It has been many hours since sunset. The moon is dim but not absent. The fires in the enemy camp now starve for fuel and slowly let darkness encroach on the tents and palisades.

  A sharp whistle wakes the half-sleeping mercenaries gathered by the gate. “Get ready! We’re heading out!”

  The Knight Flayers start their begrudging march. They have not reconciled impending death and they have not made peace. They have not found purpose or zeal. However, coin is still enough to make their legs move on their own.

  Before setting off, they have covered each other head to toe in soot to blend into the night. They have padded their armor so much that the enemy is more likely to hear the squelching of sweat than the ringing of metal. And most importantly, they had a drink of absolutely horrid moonshine, for luck.

  Still, they can’t help but ask heavy questions, as if their fellow lowlives would have the answers to life’s deepest mysteries.

  “You think there’s a world where we’re friends with whoever we’re killing tonight?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Rabbit.” Answers Kale. Thoughts are detrimental when you rely on instinct to survive. Kale does not like thoughts in moments like these.

  Just a few minutes later, one of the new guys, a skinny young man, pimpled and tall, can’t help his nerves and tries to make some small talk with Viper:

  “H-Hey;” his voice cracks “I’m-”

  “Don’t tell me your name, kid.” Viper interrupts harshly.

  “Why? I’m just trying to be friendly…”

  “I know kid, that’s why I don’t want it. There’s a good chance you’re dying soon. You can’t haunt me if we don’t know each other’s names.”

  The way Viper spoke so calmly made shivers run down the young man’s spine. He was even more nervous than before and he shook visibly with every step, but he would keep his mouth shut from now on.

  Silence rules over the men for almost an entire hour. After clumsily stepping on brittle branches, rustling leaves and foul-smelling corpses with small searching steps in the dark, they finally reach the first lookout post in their way.

  The lookout post is tiny and only comprises of two pavese shields on wheels and a single torch around which three tired and dirty soldiers pass the time talking.

  “Say, any o’ y’uhs ‘ear a-thing ‘bout what we fightin fer this time?”

  “I heard that Duke Iselbaum deflowered Count Treblin’s daughter!”

  “Ah, shut up will you? Treblin doesn’t even have any children. I have a cousin who lives around these parts and he always jokes about how the Count must be infertile.”

  “So, we’s fightin’ fer money again, eh? As alway-” His lips move with inertia as his jaw falls limp and his corpse drops to the side. The bolt of a crossbow has hit him from the dark.

  The other two are stunned for just a second. Before they register the blood sprayed onto their faces and shout for help, Thorvald splits one’s skull with a tomahawk and Viper slits the other’s throat.

  “Hah! Did’ya hear what they were talking about? This guy was finally admitting that we’re not all that different from regular soldiers. Kinda funny timing if you think about it.” Rabbit says as he retrieves the crossbow bolt from the man’s skull. Perhaps the very thought the man was expressing in his last moments was going through one of the millions of neurons still stuck on the sharpened tip.

  “Shut up, Rabbit!” Saul whispers.

  And just like that, they are now technically behind enemy lines, but the raid is not over. Now, all they have to do is keep carefully following Landyn as he leads them through the dark. Today, they are supposed to scout the camp. Find weaknesses and important resources. And most of all, to instill fear. They behead the dead and take the heads with them.

  “Alright. As we talked, then new guys will stay behind and man this post with Thorvald and Saul as backup. The enemy must not know anything is wrong. The rest come with me, we go deeper.” Landyn orders in a whisper.

  Landyn only took Viper and Rabbit with him. For hours they snake their way around the camp, keeping away from light as much as possible. They find that the enemy must have many fast-working engineers. They have already dug a moat around the noble’s tents and built a wall complete with palisades and watchtowers. The hill had hidden all of this from view from the castle, including the sheer scale of the army.

  From the top of the hill the three of them finally realise the sheer scale of the army besieging them. Campfires as far as the eye can see. So many fires that not even daylight could compete with this brightness.

  “Thousands… Tens of thousands…” Viper remarks in shock and awe.

