The bandits crept forward, their weapons advancing before them. The frontmost was slashing at the air experimentally, as if the anticipation was too much. The tendons on his neck were straining and he chomped and slavered hungrily, giving the impression that his entire head was a tethered hound, that itched to sever its leash and hurtle forward to rend and devour.

“Does anyone have any bright ideas?” Gabriel whispered, entirely pointlessly.

“Captain Cricket is opening the floor to suggestions,” Vish clarified.

“We’re outnumbered,” Lydia said emotionlessly, “there’s only one logical thing to do,” she planted the tip of her bastard sword in the ground, and took a step back from the weapon, “We surrender,” she announced.

“You surrender?” the snub-nosed bandit repeated.

“I have no desire to die here today,” Lydia confirmed.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, “You have the strangest fight or flight reflexes I have ever personally come across. Entire city guard, no problem, hack away. Six skeevy bandits?”

“Seven,” she reminded him.

“Seven skeevy bandits? Nah-uh, not for me, that sounds dangerous,” Gabriel said, impersonating the haughty warrior.

“Who are you calling skeevy?” the second bandit, who Gabriel had unconsciously dubbed mace-man, seethed.

“Hey, uh, Gabe, if the giant warrior lady says it’s too risky, then who exactly are we to argue?” Vish pointed out.

“Oh no, don’t get me wrong, I fully support the decision. I just thought it was interesting, that’s all.”

“As ever, great time to point this out, buddy.”

Whilst the bandits watched the back and forth between Gabriel and Vish, their eyes darting from one idiot to the other, Lydia slid her hatchet out from her belt. The axe cartwheeled through the air and took the lead bandit square in the chest, lifting him off his feet and depositing him on the flat of his back, a full six feet away.

“Oh, no, there she goes,” Gabriel observed dispassionately.

In the time between observation and punctuation, Lydia had her sword in hand and was in the fray.

There was a popular heroic epic Gabriel had read in his youth, called ‘The Clamour of War’, ostensibly written by Haden Charl, the Randolin general credited with being the first to figure out that the best way to fight orcs was at a considerable distance, behind a very big shield, and with an obscene number of projectiles. Anyway, one passage of ‘The Clamour of War’ had always stuck with Gabriel, and had fuelled no small number of naïve, childish dreams. The passage stated:

‘A good fight, be it a battle, a brawl, or even an exchange of words, should flow as fluidly as a dance. It is a triumph of choreography, of timing, and of mutual respect. Each person has a role, and each role has a function, and no action is superfluous.’

Gabriel had always thought that sounded oddly romantic.

If Gabriel ever got around to releasing his own memoirs, it would be with a heavy heart that he would have to amend Charl’s incredibly optimistic take. Gabriel was yet to observe a fight that looked more like a dance than it did a slapstick street performance where everyone had been given different lines and only a handful of participants actually knew the plot.

Lydia scooped up her sword and lunged at the woman of the opposing group, who was still staring stupidly at her floored comrade. A spasm of the arm, rather than a deliberate riposte, got the bandit’s sword up in time. She deflected Lydia’s lunge and remembered she was supposed be stabbing things before the next attack came.

The scene started to come alive.

Bling thought that Lydia’s little trick with the hatchet had been the best thing ever, and sort to emulate the maneuver. Accordingly, she fished a throwing weapon from her cloaks and hurtled it at mace-man.

“Aaah! Ah! Ah… Ah?” the bandit said, as he regarded the fork sticking out of his collarbone.

If Bling felt any disappointment at the effect, she didn’t indulge it. She quickly closed the distance and completed the cutlery set, by jamming a knife into mace-man’s throat.

The man gargled twice, and then collapsed, his eyes betraying confusion and shame, rather than any hint of anger.

Bling cocked her head at the dying man briefly, and then bounded off to confront her next victim.

An arrow soaring out of the darkness spurred Vish and Gabriel into action. In response to this new threat, the pair had exactly the same idea: run. Unfortunately, they had different notions about which direction to run in. They collided with one another and bounced on to their asses, skittering across the earth like stones skimming a lake.

“Where the hell were you going?” Gabriel shouted over the din of clashing blades.

“I don’t know, away?” Vish answered.

“You had an entire field of ‘away’ to run into. Why the hell did you run into me?”

“You ran into me as well!”

“I was running away!”

“Clearly not,” Vish grumbled as he rubbed his forehead.

