A/N: ‘’==thought; “”==speech

  The sun rises on sleepless men walking on raw feet. They are coming back from a job, but the reason they can’t sleep is because they botched it. They must go. Fast.

  “Sir, we’re all tired. We need rest.” Said Landyn, a former tanner’s boy. He had grown strong in these past five years of being a mercenary, but he was tired all the same.

  “Yes… I know.” Said Jon ‘The Cleaver’ a second name he’d given himself to sell his and his men’s swords for more. It sort of fit him, due to the warbrand tucked in a battered scabbard at his waist, both looted off a knight long ago. He strokes the dark tumbleweed he calls a beard and lets his melancholy speak for him. “Did I ever tell you why I joined the Knight Flayers?”

  “No?” The kid does not hide his confusion at all, no need to play mind games among brothers.

  “Ha! That’s right, you probably never knew. The Knight Flayers were here long before I joined them. I took over for our last leader when he retired.” He said with a smile that quickly faded. “Collapsed lung.” He clarified and sighs. “You see, I never had much. Just a serf on someone else’s land. Never met my mother, father died when I was young… All I had was my older sister.” His eyes grow dim. He is far away. “She was sister, mother and protector, and when I was old enough I returned the favor by working hard so she could one day have a dowry to marry a good man.” His hands start to shake slightly in anger and his voice drops even lower. “One night I came home reeking of sweat and booze after working the fields. Heard her screams. Heard his chuckles. Kicked down the door. Killed him long. Killed him cruel.” The corners of his mouth flick upwards into a concealed grin when he relives the long hours he spent inflicting unspeakable yet righteous violence onto that man, while his sister sobbed on the bed.

  Landyn looks at his leader with concerned eyes. He had never shared such a thing in five long years of fighting side by side. Not when drinking until sunrise, not when feasting at the wake of a fallen comrade, not when facing terrible beasts. Something is very wrong.

  “It was a noble I killed then, and my sister hanged for it. She always protected me. I was no man. Maybe I’m still not a man. …I kissed her dangling feet and ran away from everything.” He continued, more subdued and regretful. “This is what happens when you mess with nobles, kid… Watch and learn.”

  He then takes a deep breath and his face becomes stern and strong again, the embers in his heart have been choked out but still smolder. He bellows out orders: “HALT! Tie the carts together and block the road! We make our stand!”

  “About time we stopped running.” Said Kale, a former miner. He was short and wide with muscle, his body capable of inflicting great violence with a warhammer.

  The men sigh in relief and start fortifying the road. They have stopped at the very end of a long ravine, the only pass through these mountains for many miles. They tie their carts together with chains, forming a veritable fortress. They tie the mules behind their line and stash ammo and spare weapons near their fighting positions. They know well that when arrows run out, polearms will reign supreme, but even those must be stocked in great number because the wooden shafts break often in battle.

  “Landyn! Help us unload this cart!” Yells Viper, a former gladiator who had bought his freedom. He never had a name other than Viper, and the men did not dare give him a new one, as unfair as it seemed to others who had rather unfortunate nicknames.

  Him and the rest of the ‘bruiser squad’ are unloading a cart and storing the ammo and billhooks in opportune positions. His large golden helmet in the shape of a Viper’s head hid his grinning at the thought of battle. He thrived when killing men. It was all he had ever known.

  “Ah, let the boss rest a little. We’ve got this, right old man?” Said Thorvald, a bear of a man covered in tribal tattoos, to an old one-eyed spearman, Eagle Eye. Thorvald was larger than any man anyone of them had seen, towering even over most warhorses and sporting a rust-colored beard longer than most men’s haircuts and a tangled mess of braids and knots flowing down his back. He didn’t wear armor, and he didn’t need it. His long arms and his bardiche would deliver killing blows with terrifying leverage on any man who dared approach him in battle long before even a polearm could scrape him. He had cleaved more than one knight in two.