  “Turn back everyone!” Landyn orders, crouching down beneath the ridgeline and dragging Viper and Rabbit out of sight of the camp. “Go! We’ve done enough scouting today!” He shouts in a whisper.

  They run like mad through the dark, shaking off the soot covering their bodies and tripping on roots and twigs every now and again.

  “Oh mannn… I didn’t even get a good look at the camp…” Thorvald pouts.

  “Me neither, huff, why are we even, huff, running so fast? Huff. Did they see us?” Saul asks between exhausted breaths.

  “Of fucking course, dumbass! There’s no way a camp that large hasn’t got at least one knight or magical artefact or some-such-shit! They probably knew the mom-” Rabbit’s panicked monologue is cut short as his words turn to hapless gasps for air.

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  THUD

  Rabbit falls face-first clutching at his chest. The long arrow of a warbow has pierced his back, stabbed through his lung, and came out the other side.

  “Shit! Rabbit’s shot!” Saul tries to stop and help but Kale pushes him forward too violently for the mage to resist. “The fu-”

  “I got him!” Thorvald picks the fallen sellsword up off the ground and carries on running without even losing momentum.

  “Head for that lookout post we cleared earlier! We can take cover behind the tent!” Landyn orders.

  More arrows fly at them, but they lack the effectiveness of the first shot. These arrows all come very close to their targets, but all either glance off with just a flesh wound or are deflected entirely by the armor.

  Tired like never before, they all dive behind the tent, one after the other. Thorvald is the last one to make it to the tent and moments before he takes cover, an arrow flies through his calf and is lost in the night.

  “Hrngh! That fucking bastard! WE’RE THE FUCKING KNIGHT FLAYERS YOU SUCKER! WE’RE GONNA FLAY YOU!” Thorvald screams.

  “Well, right now it’s not looking like we’re gonna be able to do that. If anything, we’re the ones getting flayed.” Saul adds, nerdily.

  “Oegh, ah, s-shut up! Saul!” Rabbit barely gasps out. It feels more insulting now that the man can barely breathe, yet still chooses to insult him.

  “Where the fuck are the rookies?” Viper asks.

  The men all fall silent. There’s two options: the rookies got spooked and ran off, or the rookies are lying in pools of blood just a few feet away in the dark.

  “You lot don’t have eyes like mine so you can’t see them in the dark, but trust me, you really don’t want eyes like mine right now.” Kale says. Years of working in the oppressive darkness of the mines at least has some kind of payoff.

  “Wait! You can see?” Saul’s eyes light up with desperate glee.

  “Y-yeah, kind of-”

  “Find the archer and I can use your eyes to shoot a spell at them!” Saul goes to grab at Kale’s head.

  “Woah! Nobody’s gouging out any of my eyes! Got it!?”

  “No, no! I need to touch your head while I cast the spell!”

  “F-fine! Do it!” Kale agrees.

  As soon as Saul puts his hand on Kale’s head he starts to hum low and a shining light gathers in his other hand. Landyn is still shellshocked and his mouth forms the words yet his throat won’t let out any air. Kale peeks around the tent.

  “FUCK! SHOOT!”

  Saul does shoot, but at the same time a sword cuts up into Kale’s chin. As Kale closes his eyes, the projectile of light Saul had launched turns around comes straight for Kale’s head. It plinks the helmet off with a sickening metal ring and burns off half of Saul’s hand.

  “You worms thought you could run from me, didn’t you?” She speaks from the darkness as her figure takes form a little more with every second their eyes adjust to the dark. The imposing female voice comes from a knight wearing armor made of living moving dragon scales which shift and shimmer in the moonlight. The bow she has strung on her back is so large that even when hung at an angle the tip almost touches the ground. It is a knight’s bow, made of stiff spring steel, not of wood. To bend such a thing five men would need to sit on each of the bow, but this woman can do it all by herself with her terrible magics. Her longsword glints in the faint moonlight. Something about finally seeing his enemy makes Landyn snap back to normal.

  “Which of you is next?” She asks. No doubt there is a self-satisfied grin behind her helmet’s visor.

