The first sparks of rebellion weren't gunshots.
They were syllables.
By now, over a dozen children could write their names. Five adults had learned to read the old gospel texts. One, a blacksmith's daughter, had begun copying pamphlets word for word and asking questions about "what a laborer actually owes a king."
Each morning, Emil stood before a chalkboard nailed to the tavern's outer wall, teaching the alphabet to farmers with mud-stained hands. Evenings were for philosophy — disguised beneath talk of crop rotations and grain storage, hidden between carefully worded fables about "the three bulls and the one lion who taxed them."
He never said revolution.He said dignity.He never said comrades.He said neighbors.
But the village listened. And the village remembered.
It was Harst who noticed the stranger first — a tall, broad-shouldered man with a gray beard, standing just outside the workshop fence. Watching. Arms crossed.
"Don't draw attention," Harst muttered. "I think I know him."
Emil nodded subtly. That evening, over boiled roots and ale, he asked Bran.
The ex-soldier let out a quiet laugh.
"You're not gonna believe this," Bran said, wiping his mouth. "That's Vargen. Chief of Dreistel — the river village down east."
"Dreistel?"
"Yeah. They say he kicked a baron out of his own keep and made it a grain store."
Emil raised an eyebrow. "He's what, exactly?"
Bran leaned in. "He hates the crown. Used to be militia — ran campaigns against the eastern tribes, lost his men to some noble's idiotic orders, swore off the monarchy. Word is, he's been holding the town together with nothing but grit and rage."
Emil looked out the window. The man was still there.
"Then I'll make him an offer," he said.
They met beneath the chapel ruins.
No weapons. Just words.
"You're the one making flintlocks in a wine cellar," Vargen said flatly.
"And you're the one running a free village under a crown that wants you dead," Emil replied.
They stood in silence for a moment.
"I'm not here to bow to any rebel prince," Vargen finally said. "I've seen boys with banners and dreams. They all get hanged."
Emil nodded. "So have I. That's why I'm not building a throne."
He stepped forward.
"I'm building a union. A real one. Not a guild of merchants, not a drunk warband. A place where men build for themselves — where serfs become citizens, and work is shared by choice, not chains."
Vargen stared. He was still, unmoved — and yet, there was a faint tremor at the corner of his mouth.
"You've got muskets," he said. "That's not words."
"No," Emil said. "That's defense. What I teach is power."
He reached into his satchel and handed Vargen a hand-bound booklet. The title was simple:
"The People's Pact: A Primer on Self-Rule."
"I've got nothing to lose," Vargen said.
Emil smiled. "Then you've got everything to gain."
By the end of the week, Dreistel had sent three blacksmiths and a shipment of scrap iron to help "expand water mills." The crown's tax riders, scheduled for next month, were suddenly "delayed" by rumors of bandit activity near the valley.
And Emil?
He sat at his worktable, a map open before him, marking village names in red — one by one.