  “Fuck off Thorvald. Landyn! Help us finish quickly so I can fucking sit down.” Said Rabbit, a bastard with a sailor’s mouth, when he joined up he was running from the lawmen for poaching. They called him Rabbit because he had a split lip and because he had been caught with a poached rabbit in hand by the forester. He was tall, a good thing for a crossbowman since he could shoot over the heads of most men in the company, except for Thorvald of course. He had ill-fitting boots and he walked with noticeably more pain than the rest, this was the source of his current attitude.

  “Ah, I’d also like to sit down for a while. My back ain’t what it used to.” Said Eagle Eye, the old one-eyed veteran. Of course, being one-eyed was not the only disability earned with ageing in this profession, but it was the most noticeable. He was not far off from being only half a man if we were to count up all the missing bits of flesh and pierced organs.

  Landyn chuckles at the liveliness of his small squad. They called them the ‘bruiser squad’ because their job was flanking the enemy, dealing some damage, and retreating to attack from another angle. Their job was leaving “bruises” such as decapitations, slit throats, split skulls and other such banal afflictions.

  “So you remember being young now? Thought you forgot even your name you old geezer!” Says Landyn, picking up a few polearms of different shapes and sizes off the back of the cart.

  Despite being by far the oldest in the company, as evidenced by his snow-white hair and myriad wrinkles, Eagle Eye was in some ways the youngest. He did not remember anything before last month, when Landyn picked him up from among the dead and dying of the battlefield, a fresh dent in his amnesiac skull. So, in some sense, he was a newborn.

  They finish unloading the supplies and rest on the ground, leaning against the side of the cart. They light pipes and remove blood-caked boots to relieve the pressure of pustules taut like drums with dirty knives. Viper is sharpening his parrying dagger, Rabbit is counting the crossbow bolts around him and Eagle Eye is stretching old sagging muscles.

  Jon ‘The Cleaver’ walks up to them, lost in thought. He stops a little closer than intended and gives new orders. “I want the bruisers up above. Bring some bolts of course, but more importantly make sure you throw plenty of stones down on them when they come.”

  “Sure thing, sir. …Do you think we’re fighting today?” Said Landyn, getting up from the ground with his pipe in hand.

  “Yeah. A runner came from the mountain pass, said he passed by an army hot on our tails. I was right, they were chasing us. Maybe that dickhead we killed yesterday, the one with the feather in his cap, was actually a noble… Whatever. Now get moving, they’ll be here soon.”

  As they reach the top of the cliff they see the army crowding between the sharp rocks down in the ravine below. They look just as tired as them, if not more so. The army is made up mostly of peasants, conscripted militia men that is. While the mercenaries don chainmail and plate, the peasants don linen and wool. While the mercenaries bear maces, battle axes and swords, the peasants bear clubs, hatchets and pitchforks.

  Given the difference in equipment and experience, a fight like this should be easy, if it weren’t for the overwhelming numbers. While the Knight Flayers number just over fifty, the army facing them numbers in the hundreds.

  “Fire!” Jon’s voice echoes in the dark ravine. His order is followed by dozens of crossbow bolts flying with a silent whoosh that is drowned out by hundreds of steps echoing off the walls.

  Just a second later the first screams of battle erupt. Not screams of triumph, nor screams that one might shout to steel themselves to charge the enemy heroically, but screams of pain and agony. Screams that express the sheer horror of a slow death. Some try to stop and help the wounded, but the march cannot stop. They are pushed forward and those that cannot stand up are trampled over until there is no more air in their lungs to scream. These are mere peasants, forced to fight for a cause they do not know and for men they do not trust against men they fear. Morale is low. Another volley follows.

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  While Landyn’s bruiser squad rains death from above, the peasant army makes contact with the makeshift fortifications of The Knight Flayers. To be more precise, it is mostly their blood that makes contact with the carts, very few even get within two steps of the fortifications. They see death in the crossbows and death in the polearms swinging in front of them. In front of the wall of carts, another wall of corpses starts to rise.

