Rigg tried to imagine it. “I wonder if they’ll behave, during the actual raid, exactly as they did when it really happened—with them knowing nothing. But afterward, they’ll remember that they should have been alert against possible raids because there had already been forty-nine. They won’t have any explanation for King Haddamander. ‘I don’t know why the men weren’t on alert, O King-in-the-Tent. I warned them, I posted them, but when the raiders came, nobody was at his post and everybody acted as if there had never been a raid before.’”

“Off with his head,” murmured Param.

“By the fiftieth raid,” said Umbo, “maybe General Citizen will be used to the fact that we always achieve surprise and he’ll stop executing the commanders for their inexplicable lack of preparation.”

“So when our fifth raid turns the first one into the one that Haddamander thinks is fifth, he’ll execute the commanders who let him down. But then when our twentieth raid, much earlier, turns that first one into the twentieth raid, they’ll already know the pattern and that first commander won’t be killed after all.”

“The more raids we do, the more lives we’ll save,” said Param.

“What matters,” said Olivenko, “is that it will be General Citizen who’s executing his own officers and men. He’ll be made to look like a fool, and his soldiers will be frantic with despair, because no matter how much they prepare, they’re always taken by surprise.”

“If the physics of it actually work the way we’re supposing it might,” said Rigg.

“It feels like cheating,” said Leaky.

“It’s war,” said Loaf. “Any time I can find a way to cheat so I win without losing so many of my men, I’ll do it.”

Olivenko smiled at Leaky. “I’ve read a lot of military history, Mistress Leaky.”

“Leaky. No ‘mistress,’” said Leaky.

“The commanders who are called geniuses are the ones who won by maneuver rather than brute force battles. The ones who thought up ways to surprise the enemy and get them to surrender or run away. The ones who ended up with an intact, undamaged army while the other side is captured or dispersed, hopelessly disorganized.”

“So this will save lives on both sides,” said Param.

“It might,” said Olivenko. “And the fact that in the future Umbo visited, they talk about raids all over Stashiland, it suggests that we liked the outcomes enough to keep doing them.”

“This is all good,” said Loaf. “It gets us supplies and demoralizes them, but it doesn’t win the war. In fact, our most experienced raiders will be the ones in the very first raids that Haddamander’s army runs into.”