“So you mean to tell me that your… soldiers… will be up for the task?”

The Adelunan count fidgeted with the embroidery at the hem of his velvet coat as he looked at the leader of the company he had hired. He could have been a handsome man, tall and well-built as befitted a seasoned soldier, but his face showed a hardness that men who knew him before the plague struck would not have recognized. A refugee in the south, he had spent the better part of fifteen years selling the services of his company to the petty lords of Adeluna to settle their disputes. Now his face was hard, his cheeks hollow and covered with dark, coarse stubble, and his dark eyes glinted with barely contained distaste. Everything he had loved about the south was gone but he was not welcome home, so he would fight for the pampered lordlings of Adeluna, take their silver, and dream of a day when he could go north.

“Well…?!”

Galin looked at the lord and spat contemptuously at his feet. “If we weren’t, lord,” he said, his tone harsh but controlled, “we would not be here and you would not have paid us so generously. Now kindly stay here so we don’t get that lovely velvet coat stained and let us be about our work.” Without waiting for a reply, he hauled himself heavily into the saddle of his destrier and trotted toward the line or archers he had hidden in the scrub brush along the side of the road. One of them, a man ten years older and at least a head taller, was leaning against an oak, idly whittling a branch down to nothing. He smiled when he saw Galin and nodded in greeting. Owen Cooper had learned, after a few broken ribs and a busted nose, that Galin was no man to be trifled with and, when the Company was leaderless after the plague, accepted Galin’s command happily. “Most men can’t think til their next pot of ale, see,” he would tell the new recruits from the North, “but our Galin, he’s a two pot thinker, he is. Knows where they’ll be before they do, then we do the Maker’s work.” There was a hardness about his friend since the plague a few years past, losing everyone like he had, but sometimes, when he was in his cups, Owen could still see the mischief there in him, buried beneath the grief and anger. “Fine morning for a bit of harvesting, eh? The lads are ready, so they are, and waiting for your word.”

“Remember Owen, don’t kill His Lordship. We can’t ransom a corpse. And the Count, our generous benefactor, has said whatever we can take from the caravan is ours as well, the spoils of war. So aim true, spare the horses, and for the gods’ sake, don’t kill the damned Duke.” Galin leaned from the saddle, still unsteady after learning to ride in his later years, and clasped Owen’s hand. “Happy hunting, my friend. Maybe this time we will finally have enough to…” Galin left the last words unsaid, smiling with a grim determination. “Wait for the convoy to pass the mile marker, Cooper, and then send the bastards straight to hell.”

“Aye sir, it would be good to be home,” Owen replied softly as Galin rode to take his place with the squadron of mounted men at arms waiting in the trees. Maybe, he thought, if they could return to the Highlands and clear Galin’s name, it would wipe away the darkness in his soul. Until then, though, they would wreak bloody hell on the lords of the south until the nobles ran out of coin and grudges. Cooper picked up the long yew stave of his bow and bent it with a grunt until he could hook the hemp rope over the horn nock and grinned. That day, he thought, would never come.

_____________________________________________________________________

Hours later, the Count of Wherever, Galin could not readily remember after a few cups of wine, nor could he actually bring himself to care, still could not understand what happened. The Duke, trussed like a pig, was in the cellar of the company’s small fort and a note demanding his ransom had been sent on ahead with one of his surviving men-at-arms. The Count had received what he had demanded, the personal chest and effects of the Duke and Galin guessed that among the parchment, there was something that could lead the Count to a short drop and a sudden stop at the hands of the Queen but it was all the same to him.

“Alright, your lordship, once more for the punters in the cheap seats,” Galin chuckled and began to arrange the head of the banquet table to resemble the battlefield they had just left. The men gathered around, making small corrections and arguing among themselves as Galin recreated the highway, trees, and the positions of the troops from scraps of meat, rolls, and a goblet of wine to represent the captured Duke. “So, here,” he indicated a few scraps of beef, “are our archers, and here,” he said, pointing to a triangular group of rolls, “are my men at arms. The wine and the chicken bones are the Duke’s column.” The Count nodded, craning his neck to see.

