The fighting is over, but silence has not fallen. The horses still make horrible sounds as their last moments stretch on far too long and far too cruel for mindless beasts that had no choice in the matter. The hundreds of men laying dead and dying all scream in a hellish orchestra. Even the nose cannot escape the assault on the senses. With so many guts spilled and so many pants shitted in, the smell is truly a horror in itself.

  Landyn looks at Jon’s severed head sentimentally and quickly pulls himself together. It is his duty to carry on his legacy, just like Jon did before him. He owes it. “Alright! Shout your name if you’re still alive!”

  “Thorvald!”

  “Rabbit!”

  “Viper!”

  “Eagle Eye!”

  “Kale…” This last shout was much weaker and came from the former miner who had been struck in the head by the knight seconds before the fighting was over. They had thought him dead, and while he was very much close to death he still breathes. The hammer side of the warhammer had struck the side of his skull, grazing it and dragging his skin off his face. His left cheek, most of the skin around his left eye and about a quarter of his forehead had been peeled off and now hung off his ear. Blood flowed freely. By some miracle, his eyelid had been left alone and would probably still work as intended by mother nature.

  “Fuck! Rabbit! Go get the stitches!” Shouts Thorvald, blood gushing from his many wounds. His many tribal tattoos were now sunken into his skin and bled green and blue heavy vapors as a result of exhausting his magic beyond his limits.

  They stitch Kale’s face up into a distant resemblance of humanity while he drifts in and out of consciousness while his adrenaline reserves thankfully still dull the pain. They then start stitching themselves up. Bandages from torn gambesons and shirts, honey for disinfectant, splints made from swords and scabbards.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Thorvald finally breaks and decapitates the horses one by one, ending their suffering and undoing stitches and bandages on himself.

  Then they move on to the next chore of war, removing the armor before rigor mortis sets in. They start with the knights as they have the most complicated and valuable armor. By the time they get to removing Jon’s scalemail tunic, they must break his arms to take it off his stiffened headless corpse.

  Among the crying and the pained moaning of dying men, Landyn finds a familiar face. It is Jack, the son of a refugee. Him and his father had joined up just last month as crossbowmen. He holds his father’s mangled corpse, trampled by boots and hooves to the point it is impossible to recognize the man he once was or even the wound that brought him down. He cries like a banshee, only adding to the chorus of suffering.

  “Jack? It’s me, Landyn. Come on, let us get a look at that gash on your arm.”

  No response, just crying.

  “Jack? Come on buddy, let’s bury him.”

  “No!”

  “Get the fuck up!” Landyn kicks Jack in the back, shoving him onto his father’s corpse and slathering him in the blood of his kin. His crying only gets louder.

  Landyn’s face has contorted into one of rage, the kind one could not explain or understand. ‘He’s a fucking grown man! Does he think we don’t want to just sit and fucking cry? What a fucking coward!’ Landyn thinks as he keeps kicking him. “GET THE FUCK UP!”

  Viper and Rabbit rush over and hold him back from hitting the poor boy.

  “Stop! It ain’t gonna fix anything!” Rabbit tries to reason.

  “That fucking coward thinks he can ignore my orders!? In my company!?” His eyes are wild and spit jumps from his mouth.

  “Yes! We’re the fucking Knight Flayers! We’re not an army! We’re not a militia! We follow orders only as long as we want a paycheck! If he wants to leave the company, that’s his choice!” Viper shouts into Landyn’s ear, holding him back by the arm.

  “Shut the fuck up! Jon died! Everyone fucking died! I am the only one of you who led a squad before this shit! I am your new leader! You will follow my orders like the word of god!”

  Thorvald comes over and with one hand picks Landyn up by the collar of his chainmail shirt and throws him on his ass. “We followed Jon because he had a head on his shoulders you bastard! Get your head screwed back on and then give out orders! Let the fucking kid grieve his father!”

  The sudden blow and the taste of blood in his mouth seem to bring Landyn to his senses. He is not a cruel man by nature, just stressed by the situation. He sighs out in self-disapoinment: “Fuck… Sorry.”

  —That evening—

  The men of the Knight Flayers are ready to leave. They have mustered all strength they had left and buried Jack’s father and Jon. They have agreed to pay people in town to bury the rest of their dead. It’s what they owe.

