“We have you trapped like rats in a box. Surrender! Lay down your arms and you will be allowed to leave with your lives!” The raider bellowed. He was wearing a fancy hat. Guess we found the officer.

  “We are Genuda Mercenaries. You know how this will go. Stop being a coward and fight.” Othai had her halberd firmly planted next to her. There was an air of indifference- which was just right for a mercenary. If the enemy decided to scram, so much the better. They could get paid and not have to fight.

  Sneaky lady. She looks so buttoned down, but the sneakiness is there.

  “We outnumber you!”

  “So?”

  “You have nowhere to retreat, mercenary!”

  “So?”

  “You think I won’t just burn you out? Save myself some future troubles?”

  “No.”

  Othai must have been pure misery to negotiate contracts with. What magnificent “Take it or leave it” energy. That’s the kind of “always be willing to walk away from a deal” mindset that makes, and keeps, fortunes.

  “Once we attack, no quarter will be given!”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Othai nodded along.

  Fancy Hat snarled. He had a long red feather sticking out of his hat brim. It looked dyed. Rocking up to the raid in counterfeit fashion. Shameful. At least he was smart enough to shout leaning up against the side of the barn. No way to get picked off by crossbows during the “negotiation.”

  “You know we will be on top of you the second we come around this corner. Your crossbows-”

  “Oh my God, do something or piss off!”

  “I will make certain you live long enough to regret speaking to me that way.” The raider was talking some good trash, but his body language was a lot more cautious. I could see he spotted the problem already. There were two large buildings on either side of the courtyard, a split rail fence in front and a plastered brick or stone wall around the back.

  If it was me, I’d send my crossbows around the back to lob arcing fire into the courtyard. The defenders could do the same, of course, but we could spread out a lot more than they could. Even if we mostly missed, we would thin out a lot of them and break up the formation, which would give our sword and shield guys time to clear the fence and get under the pikes.

  It would, however, mean leaving my crossbowmen exposed to whatever unpleasant souls might be lurking around back. But the raiders had the mobility advantage and could scout. They could make sure there weren't any troopers waiting in the bushes.

  The raider captain apparently felt that was too time consuming. He opted to form his shield guys into an approximation of a shield wall, stuck his pikes right behind them, and put his archers in the rear. The pikes were extended over the shields. It was a highly offensive formation with decent survivability, I thought.

  The shields were round and covered the torso well, with a metal bit in the middle. They might not stop muskets, but they would stop crossbows and pikes just fine, especially if they had support.

  There is a reason I work, technically, in financial reporting and not for the Army. Many reasons, actually. But not understanding small unit tactics would definitely have kept me out of the officer corps. Because the raiders weren’t the only ones with shields.

  The raiders formed up in a fairly sloppy formation and the Captain started counting them down with his fingers.

  “Surrender, and we will permit you to leave with your weapons and armor. You will never get such a good offer again!”

  “I knew you were weak.”

  The raider captain chopped his hands forward. The sword and shield raiders yelled and swung around the corner. And were slaughtered.

  It should have been blindingly obvious. The far end of the pivot would have to travel almost ninety degrees and travel dozens of times farther than the pivot point. And they clearly understood that, on some level. They stayed tightly bunched up, crowding each other, trying to keep covered by the shields as much as possible.

  Running directly into the fence, and the tall iron shields pressed up against it.

  The pavise crossbows didn’t give a damn about the shield guys directly in front of them- they shot over and around them at the pikes coming along behind. Meanwhile, the sword and shield raiders were getting pushed back, each met by two or three pikes, and often with a bonus pike coming directly at their face.

  Raiders, it turns out, are not very good at tight military formations, moving in formation, fighting in formation, and, ultimately, had the morale of damp bread. The fight lasted all of a minute. I didn’t even have the chance to send in my Awakened.

  The raiders retreated, leaving ten dead and twenty wounded. “Clean up the battlefield.” Othai’s voice was glacially cold. The crossbows fired, and the pikes stabbed.

  The raiders left thirty dead. Half their numbers, though none of them were crossbowmen. Or the captain. Sweet Christ, even the Mongols took prisoners.

  “No quarter accepted, Raider. YOUR WORDS!” Othai’s voice bellowed out, filling the air with the weight of her words. The raiders weren’t hanging around, and had already set off down the road.

  Running pikes and crossbowmen. Yeah. This wasn’t going to be complicated. “Rikka, Rache, slow them down and start picking them off. Don’t let them get set. Versai, Mrs. Hungry, you are up. Slaughter them. And you… what was your name?” I asked the Three Hander.

  “Karl, my Lord.”

  “Karl here will keep me safe and sound from any randos that might turn up. Get ‘em!”

  I watched the raiders leg it down the road. Fifty percent casualties in two minutes- they didn’t even look back to see if they were being chased. Maybe in a minute or two they would.

