The morning comes and shines cruel light on the drunks sleeping in the courtyard of the keep. Slowly they moan and stretch and wake, tumbling and turning away from the rising sun, trying to go back to sleep and keep tomorrow at bay.

  “Do it.”

  Lady Vulpes of Winchillas says in a cold and uncaring tone to a servant who then splashes a bucket of cold water over Landyn’s head.

  Landyn jumps up like a cat that had its tail stepped on and punches the air twice before realizing how stupid he looks as Vulpes muffles her chuckles behind him.

  “Ha! Wha! Oh! Sorry! We- We drank a little too much ye-”

  All this ‘exercise’ has done nothing but upset his hungover stomach. He runs to the servant and grabs the bucket from his hand to barf in it.

  “Ugh, thank you for the bucket.”

  Landyn mutters as he pats the servant on the shoulder with a sticky hand that stinks of rum.

  “You are… certainly entertaining. Not many would dare act this way in front of me.”

  Vulpes says with a sly grin.

  “Ah, sorry my-”

  “It’s alright. My grandfather was a sellsword. I know this is how you mourn. Just, be careful with the drinking. Grandfather died from all the drinking after grandmother passed away.”

  “...Alright.”

  Landyn responds after a long pause with his head held low, like a scolded puppy.

  “Anyway, that’s not why I came for you. I need you. Come with me.”

  She orders him with certainty. Her firm gaze leaves no room for questioning, so he follows along.

  After the door closes behind them, silence falls for just a second before Thorvald starts snoring again.

  “How the fuck did he not wake up?”

  Kale asks, dumbfounded and jealous at once.

  Vulpes walks quickly, with two guards behind her and a stumbling and struggling Landyn behind them. As they weave through the corridors and up sets of stairs there is never a break in her pace, despite the fact that the hungover sellsword is falling behind more and more.

  After climbing a narrow spiral staircase for what seems like forever, they reach the top of a wide defensive tower facing opposite the enemy camp. The view is breathtaking and heartbreaking. Long rolling fields of grain and crops scratch on forever on one side and forests flank and climb a snow capped mountain with gentle slopes and cruel cliffs which no doubt claimed many lives over the long years. Most of all, one could see villages dotting the land, but despite the frigid weather no smoke stacks rose up into the sky. Everyone was either dead, hiding or fighting.

  Vulpes points in the distance to a long plume of white smoke, barely visible against the clear sky. It is segmented and shaped into what is obviously a code, for no natural fire would cause a smokestack like it.

  “That is a signal from Treblin’s army. I found a small notebook in the chamberlain’s office that details what it means. It means ‘we attack tonight, join the offensive’.”

  Landyn hunches and puts his palms on his knees, heaving and wobbling from climbing the long stairway.

  “You do realize -hah- I would believe without -hah- seeing the smoke for myself, right? -hah- Hell, the smoke’s so high -hah- we didn’t even need to climb up here. I bet we could see it from the garden.”

  Vulpes smiles teasingly and answers with foxy eyes.

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  “Well, it’s important to get some exercise in the morning.”

  Landyn waves his hand in the wind like he is swatting away her words.

  “Ah, you just wanted it to feel more dramatic, don’t lie.” he chuckles and Vulpes hides a smile behind her fingers. “Anyway, what did you want from me and mine?”

  “This time, you and your men will join my personal guard in the center rear. You will get horses and will be expected to reinforce the flanks as necessary, under my orders.”

  Vulpes looks nonchalant about handing them more fortune than most would see in their life, Landyn’s jaw is aiming for the floor.

  “H-Horses? Warhorses? Six of them??? That’s worth more than what we’d make if the siege lasted another year!”

  “They’re on loan, Sir Tanner. I expect them back at the end of the battle. …If you manage to keep them alive through the melee.”

  “S-Still, thank you! We’ll take good care of them!”

  Landyn is smiling so wide that it looks as though his old scars will start bleeding again, but somehow, to Vulpes, he still looks charming. She smiles back at him with warmth and hope.

