“We’re under attack!”
The moment the first arrows flew, the sellsword beside Erwin was already shouting the alarm.
Another blew hard on the whistle hanging at his chest, and the sharp note cut clean through the quiet of the kingswood.
Small mercy, most of the arrows went wide.
Only one unlucky farmer took a shaft through the shoulder.
“Kill them!”
The bandit leader came charging down the slope at the head of a handful of riders, and the rest of the gang poured down both hillsides on foot behind him, howling like wolves and dead men both, working up as much noise as they could manage.
The farmers panicked first, faces gone white, already looking for a way to run.
“Hold!” Erwin’s voice cracked out over the noise.
“Don’t run!
They’ve got horses under them, you think you’ll outrun that?
My men are two miles back.
Hold a while and they’ll be here!”
“Pick up whatever you can swing and fight!
Fifty silver a head for every bandit killed!
Wounded or dead, every one of you gets paid regardless!
But the first man who runs gets not one copper for his trouble!”
The farmers’ faces went through something complicated at that, caught between the promise of coin and the plain fear of dying.
In the end, the coin won out.
Hoes, shovels, sickles came up in white-knuckled grips, and the farmers turned to face the charge with something between terror and grim resolve.
The five sellswords drew their longswords and closed ranks around Erwin, faces set hard as they watched the bandits close the distance.
The bandit leader frowned at the sight.
His war cries and that first volley hadn’t broken this lot and sent them scattering like they should have.
Instead they’d formed up, shoulder to shoulder, waiting.
He threw up a hand, and the men closing in held their line rather than charging straight through.
“You’ve got no small nerve, robbing a lord in broad daylight.
Looking to die today?”
Erwin got the first word in, shouting it straight at them.
The bandit leader only laughed.
“Save the act.
We know exactly who you are and where you came from.
Even that little hiring show of yours at the inn, we’ve heard all about it.”
“You’re no lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
Kill you, and there’s no army coming to avenge it.
Besides…”
He paused there.
“Men in our line of work don’t scare easy at the word lord.
If those fine lords of yours had half the teeth they claim to, we wouldn’t have held this stretch of the kingswood as long as we have.
Isn’t that right, boys?”
That last part he threw over his shoulder at his own men.
The whole gang broke into laughter at that, cursing Erwin and every noble they could think of, talking over each other in a jumble.
The gist of it came through clear enough.
Lords never cared whether men like them lived or died, so why should they care about lords in return?
All they knew was that killing a fat lamb meant food in their bellies and ale in their cups.
Once the business was done, they melted back into the trees, and there wasn’t a useless lord in the Seven Kingdoms who could touch them for it.
What were they going to do, burn the whole kingswood down looking for them?
“As for those sellswords sitting two miles back, we’ve got better than thirty men here against your twenty, most of them farmers at that.
Plenty of time to finish the lot of you before they ever arrive.
Or we take you alive and use you as leverage instead.”
“Lose your paymaster, and you think that rabble’s still fighting for you out of love?”
“Get to it!
Quick and clean!”
He didn’t waste another word after that.
His hand came down, and the bandits surrounding them surged forward like wolves let off the leash.
Close quarters called for close weapons, so Erwin swung down off his horse, and while no one was looking too closely, traded whatever he’d been holding for the Grand Marshal’s greatsword.
The fight was on.
The bandits’ real target was obvious enough, Erwin and the five men around him.
Half the gang peeled off to deal with the farmers, while the rest closed in tight around Erwin’s group, concentrating everything on the man they actually wanted.
Outnumbered as they were, neither Erwin nor his men showed much worry over it.
Every one of them wore iron mail.
The bandits, despite their numbers, wore nothing better than crude leather, some with no protection at all, armed with broken swords or whatever else they’d scraped together.
The sight of Erwin hefting that greatsword stopped more than a few of them cold.
Where in the seven hells had a blade like that come from?
The width of it alone, the edge throwing back sunlight sharp enough to make a man’s scalp crawl, was enough to answer the question of what happened to whoever stood in front of it when it came down.
Nothing good.
The bandits carried a rough mix of swords and spears between them, but not a single warhammer among the lot, the one weapon built to crack armor open.
Common men rarely bought hammers, costing as much steel as they did to forge, and swinging one properly took a build few of them had.
Even wealthy lords usually chose a longsword over anything heavier.
Only a rare few, men built like King Robert himself and with coin enough not to worry over the cost, ever bothered with a hammer at all.
That was beside the point, though.
What mattered was that the moment Erwin brought that greatsword up, the bandit leader started taking him seriously.
He split his men accordingly, ten against the remaining sellswords, and kept five, himself included, to handle the man in full mail carrying a blade that size.
Just as he’d feared, Erwin’s first swing came fast, brutal, and stronger than any blade had a right to be.
The leader caught it on his own sword and felt his whole hand go numb from the shock of it.
Not a blow he wanted to meet head on twice.
“Careful, all of you!
This one hits harder than he’s got any business hitting!
Don’t trade blows with him straight on!
Man’s wearing that much iron and swinging a blade that size, he’ll burn himself out in a few minutes.
Once he does, we crack his shell and send him off to meet the Seven!”
Erwin only smiled at that, cold and thin.
Exactly what he’d expected.
He’d already noticed, back in his first fight with the three bandits, that his strength ran higher than it should have.
His sheet had shown fourteen points of strength, and by every rough measure he knew, an ordinary man’s strength sat closer to ten.
Fourteen put him well past what any of them could match.
And the armor he wore, heavy as it looked, weighed no more on him than ordinary clothes.
No burden at all.
Its protection hadn’t suffered for it either, holding just as strong as any regular mail, stronger even.
Strength beyond what any of them had, and none of the weight that should have come with it.
That was exactly why he could swing at these men without a shred of hesitation.
If anything, he felt something close to enjoying it.
And the bandits’ own strategy, dragging this out, played right into his hands.
His men were two miles off and closing on horseback.
The longer this went, the better it suited him.
So Erwin threw himself forward instead of holding back, swinging that greatsword in wide, relentless arcs, pressing the five men in front of him rather than waiting for them to come to him.
The sudden pressure sent all five stumbling backward on instinct, trying to wear him down through distance rather than steel.
For a man who’d never learned a single stroke of proper swordplay, swinging wild and raw, he carried enough force behind every blow that he had all five bandits giving ground, step after step, and for the moment at least, the fight belonged to him.