Mochon watched the fight play out between Yurhi and the Actor Sarros. It was Mochon’s well-placed and subtle comments which had pushed the men to this point. He had spread the story in casual conversation how the prisoner had disabled Yurhi with a single strike, and how Mochon had easily spared his life and allowed him fellowship in their ranks.

He did not actively feed the fires of discontent which busied themselves decrying their captain as soft, but he would deal with that soon enough. For now, Mochon wanted to see what Sarros would do with his back against the wall.

Mochon’s division of the Army employed a handful of Actors during his career. A couple joined voluntarily, while others were conscripted upon their discovery by the Empire. Regardless of their method of entry, each and every Actor was broken down and tortured until they lost their sense of self, separating from their Masks while at the same time being nothing without them. The Actors were chained in the dark until their service was needed, at which point their Masks were returned and the monsters were pointed in the enemy’s general direction.

There was never so much slaughter as when an Actor graced the battlefield.

From the young man’s composure, Mochon doubted Sarros was actually one of those Imperially-controlled Actors, but he needed to be sure. Without his mask, an Imperial Actor might forge a semblance of a persona to deal with day to day life but crack under extreme strain and be reduced to a sobbing, quivering shell of a man.

This didn’t seem to be the case with Sarros. His feints and subterfuge during the short brawl were not lost to Mochon’s keen eye, techniques mixing standard Imperial hand-to-hand wrestling and some other, more fluid style involving momentum manipulation and the usage of tumbling to avoid serious wounds. Mochon wondered if the latter style was some Ulritten martial art. In any event, Sarros couldn’t have been an Actor long, if his Mask was not yet bound to him and the mercenary still possessed enough of a sense of self to discredit the possibility of having been one of the Empire’s “special tools.” That suited Mochon just fine. The bandit leader’s task might be simpler than he’d hoped.

Mochon allowed a few minutes to pass before he injected himself into the scene, giving everyone involved time to cool their excitement. “Good fight,” he said as he approached the cook fire around which Sarros, Yurhi, and a few others sat. Sniveling Turis lagged behind his officer, leering at the Ulritten boy as he approached.

“Thank you,” said Sarros. “It was a lucky thing—”

“Of course,” interjected Mochon sharply. He hated subtle little games when he was the one in charge. They only served to let the weak or stupid believe they were more powerful or influential than they had the strength to be. “You’ve proved yourself a capable fighter. You will join in tomorrow’s… hunt.” The bandit leader felt as though he should smile coldly as he said this, but that would be unnecessarily theatrical. Instead he glanced down at the Actor’s sheathed blade, changing the conversation before Sarros had a chance to respond. “I see you found a weapon which suits you.”

“Yes sir.” Sarros drew the demon blade and deftly spun it by the handle, pressing its flat against the soft underside of his arm and proffering the weapon’s hilt to Mochon. It was an Imperial dress salute, and the sardonic grin on the Ulritten mercenary’s face betrayed how much he knew it would annoy a deserter like Mochon.

A fool and a bastard, Mochon seethed as he took the glade with a gracious smile. As if he isn’t a deserter too. The bandit leader stepped back into a solid stance, swinging the demon blade one-handed in graceful chopping strokes. The air seemed to part in deference to the blade’s preternatural edge, and Mochon marveled that a sheath of mere leather could contain the weapon’s deadly sharpness. He remembered the night his men had thrown the demon to the ground with grapple hooks and wide-headed hammers, how the blade had shattered even as the creature’s face had been crushed under Mochon’s own maul. The bandit leader was not a superstitious man, but he knew the importance of spirituality to a community as small and insular as his crew.

A few whispers started a rumor that the blade was cursed by the demon who had wielded it, and that anyone who touched it would suffer a terrible fate. Had any of the crew been steel-willed enough to claim the sword in self-assured bravery, Mochon would have let them wield it unchallenged. Instead, the first man to lay claim to the blade did so as the fulfillment of a drunken bet, and that man mysteriously died the following night. He fell on the blade and impaled himself through the spine, and the curse of the demon sword was codified. That it was wart-nosed Turis who set the events into motion never happened to come to light.

Sarros wielding the demon blade with his quiet calm impressed Mochon. He wondered if it would make the job to come harder or easier, but nonetheless it was impressive. Mochon returned the weapon to its owner, nodded in dismissal, and turned to leave.

“Was the day of worth?” called one of the men in a barbarian accent.

Mochon turned and flashed the hearty smile of a bandit king. “Certainly was, boys! Celebrate, for we send for supplies in the morning!” The men cheered as their leader disappeared into the dark of the night, toward the roundhouse which was his lair. That Sarros’ mouth and eyes had tightened at Mochon’s announcement did not go unnoticed. We’ll see tomorrow, he thought. If you know what’s good for you, boy, you’ll lose that self-righteous attitude soon enough. You’re no better a man than me.

He had never been assigned a tent after all, so Sarros shared one with Yurhi and four other bandits. For the last time that night. Sarros was reminded of the life he had in the Army. He closed his eyes and fell to sleep surrounded by the contented snores of murderers and thieves.