“Thief” by Lee Ann Setzer

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Thorns scratched the thief’s face as he watched the war camp from inside a bush. The threadbare warriors had lashed together branches to make a high platform—higher than the faded flags marking the bands in their ragged alliance. Higher than the poles holding their foes’ rotting heads. High enough for the thief to see the setting sun glint off the gold lying on the platform.

He knew every detail of that gold: a neck cowl made of thick rings carved in old, sacred stories. Many years ago, this camp’s chief had killed a rival chieftain’s wife, taking the cowl as a trophy.

Despite one disastrous defeat after another, they still raised the cowl to collect the sun’s own power, doggedly believing that it could connect them to the world beyond death, endow them with its owner’s power and authority, leach away her immortality for their use. A violation by proxy, renewed each sunrise.

Until tomorrow’s sunrise. He would take that cowl tonight. It wasn’t stealing, he’d reasoned— the cowl’s owner had been his mother.

Besides, his family needed it, more than these exhausted, hopeless warriors needed their idol.

He shook himself. Maybe it was stealing, and he was a thief. But only the gold mattered.

No moon rose as the sun faded. He’d lingered for weeks in a ravine well away from the camp, waiting for a dark moon to fall the night after grueling battle left them exhausted. Watched silently while they fought and died. Moon against Sun. Idol against idol. Man against man (Few women remained—captured or fled. And killed and killed and killed.)

As the ragged warriors carefully lowered the platform, the thief pinned down the long tail of his hair. He stripped to a soft shirt and worn leather trousers. He muffled the sword he carried in rags and ate some dried meat, to silence his always-hungry belly. Then by dying sunlight, he crept toward the war camp, dropping flat when he heard footsteps or voices. Spiky dry grass pricked his hands and scratched his knees.

As he crept forward, the brush rustled, and he collided with the shins of a young warrior.

With practiced ease, he surged to his feet and knocked out the sentry with the sword’s hilt before he could yelp, catching him and easing him silently to the ground. The thief checked for breath then sighed out relief. He had not killed.

The sentry was rangy and hadn’t reached his full growth. Likely never would.

The thief shook off useless despair, then set to work stripping the sentry: spear, helmet, leather armor. The armor couldn’t cover the thief’s wider shoulders, but the disguise should get him across the camp. By wan starlight, he strode out like he knew his way, avoiding the flickering torches and the occasional knots of warriors who hadn’t passed out from exhaustion.

Maybe the warriors felt the treasures’ value slipping. Though they worshipped the golden cowl, they’d posted more guards on their provisions than on the treasure tent.

He slipped into the plentiful shadows and shed his disguise.

They’d known he followed them, and they’d hunted him. But he’d raided, evaded, and stolen gold, always gold, for his family. He needed only this golden cowl. Then he’d slip away forever.

His knife ripping through the canvas sounded like an alarm in his ears, but no one stirred. He peered through the slit into deeper darkness.

Plunder lay in heaps in a torch’s guttering light—rich garments these desperate warriors would never wear. Vessels that would hold only their enemies’ blood. Wines from now-ravaged vineyards. Jewels good only for pointless worship—unless civilization somehow returned.

It wouldn’t. The past grueling decades had taught him that. Only his family remained.

The heavy cowl lay on its own pedestal, above the tumbled plunder. His fingers had known the heft and texture of those golden bands since childhood, when his mother sometimes let him play among the regalia of her office. Back when people had recognized a law above their own self-interest, greed, and passion. Before those people had slaughtered her and her other children, and his own wife and children.

He gripped the links, nearly let them clank. Then gathered himself and quietly, quietly fed the collar into the bag he’d lined with a sheep’s fleece to silence it. For his family.

The pouch of gold hung heavy at his hip as he slipped through the exhausted, heavy night.

As soon he cleared the camp, he ran. First to his ravine, where he shouldered a thin pack then headed for a rocky fall of scree, where they couldn’t track him. Then to his base camp. The sledge that held the other treasures and the rest of his gear slowed him down some. But he’d dragged them for so many years he barely noticed the weight.

He walked, talking in his head to family who hadn’t been born yet. He’d seen them a time or two, in visions. But sometimes he wondered if he was just losing his mind. He walked until the land changed to dry, rolling hills, and no one he met understood his speech. Some shared food. Some gave chase. The sword added more deaths to its long, long tally.

Finally, he reached strange, new woods, with no inhabitants except himself. Near a stream rich with clay, he made bricks, then a beehive-shaped oven, like the ones he’d made before. One day, he built a fire, clean and hot, and pulled his mother’s golden collar from its sheepskin. It glinted rich and glorious in the sunlight. Small wonder the warriors had thought it held immortality.

He fingered the thick links for a long time. Then he laid the cowl in a ceramic bowl and carefully pushed it into the refining fire. As the gold melted to a glowing river of light, he gently turned the golden pages of the book so far, planning his last words to his family.

This piece was published in 2025 as part of the 14th Annual Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.