Dawn is about to break when war drums start their song to herald coming destruction.

  The defenders feel every beat of the drums in their chests as their lungs vibrate to the rhythm and an unnamed feeling fortifies them.

  The besiegers feel their hearts drop deep into their stomachs as every beat of the drum is like a cruel hammer knocking them down further and further into their guts. Their nightmares have come true, the relief army is here.

  The thumping grows louder as hooves gallop to the beat of the drum toward the camp of the besiegers. At the foot of the hill upon which the camp sits the horsemen turn and start to circle, beating their chests and roaring and shouting and hollering, wilder than the beasts they straddle.

  The half-asleep besiegers breathe with relief when they look downhill at the band of warriors which circles them. There are only six riders at the foot of the hill, whereas the besiegers have more than two thousand men. These six riders are not the skirmishers of Count Treblin’s great army, they are just the Knight Flayers.

  As the besiegers start to throw stones and shoot arrows at the sellswords, Thorvald stands to one side of the saddle, his back towards the sky and his butt in the wind.

  “HAHAHA! EAT MY ASS YA FILTHY MONGRELS!”

  Curses and arrows all aim at him, but they can’t touch him.

  It’s not long before they get the desired response and a small sortie sets out on horseback to intercept them, a knight among them and a mage overlooking from the walls.

  The mage waves her hands around and the men get weary. Thorvald falls asleep, his ass still bare and his horse still galloping. Landyn rides closer and slaps him awake.

  “Quit messing around! We’ve got work to do!”

  A marksman hiding in the bushes takes a shoot at the mage and knocks his oversized grey hat off his head. The mage quickly retreats behind the safety of the battlements.

  After only a minute of riding everyone’s gone silent. The shouting and noise of the camp is far behind them and now only the moon lights their way. There’s only the sound of hooves tearing up the dirt and the horses breathing heavy.

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  Thorvald gets an idea. He sees a hollow log on the side of the road, a dead branch sticking up just about at hand level. As he gallops by he grabs the branch and hurls the whole thing behind him, taking out two horses, but his own horse stumbles from the sudden weight.

  Among the cracks of many bones breaking behind him, one crack comes from below him as his horse breaks his leg against a stone buried in the road.

  “Shit!” Is all his brain full of ideas can muster now.

  It only took a second for the guys to figure out what has happened, but in that time they have ridden another twenty meters ahead.

  Kale is the closest to Thorvald, but the knight is also riding towards him, lance leveled towards Kale, not the giant pinned beneath his own squirming horse.

  Kale is undeterred. He leans forward in the saddle until his body is parallel to the horse’s neck and he holds his shield in front with one hand, and his warhammer’s at the ready in the other.

  Breaths throw clouds of fog. Hooves like wardrums. Eyes like tigers. One man of steel against another. Both have shaped themselves into arrows and plan to clash head on. Insanity.

  Clash. The lance shatters. The shield holds. The stirrups shear off.

  Kale is sliding back in the saddle, but he catches the saddle with the rim of his shield. In the same moment, his warhammer strikes the knight. The beak sticks so deep into his cuirass that it is ripped from Kale’s hand.

  “You owe me a warhammer!” Kale informs Thorvald with a smile and an outstretched hand.

  “You got it! Just get me the fuck outta here!” Thorvald grabs Kale’s hand and jumps on the back of the horse as they turn around and start booking it.

  Meanwhile, the knight wounded by Kale, coughing up blood and shell shocked after losing a jousting match against some peasant with a hammer, gets walloped over the head by Viper with a mace.

  The knight falls and… Would you look at that. A brand new horse to replace the one they lost. What luck!

  Thorvald hops over to the knight’s horse and they ride off. The small sortie has lost almost half their men in this short time, so they retreat.

  “HAHAHA!” Landyn laughs with adrenaline. “We’ve already killed two of their knights just skirmishing! Saul! You’d better have been holding that damn rag up high when we rode by!”

  This whole time Saul had been riding with them, holding the flag of the Knight Flayers, made from a barely held together old bedsheet with poor quality paints rather than dyes. ‘Rag’ is an apt description.

  “Yes, Sir Tanner!” Saul salutes like a soldier.

  “Attaboy!” Thorvald congratulates him.

  They return alive. A feat in its own right.