  Shouts of cowardice start to make themselves heard from among the crowd of peasants. “Turn back!” “We’ll all die!” “We can’t go any further!” They start trying to fall back, stumbling again over the same comrades they trampled before. The men further back in the army are outraged at the cowardice of the front ranks and push them back to front. The army facing the Knight Flayers is clashing against itself in fear of their mastery over warfare.

  Suddenly, a low booming horn rattles the lungs of everyone present. Though they all know it is not a horn, but the booming sound of a knight of the highest level commanding authority in the same way a lion would roar to bring order to his subjects. Although there was not a word spoken, all the peasants knew what to do on an instinctual level. They all jump to the sides, clinging to the rock walls.

  Hooves like thunder echo in the ravine and ten knights can soon be seen riding through the mass of peasants that they had parted like the seas.

  “Pikes forward!” Shouts Jon ‘The Cleaver’, though he knows full well that even with his carts tied together with chains and with all the pikes in the world he could not stop ten knights charging.

  In this world, a knight is not merely a man strong enough to don plate armor with ease, nor is he merely a small noble in service to someone of ‘blue blood’ which somehow turns red when the throat is slit. But a knight is a bringer of death. They use terrible magics and cut through armies with ease.

  The Knight Flayers would do battle against knights only when they outnumbered them twenty to one, and even then they would use all their dirty tricks to ensure as few casualties as possible. Right now they only outnumber them five to one, and they are tired after holding off the relentless onslaught of peasants for an hour. If it were four or five, then maybe some of the Knight Flayers would have lived to see another day. It seems hopeless.

  But all hope is not lost. Thorvald certainly thinks so. He lets out a roar of his own and steps closer to the edge, his bardiche high above his head. His tattoos light up in blue and green as he activates magic of his own before bringing his weapon down hard on the dirt and rocks. Again and again he strikes at the overhang as the knights thunder down like a raging river, only two abreast.

  They grow closer.

  And closer.

  And Thorvald strikes.

  And they get closer.

  And Thorvald strikes.

  And a stone the size of a house and more falls down into the ravine.

  It tumbles through the air.

  The first two knights pass.

  And then another two.

  BOOM!

  The rock falls like an explosion and crushes the other six knights and their steeds who were so convinced of their invincibility they never even looked up to see what was happening above them.

  But four still got through.

  Only a hundred meters left until they reach the Knight Flayers and their meager fortifications. Their crossbowmen fire like mad, like machine guns, paying no heed to their tired muscles’ incessant screams for rest.

  Finally one lands the shot needed. They use special bolts against knights, ones that have the tip removed and are made of soft wood that splinters easily. One such bolt hits the visor of a knight and splits into a thousand needles that spray into his eyes, blinding him forever. In his pain he forgets to keep his feet in the stirrups and his hand on the bridle and so he falls against the rocky ground, rolling and tumbling across as sparks fly from his metal suit he wears like skin.

  Enraged by the losses, the leading knight roars again and the men holding the line falter and some fall backwards onto their asses. They have reached them. Hell is to be unleashed.

  The mercenaries stumble and dodge out of the way of the charge as best as they can, but some are still trampled under the heavy hooves as the horses break through the carts and chains as though they were not there.

  Jon also dodged the first two knights, but he got up in time to meet the third, warbrand in hand. He readies his sword to his side like a baseball player getting ready for a home run and hides behind the cart, out of view. As the wood splinters and the metal spalls his sword swings low against the horse’s legs. The sword comes crashing into the hind legs, cutting with just enough force to sever one leg and scoop out the muscle from the other before Jon is knocked off his feet with a broken wrist and a sore arse from the tumble.

  The knight jumps off his horse before it can hit the ground, as though it were some disposable asset, not a mighty warhorse as strong as a bear and as expensive as a house. He shoots flames out from his hands at the closest mercenaries to him, singing their eyes and burning away all hair, but leaving them to cling to life for a few more agonizing minutes. He takes the head of another clean off with a brutal swing of his oversized mace.