  Landyn and Viper have looted the suits of armor worn by the knights, and Eagle Eye has upgraded his chainmail into scalemail, looted off Jon. Even Rabbit and Jack have left their gambesons for chainmail, despite their backline role as crossbowmen usually requiring little protection. Thorvald removed the padding and severed head from one knight’s helmet and now dons it, though he says it still chafes against his ears despite the extra room. There was no armor big enough to fit his enormous body, as usual.

  Jack has quelled his tears for the moment, but continues to refuse to speak more than one word at a time. When they asked him if he will stay with the company he said “Yes,”. They don’t really trust him to have their backs in his state, but can’t bring themselves to kick him out.

  The wheels on all of the carts are destroyed and all the mules are dead. They have made a makeshift sled out of some pieces of carts and they pull it along down the mountain. Kale rests in the sled along with weapons and any piece of iron they could scrounge off the battlefield to sell. They cannot carry it all away, most will be left to scavengers.

  Just as they’re about to set off from that cursed place, a line of wagons, horses and soldiers approaches from their direction of travel. It is the army of the noble that hired them, the Count of Treblin, as indicated by the banners.

  Noticing the soldiers’ unease, Eagle Eye rushes to lift up their banner from the back of the sled. A mace and dagger crossed over a knight’s helmet draped in blood.

  “Thorvald, I’m tired. You do it, please.” Says Landyn, letting go of the rope he was pulling the sled on.

  “Alright… but you owe me a beer when we get back.” He chuckles, letting go of his rope and patting his leader on the back. He then steps forward, puffs out his chest and bellows out: “WE ARE THE KNIGHT FLAYERS! SELLSWORDS HIRED BY COUNT TREBLIN! LOOK UPON OUR WORK!” He turns to face the slaughter behind him. Some dying men still moan among the piles of viscera.

  The soldiers pause in shock and awe. As far as they can see down into the ravine there are only corpses. A river of blood flows deeper down into the mountain. They have achieved it. The final goal of waging war. Bringing hell to earth.

  A horseman trots with pomp and snobness to the front of the stopped column of soldiers. He wears expensive clothes in the colors of House Treblin, he must be the Count of Treblin. He stops his horse by yanking on the bridle with no respect for the animal and then he scoffs at the mercenaries.

  “Pft! To think the mighty Knight Flayers return like this after a job as simple as setting fire to a stockpile of meager grain. You are not worthy of the tall tales the minstrels spin about you.”

  Landyn, still wheezing with exhaustion but now shaking with anger: “Count Treblin, I assume. I am Landyn, the new leader of the Knight Flayers. In this mountain pass we have laid low more than three hundred men, including ten knights. We have flayed them and I wear the steel skin one such knight thought would make him invincible. I believe we are not worth mere tall tales, but also our pay.”

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  “Ha! Preposterous! You commoners” the word sticks in his throat “are all the same. You believe the law of man does not govern you at all. We signed a contract that clearly stipulated your pay and you shall not see a single dime more! You think just because you killed some bastard of Iselbaum that you deserve more of my ancestors’ hard-earned wealth? The gall to demand such…” He bites his tongue.

  Landyn lets some of his anger seep through his voice. He is not intimidated by the man’s status, in fact his anger fills him with confidence. “I may not have been born a noble, but I know contracts are sacred to people like you. Except when you don’t like what they say.”

  “What!? How dare you! I could-!”

  “The contract says that in addition to the lump sum of a thousand crowns, we shall be paid fifty crowns for every head we take! Have your men start counting. We wouldn’t want my tired mercenaries making a mistake in tallying up the total now would we?” Landyn has interrupted the Count in the middle of speaking and made demands of him. He knows full well he could lose his head under normal circumstances, but the Count needs to save face with the vassals standing behind him. A grin escapes him as the Count grows redder and redder with his every word.

  Count Treblin turns to the men behind him and points in their general direction, not caring to single out any one of them because he doesn’t know their names or ranks: “Start counting!” He orders with a shaky voice. “And you, sellsword,” this word too sticks in his throat “you shall get your pay in Fort Treblin. Now away with you! You sour my view and foul the air!”

  The mercenaries hold their tongues, but they smirk all the way until they pass the long column of wagons and warriors.