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  The pikes didn’t ditch their spears, I noticed, and the crossbowmen held on to their weapons too. So they were running, but they weren’t running. At least that was my guess. Not that it was going to matter in a moment.

  Rache came zipping up behind the rearmost crossbowman. She stretched out her saber, and with the trailing cut of a born trooper, she sent his head flying. The running pikeman ahead of him got his shoulder opened up. Another crossbowman got his neck sliced open. And then she peeled off, racing across the countryside on her ghostly motorcycle.

  “What the hell is that?! Shoot her, shoot her!” Yelled the captain. The raiders came to a halt, trying to get organized. If they managed it, they could make a decently tough to assault position. Alas, quick though they were, they weren’t quicker than Rikka.

  Knowing she would hear me, I quickly ordered- “Everyone, try to take the captain alive. We need more information!”

  Rikka decided that “alive” didn’t mean “uninjured.” She popped out of the shadow of a rock and shanked him five times in the back before whipping a dagger at one of the crossbowmen and fading away. The crossbowman got it in the eye. The captain fell down screaming. Nobody saw who did it.

  I don’t have any sympathy for these guys, but it was terrifying to watch. I can only imagine what it was like for them.

  It must have been a relief seeing Versai and Mrs. Hungry rushing up the road at them. That was a problem they could more-or-less understand. Maybe not the attractive older woman running at them with meat hooks part, but generally. The pikes swung around, trying to bunch together like they were trained to do. The crossbowmen were all over the place. They didn’t have big shields like my pavise crossbowmen did, and there was no one to tell them where to go. Most of them tried to run around behind the pikes, knocking the long spears to the side and creating chaos in the formation.

  Rache came back, and two more heads went flying. And now the crossbowmen didn’t know where to go. And the pikes were in chaos. And then Versai was on them.

  I had wondered how Versai intended to deal with twenty foot pikes. If they were formed up into a dense wall, even with her speed hack they probably would have been too much for her. These raiders weren’t in a wall. They were scattered. She dove in, letting the long shaft ride over her shield as she slid closer to the line. Then she was in, and it started raining gore.

  Heads, arms, legs, hands, entrails, all came flying out. Versai didn’t care what she cut. Someone was going to die regardless. Once they couldn’t pick up a pike or crossbow, it didn’t really matter how long the dying took. She was mostly done by the time Mrs. Hungry got into the mix.

  Mrs. Hungry’s attacks were terribly short ranged, but there was some magic in those hooks. Anything she hooked was meat. Her hook would lash out, snag an arm, and yank the whole screaming person into her cook pot. Never to return. “A real one pot meal.” The thought wormed its way through my ears. She kept smiling. Hook, yank, into the pot and onto the next victim. Just a housewife getting her shopping done while the sale was on. She had a big family to feed.

  It was over in barely a few minutes.

  “Othai, please join us. Leave the rest of the troops to defend the farm.”

  I walked over to the raider. Versai had searched him and tied his hands. My Three Hander Karl trailed behind me, looking faintly ill. He had seen it all, I’m sure, but my Awakened were… well. They were superhuman.

  “Alright, anyone with experience in interrogations?”

  There was a lot of shaking heads, though Othai did wiggle her hand a bit. Not good enough for me. I sighed and looked down at the captain.

  “Something you should know. In addition to fighting like absolute demons, one of my servants is a capable healer. So depending how this goes, I can either keep you alive and suffering, alive and healthy, or let you slip into a peaceful death. Or, well, a less horrible death. I guess peaceful is already out.”

  I scratched the back of my head. Some part of me was screaming, but I shoved it down.

  The raider captain laughed, an ugly, hacking noise. “True demons. I have seen true demons, and your servants don’t measure up.”

  “Matter of opinion, I suppose. So. What’s your name?”

  That got everybody giving me a look, the raider included.

  “What?”

  “What. Is. Your. Name?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Why do you care?”

  The raider shook his head. “I gave up the right to a name the moment I accepted a role leading our raiders. I am called Red Feather. For my feather is dipped in the blood of my enemies, a white feather turned red!”

  “Blood turns black when it dries, but you know that. What kind of fake J’s wearing… You know what? I’m skipping past that. Red Feather, leading raiders. Why are you raiding Verton?”

  “Loot.”

  “Nah, try harder.”

  “What is better than falling on a fat countryside, plundering crops, burning homes, carrying away the tastier womenfolk and hearing the screams of everyone else dying under our blades? What could be more pleasing to the eye than a family trapped in a burning home, the doors nailed shut as we share our rough wine and laugh?”

  “Are you hoping I’m going to be so pissed off I kill you early?”

  “How am I doing?”

