“How was the siege?” Friedroth said, smirking at Madrily. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help.”

“What do you want?” Madrily growled.

“Your mother told us you were visiting the Count of Arrance,” Friedroth swung his halberd off his shoulder and whooshed the air as he pointed it at Geruke. “What’re you doing running away with an escapee debtor!?”

“Didn’t she tell you about Geruke’s and Lyrassa’s mission?” She crossed her arms.

“I don’t care. Geruke is a debtor; he needs to stay in Archi Town where we can keep tabs on him.”

“The mission is temporary,” Geruke said. His hand fell to the pommel of a short sword. “By the end of the week I’ll be back in Archi Town and will have the money to pay off my debts.”

“Barsanna said she’s paying you two thousand rubounds,” Friedroth gripped his halberd with both hands. “You’re four thousand rubounds in debt after paying us four thousand yesterday.”

“I’ll be getting money from the ship of the Golden Dragon Pirates.” Geruke rested his other hand on a short sword.

“That’s if you succeed,” Friedroth’s hands strained as they strangled the halberd’s shaft.

“We will,” Geruke wrapped his fingers around his short swords.

“You won’t,” Friedroth said, scowling. “If I couldn’t, then you sure as hell will never.”

“You couldn’t succeed?” Sweat dripped down Geruke’s temple.

“I fought Snakard before.” He scratched his face, and the stump of his pinky finger scraped across his black eyepatch. “If I couldn’t beat him, what could a scrawny blacksmith apprentice like you do?”

“Why are you doing this!?” Madrily stepped between Geruke and Friedroth. “We need Geruke to help save the lives of the people those pirates kidnapped!”

“It’s my job to make sure that he’s ready for us to cuff him and chuck him off to the Infernal Fortress in a week’s time,” Friedroth pushed Madrily to the side and stepped towards Geruke. “The ranagraxa aren’t gonna kill themselves.”

“Shouldn’t you wait and see if we succeed?” Lyrassa’s hand fell to her sword. “Whilst it may be unlikely, you don’t know for sure.”

“I’ll lose my job if I let him escape.”

Lyrassa stepped closer to Geruke.

“Who cares about your job!?” Madrily shouted. “Who cares about rubounds or debts! Twenty innocent lives are at stake!”

“Innocent strangers,” a bald Templaga lackey with a blonde goatee hopped off of their horse and yawned as he approached them. “Let’s get this over with.” He flicked his fingers at Geruke and pulled out a set of cuffs. “Come here, get your hands off your swords, and put them in this.”

“Why should we get our hands off our swords?” Geruke whipped his swords out of their scabbards. “Is it making you feel uncomfortable?”

“I think it is, Geru,” Lyrassa ripped her swords out of their scabbards as well. She glared at the blonde pig. “You should jump back on that horse and ride away; it might help calm your nerves. If It doesn’t, then maybe never demanding money from Geruke ever again will fizzle that fright forever.”

“Put your swords away,” Madrily said, raising her palm towards Geruke and Lyrassa. “There’s no point in killing each other over a bit of money.”

“There’s nothing more worth killing for,” Friedroth said as he strolled past them and towards their carriage. Rummaging through their supplies, the rattling of coins jingled through the air. He picked up and wagged at them a sack of rubounds that they were gonna use to buy huxkrana horses at Stradrid City, and a caravel at Peadon City. “And I think I just found something worth killing for. How much is in here?”

“Not enough to pay off my debts,” Geruke said. “Put it down.”

“Enough to make me wanna gouge out your other eye if you don’t keep your filthy hands off it,” Lyrassa said.

“We’re not letting go of that money,” Madrily said. Her hand fell to her sword. “Without it, innocent people will die.”

“Strangers will die if you don’t give it to us, is it?” The bald bastard said. The hissing of metal scraping against metal filled the air as he ripped his sword from its scabbard. “You’ll die if you don’t.”

“Are you sure?” Madrily said, strangling the hilt of her sword. “Who do you think commanded the thirty soldiers of Archi Town against eighty pirates and won?”

“They kidnapped twenty civilians; that’s not winning,” the bald bellend spun, flipped, and twirled his sword in his hands like a child who just picked up a weapon for the first time. “Some measly pirates aren’t threatening foes, either. Try being me and fight in the Norian holy wars. Did you take part in those wars decades ago?”

“No, I wasn’t alive back then,” Madrily scowled.

“Twenty Norian soldiers surrounded me after retreating from a lost battle,” He marched towards her. “Wanna know what I did?”

“No.”

“I cut those filthy dischans down. I struck so much fear into their hearts that some of them ran to cower in corners, flicked through their Rilans, muttered verses from it, and prayed to their pathetic gods. It just made cutting off their heads that much sweeter because it made them realize that their useless religion was a load of nonsense all a-“

“I’m sorry,” Madrily said, as she sliced the bald man’s head off. It twirled in the air and showered her helmet with blood. “But I’ve had enough.”

The hissing of metal scraping against metal, the whooshing of war hammers and poleaxes being flung off shoulders ravaged the air. Four Templaga ran at each of them. Geruke smiled. Friedroth ran at him along with three others.

Finally, he found an excuse to flay the fool

Channelling all the frustration he felt during the many fury-fuelling years he spent in debt with such scummy people, he swung his two short swords at the oblique of a Templaga soldier; they sunk through gambeson, tore through skin, ripped through muscle, squelched through kidneys, burst through veins, and crunched through ribs to come out the other side, severing the man’s torso into two, rendering it a bleeding, wriggling, and falling mess of wrecked flesh and bone.

Blood fell to the grass like a roaring wave crashing onto the shore, but the other three Templaga rushed at him like a tsunami of steel.

Three left.