  They all realise that it was not a coincidence that the third son of Iselbaum was at the exact grain warehouse they were sent to raid, his death sending a whole army after them. The Count had betrayed them and caused the deaths of their comrades and leader. They will rebuild and have their revenge some day, but not today. Starting a fight with yet another army in their state would be… less than advisable.

  —

  That night they finally realise the depth of their loss. They sit around a campfire, like they usually would. But this time their campfire is not one of many dotting the campsite, but a lonely fire raging in solitude and grief. They sit silently and listen to the grasshoppers, the woodpeckers and the many other animals going about their normal lives, uncaring for the plight of man. Only the scavengers care for their suffering; wolves, crows and rats. It has provided them with a veritable feast down in the ravine.

  Rabbit spits chewing tobacco into the fire, the crackling of moisture makes the men jump out of their thoughts. “What do we do now?”

  Landyn answers without missing a beat. “We rebuild.”

  “Rebuild what? We couldn’t even rebuild the fucking carts, jackass!” Says Rabbit, still not seeing Landyn as his new leader.

  “We did rebuild one cart. Made it into a sled. The Knight Flayers will have to become something new too.” Landyn’s eyes are lazy yet confident, as though it were the most obvious truth he is speaking.

  “We’ll get fucking laughed out of town when we return. You know that, right?” Rabbit turns more cynical.

  “Let them laugh. Let even the Count laugh for all I care. I will rebuild this company into something more than it was. And I will wipe out the name Treblin!” His hands shake and his face turns red. He remembers the arrogance and the casual way in which the nobleman had lied and cheated, knowing full well it would cause the death of many men and that his status would mean no consequences would come back to bite him. But oh, they will bite.

  Thorvald cuts into the silence that fell after Landyn’s words, stirring a stick into the burning logs and twigs. “Have you ever seen an old wolf go up the mountain for his last winter? It is a sorry sight. An old predator once feared by the whole forest, weakened not by wounds or disease, but simply by time. He recognizes he can’t keep up with the rest of the pack, so he goes away on his own terms. While his pack goes down the mountain for the winter to hunt for more game, he goes back up alone, determined to die up there… Jon went up the mountain. He knew full well getting tangled up with nobles was a bad idea, but he couldn’t help himself. He had joined to die in the first place, I think he held on long enough. His last expression was a selfish smile, mocking us for living. So we shall live in mockery! We shall show him the impossible! We shall get the fuck up!” He dramatically stands up as his voice rises to a crescendo. “We’ll rebuild and take that damned count’s head!”

  “Fuck’s sake Thorvald, calm down. Where do you think you’re going in the middle of the fucking night?” Says Viper, taking the wind out of his friend’s sails.

  “Ole Thorrie here is becoming quite the rambler, ain’t he?” Eagle Eye chuckles, making Thorvald realize he is being very dramatic indeed. The giant man seems embarrassed now, not a rare sight for those that spend time around him.

  “Fuck it then. Landyn, you’d better do a good job and get us our revenge on Treblin. I’m going to bed.” Rabbit’s unusually bad mood seems to have improved somewhat, but he does not want to let it show. ‘He’s not the best leader, but I don’t think any of us could do a better job.’ He thinks as his silhouette disappears into the darkness towards his tent.

  The men do not stay up for much longer either. Though their heads spin with memories of the day, their bodies demand rest and soon their tired eyes close.

  —Noon the next day—

  The sorry state in which the mercenaries return to town does not earn any sympathy from the peasants. They spit and curse and thank the gods for the divine punishment they have meted out on the sellswords.

  Mercenaries are not liked almost anywhere they go, the callous nature of their profession and their often abrasive personalities earn them the ire of the common folk who do not pause to differentiate between different companies of mercenaries. They judge like they judge everyone else: by clothes and tools. These men all wear bloodied armor that had clearly been forged for another, dead, man. And their tools are weapons of war like maces, axes, polearms and warhammers, not the ‘valiant and honorable’ swords from tales of old. Of course they’d be despised.

  Rabbit grumbles mostly to himself: “Fucking jackasses. They don’t even know we stopped a whole army from marching through their stupid fucking fields.” Of course, his fellow mercenaries hear him but have no funny quips prepared nor do they disagree with him, so they remain silent.