  “Huh? Thorvald is, of course.” Landyn says, nonchalantly.

  “What? But I’m wounded! I even carried Rabbit all the way here!”

  “Wheeze -e did.” Rabbit confirms, raising a finger in the air.

  “Fine then, Saul.”

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” Saul is still screaming his lungs off and clutching his maimed hand.

  “Yeah, we can’t send Saul either…” Landyn strokes the chin of his helmet.

  “Are you… mocking me, worm?” The knight tilts her head.

  “Oh no! I wouldn’t dare! You see, we take duels very seriously in my company, so I only wish to send you the best to face you! I would be mocking you if I were to send Rabbit for example. In his state, he can’t quite call himself a sellsword, can he?”

  “Wheeze -uck of-hhhhh”

  She raises her visor to better communicate her frustration, revealing the scarred face of a lifelong warrior. “You are worse than I thought. I cannot believe I wasted time parlaying with such buffoons. It’s not like anyone would care about your last words anyway. You’re lucky though, not many can make your death as quick as I can.”

  She raises her sword dramatically, preparing to deliver final blow after final blow with expertise and grace. Her mouth hangs open so she can control her breathing better. Inhale. Exhale.

  “SWEEP HER LEG DUMBASS!” Landyn shouts.

  “Oh!” Thorvald exclaims as he seemingly comes back to reality. He kicks against her steel shoes with his bare shin while flexing his pierced calf. “AH FUCK!”

  Before the woman can even hit the ground Viper is already pouncing on her. A hit with the mace to the hinge of the visor jams it open and then his dagger plunges with the strength of a desperate man. The steel passes through her throat and severs her spinal cord, paralyzing her instantly. In her last few seconds alive her face contorts into a scowl and her eyes stare with unimaginable hate into the man who took her life. Curses unspoken.

  “Whew! Nice one, boys!” Landyn lays down on the ground and looks at the stars to try and calm his breath.

  “Fucking hell Tanner, I really thought you’d gone mad!” Thorvald slaps his captain on the chest stirring a pained grunt from the sellsword.

  “Ueoughhhhh” Their chuckling is interrupted.

  “Oh shit! Kale is still kicking!” Viper shouts as he rushes over to his friend.

  He turns the man onto his back and reveals the gruesome extent of his wounds. His jaw has been shattered and cut through almost all the way up to his eye, but the blade thankfully stopped on the steel of his helmet. To add to that, Saul’s magic has burned most of his hair away and charred the other side of his face.

  “Fuck, alright! We gotta get moving! Saul, get up and take the sack of heads with you. Viper, carry Kale. Thorvald, carry Rabbit. I’ll get the knight. Follow me!”

  “Aye aye, Sir Tanner.” Thorvald answers in his tired and ragged voice.

  The way back is quiet, except for the whinging and moaning of the wounded. It seems they let the knight patrol alone, trusting in her skills and experience. They did not account for the Knight Flayers’ capability for the absurd.

  After a long hard trek back to the fortress, they finally approach the gates. But then someone blows a horn and all of a sudden dozens of crossbows point at their faces. Who can blame them? Men carrying men all moaning and dying and covered in soot and blood. Maybe they didn’t sound the alarm because they feared they were enemies, but because they feared they were demons from below.

  “Ah fuck off with your bullshit… It’s us! The Knight Flayers! Open the fucking gate! And wake the damned healers!” Thorvald shouts, too tired to even look up at the scared peasants manning the wall.

  One of the actual guardsmen among the peasants orders the others to put down their arms and open the gate as he recognizes the sellswords, despite their sorry state. The Knight Flayers shuffle in like the walking dead, while Landyn stays behind to accomplish the objective of their little excursion.

  In front of the gate there are stakes driven into the ground at an angle, to deter a charge or even impale the horses. Landyn takes the heads of the ones they killed tonight and one by one he impales them on the stakes. The knight is stripped of her precious armor and is then impaled through the body. Her bow is then strung over her to show everyone who she was. Landyn then finally shuffles in and the gates are slammed closed by a dozen men.

  Their first sortie is over.