Visitors (Pathfinder 3)

“I forgot that I was speaking to a queen,” said Ram Odin.

“What you forgot,” said Param, “is that you are not part of our company. You tried to kill Rigg. He may have forgiven you, but I don’t trust you or whatever advice you give.”

“He hasn’t forgiven me,” said Ram Odin. “Because he also killed me, and whereas I have no memory of my attempt on his life, he has a very clear memory of—what did you do? Stab me? Break my neck?”

Rigg sighed. “He’s teasing us both,” said Rigg. “And we’d be fools not to listen to his counsel, because he knows far more than we do about Ramfold and all the others.”

“But he also lies, and tells the expendables to lie to us.”

“True,” said Rigg. “So let’s ask another source

of information. Olivenko, what would you advise us to do, as our student of military history?”

“I came with two plans,” said Olivenko. “And the guerrilla campaign by Captain Toad was one of them, though the name isn’t one I would have chosen.”

“How is that plan supposed to work, since there’s at least one version of the future in which we chose it?”

“Guerrilla campaigns can’t bring victory by themselves,” said Olivenko. “But if you run it properly, you can win over the ­people while humiliating and terrifying the government. The foolish way to do it is to force the villages to feed your men and assassinate anyone who opposes you, so that all the villagers obey you out of fear—and betray you the first chance they get.”

“That’s why I was surprised to learn we had chosen it,” said Rigg.

“I doubt that you did, because, as I said, it’s foolish. Fools resort to those tactics because they expect the people to support them voluntarily, and when they don’t, the rebels become angry and take vengeance. But you’re not fools. You know that the villagers can’t pay taxes to King Haddamander and to the Rebel King. When they hid their meager supplies from Haddamander’s tax collectors, they weren’t saving it for us and our army.”

“So what is Captain Toad doing in his raids?” asked Rigg. “Considering that if I’m Captain Toad, I’m no soldier.”

“You could be,” said Loaf. “It takes training, but if there’s one thing we have, it’s time enough to do whatever we want.”

“Training would be good,” said Olivenko, “but what I had in mind was a place of refuge and a source of supplies. And here’s where Ram Odin becomes part of whatever we do. In ordinary guerrilla campaigns, the rebels have to hide. Since they’re constantly being betrayed by people who want the reward money, they have to move frequently. They can’t bring their wives and children. They can’t farm or even store up food against the winter.”

“You want a safe refuge on the far side of the Wall,” said Ram Odin.

“Where Ramfold, Vadeshfold, and Larfold come together, the land is fertile and there’s plenty of rain and good streams.”

“Some have facemask spores in them,” said Ram Odin.

“I think you’re perfectly capable of eradicating them from any stream you choose,” said Olivenko. “All I ask is that you pull back the boundary of Vadeshfold and make an enclave that isn’t inside any of the three wallfolds. Then when we recruit fighters for the rebel army, they bring their families. They farm. They hunt. They make weapons. They train. They stockpile food.”

“That could take years,” said Loaf.

“But you can always give yourself years,” said Olivenko. “Don’t make this enclave now. Make it ten years ago. The people we recruit will be the ones who are angry—their number will increase, but we can start small. The first recruits will clear land. They’ll have children. One village will turn into two or three or four.”

“Ten years ago,” said Loaf, “the People’s Revolutionary Council was the government, and the only people who hated them and wanted to rebel were former nobles like General Citizen and Param’s mother.”

“But we won’t recruit people ten years ago,” said Olivenko. “That’s just where we go to build up supplies. You bring the first recruits to the place ten years ago; then you bring later recruits to nine years ago, and eight, with each new increment clearing more land, farming more food, mining more ore, making more ­weapons. Your raids capture food and weapons and you bring them back to whatever time you need them. So the earliest recruits will have ten years in the enclave, but the newest will only arrive when there’s plenty for them to eat, and only with time enough to train them.”

“So we raid today, then bring the supplies to the enclave at the time we need them,” said Umbo.

“Your timeshaping is what sets you apart from other ­rebels, you see,” said Olivenko. “There’s no reason not to use your ­abilities. General Citizen or whatever he’s calling himself—he can hunt for you all he wants, but you’re not only outside the wallfold between raids, you’re also three or five or eight years in the past.”

“It’s going to take some real care not to bring people back to a time before they came to the enclave,” said Umbo. “It won’t do to have them meet themselves. Or to have you or any of us making new copies of ourselves.”

“We’ll keep a calendar,” said Rigg. “We’ll organize each cohort according to their time of recruitment, and make sure we always bring a group home from a raid to some time after they left on that raid.”

“Everything in proper order,” said Olivenko. “And we’ll also schedule the raids on various arsenals and stockpiles for times when they’re not looked for.”

“What would happen,” said Umbo, “if our first raid were the most recent—say, last Thursday—and our next raid was a week before that, and the next was two weeks earlier. So that every raid is the first one and we always have surprise.”

“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “Wouldn’t that make it so they were ready for us on the earlier raids after all?”