“Well, your lordship, when the column, the chicken bones, that is, made it to here, at the mile marker on the Queen’s Road, they were right abreast of the archers. Now you ask me how twenty-odd men with bows can stop armored men-at-arms, knights even? They do it with this.” Galin put an arrow on the table, its tapering steel head pointed at the count. “Bodkin point, see? Slides through mail like a needle through linen. So even their men at arms, they may as well have been buck arse naked for all the good it did them. And once you’ve got a few men at the head of the column down, men and horses, that is, and the same at the rear, they’ve got nowhere to go.” Galin bunched the bones together around the goblet.

“And now it’s less than a hundred yards and the arrows won’t miss, so they’re getting cut down like summer wheat. Now the Duke, he’s got proper plate armor, the best Egjora can make. These arrows may not kill the bastard, but they will sure ring his bell a bit. So the Duke, he’s getting his men picked off, he decides to make a break for it, see? Owen’s got the good sense to tell the bowmen to slow their shooting, to look like they’ve run short of arrows. So the Duke gets whatever men he can and makes a dash for the head of the column and safety.” Galin pushed the goblet down the table with his left hand and then pushed the trio of rolls into its side with his right. “And that’s when we hit ‘em, when they were panicked and running scared. Cut our way to the Duke, got his surrender, and your chest. Speaking of, my lord, there’s a chest you’re owing to me. It’s in the storehouse like we agreed?”

The Count, still a bit queasy from the sight of the slaughter and hearing it replayed in front of him with such relish, nodded. “All in gold, Adelunan crescents, nothing clipped, nothing light,” he sputtered and Galin gave him a rare smile as he filled the count’s cup.

“Oh I believe you, your lordship, or you’ll be seeing one of these again, very, very soon.” He patted the war arrow lovingly a moment then gave it back to one of Cooper’s men. “Now my lord, men, ladies… Enjoy the feast. We’ve done well today and you deserve it. But if any of you dozy bastards think you won’t be in the saddle tomorrow, nursing your sore head from the warmth of your bed, you’ll learn, from me, that you’re sorely mistaken.” The men laughed as Galin left the hall, not because they did not believe the threat, but because they had learned, some faster than others, that Galin was deadly serious. When he gave them liberty, they could drink like lords, but tomorrow they had to ride out to negotiate with a merchants’ guild and it would not help if half the men were hanging insensate from their saddles. So they drank, not to excess, but just to its boundary, laughing, singing, and brawling until the wine overtook them and they drifted, one by one, to sleep.

Galin, as was his custom, took the first watch at the fort’s small gatehouse, letting the men enjoy their good fortune. The count’s chest of coin was enough to give each man a year’s wages in a single day, though Galin knew that most of it would vanish down ale pots and in dice games. His he saved, as he always did, for his journey north, saving every bent copper he could for that day. The night was cold and he pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as he leaned against the rampart. These were the moments, he thought, where he could almost feel them, the ones he lost, as though they were just a step away in the darkness, and it ate him alive. He was relieved when he heard a shout from the courtyard and heard Cooper bellowing for him.

Galin followed the men’s firebrands to the storehouse and ducked under the low door frame and into the stone cellar. He could see a struggle but trusted Cooper could handle himself, and besides, there were ten other men there in varying stages of sobriety. After a loud thump and a few choice curses, Cooper dragged a woman at the end of a rope, he hands bound, and kicked out her knees when she was in front of Galin. Men leaned closer, their firebrands illuminating her face, and Galin laughed. She was young, a few years younger than he, and no warrior, from her clothes, so that made her either a whore or a thief, and whores did not usually sneak into locked buildings where iron-bound chests of coin were kept. He stooped down and rocked back on his heels so he could look her in the eye with a cold, humorless smile.

“So, what do we have here, lads?”

Twelve. Twelve silver.

The coins made a sad, empty sound as a raven haired woman plunked them back into a small leather pouch. Twelve silver to last her until she found another mark - make that ten, as she pulled two back out and handed them to the tavern maid who walked back to her with another mug of ale. She sat off to the side, positioned so she could see nearly every patron in the establishment, hoping that there would be one that stood out amongst the crowd, but it was a fruitless effort. She sighed, taking a long drink from her mug, slouching back in her chair slightly.

