The Wise Man's Fear

“You’re defending civilization,” I corrected. “And you’re keeping the roads safe. Besides, Maer Alveron does important things with those taxes.” I grinned. “Like pay us.”

“That’s what I’m fighting for,” Marten said.

After dinner, I outlined the only strategy I’d been able to come up with in five long days of thinking. I drew a curving line on the ground with a stick. “Okay. Here’s the road, about twenty miles of it.”

“Mieles.” The soft voice was Tempi’s.

“Excuse me?” I asked. This was the first thing I had heard him say in a day and a half.

“Miils?” His accent was so thick around the unfamiliar word that it took me a second to understand he was saying “miles.”

“Miles.” I said distinctly. I pointed in the direction of the road and held up one finger. “From here to the road is one mile. Today we walked fifteen miles.”

He nodded once.

I turned back to my drawing. “It’s safe to assume the bandits are within ten miles of the road.” I drew a box around my crude sketch of the road. “That gives us four hundred square miles of forest to search.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone absorbed that piece of information. Finally, Tempi spoke, “That is large.”

I nodded seriously. “It would take us months to search that much territory, but we shouldn’t have to.” I added a couple more lines to my drawing. “Every day Marten will scout ahead for us.” I looked up to him. “How much ground can you safely cover in a day?”

He thought for a second, looking around at the trees surrounding us. “This forest? With this much underscrub? About a square mile.”

“How many if you’re being careful?”

He smiled. “I’m always careful.”

I nodded and drew a line parallel to the road. “Marten will scout a strip about a half mile wide, about a mile back from the road. He’ll keep an eye out for their camp or their sentries so the rest of us don’t stumble into them accidentally.”

Hespe shook her head. “That’s no good. They won’t be that close to the road. If they’re looking to stay hid, they’ll be farther back. At least two or three miles.”

Dedan nodded. “I’d make sure I was at least four miles from the road before I hunkered down and made a habit of killing folk.”

“I think so too,” I agreed. “But they have to make their way to the road sooner or later. They have to post lookouts and travel back and forth for ambushes. They need to reprovision themselves. Since they’ve been here several months, odds are they’ve worn some sort of trail.”

I added a little detail to my dirt map with my stick. “After Marten has scouted, two of us will go in and make a careful search behind him. We’ll cover a thin strip of forest, searching it for any sign of their trail. The other two will keep an eye on the camp.

“We can cover about two miles a day. We’ll start on the north side of the road and search from west to east. If we don’t find a trail, we’ll cross to the south side of the road and work our way back from east to west.” I finished drawing in the dirt and stood back. “We’ll find their trail in a span of days. Maybe two, depending on our luck.” I leaned back and drove my stick into the ground.

Dedan stared bleakly at the rough map. “We’ll need more supplies.”

I nodded. “We’ll move camp every fifth day. Two of us will walk back to Crosson to get supplies. The other two will move the camp. Marten will rest.”

Marten spoke up. “We’ll have to be careful with our fires from now on, too,” he said. “The smell of smoke will give us away if we’re upwind of them.”

I nodded. “We’ll need a fire pit every night, and we’ll want to keep an eye out for rennel trees.” I looked at Marten. “You know what a rennel looks like, don’t you?” His expression was surprised.

Hespe looked back and forth between us. “What’s rennel?” she asked.

“It’s a tree,” Marten said. “Good for firewood. It burns clean and hot. No smoke to speak of, and hardly any stink of smoke either.”

“Even when the wood is green,” I said. “Same with the leaves. It’s useful stuff. It doesn’t grow everywhere, but I’ve seen some around.”

“How does a city boy like you know something like that?” Dedan asked.

“Knowing things is what I do,” I said seriously. “And what in the world makes you think I grew up in a city?”

Dedan shrugged, looking away.

“That should be the only wood we burn from here on out,” I said. “If it’s in short supply, we’ll save it for a cookfire. If we don’t have any, we’ll have to eat cold. So keep an eye out.”

Everyone nodded, Tempi slightly later than the rest.

“Lastly, we’d better have our stories straight in case they stumble onto us while we’re looking for them.” I pointed to Marten. “What are you going to say if someone catches you while you’re out scouting?”

He looked surprised, but hardly hesitated in his response. “I’m a poacher.” He pointed to his unstrung bow leaning against a tree. “It won’t be far from the truth.”

“And you’re from?”

There was a flicker of hesitation. “Crosson, just a day west of here.”

“And your name is?”

“M-Meris,” he said awkwardly. Dedan laughed.

I cracked a smile. “Don’t lie about your name. It’s hard to do convincingly. If they catch you and let you go, fine. Just don’t lead them back to our camp. If they want to take you back with them, make the best of it. Pretend you’d like to join up. Don’t try to run.”

Marten looked uneasy. “I just stay with them?”

I nodded. “They’ll expect you to run on the first night if they think you’re stupid. If they think you’re clever, they’ll expect you to run on the second night. But by the third night they should trust you a bit. Wait until midnight, then start some sort of disturbance. Light a couple of tents on fire or something. We’ll be waiting for the confusion and take them apart from the outside.”

I looked around at the other three. “The plan is the same for any of you. Wait until the third night.”

“How will you find their camp?” Marten asked, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. I didn’t blame him. This was a dangerous game we were playing. “If they catch me, I won’t be there to help track you down.”

“I won’t be finding them,” I said. “I’ll be finding you. I can find any of you in the forest.”

I looked around the fire, expecting at least a grumble from Dedan, but none of them seemed to doubt my arcane abilities. Idly, I wondered how much they thought I was capable of.

The truth was I’d surreptitiously collected a hair from each of them in the last few days. So I could easily could create a makeshift dowsing pendulum for anyone in the group in less than a minute. Given Vintish superstition, I doubted they’d be happy knowing the specific details.

“What should our stories be?” Hespe tapped Dedan on the chest with the back of her hand, her knuckles making a hollow noise on his hard leather vest.

“Do you think you could convince them you were disgruntled caravan guards who had decided to turn bandit?”

Dedan snorted. “Hell, I’ve thought about it once or twice.” At a look from Hespe he snorted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t done the same. Span after span of walking in the rain, eating beans, sleeping on the ground. All for penny a day?” He shrugged. “God’s teeth. I’m surprised half of us don’t take to the trees.”

I smiled. “You’ll do just fine.”

“What about him?” Hespe jerked her thumb at Tempi. “Nobody is going to believe he’s gone wild. Adem make ten times what we do for a day’s work.”

“Twenty times,” Dedan grumbled.

I’d been thinking the same thing. “Tempi, what will you do if you are found by the bandits?”

Tempi fidgeted a little, but didn’t say anything. He looked at me briefly, then broke eye contact, glancing down and to the side. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking, or merely confused.