From a mile out, Hunter could feel exactly how badly the raid was going.
He lay on his stomach in the long grass on the rise above Clearwater, with Lex on one side of him and Xuan on the other.
His new sense stretched down the slope, over the wall and into the village square.
Tao was there, right in the middle of it, pressed behind a tree.
His heart was going like a rabbit’s.
That was the only heart in Clearwater that was.
People were drifting toward him, not away.
A portly man was walking up to the tree with the slow, careful gait of someone approaching a lost dog.
Someone small had a fist wrapped in an adult’s sleeve and was pointing.
And out in the paddies beyond the wall, an old man was still folded in half and shaking, over and over, in a rhythm Hunter knew from every office party he’d ever attended.
The farmer was laughing.
Hunter put his face down in the grass.
The plan had been simple.
He had made it simple on purpose.
He had made it simple because of last night.
Last night, on the ridge, the little girl had chased her ball back through the gate and the village had lit its lamps.
The three of them had gathered in a hollow out of the wind to plan the raid.
Hunter had sat a little apart on a rock.
It was a management choice.
A good master let his people bring him options.
He’d sat in on a hundred planning meetings where the senior person said nothing and everyone assumed he was a genius.
He intended to be that person.
Mostly because he had no idea how you robbed a village, and was hoping, very sincerely, that actual bandits did.
Tao went first, leaning in with his eyes bright and his voice low.
“So I dress up as a traveling merchant, Master, real convincing, and I sell them expired produce.”
“Expired,” Lex said slowly.
“Stuff that’s about to turn anyway.” Tao sat back and folded his arms, the picture of a man who had cracked the case.
“They won’t know till we’re long gone, and we rinse them.”
Hunter’s eye twitched.
That wasn’t a raid.
That was fraud, and small-scale fraud at that.
He’d investigated bigger schemes involving a single water heater.
Before he could say anything, Xuan lit up.
“Oh!
Oh, I’ve got one.” He dug inside his shirt and came out, reverently, with something black and curled and flapping at the toe.
It was Hunter’s right shoe.
“Master’s shoe, from the march.
I kept it safe.” He held it up to the firelight.
“I bet those villagers would pay a whole silver for it.”
Hunter stared at the shoe.
The shoe, as far as it was able, stared back.
Then something changed in Xuan’s face.
The smile slid off, and his pulse jumped, and Hunter felt a small, warm flicker of hope.
The kid had heard himself.
The kid was about to say wait, that’s stupid.
“If Master doesn’t mind me selling his junk,” Xuan said, with real anxiety.
Hunter pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead until he saw lights.
That left Lex, the oldest, the one who’d spoken first on that hillside and bargained hardest.
If anyone had a working plan, it was Lex.
Lex seemed to feel the weight of his master’s attention, because he straightened and cleared his throat.
“Master, I have a better idea,” he said, and paused for effect.
“It’s foolproof.” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Please, Hunter thought.
“We infiltrate the village.
Take any jobs, doesn’t matter what.
We work every day and we earn their trust.”
Hunter sat up a little.
That was real strategy.
You got inside, learned the routines, found out where the valuables were kept.
“And then?”
Lex’s face shone with the joy of a student finally called on.
“And then, Master, this is the beautiful part.
When they trust us completely, they pay us directly, week after week, month after month, and they never even know they’re being robbed.” He spread his hands.
“Then thirty years later, we just walk out, like nothing happened.”
“Genius,” Tao breathed.
“Master’s going to be so impressed,” Xuan whispered.
Hunter looked at the three of them.
“That’s a job,” he said.
“You’ve just described having a job.”
“But Master,” Lex said patiently, as though explaining sums to a child, “they’d be giving us money.
For years.”
“Because you’d be employees!”
“Employed bandits,” Xuan offered.
Hunter got up and paced to the edge of the hollow and back, hands in his hair.
They were the worst bandits in the world.
He was starting to suspect the old leader had been the only thing between these three and starvation, and he had put a sword through the old leader.
He had not, at the time, considered the downstream staffing implications.
When he turned back, Tao had his hand up, the way a man raises his hand when he’s been saving the best for last.
“Or,” Tao said, “we just walk in and ask for it.”