Bonus Chapter sponsored by:
[MARCO69]
“Die!”
A bandit came at one of the sellswords from behind, driving his blade toward the man’s back, already picturing the spray of blood that was sure to follow.
Instead, the strange resistance that met his blade left his mouth hanging open in shock.
Iron?
Under that cloak?
Before he could make sense of it, the sellsword spun his own blade around and drove it straight through the bandit’s throat.
Blood came out of him like a spigot torn open.
Another bandit saw his chance and brought his sword down on the same sellsword’s arm.
The clang of steel on steel rang out, and his face went just as slack with disbelief.
The sellsword only grinned, whipped his blade free, and drove it into the man before he could recover.
“This one’s wearing iron under there!” the bandit screamed, too late to matter.
The others swarming the rest of the sellswords caught on fast after that.
Numbers on their side or not, the odd blow that landed clean simply wasn’t getting through.
Whatever these men wore under their cloaks, it wasn’t cloth.
With mail on their backs, so long as a blade didn’t find the gap at a joint, none of the five sellswords took real damage, and they fought harder for it with every passing moment.
The bandit leader wasn’t faring any better on his end.
He’d counted on Erwin being the only one in real armor, figured a company this small would fold in minutes.
Instead he’d run headlong into a wall.
Every one of those five sellswords wore iron, and the armored lordling himself was proving just as hard to chew through.
Five of his best had been working Erwin over for a good stretch now without gaining an inch.
Every blow that slipped past his sloppy, untrained swordwork found nothing but steel underneath, no matter how many times they’d caught him from the side.
Worse, the greatsword swinging in wide, furious arcs kept forcing them back on their heels, none of them willing to risk standing in front of it and finding out what it did to flesh.
It was like a lion trying to bite down on a hedgehog.
Nowhere soft to sink teeth into.
And after several minutes of this, Erwin showed no sign of tiring at all.
That alone was enough to fray the bandit leader’s nerves.
Every minute this dragged on brought those trailing sellswords closer, and closer meant trouble.
Finding out even the sellswords wore mail had already ruined any chance of finishing this quick and clean.
They weren’t walking away with nothing to show for it, at least.
The men working over the farmers had cut down a few of them by now, though they’d paid for it too, a couple of bandits left with their skulls cracked open by a well-swung shovel.
Truth told, past a core of a few dozen real fighters, most of this gang was nothing more than farmers who’d picked up weapons instead of hoes.
Farmer against farmer came down to nerve, plain and simple.
And Erwin’s own farmers were starting to learn that these bandits bled just the same as anyone else, once they fought back hard enough.
Their fear thinned out fast, and the bandits found themselves stuck, unable to finish off men they should have overrun in moments.
Watching it all unfold, the bandit leader felt the first flicker of doubt creep in.
Then a scream cut through everything.
One of the sellswords had caught his foot on a stone underfoot and stumbled, and a bandit seized the opening to drag him down.
Another closed in fast and drove a blade straight through his face where he lay.
That was bad enough, but the sellsword beside him, thrown off by watching his friend die like that, let his guard drop for half a heartbeat.
A bandit archer who’d crept in close put an arrow clean through his cheek.
The pain tore a scream out of him, and whatever composure he had left went with it.
The men closing in finished him where he stood, blades falling in a ragged mess until he stopped moving.
Two of his men, gone in the space of a breath.
Erwin felt something cold settle in his chest at the sight of it.
The bandit leader, on the other hand, felt his spirits lift at once.
Only three sellswords left standing meant more hands free to close in elsewhere.
Cracking open this iron turtle of a lord wouldn’t take much longer now, or so he told himself.
“Keep at it, lads!
Cut these bastards down, then finish the lordling!
Gold dragons all around after this, wine and women besides!”
The bandit lieutenant shouting loudest among them let out a wild howl, and the rest answered with howls of their own, as if they could already feel the coin in their hands.
The three remaining sellswords went pale at the sound of it, eyes cutting toward Erwin.
Erwin let out a roar of his own and threw everything he had into a charge, straight at the lieutenant who’d been shouting the loudest.
That man, second only to the leader himself, had been the greatest threat to Erwin all fight, landing more than one blind-side hit that only the mail beneath his armor had turned aside.
Riled up now, practically foaming for it, the lieutenant even turned his back on Erwin long enough to slap his own arse in mockery.
Erwin took the opening without hesitation, putting every ounce of strength he had into a single swing of the greatsword.
More than that, he called on Heavy Strike, level two.
Heavy Strike: a blow struck with all the weight behind it, its force bound to the strength behind the arm that swings it.
The lieutenant’s little display hadn’t been recklessness.
He’d meant to goad Erwin into swinging blind, hoping anger would open a gap his own skill could exploit.
He’d earned that confidence honestly too, a man who’d survived more fights than he could count and picked up real swordwork along the way.
So when Erwin’s roar came with a wide horizontal cut behind it, the lieutenant didn’t panic.
He brought his own blade up to block it, calm as anything, already stepping forward to close the distance, meaning to catch the block, drive in close, and drag Erwin down where the others could finish the job.
What he hadn’t counted on was exactly how much force rode behind that swing, or how little his own crude, hastily forged longsword could do against a blade like the Grand Marshal’s.
A single clang of steel rang out.
Then blood, more of it than any one blow should have produced.
The lieutenant’s sword, his arm, and the rest of him besides, all went the same way, cleaved clean in two by the greatsword.
Whatever sly confidence had been on his face a moment before froze there, replaced by pure disbelief, before he dropped.
Every man on that field went still at the sight of it.
One stroke, through a man and the blade he’d raised to stop it, both at once?
What kind of strength did that take?
“Who’s next?”
Erwin stood there with the lieutenant’s blood sprayed across his face, turned, and let out a roar of his own, eyes burning with something close to murder as he swept the field around him.
Every man within sight of it took an involuntary half step back.
“For Lord Erwin!
Kill them!”
One of the sellswords was first to find his voice, shouting the cry and driving his blade into the chest of the bandit distracted enough to give him the chance, then kicking the man off his blade.
The bandit went down clutching the wound, a look of pure resentment on his face as the life went out of him.
The other two sellswords seized the moment too, cutting down two more bandits between them, roaring the same words back.
“For Lord Erwin!”
Even the farmers, still locked in their own scrappy fight against the lesser bandits, caught fire at the sight of it, swinging their tools with a kind of reckless fury, howling like men who’d stopped caring whether they lived through it.
The whole fight turned on its head in that instant.
The bandits started looking for a way out.
And underneath it all, faint but growing, came the sound of hooves.
The sellswords caught it first, shouting with something close to joy.
“Reinforcements!
Our men are here!”
Every bandit face fell at once, every eye turning to their leader.
He knew it well enough himself.
They’d run straight into a wall this time, and there was no cracking it.
No choice left but to run.
He shot one last hateful look at Erwin, then bellowed the order.
“Fall back!”