“If I get stabbed because of this,” Gabriel trailed off.

“If you have plans to bug me in the afterlife then you can nip that idea in the bud. I’m going to ask the aether gods for oblivion.”

“You’d pick oblivion over eternity with me?”

“I wasn’t going to ask for oblivion for me…”

Another arrow struck the ground between Gabriel’s legs. He shuffled back on his hands like a crab.

“Another time?”

“Another time,” Vish agreed.

“Oh, shit, here they come.”

Two of the bandits had peeled away from the pack, unable, or unwilling, to find a way passed the flurry of blades that sliced the night’s sky as Lydia and Bling dueled their respective opponents. Gabriel and Vish bolted upright, ready to heroically retreat.

One of the men was ape-like (that is, he was a human who somewhat resembled an ape, rather than a Rhoskin of ape-like persuasion). He walked with his chest parallel to the floor. The man carried a broken spear in one hand and a club in the other, which practically carved furrows in the earth, his fists swung so low. He advanced on Gabriel, smiling all the while, and in the process revealing a grand total of three molars and one canine.

Now, the other man, well…

If the creature had been pressing towards Gabriel, he might have thought something like:

‘Gods, that’s about as intimidating as they get! His orange-yellow, scale-like flesh gives him a fish-like quality, and his head seems impossibly large for his spindly body. The way his eyes are set deep in those dish-like depressions is creepy as hell, and I really hope he doesn’t have sharp teeth underneath that ridiculously pronounced overbite. Where even is his jaw?’

If the creature had been approaching Lydia she might have thought:

‘Long arms, sharp nails, but primary weapon is a flail. Reach could be a problem. Sunken eyes probably means poor peripheral vision. Protrusions underneath cloak may suggest an armoured spine. Little visible armour; skin may afford protection. Low body mass may make it easy to topple. Best approach? Flank, trip, pierce.’

If the creature had been approaching Figo then he almost certainly would have thought:

‘My goodness, that looks like a Magrain! It’s a long way from the Northern Floodplains. I never thought I would get to see one in the flesh! Or scales, even. I should be careful not to get slashed with those claws, even if I get away the wound is almost certain to become fetid.’

The creature was approaching Vish, though, and Vish said exactly what Vish thought:

“Deeeemoooooon, beegoone!”

Then he legged it.

The magrain, a descendant of one of the earliest recorded sentient beings on the continent, whose ancestors had been the first to master abjuration, and, according to some sources, had formulated the basis of the modern calendar, squinted as the man in pale-blue turned his back and fled as fast as his robe-restricted legs would allow.

Now, if the creature had been a Magrain Lore Master, whose business was the history of the land and its peoples, he would have thought:

‘Pathetic. Does the human not know there hasn’t been a reliable sighting of an aether daemon since the Obsidian Wars?’

If the creature had been a Magrain Battle-Warden he might have thought:

‘How quaint, the human thinks I am a demon. Funnier still, he thinks that running will save him.’

Unfortunately, though, the creature was the magrain known as Kyk, fourth son of Telk the Slow. Kyk was famed in the Floodplains for somehow, somewhere, having found a horse in that vast, equine-less land which surely, surely, must have kicked him repeatedly in his gigantic, dense head.

Kyk said exactly what Kyk thought:

“Deeeeeemoooooon!” he screamed.

Then he legged it.

Kyk wasn’t completely stupid. Kyk reasoned that if there was a demon, which he plainly couldn’t see, then his best chance for survival was to stick with the only being which apparently could see this invisible menace. So, Kyk tossed aside his weapon, dropped to all fours, and sprinted with all his might after the retreating mind-mapper.

Vish risked a look over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the bulbous-headed magrain pursuing him like a wolf after a rabbit. He doubled his speed.

Elsewhere, things were at a stalemate.

Gabriel was, as ever, outmatched, but he was staying a step ahead of his would-be killer, using his sword and lanky appendages to remain just out of reach of the brawny bandit. He was constantly on the backfoot though, not that he would have known what to do with the front foot, and it was only a matter of time before a slip up cost him his life. His supine stalker knew this, and was in no rush. In fact, the bandit seemed to be enjoying the sport.

Lydia was in the opposite situation. The woman she fought posed little threat, but she was wily and cautious, making her hard to kill. Their moves were restrained and careful. They sized one another up, sussed each other out, and only struck to test a guard or to tease an opening.

