There’s truth in the old saying, that once an army starts running, nothing short of the ground itself stops it.
The moment the bandit leader gave the order to fall back, that whole ragged mob ran like the devil himself was on their heels, each man faster than the last, none of them keen to be the one caught.
Erwin saw the retreat called and swung back up onto his horse at once, shouting the charge and leading the chase.
Whatever fight had been left in the bandits went out of them the instant they turned to run, and what remained of Erwin’s own men, sellswords and farmers alike, chased after them with real hunger, every one of them eager to cut down one more before the day was through.
Fifty silver a head bought a man plenty of motivation.
Erwin rode at the front of it all, his weapon swapped now for a long spear.
Mounted like that, spear cutting the air in wide, sweeping arcs like a dragon breaking the surface of the sea, he might have been Achilles come again, or El Cid himself sitting that saddle.
In the space of a few breaths, four bandits went down under his spear.
That earned him another four hundred experience, and with the two hundred he’d already gotten off the lieutenant earlier, it was enough to push him up a full level on the spot.
Delighted, Erwin checked his panel and found he’d picked up the warrior’s signature move.
Charge: A powerful charge at an enemy, dealing damage and stunning them for one second.
Damage scales with strength and charge speed.
Can be used while mounted.
Usable on horseback too?
The note in the parentheses only made him more eager to try it.
He turned toward a bandit further off and triggered Charge without a second thought.
His white courser let out a sharp whinny and shot forward under him, noticeably faster than its normal gait, closing the distance in what felt like no time at all.
Erwin drove his spear through the man’s shoulder and sent him flying, tumbling end over end before he hit the ground screaming, a sound raw enough to tear at the throat that made it.
Words couldn’t quite capture what Erwin felt in that moment.
A man was meant to fight from horseback.
That was the plain truth of it.
The rush of a mounted charge left his blood running hot.
He came back to himself soon enough, though, and called off the chase.
The bandits had scattered in every direction, vanishing into the hills and trees around them, and pushing further in after them risked walking straight into whatever traps they might have waiting.
At his word, the three sellswords and the rest of the farmers broke off the pursuit, grinning, and turned to clearing the field instead.
Willem’s riders arrived not long after, only to find the fight already finished.
“M’lord!
Forgive my lateness!
I’ll take whatever punishment you see fit!”
Willem rode up to him, guilt written plain across his face.
Truth was, Erwin’s own dawdling these past two days had bred a kind of complacency in Willem too.
He’d half convinced himself no bandits would show along this road at all, and let his own pace slacken to match.
Now Erwin had been ambushed after all, and his men hadn’t reached him in time to help.
Seeing Erwin standing there without a mark on him, Willem let out a long breath of relief, and swore to himself, quietly, that he’d never let his guard slip like that again.
Griff and his men watched it all with real surprise.
The field told its own story, farmers and two sellswords dead, and yet this lordling they’d written off as all show hadn’t taken a scratch, and word was he’d killed five bandits himself.
What struck Griff harder was the mail showing through the dead sellswords’ torn cloaks.
He’d known both men well enough to know neither could ever have afforded armor like that on his own coin.
It had come from their employer, plainly, and the thought soured fast in Griff’s chest.
His own skill outstripped every man in this company, and this lordling had handed mail to men beneath him instead.
With armor like that on his own back, he’d have cut down twice the bandits, easy.
Then there was the bounty.
Fifty silver stags a head, snatched up by men Griff didn’t rate half as highly as himself.
Once the field was cleared, Erwin had the full count in front of him.
Two sellswords dead on his side, eight farmers with them.
Fourteen bandits dead in turn.
Beyond the five Erwin had taken himself, the three surviving sellswords had each claimed two or three, and the farmers together had managed two more between them.
Erwin pulled a handful of gold coins from his belt and handed them to Willem to divide out by merit earned.
Cheers went up from every man about to see some of that gold.
The sight of it only soured Griff’s mood further.
After that came a small funeral, the dead buried nearby under stacked stone and cut timber.
Erwin stood before each grave a moment, and true to his word, asked after any family left behind, setting aside compensation to be sent on later.
None of them had ever served a lord like this.
Most nobles treated men like them as livestock, and a dead one earned no more mourning than a live one.
Erwin had paid every debt owed and grieved men most lords wouldn’t have looked at twice.
It was respect, plain and simple, something none of them had ever been given before, and it won him real devotion from every man watching.
Griff and his men only sneered at the display, calling it theater.
Every lord was cut from the same crooked cloth in their eyes, and this was just loyalty bought cheap from a foreign nobody with no roots here to answer for it.
Where did all that gold come from anyway, if not squeezed from men like them in the first place?
Griff had long since decided the only things worth trusting in this world were the sword in his hand and the coin in his purse.
…
By the time the funeral ended, the light had all but gone from the sky, and the company found a sheltered spot nearby to make camp for the night.
That gave Erwin the chance to question the bandit he’d sent flying with Charge earlier.
A bit of persuasion later, he had exactly what he wanted.
The location of the gang’s den.
He called the sellswords together after that and laid out his plan.
He meant to strike while the iron was still hot and finish this gang off for good.
The bounty stood as it always had.
Fifty silver a head for every bandit killed.
But for any man who brought one back alive, so that Erwin could pass judgment on these murderers himself, as tradition demanded of a lord, there’d be an extra ten silver stags on top of it.
At the promise of even more silver to be earned, every man in the company came alive with fresh purpose.
…
…..
🔥
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