Bonus chapter, even though we didn’t quite reach the goal.
But hey, you guys got close enough.
😏
…
The order struck everyone as strange, but the farmers were used enough to doing whatever a lord told them without question, and they set to filling the crates without a word of complaint.
“M’lord, what exactly are you playing at?”
Griff, who’d trailed out after the others, couldn’t help himself either.
Filling good crates with rocks and dirt, for no reason anyone could see.
Erwin looked at him, face unreadable.
“Don’t ask what isn’t your business to ask.
Do all sellswords make a habit of prying into their employer’s affairs?
I pay you to do a job, not to question me over every last thing.”
Griff’s face soured, and he shut his mouth.
Willem, standing nearby, had the good sense not to ask anything at all.
Whatever order Erwin gave him, he simply carried it out, no questions asked, and that was exactly the kind of man Erwin found himself satisfied with.
Watching the farmers work, Erwin caught Willem’s eye and turned back toward the inn.
Willem hurried after him, and on the way past Griff, allowed himself a small, mocking look.
Griff’s expression only curdled further at that.
Up in his room on the second floor, Erwin pointed Willem toward the cured venison, hard bread, and a jug of Northrend mead sitting on the table.
“You’ve earned a meal.
Eat something.”
Willem needed no second invitation, dropping into a chair and digging in without ceremony.
But the moment he’d swallowed a good piece of the venison and washed it down with the mead, his eyes went wide.
He’d never tasted anything like it in his life, especially that mead, golden as honey in the cup, finer than any drink he’d ever put to his lips.
“M’lord, what is this?”
“A mead we make plenty of back home.
Good, isn’t it?”
“Better than good!
I’d wager it beats even the wine out of the Arbor!”
That was exactly the answer Erwin had been hoping for.
The day before, testing which mounts he could still call up, Erwin had found that two of them, a great tundra mammoth and a sturdy pack yak, still answered his call, and the merchants who traveled with them had come through right alongside their beasts.
Which meant Erwin could buy whatever those two merchants had for sale.
The food and mead in question had come straight off the mammoth’s own trader, tucked away in his pack ever since.
He’d already pulled some of it out for his own breakfast that morning.
Giving Willem a taste now was simply to see whether it suited a native palate.
By the look of things, it suited one just fine.
If it truly outdid Arbor wine, as Willem claimed…
then there was coin to be made selling Northrend mead in this world.
And that wasn’t all either.
Both merchants carried other food and drink besides, and picking the right stock to sell could turn into real profit for him down the line.
A whole jug of that mead had cost him all of fifty coppers.
“Enough small talk.
I called you up here because there’s something important I need to tell you.”
Willem straightened at that, his face turning serious.
“You already know my men and servants and I crossed more seas than I care to count to reach Westeros, only to be scattered by a storm just short of our destination.”
“What was left of my household and I made land at Massey’s Hook, only to lose our way in the kingswood on the road to King’s Landing.
That’s where those cursed outlaws found us.
They killed my servants and made off with several chests of my belongings.”
“I mean to see every last one of that gang dead.
That’s the whole reason I came here and hired you all.”
Willem was on his feet at once, bowing low.
“M’lord, your orders are my purpose from here on.
I swear it on the Seven, Willem Storm will not betray the faith you’ve placed in him.”
“Good.” Erwin clapped him on the shoulder.
“Sit, finish your meal.
Once you’re done, bring me a few sellswords you’d trust with your own life.
I’ve something for the lot of you.”
“No need, m’lord, I’ve eaten my fill!
I’ll fetch them straightaway!”
Willem was through the door and pounding down the stairs before Erwin could say another word.
Before long, he was back, five sellswords in tow, knocking at Erwin’s door.
“Come in.”
The six of them stepped inside, and their eyes went wide at once.
Laid out across the floor were seven or eight sets of chainmail.
“This is…?”
“Armor.
For you.
Take whichever set fits, and once it’s on, throw a cloak over it.
I don’t want anyone seeing iron underneath.”
“At your command, m’lord!”
Every one of them lit up at the sight.
In this world, a proper suit of mail, greaves and full helm included, didn’t come cheap.
In the old knight’s tale Martin had once written of the years before this story, a plain, unadorned suit of armor ran to about four gold dragons, better than eight hundred silver stags.
Men like Willem and his fellows, living the way they did with a blade at their hip and no notion of whether the sun or a grave would find them first, rarely kept enough coin between jobs to buy much of anything.
Owning a decent set of leather already counted as being well equipped in their trade.
A proper suit of metal armor was the kind of thing every sellsword dreamed of and few ever owned.
With it, a man’s odds of walking away from a fight, and his chances of winning one, both climbed sharply.
An armored man against an unarmored one held every advantage worth having.
Now here was a lord generous enough to hand them full sets outright.
Small wonder they could hardly contain themselves.
It didn’t take them long to pick out armor that suited them and get it on.
Willem, ever thoughtful, had already sent one man down ahead of time to fetch six worn old cloaks, and the six of them pulled their own coats and cloaks over the mail once it was strapped on.
Unless a man got close enough to lay hands on them, there’d be no telling from the outside what they had on underneath.
The armor, of course, had come out of Erwin’s own transmog collection.
As before, the system held more than just Character and Bag.
There was a Collection page too, holding Mounts and Transmog, Pets, and a Toy Box.
Only Mounts and Transmog could actually be opened, though, and like his mounts, anything in his transmog collection could be pulled out physically into the world, so long as it carried no trace of magic.
Anything even faintly enchanted stayed locked away, out of reach.
So there’d be no riding into battle wielding something like Ashbringer or Sulfuras and cutting a swath through everyone in his path.
That particular fantasy was off the table for good.
What Erwin had pulled instead were seven or eight sets of the plainest, lowest-tier chainmail he owned, meant for exactly this, arming the men he’d hired for the day.
Facing down a bandit gang meant taking every precaution he could to guarantee the outcome.
With mail on their backs, these sellswords would fight considerably better than they had any right to expect from their pay.
“To keep this road as safe as it can be, and on Willem’s word for the lot of you, I’ve had this armor brought for you.
I trust you’ll hold to your oaths and your honor as sellswords, and not give me cause for regret.” Erwin made sure to remind them of that much.
“You’ll have no cause for regret from us, m’lord!” they answered eagerly, one after another, without sparing a thought for where exactly the armor had come from in the first place.
Willem had his own doubts about that.
He’d been in this very room not long before and seen no armor anywhere in it.
But by the same rule he lived by, do as you’re told and ask little, he let the question go unspoken.
“Good.
Off with you, then.
Keep that mail out of sight.
The moment the innkeep’s wagons come in with the supplies, we ride.”
“At your command, m’lord!”
…..