“He’s over here,” a voice called from behind Sarros. The Actor turned. He’d managed to find a group of men who fairly tolerated his presence enough to let him eat unmolested, and had spent the last half hour staring into their cook fire, swallowing watery soup and gnawing at black bread as tough as wood. Now, however, someone wanted Sarros. With any luck it would be Captain Mochon, finally returned from his blasted mission.

It wasn’t. The man approaching the firelight had dark skin, hair knotted into dreadlocks, and an outraged expression on his face. He also, to the Actor’s anger, seemed to be supporting a hurt ankle with Sarros’ treasured walking stick.

“Yes, I’m here!” Sarros scrambled to his feet and put a hand on the demon blade’s hilt. “How kind of you to seek me out just to return my staff.”

“Bah!” the bandit spat on the ground and looked over his shoulder. Four men followed a close distance behind, glowers visible in the dim firelight which just barely reached them. “He has the gall to accuse me, when he attacked me cowardly and unprovoked!”

The men sharing Sarros’ fire began to murmur, but the Actor ignored them. “Enough of that,” he said. “You had me surrounded. I tried to get away, and, well, I got what came to me.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Mochon let me join up, though. I’m one of you now.”

“You think so, do you?” The wounded man laughed and pointed a finger at Sarros’ chest. “Captain doesn’t remember how things used to be, like mah dad taught me. Once upon a while a man had to prove himself to join up with men of the road. Nowadays Captain just says you’re in, and so you are.” The bandit gestured widely with his free arm. “What do you all think about that, boys? Should we initiate the demon in our own way?”

Sarros felt sweat slide down the back of his neck, and it wasn’t just from the intense heat of the fire. All the men in earshot were approaching slowly, muttering, whispering. Sarros had heard the gossip as he wandered the encampment, and he was no fool to begin with. Mochon’s machinations were leading the simple men of the crew to think him soft. Obviously Sarros’ presence by the cook fire instead of in a shallow grave was further proof to this effect. If the almost dozen bandits who were growing ever closer decided to make a rush, Sarros had no delusions as to how many more bowls of disgusting soup he would get to enjoy in his lifetime. He needed to act quickly.

The Actor took a long step towards the bandit who possessed his staff, making the movement look like a stumble. He ended up on one knee before the bandit (with just enough freedom of movement to avoid a heavy shot to the groin or face, if need be) and raised both hands as though to ward off an incoming blow. “Please don’t hurt me!” he said, and allowed a bit of his unease to ferment into a fearful sob. “I didn’t mean to show you up in front of everyone!”

“You did nothing of the sort!” the bandit bellowed. He struck Sarros on the shoulder, but the former Imperial rolled with it, letting his groans make up for the pain he didn’t actually feel. “Coward!” continued the dreadlocked man. He seemed emboldened by his victim’s submission. “I have half a mind to thrash you right here.”

“Well…” Sarros sniffed a fake sniffle, and covered it with an even faker cough. “Sir, I was a top wrestler in the Army. If you think it would even things out between us, we could have a tussle right here.”

The bandit seemed taken aback, but his comrades urged him on from behind. “Get ‘im, Yurhi!” said one. “He’s nothin’ but a twig!”

It was true Sarros’ build was slighter than the bandit’s, and that he stood a good inch or two shorter, but Sarros also spoke the truth when he mentioned his training as an Imperial wrestler. Imperial wrestling, of course, was more a matter of elbows and knees and crushing joints, and less the lumbering, thundering impact of one drunken farmer’s shoulder against another’s gut which was a common sight in taverns and village fairs.

“Uh…” The bandit didn’t seem to know the difference. “All right, you and me.” He suddenly sneered, as if a clever idea had come to his mind. “Think of this as your initiation, demon.”

Sarros was ready for a right hook, but not the left-handed sledgehammer of a fist that clouted him from out of nowhere. The ash walking stick clattered to the ground in time with the Actor’s half-fall, half-roll. The groans of pain which came from his lips were no longer fake. Sarros hadn’t thought his strike to the bandit named Yurhi’s ankle had been powerful enough to cause a lasting injury. The man had apparently been using his ‘injury’ to garner sympathy from the others. “You’re almost as good an actor as myself!” Sarros called as he staggered to his feet. There likely wasn’t any lasting brain injury (he hoped), but everything was a little hard to see for the moment. “Not much of a puncher though!”

The bandit bellowed and rushed Sarros with both arms spread wide, dirty fingernails ready to rake at the Actor’s back should he find himself crushed to the man’s filth-encrusted chest.

With a grunt Sarros sidestepped at the last moment, kicking Yurhi in the back of the knee as he passed, bracing himself on the much greater weight and spinning almost forty-five degrees to slam a hand-braced elbow into the bandit’s ribcage.