  Viper seems more interested in something else. A beautiful blonde woman, kneeling by the roadside selling flowers stacked up on a rug in front of her. Moving closer he notices sunken cheeks and dainty hands, telltale signs of poverty and malnourishment which he recognizes right away, having seen them many times before. But still her hair is combed thoroughly and her patched dress has not even a speck of dust on it. ‘There’s still fire in her.’ He thinks.

  “How much for this rose here?” He says with a warmth in his voice the others haven’t heard before nor thought possible to come from such a hardened killer.

  She flinches back a little, surprised by the tender voice of the man clad in dozens of kilograms of silvery steel topped with a helmet that hid his face and replaced it with a golden viper. But behind the fangs she saw calming brown eyes that held no hostility, but something more that she could not place. “J-Just a crown, sir.” She hesitates a little, thinking this man might not want to pay despite his kind eyes.

  Viper leans back a little to see the entire arrangement of flowers and starts counting, his finger jumping quickly from rose to rose. “A dozen, eh? Well, that one was one crown but it looks sort of sickly…” She tenses up a little and her head goes down, though not in a bow but in a tucked in position to resist a slap better. “I think an even fifty should be alright, no?”

  “What? Uh- I mean. Pardon?” Her eyes are wide in surprise, but she is even more tense now. ‘No way he is going to pay for my flowers, and definitely not fifty crowns!’ Her eyes become glassy.

  “Well, the other flowers are of higher quality, no way I should pay the same price.” Before she can respond he has already undone a string holding a pouch to his belt, heavy with coin. He hands it all to her but she does not dare reach out. “I’m not lying and I’m not going to hurt you. In my culture, one has to give alms to honor the dead… Plus, there’s this girl who I want to gift these to…”

  ‘Holy shit is Viper flirting…?’ all his companions were thinking in shared disbelief.

  “Th-Thank you,” She reaches out a trembling hand that almost falls to the ground when the heavy pouch is dropped into her palm.

  Viper scoops up all the flowers and turns on his heels. He arranges them a little to hold them in one hand in a nice bouquet and then turns on his heels again to face her again. He bends at the waist and extends the bouquet towards the beautiful lady kneeling in poverty. “Beautiful lady, would you accept these flowers? Though they pale in comparison to your own beauty, and come from a lowly admirer such as myself?”

  ‘Nah, something’s wrong with him. Did he get drunk while we weren’t watching?’ the mercenaries think to themselves with curious looks on their scarred faces.

  Her eyes grow wide with surprise again, and a subtle blush creeps across her pale cheeks. With a beautiful smile she takes the flowers in both hands and hugs them close. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir, I am just a mercenary. Call me Viper, please. …Would you be so kind as to tell me your name too?” The wide smile on his lips is hidden behind gilded steel, but the woman swears she could see it.

  She chuckles at his clearly fake name. “Viper… that’s an interesting name.” Confidence suits her more and her voice sounds more seductive now, rather than weak and fearing.

  She thinks to herself: ‘Heh. He’s naming himself after his helmet, huh? Well, it would be spicy to have a fling with fake names… What should I call myself then?’

  “I am …Rose. Nice to meet you, sellsword.” She said, eyeing the bouquet in her arms. A seductive knowing smile lingers on her thin lips, but of course that smile was not ‘knowing’ but ‘misunderstanding’.

  “Rose… what a fitting name. The most beautiful lady, named after the most beautiful flower.”

  “And Viper is fitting too. A dangerous man named after a dangerous predator…” She retorts in jest, as she assumes he was jesting too.

  Before Viper can think of another clever flirt, Landyn clears his throat and reminds him that he is making them all wait awkwardly while he tries to seduce some girl on the street. “My boss seems to be waiting for me.” He turns his head towards his company and then back to her. “Could I take you out tonight, Rose?”

  “I’ll be waiting for you here, Viper.” The fire in her eyes seems to be raging even hotter now and her rosy cheeks radiate a warm glow despite being sunken and gaunt. ‘I hope I’ll see him again. Even if this was just him playing… then I hope we can play a little longer.’ She thinks as he walks away and disappears in the busy crowd of the town along with his company and their overloaded sled.