Times had not exactly been easy for the pale-skinned woman. Though her appearance put her in her early twenties at most, even she could not be sure of her age. In fact - she wasn’t sure of much of her past at all. Not much more than a year ago, she had been found outside the city walls of Adeluna, lost, alone, and confused. The only thing she knew was her name, Katja - no surname, no home land, nothing.

The elderly couple that had found her in such a vulnerable state had taken her in - they were farmers who had been traveling to the city to sell their goods. They clothed her and fed her along with room and board, asking only that she help around the farm in return. It seemed a decent bargain to Katja, and she was grateful that they were so generous.

Unfortunately, a clan of bandits attacked the farm in the middle of the night. Katja had managed to slip out of a window undetected, hiding in the chicken coop until the bandits had taken what they came for, leaving the old couple slaughtered in cold blood. The next morning, Katja had fled to the city, alerting the city guard of the atrocity that had taken place - but they had no time to listen to a poor-looking girl, nor did they care about the murder of an old pair of farmers.

Rather than heading back to the farm, Katja had stayed in the city - and it seemed she had a knack for going unnoticed. She had a pretty face, which helped her blend in, and a slight frame, which helped her to be quick. It was there that she realized those qualities came in handy as a way for her to earn some coin - a least enough to survive. Unfortunately, the methods in which she obtained that silver were less than ethical, and she had to keep a low profile. Taverns were a particularly easy place, as most of the taverns in Adeluna had an inn above them. She would spot a patron until they drank enough to head back to their room, and sneak up in her own time. Picking the lock was easy with the tools she had, and she would relieve them of whatever valuables or coin they had.

Trade had slowed in Adeluna as of late, and that left a sour taste in Katja’s mouth as it left her coin purse empty. Thus, when she heard a drunken group of soldiers bragging about the haul they were about to make, she froze halfway through taking a drink of her ale, her ears focusing in on what was being said.

It was this very act that led her to the predicament she currently found herself in - hands bound, being dragged by a rope. She struggled to stay on her feet. She whipped her head to one side, a braid coming to rest on her shoulder, and made an attempt to fiddle with the braid in an attempt to retrieve a small concealed dagger hidden in the plait. However, that was no longer of concern as a boot connected with her knees, sending her down to the ground. She let out a grunt as she did so, glaring up at the man she had been tossed in front of through narrowed blue eyes.

In response, Katja struggled momentarily against her restraints before she spat on the ground in front of the man addressing her. One of the men that had dragged her in proceeded to tell Galin the event that had unfolded, in which they had caught her in the middle of picking the lock of one of the strong boxes they had liberated during their most recent task. It was followed with a few lewd comments. Rather than crying out in distraught fear, Katja remained silent, holding her head high as she awaited whatever consequences would arise from her actions, a stoic smile spreading across her lips. "Just looked like an awful lot of silver for your men to carry," she said. "Just trying to do my civic duty and lighten the load, so to speak," she added. Her eyes scanned the group surrounding her before they fell back on the newest arrival, her smile faltering as she saw the look in some of their eyes. "Get on with it," she said through a sigh, casting her eyes to the ground.

Dermot, one of Cooper’s archers, casually scratched the pox scars on his face and tugged at the rope holding the prisoner so her head jerked back before answering Galin. “Well sir, you knows I was on guard here, watching all vigilant-like. So I hears a noise, see, like a wee mouse, but I ain’t never seen a mouse trying to get into a crate of good silver. Grain, aye, that sort of thing, but silver ain’t no use to a mouse, says I, so I go to have a look, and have I found but this wee mouse of a girl trying to open on the strongboxes all secret like. So I grabs her up and trusses her up for yourself, sir, like a proper present. And she’d make a proper present, so she would, so long as you unwrap her first. Looks like there’s plenty there for us to enjoy, if you see my meaning, eh sir? You’d have her first, of course, but me and the lads wouldn’t mind a second round, complete the celebration proper, you ken?”

