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Chapter Fifteen. Yimpang's Black Day |
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Normally Yimpang had a mixed population of Kalyo Kengyus, Changs, and Yimsungr, but Chingmak must have painted our fierceness and the punishments we would mete out pretty black, for when we arrived the whole village was almost deserted. Here and there a man sat with a sullen face watching us intently from the cover of his house as we walked through the village. There was not a woman or a child to be seen. They had all been evacuated (126) the day before, taking with them the livestock. Perhaps it was this total lack of the usual straying pigs, goats, and cows that gave the village such a particularly desolate look. Later we were told that the villagers had devoured those animals that could not be taken away, rather than let them fall into our hands. It was scorched earth policy on a small scale. |
