The Price of Survival
Around lunchtime, Isaac and Chira returned from the forest on horseback, the mounts lent by the village. The atmosphere in Kurib Village felt like a house of mourning. Villagers stood idle, clustered around the chief, doing nothing but sighing.
“They coming down?”
“Yeah.”
“How many horses they riding?”
“None. All on foot.”
“Figures…”
Horses were precious. A bandit crew that lived off a border village would hardly keep many. They probably kept a few in reserve, but saw no need to waste them on a simple raid.
“Let’s move.”
The Muslan party rose as one.
“You’re leaving?” the chief asked.
“We are.”
Their faces and voices were calm. The chief sensed something in that stillness.
“Come back alive.”
“We will. And there are things you need to prepare.”
“?”
“Water. A great deal of it. Warm. And food—bring as much as you can.”
With that, they walked away, looking far too ordinary for a band heading to face dozens of bandits. No proper armor, weapons that looked worn. Yet they moved without a trace of fear. It was impressive—and unsettling.
‘Is that what mercenaries are? Fearless?’
The villagers soon learned otherwise.
They never saw the fight itself. The mercenaries vanished into the trees, and battle erupted inside. Moments later a roar tore through the forest, so loud it reached the village. The clash of steel, the screams—every sound carried clearly because no one in the village dared speak.
The villagers understood then: there had been fear. They could feel it in their skin—the raw, wretched cries of men facing death, the terrible music of life meeting its end. What echoed from the woods was not battle. It was death itself.
Curses gave way to ringing steel, then to broken screams that sounded as though they were vomiting out their souls. The sound went on and on, terrifying in its finality.
“Having fun?”
Stern, the bald, three-white-eyed bandit leader, watched his men struggle and spat the words. His vanguard had charged in hot, yet four defenders around a single tree were holding them off. Three of the defenders focused purely on protection; the silver-haired man among them fought with an almost leisurely air.
Stern felt the wrongness at once. Muslan was a strategist. Even when he appeared relaxed, every move was calculated. That was why they had called him the Blood God in the martial world. He had fought too many battles not to know the most efficient way to end this one.
His chosen tactic was simple: spread terror. Bandits had no real courage to stake their lives. They were the lowest of those who lived by force—ragtag, undisciplined, and soft when the strong turned on them.
So Muslan did not kill the first bandit cleanly. He seized the man by the neck, forced him to face forward, then reached around and opened his belly from sternum to navel. The scream that followed was loud enough to split ears. Muslan did not stop there. He plunged his hand into the wound, dragged out the spilling entrails, and stared straight at Stern while he did it.
Cruelty is a weapon, especially against men who had only ever preyed on the weak. Fear robbed them of movement and judgment. While they faltered, Wiris’s arrows flew. Stern himself finally stepped forward, but his men were already sluggish.
Muslan drove the wedge home. He split Stern vertically from crown to chest in a single stroke. The bandit leader never managed even one exchange. Seeing their leader halved, the rest broke. Some shook so hard they could barely stand.
Muslan regarded them with cold eyes, his body painted in Stern’s blood.
“Drop your weapons.”
A simple command. Not one bandit disobeyed.
When the sounds of fighting ceased, every villager turned toward the forest. In those few minutes their faces had aged years. Their fate would be decided by whoever emerged.
People came out. The chief stared, eyes wide. It was not the Muslan party. For one terrible moment the villagers’ faces went ashen—until they realized the figures stumbling from the trees were the bandits themselves, bound in a long, sausage-like line.
A murmur rose. Voices returned. Then the mercenaries appeared. The others looked much as they had when they left, but Muslan at the front was drenched head to toe in blood, as though he had bathed in it.
Only then did Chief Mayhem truly grasp what Muslan had meant when he said numbers did not matter.
More than twenty prisoners. The chief and Muslan needed to decide their fate.
“What will you do with them?”
“You know we’re keeping the spoils?”
“I know. So speak. What’s best?”
“Kill them.”
“As expected.”
“But we won’t do it ourselves.”
“What? Why?”
The chief’s eyes widened.
“The contract was only to repel the bandits. The band is broken and the prisoners are taken. Our part is done.”
“Then we must kill them?”
“You said this wasn’t the only village they harmed.”
“At least two others hold grudges.”
“Call them. Some will recognize these faces. Let them decide who lives and who dies. Any who survive, I’ll take.”
“How?”
“I have plans. First, summon the neighboring villagers.”
“Very well. We’ll do as you say.”
“One request. Lend us a cart.”
“A cart? Why?”
“We still need to visit the bandit camp.”
The party moved quickly. They gathered every weapon, then marched to the bandit stronghold and stripped it of anything worth coin.
“Stern lived like a king here. Look at this bed—soft as anything. Even has a tub.”
“No horses, though.”
“Horses?”
“Yeah. Thought there’d be one or two. Most valuable thing they could’ve had.”
There were no horses, but the stores of food were impressive.
“Winter’s coming. You all know that?”
“We know.”
“We’ll winter here.”
“Is that all right?”
“With this much food we’ll have plenty left.”
“So we do nothing all winter?”
“We do what must be done.”
“What?”
“Training.”
“Training with you is basically playing around.”
Muslan had never pushed them to brutal physical limits; their stamina was already high. Now was the time for finer technique, not exhaustion.
“We’ll spend the season on that play. You’re all still lacking.”
“Leader, you’re just too strong.”
“My strength doesn’t matter. You need to grow stronger so you don’t get hurt.”
So you don’t die—he left the last words unspoken.
The executions began. The villagers needed no encouragement; their hatred for the Stern band ran deep. They knew every face. The decision was quick: kill them and burn the bodies.
Yet five prisoners survived the judgment. No one recognized them. They were little more than boys, too young and too frightened to have been real fighters. They claimed they had only tended the camp. Their eyes, their trembling, their speech—all confirmed it. The villagers, ordinary farmers who had already spent their rage on the executions, chose to spare them.
Muslan took the five into the band under one condition: five years of unpaid service. After that they would be free. They had no reason to refuse; it was merely a change of masters.
They did not yet understand that Muslan’s plans went far beyond simple labor. Five young, cost-free recruits had fallen into his hands. Right now they would only hinder a fight, but with proper shaping they could become something more. And they had nowhere else to go. Fail to adapt and they would die.
‘So I can use them however I please.’
He had served in armies before. He knew exactly how to remake men into useful tools.
A faint smile touched Muslan’s lips. The five prisoners felt a chill they could not name.