“You’re talking a handful of peasants with pitchforks,” Kitay said.
“I’m talking an extra hundred men wherever we go.”
“Bullshit,” Rin said.
“I’m from this region,” Souji said. “I have contacts. I can win Leiyang for you, if you’ll both just trust me. Can you manage that?”
He extended his hand toward her.
Rin and Kitay exchanged a doubtful glance.
“This isn’t a trap,” Souji said, exasperated. “Come on, you two. I’m just as eager to go home as you are.”
Rin paused, then reached out to grasp his hand.
The tent flap swung open the moment their palms touched. A sentry stepped inside. “Mugenese patrol,” he said breathlessly. “Two miles out.”
“Everyone hide,” Souji said. “There’s tree cover for half a mile on both sides, have the men pack up and go.”
“No—what?” Rin scrambled to her feet, fumbling to gather up the maps. “I’m the one giving orders here—”
He shot her an exasperated look. “So order them to hide.”
“Fuck that,” she said. “We fight.”
The Mugenese had a single patrol group. They had an army. How was this a debate?
But before she could shout the order, Souji stuck his head out the tent flap, jammed two fingers in his mouth, and whistled thrice in succession so loudly Rin felt like knives had been driven through her ears.
The response astonished her. At once, the Iron Wolves got up and began packing their gear. In under two minutes they had rolled up their tents, bagged up their equipment, and disappeared completely from the campsite into the forest. They left no trace behind—their campfires were leveled, their litter cleaned. They’d even filled in the holes their tent pegs made in the dirt. No casual observer would ever guess this had once been a campsite.
Rin didn’t know if she was furious or impressed.
“Still going to fight?” Souji inquired.
“You little shit.”
“Better come with.”
“Please, I’ve got a god—”
“And all it takes is one arrow to shut you up, Princess. No one’s covering for you now. I’d follow along.”
Cheeks flaming, Rin ordered Zhuden’s men to clear their campsites and retreat into the trees.
They ran, pushing through branches that left thousands of tiny cuts in their exposed skin, before they stopped and hoisted themselves up into the trees. Rin had never felt so humiliated as she crouched, perched beside Souji, peeking through the leaves to track the incoming patrol.
Was Souji’s plan to just wait the Mugenese out? He couldn’t possibly intend to attack—it’d be suicide. This didn’t check any of the prerequisites for an ambush they’d been hardwired for in Strategy class—they didn’t have fixed artillery stations, they didn’t have clear lines of communication or signal visibility between the ranks. By retreating into the forest they’d only scattered and disorganized their numbers, while Rin was now trapped in a fighting zone where her flames would easily grow out of control.
Several minutes later Rin saw the Mugenese patrol moving down the main road.
“We could have taken them in the clearing,” she hissed at Souji. “Why—”
He clamped a hand over her mouth. “Look.”
The patrol came thundering into clear view. Rin counted about twenty of them. They rode on sleek warhorses, no doubt fed with grain stolen from starving villagers, moving slowly as they examined the abandoned campsite.
“Come on,” Souji muttered. “Move along.”
No way, Rin thought. Her men were efficient, but not that efficient. Ten minutes wasn’t enough to evacuate a campsite without leaving a single trace behind.
Sure enough, it took only a minute before the Mugenese captain shouted something and pointed at the ground. Rin didn’t know what he’d seen—a footprint, a peg hole, a discarded belt—but it didn’t matter. They’d been made.
“Now watch.” Souji stuck his fingers into his mouth again and whistled, this time twice in succession.
The Iron Wolves loosed a round of arrows into the clearing.
They aimed true. Half the Mugenese patrollers dropped from the horses. The other half bolted and made to run, but another round of arrows hissed through the air, burrowing into throats, temples, mouths, and eyes. The last three patrollers raced farther down the road, only to be felled by a final group of archers stationed nearly a mile from where Rin hid.
“And that’s the last of them.” Souji dropped from the tree and extended a hand to help her down. “Was that so bad?”
“That was unnecessary.” Rin batted Souji’s hand away and climbed down herself. Her left arm buckled from the strain; she let go, dropped the last few inches, and nearly fell flat on her bum. Hastily she recovered. “We could have taken them head-on, we didn’t have to hide—”
“How many troops do you think they had?” Souji inquired.
“Twenty. Thirty, maybe, I didn’t—”
“And how many do you think we shot?”
“Well, all of them, but—”
“And how many casualties do we have?”
“None,” she muttered.
“And do the Mugenese back in the Beehive know we’re coming?”
“No.”
“So there you go,” he said smugly. “Tell me that was unnecessary.”
She wanted to slap that look off his face. “Hiding was unnecessary. We could have just taken them—”
“And what, given them an extra day to muster defenses? The very first thing that Mugenese patrol teams do when they sense a fight coming is send back a designated survivor to report it.”
She frowned. “I didn’t know that.”
“Course you didn’t. You would have burned most of them where they stood, fine. But you can’t outrun a horse. None of us have steeds faster than what they’re riding. You slip up a single time, and you’ve given up all advantage of surprise.”
“But that’s absurd,” she said. “We’re not going to keep ourselves concealed all the way until we reach Leiyang.”
“Fair enough. But we should try to keep our numbers concealed at least until we attack our next targets. Tiny strategic adjustments like this matter. Don’t think about absolutes, think about the details. Every day, every hour that you can maintain an information asymmetry, you do it. It means the difference between two casualties and twenty.”
“Got it,” she said, chastened.
She wasn’t too stubborn to admit when she’d been wrong. It stung to realize that she had been thinking about strategies in terms of absolutes. She’d gotten so used to it—the details had never seemed to matter much when her strategies boiled down to extermination by fire.
Cheeks burning, she brushed the leaves off her pants, and then uttered the words she knew Souji was waiting to hear. “You win, okay? You’re right.”
He grinned, vindicated. “I’ve been doing this for years, Princess. You may as well pay attention.”
They made camp two miles south of where they’d seen the patrol, under tree cover so thick the leaves would dissipate the smoke from their campfires before it could furl higher into the air. Even so, Rin set strict limits—no more than one fire to every seven men, and all evidence would have to be tamped down and thoroughly concealed with leaves and dirt before they picked up again to march in the morning.