  “Excellently. I’m going to have you healed, then tortured for a few hours. Well. Days, really. I’m not great at interrogation, so I think I’ll do better once your fingernails are ripped out, your teeth are drilled and one thousand pinky-nail sized bits of your skin are sliced off. Or whatever they are going to do to you, I’m really not an expert.” I stood and dusted my knees. “Mrs. Hungry, a Family Meal if you please. I think it would be quite fitting for him to be healed up with the flesh of his own troops-”

  “NO! NO! Not that! Not that! I’ll talk!”

  He had been sneering when I threatened to torture him. But the cannibalism scared him? He said he had seen real demons. I had a feeling I knew just who they were.

  “Hold off on dinner for now, please. Oh, Othai, do I owe Truso any indemnity money?”

  “Not a scratch on them, the lucky devils.”

  “Good. That’s good. Alright, Red Feather, let’s hear you sing. What are you doing out here?”

  “I was telling the truth- our job is to loot, to burn, to cause as much chaos and destruction as possible. But we aren’t retreating afterward this time. Our job is to destroy this land.”

  I grunted. That’s not how armies have historically done it. No point in conquering a land if you aren’t going to keep it. My theory was looking better and better by the second.

  “Why attack this particular farm? We checked the barn, it’s just seeds.”

  “Exactly. Seed grain. After we loot everything and burn everything, they will have no food. We will control the river, our raiders will cover the roads. There will be no food coming in from abroad. And if we burn the seed grain-”

  “Everybody starves.” You know what? I’m seeing a real recurring theme here. Fear, chaos, starvation, all that’s missing is a plague.

  I felt the thought settle in around me, and I gently pinched the bridge of my nose. I just had to go and think it. I couldn’t leave well enough alone.

  “By any chance have you been ordered to leave rotting carcasses out, and once they are ripe and maggoty, throw them into wells and rivers?”

  His head whipped around, staring at me in shock. “How could you know that? The curse arts of the demons should be-”

  “Oh god, we are pre-germ theory in this ‘verse. But the Monsters aren’t, clearly. Hell, maybe they are and genuinely believe they are sending tiny sickness demons in with the “offerings” of rotted meat.”

  Red Feather was looking seriously spooked right now. Karl had taken two steps back and dropped his hand to his sword hilt. Even my Awakened were giving me hard looks.

  “Oh fer- I’M NOT A WITCH! This was all common knowledge where I’m from. We devoted more money than this region earns in a century EVERY YEAR to combating this stuff, and that was just in my home city. The most rank, stank, condemned by the health inspectors commercial kitchen still has more “anti-demon” technology in active use than you poor yokels have ever seen.”

  If there is one trope I will not tolerate, it’s “Being accused of witchcraft because I wouldn't play along with local superstitions.” In this Tower Jonah Salik and Doctor Stone are heroes, and that’s final!

  I glared down at Red Feather. “I want troop numbers, where you are coming in from, I want to know every little thing you know.”

  “How much could a little officer like me possibly know?” He was getting weaker, bleeding out. We both knew he wouldn’t last much longer.

  “Talk fast, or it’s going to be time for a hearty stew of your subordinates.”

  “There are some five thousand of us from Hosk. But it’s not just us. We are just here to cut off Verton and start the famines and plagues. The real army is still assembling in Ko’Ras. Soon, they will march out and board their galleys. Then the true horror will descend on Verton. I am only thankful that I will be dead.”

  I looked over at Othai, who looked back with wide eyes. I mouthed “Later.”

  “How many is Ko’Ras sending? How many galleys?”

  Read Feather started to laugh, blood and yellow bile spilling out from him. “How should I know? They cleared our villages. They rounded us all up, and burned our houses down in front of us. I was lucky- my wife had died in the fighting. I have no one left for them to play with. To feed them. We were pushed out ahead of their armies and told that if any of us survived, when the land was wiped clear, we could rebuild. We would be given farms in the rich lands of what used to be Verton.”

  “They were lying.”

  “They always lie. Always. But it doesn’t matter. It’s hope. Every living adult from Hosk is coming. Our ships are burnt on the beaches. There is no surrender for us, and no retreat.”

  “Lies again!” Othai jumped in. “There are at least twenty thousand effectives in the Hosk Confederacy.”

  “There were. Now there are five thousand, or thereabouts. Sixty fewer, now.”

  He was almost gone. I looked over at my Awakened, and knew if I asked “What am I missing?” they would just tell me it was my job to figure it out.

  “What would hurt Ko’Ras the most? You want even a chance at revenge? What would hurt them the most?”

  “Let them starve.” I watched the light go out of his eyes. I… his eyes were wide open, staring up at the beautiful sky and the pain just left. They lost focus. They lost whatever spark kept us meat puppets going. That light of life. I felt like I should close his eyes, but I really didn’t want to touch a corpse.

  “We searched him?”

  “Yes, Tower Master.”

  I reached out with a trembling hand and closed his eyes. No explosions, no vanishing into a cloud of light. Just closing the shutters on the windows the soul flew out of.