine, soot-heavy ash, turning the blades of grass dark and slimy where the boots of the vanguard tread.
The road toward Pormarensis narrows as it climbs through a series of terraced hillsides. Here, the master tenants had built elaborate stone retaining walls to hold the rich black earth in place, creating perfect platforms for plum and cherry orchards. Now, many of these stone walls have been intentionally undermined, their heavy boulders dragged down into the center of the road to form crude barricades. Beside the overturned stones lie smashed wooden crates, broken tools, and the spilled contents of jarred fruit, left to rot in the mud.
Volkov walks near the front of the main column, his eyes scanning the ridgeline above. His broad face is set like granite, his lips pressed into a thin, unyielding line. Every few hundred paces, the column passes another smallholding. The story remains unchanged: charred roof timbers, black gaps where granary doors used to stand, and the distinct, sickening smell of lime hanging over every stone wellhead.
Irina walks at his left shoulder, her musket resting comfortably in the crook of her arm. Her eyes are constantly moving, assessing the terrain, the tree lines, and the condition of the soil. She pauses briefly near a low stone wall where a cluster of wild blackberry bushes has been scorched black by nearby brushfires. She reaches out with a gloved hand, snapping a brittle, charred stem between her fingers. It crumbles into fine powder instantly.
"They thought they could create a desert," Irina says quietly, her tone lacking any trace of anger, carrying only a hard, analytical weight. "They believed that if they destroyed the sustenance of the earth, we would crumble and turn back to the north."
[They do not understand what drives a hungry man,] she thinks, dropping the crushed stem back into the road. [A man who has known cold and iron does not retreat because the path is covered in ash.]
Masha steps closer to Volkov, her gaze fixed on the horizon ahead where the high stone towers of Pormarensis can just be distinguished against the pale, hazy sky. The county seat stands formidable atop a broad limestone plateau, surrounded by thick defensive walls and heavy granaries that have supplied the Duchy's armies for decades.
"If Pormarensis has taken in all the freeholders from these valleys," Masha says, her voice cautious, "then the city will be filled with desperate people. People who have just burned everything they owned."
[They will fight with the fury of those who have nothing left to lose except their pride,] Masha reflects, her fingers nervously tracing the seam of her thick wool sleeve. [It will not be like Pomer or Fluane.]
Volkov slows his stride slightly, looking back over his shoulder at the thousands of men and women marching behind them. They are serfs, former mine workers, landless laborers, and newly liberated peasants carrying scythes, heavy wood-splitting axes, and iron pitchforks. Their faces are dark with soot, their clothes worn and stained, but their eyes burn with a dark, collective purpose that no burnt orchard can extinguish.
"They burned their own bread because they feared sharing it," Volkov says, his voice deep and resonant, carrying to the squad leaders marching nearby. "In Pormarensis, they hold the grand silos—the grain that was stolen from the serfs of these very valleys over fifty years. They cannot burn what is stored behind sixty feet of stone before we reach the gates."
[We will break those gates just as we broke the gatehouses of Von Kray,] Volkov vows internally, his heavy fist tightening around the handle of his blacksmith's hammer. [The soil will be reclaimed, and the grain will feed those who bled to grow it.]
A sudden breeze sweeps down from the high limestone plateau, carrying with it the distant, rhythmic tolling of heavy iron bells from the watchtowers of Pormarensis. The alarm bells ring out in rapid, frantic succession, echoing across the smoldering orchards and the ruined brick homesteads of Upper Fluane.
Irina adjusts her ushanka, her steel-blue eyes locking onto the distant spires of the county seat. A faint, cold smile touches the corner of her lips.
"Listen to them," Irina whispers, her voice cutting through the sound of marching boots. "They are ringing the bells for a world that has already burned to the ground."
The vanguard continues its steady, relentless advance along the ash-dusted road. Behind them, the smoke of Verdant Rise continues to smudge the sky. Ahead, the red banners flutter brightly against the pale copper horizon, leading the broad, unyielding wave of the revolution toward the gates of Pormarensis.