  Jon may not know magic, but in his many years of handling a blade he has learned a thing or two about swinging his sword. His accuracy is unmatched as his first strike slips between the plates and cuts the straps on the knight’s helmet, knocking it upwards just enough for a second strike to cut halfway through his neck. Before he can cast another spell, the knight drops like a sack of shit.

  The peasants now rush in, trying to close the last hundred meters between them and the now broken blockade of the mercenaries. Many still fall to sporadic bolts and thrown javelins as they get closer, but soon a melee starts.

  “Rabbit! Stay up here and keep throwing stones! Viper, Thorvald, Eagle Eye! We’re going into the melee!” Orders Landyn, knowing this may well be their end. But they joined the Knight Flayers searching this end, not the miserable one offered by old age.

  After they broke through their lines, the two knights still standing atop their horses simply sit back and watch from the back as the peasants rush in. The melee goes on for an hour. The noble knights yawn.

  After the shouting dies down, the cries and moans of the wounded and dying are all that prevails over the battlefield. All the peasants have fought to the last, under the influence of the magic of the knights. The mercenaries number just a dozen men still standing. None of them are untouched by blades except for Rabbit who has only just come down off the top of the cliff.

  “Yesterday you cut down Frederick Von Iselbaum, the third son of the Duke of Iselbaum! For your crimes only death awaits! …But! Put down your arms and we shall make it quick!” Shouts the knight atop his tall horse, chin raised and sword pointed towards the heaving tired mercenaries.

  Jon retches loudly and defiantly spits blood and snot in the direction of the knight. “Fuck you! And the horse you rode in on! Do you noble fucks think we can’t smell your shit-stained pants all the way from here?”

  The mercenaries force chuckles, but they expect to die soon. They hold up battered arms and prepare for their last fight.

  The knights charge in.

  “Cut the hind legs!” Shouts Jon and his order is followed. Each knight kills a man before they have to jump off their horse. The two majestic beasts clash into the dirt softened by blood and crush bones both their own and of dead men into dust.While the horses neigh horribly in their death throes, the warriors fight on.

  The knight who spoke earlier will be the first to die. He uses an arming sword, an insult. To use a weapon meant to be a sidearm in open battle shows just how much he underestimated his killers. He takes the head of Gunther, a hunter’s son. Then his blade clashes against Jon’s warbrand. They exchange a quick glance, Jon realizing his death is coming he smiles. With one hand on his warbrand and with the other limply trying to raise a middle finger at him despite the shattered wrist, he smiles as his head is cut along with the steel armor protecting his neck. Thorvald then cleaves the knight in half with his magic folded around his bardiche, steel plate and all. Revenge for his leader’s death.

  Meanwhile the other knight has killed four men. One with his warhammer and three by shooting lighting from his hand. Blood drips off the beak of his weapon.

  “I’ll fucking kill all of you dirty fucking serfs!” He hates.

  A swing of the hammer grazes the side of Kale’s head, his helmet had fallen off in the heat of battle. Then he swings around again and his warhammer is caught in Thorvald’s hand. To use magic, one has to be able to focus, which is hard to do when there is a hole the size of a plum in your palm. The others can’t use any magic relevant to dealing damage to an armored knight, so they must get ugly with it.

  Viper’s mace rings the knight’s helmet like a bell repeatedly while his dagger incessantly searches for gaps in the armor. Landyn has grabbed his sword with a hand on the hilt and one on the blade to maneuver it better into the shoulder joint. Eagle Eye keeps searching for openings with his spear all the same.

  Thorvald groans out, his hands holding the knight in place with great force: “Get him in the balls!”

  Viper’s only thought is: ‘Of course! How did I not think of that?’ His dagger plunges again and again into the man’s jewels. They could not remove his helmet or cut his throat, but his codpiece was not nearly as well secured. His death is a slow and painful one.

  The fighting is finally over. Only four men of the Knight Flayers are left standing. The mighty Knights Flayers renowned in all lands far and wide have fallen.