“Fuck,” Yurhi wheezed. It wasn’t much of a shout. He staggered forward another step, clutching a hand to his side and turning somewhat slowly to face his would-be victim.

Sarros had largely recovered from his initial wound at this point, and stepped forward with both hands raised in fists before him. He ducked below a too-slow punch and darted in, delivering a sharp knee to the bandit’s diaphragm.

It was another ruse. Yurhi breathed out as Sarros’ knee connected with his abdomen, ignoring the normally devastating attack, grabbing the Actor by his shoulders and thrusting his dreadlocked head down toward Sarros’ unprotected face. He hurled the Actor from him a moment later, howling in agony and clawing at his mashed nose, blood streaming down his jaw and hissing as it spun off into the nearby fire. Sarros had ducked his head down at the last moment, placing his forehead where his nose had been only a moment before.

“All… Right,” Sarros said, out of breath. He hadn’t fought in a long while. Not really fought. The physical exertion wasn’t the exhausting part—that was tiring, to be sure, despite taking place over only a few seconds. The strain of knowing one false move could mean a lifelong injury or worse was the truly exhausting part. It had taken everything Sarros had to avoid those steel-cord muscles. His strikes had been like the stings of a shrike wasp: Painful, ugly, scarring, but not really debilitating unless they had a chance to pile up. Sarros was confident the fight was nearly over, but that just meant the difficult part had arrived. He approached the slowly-retreating Yurhi and did his best to magnify the exhaustion he actually felt, making each plodding step and ragged breath look a hundred times worse. Despite the most worst of the damage existing on Yurhi’s person, Sarros needed to make everyone forget and believe him to have received the worst of it all along. “I’ll… Get you…” he wheezed.

Sure enough, when he got close enough, Yurhi swung with that same, regular left hook. Sarros raised a hand just a purposeful half-second too late, the heavy haymaker brushing past the Actor’s guard and cracking him on the jaw. Sarros let himself fall to the ground, wincing and wishing he’d blocked just a bit more of the strike. He’d have a solid welt come morning. Then the Actor hauled himself back up and waveringly returned his fists to their guard position. “That… The best you got?”

Yurhi, confidence largely regained, laughed and stepped in to slug Sarros in the gut.

This time the Actor did try to block, but he underestimated how much strength the bandit had left, and found himself knocked to the ground again. All right, he thought. Enough playing. He hauled himself up, parried a punch, and with every pound of force he could muster drove a thunderous uppercut into Yurhi’s stubble-covered chin.

The bandit groaned as he staggered back, consciousness faded from his eyes. He crashed down to the ground, and Sarros was quick to to his side as the men around began to shout angrily. This was the tricky part. Yurhi would regain consciousness within a minute or two, but that might be too late if the rest of the men decided to rip this upstart limb from limb straight away. So, Sarros slapped Yurhi’s face frantically until the bandit began to blink and squint at the firelight. Sarros lost no time in throwing the bandit’s arm around his shoulder and hauling Yurhi to his feet. “Fucking good fight!” The Actor shouted, making sure everyone could hear him. “No one in the Army gave me half so good a tussle as that, stars as my witness!” He looked around with what he hoped was fire in his eyes. “It’s a good thing I had my stick when I did, last time. He’d have got me no questions asked if it was man to man from the beginning.”

Yurhi pushed away from Sarros, snorting a wad of coagulated blood onto the ground. “…Yeah, you were pretty quick though,” he said. “I doubt anyone else’s so good with that staff, to get me on the first try.”

“Well,” the Actor said bashfully, “I’m all right. You almost had me there, though. If I hadn’t gotten lucky with that uppercut… Well, three time’s the charm, as they say. You already had me twice.”

The bandit clapped Sarros on the shoulder, almost harder than he’d hit with any of his left hooks. “I guess he’s in, boys. Let no one say the demon won’t fight man to man!”

Sarros finally relaxed as one of the men cheered, and while the others didn’t seem completely placated, they eventually began to talk among themselves again. The looks of hostility, while not eradicated, were at least greatly reduced. Yurhi even told Sarros he was welcome to share the fire of himself and his fellows any time he wanted, and returned the Actor’s walking stick. Sarros grinned and accepted both gratefully, happy to have finally made a semblance of a friend among the rougher of the bandits. He never, of course, let the fact slip from his mind that Yurhi had lain in ambush with a half dozen others to capture, ransom, and maybe torture and murder travelers who happened on his path.

These thoughts and darker ones lurked in Sarros’ mind as he glanced toward the edge of the campfire and saw the nonplussed gaze of Captain Mochon staring back at him. Wart-nosed Turis stood beside him, an oily grin plastered across his face.