Hunter woke at first light to birdsong and walked down to the stream below the ridge to wash his face.
For a few minutes the morning was perfect.
A doe stood in the shallows with two fawns, gold light behind them, mist lifting off the water.
One of the fawns was trying to drink and kept stepping on its own reflection.
The mother was grooming the other one, slow and patient, with her tongue.
Hunter crouched on the bank and forgot, for about a minute, what day it was.
Then the undergrowth on the far side moved, all along its length at once.
They came out low and fast, a dozen of them.
Each was the size of a house cat, gray-furred, with bushy tails and red eyes and teeth far too long for their faces.
For one stupid second his brain insisted they were squirrels.
The doe got her head up.
That was all she had time for.
The fawns ran, but they were too small, and the pack was very fast.
Hunter didn’t move.
He didn’t look away either, though he wanted to.
The pack fed and the stream ran on and the birds kept singing, because none of this was unusual here.
It was only morning.
This is what this world is, he thought.
This is what I’m about to do to that village.
He walked back up to the camp with his hands shaking and found Lex at the fire.
“Master?” Lex took one look at him and half-rose.
“Is something wrong?”
“Squirrels,” Hunter said, and heard how it sounded.
“At the stream.
There was a deer.”
“Master, what’s a squirrel?”
Hunter looked at him, then sat down on a log.
“Don’t worry about it.
We move at noon.”
They spent the morning in the hollow going over the plan until the three of them could recite it.
Tao kept stopping in the middle of his lines and staring at nothing.
Lex and Xuan practiced looking frightening at each other, which mostly involved scowling.
“Xuan, that’s not frightening,” Hunter said.
“That’s heartburn.
Think about somebody stepping on your hand, and then think about doing it back.”
Xuan tried again.
It was worse.
Around midday they worked their way down through the trees to the edge of the paddies.
By late afternoon they were lying in the long grass on the rise, a mile from the wall.
Clearwater looked exactly as it had last night: the stone ring, the roofs, and the granary fat and square behind them.
The only difference was the gate.
There was a man in it now.
He was old, sitting on an upturned bucket with a spear across his knees.
Every few minutes he reached behind the gatepost for a jar, took a pull from it and put it back, as though nobody could see him.
Hunter’s sense brushed over him: a slow heart, a bit of a wheeze, and a lot of stubbornness in the set of his shoulders.
Old Shuan, who wouldn’t run.
I’m not doing this, Hunter thought, and it was a relief to think it.
I’m calling it off.
The chime that answered him wasn’t bright.
PENALTY FOR ABANDONING AN ACCEPTED MISSION: IMMEDIATE DEATH
ABORT MISSION?
(Y/N)
He looked at the Y for a long time.
He thought about his apartment.
For some reason what came was the sound of his key in the lock at the end of a long day.
His boring, safe life was on the other side of that N, and nowhere on the side of the Y.
[SYSTEM] REMINDER: Y = IMMEDIATE DEATH
He chose N.
His hands were shaking.
[SYSTEM] YAY!
LET’S GO!
ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
He didn’t answer it.
He turned his head in the grass and looked at Tao.
“You’re up,” he said.
“The guard’s been drinking.
Walk like you belong there, don’t stop, and he’ll probably just wave you through.
Find a shed, light it, and stay out of sight.”
Tao straightened, and his jaw set.
“I’ll make you proud, Master.”
He pushed his sword through his belt, got up out of the grass, and set off down the slope toward Clearwater.
Hunter watched him go along the edge of the paddies, one thin figure on the long straight road, walking up to the gate alone.