Galin stood up slowly, ignoring the would-be thief for a moment and looked at the poxed archer. He was a good soldier and could put an arrow shaft through a bracelet at two hundred paces, but at the moment, Galin was considering what he had not-so-subtly suggested. “So you’re saying I’ll have her first and then you lads take turns to properly remind her of the cost of trying to steal from us, eh Dermot? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

Dermot shrugged and looked at the woman again. “Well, she’s a thief, ain’t she? Needs punishing and we need a bit of fun, right lads?” A few of the other men murmured, though it was not sure if it was in agreement or simply curiosity about Galin’s intentions. Owen looked at Galin, his grey eyes filled with concern, but Galin did not meet them. Instead, he took a step toward Dermot and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Interesting idea, Dermot. Now, would you mind telling me in what bloody world I will stand around and watch my soldiers raping a fucking woman? Please, enlighten me, you pox-faced son of a whore.” Galin growled as he spoke then grabbed Dermot’s other shoulder for balance as he drove his knee hard into the man’s groin. Dermot made a strangled mewing noise and dropped to his knees, vomiting on the stone floor. “Anyone else want to see how I feel about Dermot’s idea? No? Good. Now get back to your posts or your quarters.” The men slowly drifted away, two of them dragging the prostrate Dermot out of the storehouse, leaving Galin, Owen, and the prisoner alone in the flickering torch light.

“So,” Galin said, fishing a key out from under his tunic, “this is what you were after? This silver?” He turned the key in the lock and after a series of clicks, the latch released and Galin pushed back the heavy, iron-bound lid. “This is the stuff dreams are made of,” he said, almost in a whisper and Owen leaned closer with a torch in his hand. The light glinted off the coins and Galin swore violently. “That fucking bastard,” he spat and lifted a handful of the coins from the chest. They were Adelunan silver crescents but they were anything but good coin. Some were clipped, some so old that they were worn thin, and some, he suspected were debased with other metal to make up the difference. In other words, the Count had lied and left before his treachery was discovered.

“Cooper, look at this. The bastard lied and gave us worse coin than an Adelunan prostitute keeps for change. Damn his eyes.” Galin stood up and began pacing and Cooper, well used to his commander’s temper, let him pace, keeping his eyes on the captive woman. “We have to hit him, Coop, you know that. Can’t let folks think that we can be taken in by a fop in a velvet fucking jacket… But we can’t march the whole damned company after him. It’s got to be quick, violent, and scare the living piss out of him…” Galin turned abruptly to the woman.

“My name is Galin Ochiern, some call me Sir Galin but I think it’s a load of bollocks. This is Owen Cooper, commander of the archers. You just tried to steal from us and we take that a bit seriously, as you may guess. But someone’s already done that, stolen from us, and now you have a chance to keep your hand there. Because if you don’t take the chance, we will take your hand, just sure as you’re breathing. But if you help us get what’s ours, you’ll keep the hand and keep working for us a while until we feel a bit less aggrieved by your attempted theft.

“So, I have two questions. What do we call you, Madame Thief, and will you be taking me up on my offer or losing one of those hands?”

Katja let out a pained noise as the man holding her restraints pulled back on the rope, her head violently rocking backward. The next few sentences that the illiterate underling spoke cause panic to arise within her, and she struggled against the restraints once more. The idea of being raped by a group of soldiers did not exactly sit well with her. She realized, however, that struggling against the ropes was doing nothing more than cutting the skin of her wrists, and she ceased, watching the man who had just arrived with a cautious eye as he stood up, addressing the man that had suggested her violation.

She had not expected the events which followed to unfold, a small smirk making its way onto her face as she watched Dermot take a knee between the legs, spilling the contents of his stomach to the floor beneath him. The smirk did not stick around long, as the rest of the men retreated at the command of the new arrival, leaving only he and Katja and one other man behind. A sick feeling crept into her stomach - was he going to follow suit with what the one had suggested, and just didn’t want to share with the rest of them? It seemed unlikely, considering the reaction he had towards the suggestion itself, but the fear was still there.

She watched silently as the man retrieved the key hidden beneath his clothing, unlocking the very chest she had been keen on breaking into. She could have spat some remark or hasty plea, but she saw no point. Her heart raced as she saw the contents, silently chastising herself for having been caught. She had been so close to liberating the contents when she’d been found - another minute or two and she would have had it. Soon, however, a rather angry string of curses jolted her out of her self-hatred and back to the scene at hand. She almost laughed. Here she was, bound and probably about to be executed, or worse, and she had been trying to steal a chest full of damaged, hardly tradeable coin.