  They talk about the specifics of the coming battle for a while longer, joking and flirting all the while. At the end, they both sigh and their eyes linger on one another, but neither has anything left to say. Not anything they would dare give voice to.

  —

  “The hell’s taking Tanner so long?” Kale grumbles as he cracks open a sunflower seed between his front teeth. Him and Eagle Eye are sitting on a set of steps coming down to the garden, a pile of rind from sunflower seeds already forming at their feet.

  Eagle Eye spits out the rind of a seed from his lips and answers him with a sly grin: “Maybe he’s getting lucky?”

  “Hah! A princess and a sellsword? Not even my nan could think up that kind of fairytale!” Kale laughs and crunches a seed in between his molars.

  *SLAP*

  “OW!”

  Landyn was right behind them and simply walked between the two and gave each a slap to the back of the head as he went past.

  “Stop talking bullshit about our employer in her own castle. You’ll get us kicked out, and then we won’t get to ride warhorses!”

  “Warhorses?!” Thorvald jumps up from the nearby bench he was pretending to be asleep on. “We’re getting warhorses?!”

  “Indeed we are my friend. They’re just on loan for the coming battle though, so make sure you ride them till they drop.” Landyn smirks as his men listen in disbelief.

  “Wait a second, they’re giving us free reign over warhorses?? The beasts that are as tall as this fucking ginger mountain” -he points to Thorvald- “and as expensive as a house? Those kinds of warhorses?!” Viper asks.

  “Well, I haven’t seen them yet, but I believe they’re some of the best they’ve got. Get dressed up, men! Let’s go see our steeds!”

  “Gotta impress the mares, eh?” Kale nudges Landyn with his elbow as he jokes.

  —

  The men inspect the horses, wearing their least bloodied clothes so as to not seem improper at the noblewoman’s stable. Kale’s horse picks him as his rider by chewing on his hair in the middle of an attempt at a serious conversation, making everyone break out in laughter.

  After a quick trot around the rather small inner courtyard, the men say farewell to their horses and return to their lodgings to prepare for battle.

  Night falls while they are still honing blades and scrubbing the rust out from the joints in their armor.

  Kale and Viper have finished first and now they sit on the ramparts, their feet dangling over the tents of refugees. Since the start of the siege this place has not known quiet, so much so that one wonders if they’d even hear the enemy approaching even if they were to march up to the beat of wardrums, but up on the wall the distant conversations and moans of pain and hunger and even the tired snoring turn into a whispering chorus to which their ears slowly grow deaf to.

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?” Kale barely breaks the silence.

  “What? How he’s not around anymore?” Viper lays back on the uneven planks of the rampart and sighs at the moon. “I know. I miss that hare-lipped prick.”

  “Yeah. That too…” Rabbit’s eyes focus on a bonfire around which a dozen tents or more are huddled. “It’s just weird how it goes on.” The logs crackle and spark and turn to ash, slowly but surely.

  “It always goes on, friend. It will go on without us too, so there’s no need to dwell on it. We’ve seen it go on without hundreds, maybe thousands of others, why would we be special?”

  “It just hits harder with Rabbit, you know? None of us really liked him, but he’s been around for so long. He was one of the only things that never changed in that constant churn of the Knight Flayers.”

  “...If you think about it, it never actually goes on. Not in the same way. When a leaf falls in the wind, the branch won’t sway in the wind as much; by just a little but. When a wave hits a rock, it wears it down; by just a little bit. When an animal dies, the forest becomes quieter; by just a little bit. When a man dies, the world becomes different; by just a little bit. It goes on, but different.”

  “I guess… But leaves grow back and animals have cubs all the time.”

  “Thanks, smartass.”

  “I think we’re more like the rock. Without Rabbit we’ll always be just a little less.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Unlike the rock, we can adapt. It takes time, but we’ll be fine. We’ve been fine before.”

  “It goes on, but different. Huh.”