Bling was fighting her counterpart. When the redhead had charged the jagged-faced man he whipped out a pair of short swords and kept her at bay by effectively cocooning himself in iron. She was fast and ferocious, so, rather than fight her, he seemed to be focusing all of his energy on preventing her from closing the distance between them. The bandit whipped his swords in every conceivable direction, spinning and hacking at nothing, but preventing Bling from landing the killer blow. His fear was well founded; there is something very menacing about a slathering, blazing-haired woman gnashing at your heels with dagger and stiletto in hand, especially when the stiletto in question is a, fairly classy looking, high-heeled shoe.

As always, though, Haden Charl would be proven correct about one thing – a battle is always fluid. And, as with most fluids the mercenaries had encountered, at some stage it was bound to turn to piss. The only question was: for who?

“Ha-ha! Don’t worry everyone, I’ll help you!” Figo called triumphantly.

The moment Lydia had thrown down her hatchet, Figo had taken his cue. The confusion that the warrior’s surrender-feint had caused had allowed Figo to detach himself quietly and discreetly from the pack. It had been easy enough for the bandits to forget about the arrowless archer once the excitement picked up, and nobody noticed or thought about Figo until he slunk around the back of the enemy and neatly dispatched their ranger with the same rapid efficiency he would ease the pain of a wounded deer. Now the bandits had lost their range support, and it was a far more comfortable five against four (six against four if Gabriel was counted).

Figo notched a stolen arrow and took aim. He was spoilt for choice, and having a loaded bow in his hands again was filling him with more adrenaline and excitement than he could easily contain. It was with some effort that he brought himself back to the hunt, remembered the first buck he had killed and his father’s instructions in his ear, took a steadying breath, and loosed.

The arrow corkscrewed as it flew the distance between bow and target. Seven pairs of eyes watched in fear and anticipation as the missile weaved between Lydia and her foe, bypassed Bling and the sky-slasher, and struck home.

It sank deep into a fleshy thigh, just shy of that crucial artery which would have caused a fatal bleed out.

“Oh,” Figo said.

Gabriel looked down at where a thin length of wood jutted from the outside of his leg. He checked his inner thigh to find a small nub of metal poking out to greet him, a reasonable amount of blood dripping from its tip and around the puckered skin at its base.

“… What the fuck, Figo?”

“Oh, err, sorry. My arm is still a bit sore from the goblins, I suppose. I thought it would have healed by now and, uh… Sorry.”

“You shot me,” Gabriel said, stating the obvious.

“Let me try again,” Figo said, notching another arrow.

“Don’t you bloody dare.”

Gabriel didn’t get much beyond that. The bafflement caused by Figo’s blunder was wearing off, and ape-man was the quickest to snap out of it. He clouted Gabriel around the side of the head with his club. Gabriel’s head snapped back, accompanied by a hollow thud, and he hit the ground without breaking his fall. It had been a lazy, back-handed blow, but it was a square hit to the skull, and ape-man was no weakling.

Bling watched in horror as her brother bounced once and then settled motionlessly on the ground. Her dueling partner was also opportunistic, though, and he stabbed forward with one of his swords, catching the redhead in the side, eliciting a shrill, piercing call of pain.

Entirely focused on the task at hand, ape-man ignored the sounds around him. He raised his broken spear to finish the job, if he hadn’t already.

He didn’t get to land the blow.

Lydia made a snap decision and threw her longsword at Gabriel’s attacker. It span twice and then skewered ape-man under his left armpit, carrying him off his feet and leaving the blade sticking upright from the collapsed pile of flesh and muscle. Lydia’s rash move had left her open, though, and the female bandit she had failed to subdue was now hacking and slashing recklessly, her face a picture of rage.

Figo’s arrow tracked between the two remaining targets, never leaving the bow. He watched in horror as everything fell apart around him and his friends suffered at the hands of his mistakes. Lydia was strafing and back-stepping away from her attacker, occasionally raising her arm to deflect a blow away from her face. Her vembrace was becoming dented and nicked, and in places the iron armour was beginning to give beneath the barrage of steel. Bling was tugging at the blade in her side, distraught, and unrecognizably animalistic. She switched between pining, screeching and threatening, all in the blink of an eye. Vish was nowhere to be seen. And Gabriel… Gabriel.

Not for the first time in his short adventuring career, tears filled Figo’s eyes and fear drained the power from his fingers. All the while he asked himself, “What have I done?”