For the next several moments, Katja found her body wracked with a bit of fear as the pair of men discussed what had taken place, though the fear increased as she was addressed directly once more. She cowered back a bit, the rope that had been used to drag her and keep her in place laying discarded on the stone, but she made no attempt to flee as her hands were still bound rather tightly, and she didn’t think they would let her get too far.

“Katja,” she said, her voice quiet and slightly shaky as she spoke. She revealed no surname, as she wasn’t sure she had one in the first place. It was clear that she was still a bit unsure about how the situation was going to unfold, as she waited for a few beats before answering the rest of his question. “I’m rather attached to both of my hands and I would prefer keeping them attached to my arms,” she began, clearly attempting to sound as confident as possible. “I assure you, I meant no personal offense by attempting to take your… coin,” she said, her eyes glancing back to the chest of shoddy silver. “I didn’t plan on taking much. I’ve hardly eaten anything in a week, and my coin purse is rather empty - walking cliche, aren’t I?” she said, laughing weakly. “‘Honest sir, wasn’ gonna’ take more than but a few coppers, me sister’s layin’ weak in the gutter!’” she said in a mocked voice. She shrugged her shoulders, twisting her head from side to side to stretch out her neck now that there was no tension from the rope.

“I’ll work off my crime, just tell me what it is you need me to do,” she said, nodding at Galin. “Normally, I don’t get caught,” she said offhandedly, as she assumed that ‘helping them to get what was theirs’ would entail putting her skills to good use. “Not to be greedy after you’ve so graciously spared me both life and limb, but I don’t suppose you could spare a bit of ale, or even just a skin of water? Got a nasty bit of dirt in my mouth from the lovely transport your men have given me.”

“Katja. Ain’t a northern name, that’s for sure, but we won’t hold that against you. Our lads, more or less, are from the Highlands and have washed up down here for a variety of reasons. Sure, there’s an odd Adelunan and for a few months we had a Mamlak bastard, black as midnight he was, but it’s mostly us northern savages. Don’t expect much, but we will treat you fairly if you treat us the same in return.” Galin bent down and untied the knot that bound her hands. “If you work with us, you’ll be fed, sheltered, and paid, same as any other soldier. I don’t expect you to stand in with the men-at-arms, being a wee slip of a thing, but you’ll serve in ways Owen and I can’t.” He tossed the rope back to Owen and motioned for Katja to follow him as he left the storehouse. “Coop, have Maria send some of the ladies to my quarters with water for a bath. Katja here smells like the south end of a northbound horse and it won’t do at all to have the newest recruit bowling anyone over with their stench.”

Galin led the newest member of his company back to the main keep where he still kept a suite of rooms. They had once belonged to a minor Adelunan lord who had rebelled against his liege lord. The company had been contracted to remove the lord and instead of a regular sort of payment in coin, the fortress, if it could be called that, and the surrounding lands were given to the Company to use as a base of operations and revenue. The local farmers and tradesmen were nervous about the uncouth northern men at first but found their taxes fair and their courts just, and so now they lived content in the cluster of houses outside the curtain wall. Galin had wanted to leave the chambers after the plague, give them to Cooper and his wife, but his friend had refused, saying that a commander would not be confined to a tiny chamber when his subordinate lived in comfort. So he remained in the room with its reminders of his loss, sharing the space with the ghosts of the past and his regrets, waiting for it to hurt just a little bit less.

“There aren’t really women on the rolls of the Company, Katja, just the wives and sweethearts, so until we figure out a living situation, you’ll have these rooms and I’ll move myself to the barracks with the lads. And don’t start protesting, I don’t want the damned rooms anyhow. There’s a draft,” he said, somewhat unconvincingly, as he pushed open the door. “The bed’s through there, that door, and I’ll leave the key for you. This main room will be used for planning and the like, so you’ll see me around more often than not, but the bedchamber’s yours and yours alone.” He walked past his cluttered desk with its maps, tax rolls, and logs, and pushed open the door to the bedchamber. “Now, I see you haven’t got a proper bit of armor and need something more than… whatever it is you’ve got in that braid you were playing with back there.” He pulled a small chest away from the foot of the four poster bed and brushed the dust from the top, tracing the L etched into the lid for a lingering moment, then flipped it open. Inside were women’s clothes and armor, all well-made and maintained, and sized for a woman of close to Katja’s stature.

