The Grace of Kings (13 page)

Kuni Garu and his men took to banditry well. They made their camp high in the Er-Mé Mountains, and every few days they swept down to attack merchant caravans at dusk, when the drivers and their escorts were tired and sleepy, or at dawn, when they were just getting ready to set out on the road again.

They were careful to avoid deaths and serious injuries, and they always distributed a share of what they took to the scattered woodsmen living in the mountains. “We follow the virtuous path of the honorable bandit,” Kuni taught his men to chant. “We are outlaws only because Xana's laws leave no room for honest men.”

When garrisons in nearby towns sent detachments of riders to come after the desperadoes, the woodsmen always seemed to know nothing and to have seen nothing.

More and more runaway laborers and deserting soldiers came to join his gang, since Kuni had a reputation for treating his men well.

The attack on this particular caravan had gone wrong from the start.

Instead of scattering to the winds as soon as the bandits approached, the merchants had stayed where they were and huddled next to the campfires. Kuni cursed himself. That should have been a clue.

But his successes so far had made him arrogant. Instead of calling off the raid, he had ordered everyone to press on into the camp—“Knock them on the back of the head with your clubs and tie them up. Don't kill anyone!”

However, once the bandits were close enough, the oxcart curtains opened wide and dozens of armed escorts rushed out with swords drawn and arrows nocked. Whatever these merchants were carrying, they spent the funds to hire plenty of professional bodyguards. Kuni's gang was caught completely off guard.

Within minutes, two of Kuni's men fell with arrows sticking from their necks. Stunned, Kuni just stood there.

“Kuni!” Hupé shouted at him. “You've got to order a retreat!”

“Pull back! Abort! Tough marks! High fire! Tight wind!” All Kuni's notions about banditry had come from listening to storytellers in the markets and reading Kon Fiji's moral fables. He tossed out every bit of “thieves' cant” he could remember, having no idea what he was actually supposed to do or say.

Kuni's men milled about in confusion while the armed escorts for the merchants advanced. Another volley of arrows flew at them.

“They've got horses,” said Hupé. “If we try to run for it, we're going to be cut down like vermin. Some of us have to stay behind and fight.”

“Right,” said Kuni. He felt calmer now that he was given a plan. “I'll stay behind with Fi and Gatha, you take the rest of the men and flee.”

Hupé shook his head. “This isn't like a bar fight, Kuni. I know you've never killed anyone or practiced real sword fighting, but I was in the army, and so if anyone should stay, it's me.”

“But I'm the leader!”

“Don't be foolish. You have a wife and a brother and parents still in Zudi, while I don't have anyone. And the others depend on you to have any hope of saving their families in the city. I believe in the dream I had about you, and I believe in the prophecy of the fish. Remember that.”

Hupé rushed at the advancing escorts, holding high his sword—carved from a tree branch, since he had given his real sword to Kuni—and yelling fearsomely at the top of his lungs.

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.