Another man fell next to Kuni, screaming and clutching at an arrow sticking from his belly.
“We have to leave! Now!” Kuni shouted. He did his best to rally the rest of the bandits, and they ran away from the merchants’ camp toward the mountains, not stopping until their legs gave out and their lungs were on fire.
Hupé never came back.
Kuni stayed in his tent and refused to come out.
“You should at least eat something,” said Otho Krin, the man who Kuni had saved from the great white snake.
“Go away.”
Banditry wasn’t at all how it was portrayed in bards’ tales and Kon Fiji’s fables. Real men died. Died because of his foolish decisions.
“There are some new recruits here to join us,” said Otho.
“Tell them to go away,” said Kuni.
“They won’t leave until they see you.”
Kuni emerged from his tent and blinked at the bright sunlight, his eyes red and puffy. He wished he had a jar of sorghum mead so he could retreat into oblivion.
Two men stood in front of him, and Kuni noticed that they were both missing their left hands.
“Remember us?” the older one asked.
They looked vaguely familiar to Kuni.
“You sent us to Pan last year.”
Kuni looked closer at their faces. “You are father and son. You couldn’t pay the tax, and so you both had to do corvée.” He closed his eyes as he struggled to remember. “Your name is Muru, and you liked to play Two-Handed Rummy.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Kuni wished he hadn’t said them. The man clearly couldn’t play his favorite game anymore, and he was sorry to draw attention to his loss.
But Muru nodded, a smile on his face. “I knew you’d remember, Kuni Garu. You may have worked for the emperor, and I may have been your prisoner, but you talked to me like we were friends.”
“What happened to you?”
“Because my son broke a statue in the Mausoleum, they cut off his left hand. Because I tried to explain it was an accident, they cut off mine as well. After we finished our year of labor, they sent us back. But my wife… she didn’t make it through last winter because there was nothing to eat.”
“I’m sorry,” said Kuni. He thought about all the men he had sent to Pan over the years. Sure, he had been kind to them while they were under his charge, but did he ever think, really think, about the fate he was consigning them to?
“We’re the lucky ones. Plenty of others will never come back.”
Kuni nodded numbly. “You have a right to be angry at me.”
“Angry? No. We’re here to fight with you.”
Kuni looked at them, not understanding.
“I had to mortgage my land to give my wife a decent burial, but given the weather this year — it’s like Kiji and the Twins are mad at each other — I’m certain I won’t be able to redeem it. What path is open to my son and me but to become bandits? But none of the bandit leaders would take us because we’re cripples.
“And then we heard that you’ve become a bandit too.”
“I’m a terrible bandit,” Kuni said. “I don’t know a thing about leading men.”
Muru shook his head. “I remember that when my son and I were in prison under your charge, you played cards with us and shared your beer. You told your men not to chain my legs because of a sore on my ankle. They say now you follow the path of the honorable bandit and protect the weak against the powerful. They say that you fight serpents to save your followers, and you’re the last to retreat when a raid fails. I believe them. You’re a good man, Kuni Garu.”
Kuni broke down and cried.
Kuni put away his romantic notions about banditry and asked his men for advice, especially those who had been outlaws before being sentenced to hard labor. He became more cautious, scouted the targets carefully, and developed a system of signals. When he launched a raid, he divided his men into teams so they could support one another, and he always made plans for retreat before attacking.
Lives depended on him, and he would not be careless again. His reputation grew, and more men and women who had lost all hope flocked to him, especially people who were rejected by the other bandit gangs: those who had lost limbs, the too young or too old, widows.
Kuni took everyone. Sometimes his captains grumbled that the newcomers had to be fed without being able to do much, but Kuni figured out ways that the new recruits could contribute. Since they didn’t look like bandits, they made ideal scouts and could ambush the caravans effectively — Kuni’s gang managed to conduct a few raids without even drawing a sword simply by setting up tea huts next to the road into Zudi and feeding the merchants drinks laced with sleeping powder.
But Kuni’s real goal had never been banditry alone. His failure to deliver the corvée team had placed his family in danger from official reprisal. Though the Zudi garrison seemed too distracted by the rebellion to enforce the emperor’s laws — or perhaps they were waiting to see how the winds blew — he wasn’t going to take any chances. Maybe the mayor would try to protect his friend, Gilo Matiza, and his daughter Jia, but who knew how long that protection would last? His parents and brother and Jia’s family all had too much property to be able to leave it all behind, and he doubted he could persuade them to join him. But Jia, Jia he had to save as soon as possible.
When it was clear that he had built a stable base, Kuni decided to send someone to bring Jia to join him. It had to be someone who wasn’t well known in Zudi and thus wouldn’t bump into Imperials who might recognize him, and it also had to be someone he completely trusted. He settled on Otho Krin.
“Haven’t we been here before?”
Until now, Jia had let the gaunt young man lead even when she doubted his competence. They had come to the same clearing in the woods for the third time and it was almost completely dark.
Otho Krin had hidden his face from Jia for the last hour by walking ahead. Now that he finally turned around to face her, the look of panic confirmed Jia’s suspicion that they were lost.
“I’m sure that we’re close,” he answered nervously without looking into her eyes.
“Where are you from, Otho?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your accent tells me you’re not from around Zudi. You don’t know your way around, do you?”
“No, ma’am.”
Jia sighed. It was useless to get angry at this pathetic bamboo stalk of a man. She was tired, even more so because she was pregnant. She and Kuni had been trying to conceive for a while without success, but just before he left, she had finally hit upon the right combination of herbs. This was a bit of news that she couldn’t wait to tell Kuni — right after she gave him a good tongue-lashing for leaving her alone with no word from him for a month. She wasn’t mad at him for turning into a bandit, exactly; it was more that she wished he had included her more in his plans. In truth, she was getting restless too; it was time for an adventure for both her and Kuni.
But first, she should take the lead here.
“Let’s just camp here for the night. We’ll continue in the morning.”
Otho Krin looked at Jia. She was not much older than he. She never raised her voice, but the look in her eyes reminded him of his mother when she was ready to berate him. He hung his head and silently acquiesced.
Jia gathered some branches and leaves to make a bed for herself. When she saw Otho standing around helplessly, she gathered more branches and made a bed for him, too.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
The young man nodded.