1 Bonus Chapter
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A longsword drove into Griff’s back from behind, finding its mark clean in the small of his spine.
Griff felt the burn of it and spun with a wild swing of his own, cursing as he turned.
“Jerry!
Have you lost your mind?”
Because the man who’d struck him was Jerry, the one he’d trusted above every other man in his crew.
Jerry danced clear of the counterstrike, sneering back at him like a man who’d never done a wrong thing in his life.
“You’re the mad one, Griff.
Laying hands on a lord.
Throw your own life away if you like, but you won’t drag the rest of us down with you.”
He turned to Erwin next, loud enough for the whole cave to hear.
“M’lord, Griff forced our hand tonight, every one of us.
Cross him and he’d have killed us himself.
I’ll fight for you now, whatever it costs me.”
Erwin smiled and gave a slow nod.
“Good.
I believe he led the rest of you astray.
The offer still stands.
Whoever finishes Griff keeps every coin on this ground.”
Another sellsword swung in from behind Griff at that, seizing the moment.
The blade met him with a ringing clang instead of flesh.
It hadn’t gone in at all, and the man froze in shock at the sound of it.
Griff was wearing iron too?
Jerry shouted the answer before anyone could ask.
“He stole the mail off the two dead men!
Go for the joints, that’s the only soft spot on him now!”
That caught Erwin off guard for half a moment.
He’d had the two dead sellswords’ armor collected after the fight, meaning to have it cleaned up properly once they reached King’s Landing before folding it back into his own collection.
He’d found it too blood-soaked to bother with in the meantime.
Griff must have lifted it before anyone thought to check.
That explained where his nerve had come from to try this at all.
With even Griff’s most trusted man turning on him now, the rest of the sellswords, along with Griff’s remaining man, closed in together, swords raised, surrounding him on every side.
A man can only fend off so many hands at once.
However hard Griff fought back, mail or no mail, a few exchanges later he was bleeding from more than one cut.
The armor covered plenty, but never everything.
There were always gaps a determined blade could find.
Faced with the certainty of his own death, Griff laughed instead of begging.
“Ha!
My own fault, then, misjudging the lot of you so badly.”
All he got back for it was a chorus of curses, every man there calling him a stain on their trade, a coward beneath contempt, a man who’d more than earned whatever came next.
They tore into him with righteous fury, every one of them sounding for all the world like the most honor-bound sellswords who’d ever lived.
Between the lot of them, Griff went down at last.
Erwin found him on the ground still, chest heaving, glaring pure hatred up at him.
He walked over, and the sellswords stepped aside to let him through.
Standing over the dying man, Erwin spoke evenly.
“There’s an old saying where I come from.
The best swimmers are the ones who drown.
The best riders are the ones who fall.”
“A man who loves betrayal as much as you do was always going to meet someone who loved it more.”
He drove his sword into Griff’s throat and finished it there.
Six hundred experience came with the kill, exactly as Erwin had hoped.
His count now stood at nine hundred out of twenty-four hundred.
That surprised him more than a little.
Griff had been worth more than the bandit leader himself.
What accounted for that, he couldn’t say yet.
Erwin wiped his blade clean on Griff’s own clothes and looked over the sellswords still standing around him.
Every face turned toward him with open hunger.
He tipped his chin toward the ground.
“Go on, then.
It’s yours.”
They dove for the coins without a second’s hesitation, scrambling over each other like starved dogs.
Watching them claw at the gold, Erwin’s face settled into disgust.
He raised the greatsword without a word and caught Willem’s eye, along with the three sellswords still in mail.
Willem understood at once, and brought his own sword up.
An instant later, Erwin triggered Charge and drove straight into the men still scrabbling in the dirt, sending Jerry, laughing loudest of all of them, flying through the air, and burying his sword in the back of Griff’s other man in the same motion.
A scream.
A wet, choking sound.
The Seventh Legion plate lent enough weight to that Charge that Jerry sailed a good two or three meters before he hit the ground, coughing blood.
Just as Erwin had suspected.
Jerry had the other stolen set of mail on under his clothes.
The other man, the one caught from behind, didn’t even manage a sound before he dropped.
The rest finally understood what was happening, swords coming up, eyes wide with real fear now as they stared at Erwin.
“M…m’lord?
What…
what is this?”
“Wasn’t the deal that killing Griff earned us that gold?”
Erwin spread his hands.
“It did.
I promised you the gold, and you have it.
I never once promised I wouldn’t kill you after.”
“There’s nothing I hate more than betrayal.
As far as I’m concerned, a man who betrays once will betray without limit, given the chance.
You turned on me tonight because Griff talked you into it.
Give you the right moment down the road, and you’d turn on me again just as easily.
That’s not a risk I can afford to carry.”
“Fuck!
Knew it!
Not one of these lordly bastards is worth trusting!” one of them spat, fury plain on his face.
“Well then, brothers, we finish this the hard way!”
“The hard way!”
Between Griff and his two men, they’d turned six others, eight men total in the plot.
With Griff dead, and two more down to Erwin’s blade, five stood left with any fight in them.
On Erwin’s side stood himself, Willem, and the three sellswords in mail.
Erwin held off two attackers, giving ground as he fought, while the remaining three pressed Willem, who’d stepped up to help hold the line.
Seeing the three mail-clad sellswords still standing frozen, Erwin barked at them.
“You three!
What are you waiting for?”
That snapped them out of it, and they joined the fight at last.
With five now standing against five, and every man on Erwin’s side wearing iron the others didn’t have, there was little question how it would end.
It didn’t take long before all five turned traitors lay badly wounded on the ground.
On Erwin’s side, only one man had taken a shallow cut to the arm for his trouble.
Erwin walked the line and finished each one with a final stroke.
Only one had already died before he reached him, and stabbing a corpse earned nothing for the trouble.
Counting the sellsword and Jerry from before, six kills in total, worth fourteen hundred experience between them, roughly two or three hundred each.
That put him at twenty-three hundred out of twenty-four hundred now.
A hundred more, and he’d level again.
Erwin was starting to guess the pattern.
Experience seemed tied to how dangerous or how significant the kill had been.
An ordinary bandit was worth a flat hundred.
A sellsword ran well past two hundred.
And the cost to level kept doubling, near enough, every time.
Only level four now, and already he could hardly imagine what the numbers would look like ten or twenty levels further on.
Not a problem worth chewing on tonight, though.
He turned to Willem and the other three.
“All four of you did well tonight.
Willem especially.
You showed exactly the loyalty a man in your position should, right when it counted.”
Willem’s face lit with quiet pride.
“You’ve no cause to doubt me, m’lord.
Not after tonight.”
The other three muttered much the same, each in his own way.
Erwin nodded, satisfied.
“Good.
Hold to those words.
There’s nothing in this world I hate more than betrayal.
But loyal, brave men will never find me anything less than generous in return.”