“Take what you need from here,” he said brusquely, leaving the chest open for her. He dragged a matching chest from the side of the bed into the study outside. He would take it to one of the other rooms in the fortress later, he thought, as a throng of women started marching into the room with buckets of steaming water. “The ladies have drawn a bath for you,” he said and kicked the half of an ale tun that served as a bathtub in the corner of the room. “I will leave you to that and there’s wine on the table near the bed. I remember you said you wanted something to drink. It isn’t the best, but it’ll do better than dust and cow shit, I hope. I’ll return when you’ve finished and we can speak about how you will be of service in the coming days.”

While the women fussed over the new, dirty-faced girl, Galin lifted the iron-bound chest onto his shoulder and stomped out of the rooms, leaving them to their own devices. Down the hall, nearer the noisy kitchens, was a small vacant chamber that had belonged to one of the men-at-arms who had left the company to seek his fortune in the unrest in the north in the last year. It suited Galin perfectly, with its small writing desk, bed, and wash stand and none of the fancier amenities of the lord’s quarters. Once he stashed his chest by the bed, he turned down the hall to the kitchens to make up a plate for Katja. He cut a few pieces of ham from a haunch hanging near the fireplace and added some fresh bread, cheese, and olives, and another flagon of wine. The one thing he would admit that the southern realms outclassed the northern in was cookery and his exile had only confirmed this, making him a lover of the variety of flavors aside from boiled cabbage and salt beef. Popping one of the olives into his mouth, he returned to his former chambers and, without thinking, opened the door to the bedchambers as he had a thousand times before. Katja, he realized a moment too late, was not as quick a bather as he was, and was still stark naked in the bath.

“Maker’s bollocks, my mistake,” he stammered quickly and stepped back into the study. “When you’re not naked as the day you were born, I have some things to discuss. I will just wait here and see if I die of shame before you finish the bath. I’ll bet it’s a close run thing.”

“Not sure where the name’s from, if I’m to be honest,” she confessed. “Been in Adeluna as long as I can remember,” she added, and while her memory only spanned back so far, the statement was far from false. She was sure she had come from somewhere - just not sure whether or not Adeluna was her hometown.

Frankly, Katja could not blame Galin for his comments on her appearance. After all, she hadn’t enough coin to get a decent room in quite some time, which meant little opportunity to bathe oneself without breaking into someone’s home midday when they were away. Of all of the ways her failed attempt at thievery could have gone, she would not have imagined in a myriad of years that she would be offered a bath of all things. She remained silent, nodding when appropriate and making small noises of comprehension. She didn’t want to push it, after all, so she snapped her mouth closed when he told her not to protest the offer of living quarters. Her eyes scanned the suite as the pair trekked through it, and she followed him through the doors into the bedchamber. Self consciously, she grasped at her long plait as he commented on her attempt to retrieve something within it. “Dagger,” she said quietly, turning her attention to the contents of the chest that he had opened. It seemed that she would be able to find what she would need within it.

After he had finished his explanation, she nodded in an effort to show Galin she understood. After he had hoisted the other chest onto his shoulder and made to move, she realized she had yet to thank him for being merciful in their encounter. “Thank you,” she called after him, though she was unsure as to whether or not the words would reach his ears. When she turned from the doorway, however, she was immediately swarmed by the women who had come in to bring the water for her bath. After a moment where they began to attempt to fuss with her dirty, ragged clothing and her unkempt hair, she made a bit of a face, holding her hands out for a moment before shouting at them to stop. “I’d rather bathe myself in private, if you don’t mind?” she said, attempting to sound as polite as she could. The ladies took their leave, and fortunately for Katja none of them seemed perturbed by her request to be left alone.

When silence had fallen over the bedchamber, Katja took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, thanking her lucky stars that she had not been maimed, killed, or worse that evening. Before anything, she walked to the table that sat beside the bed, pouring herself a decent helping of wine and downing it rather quickly. She swished it between her teeth a bit before swallowing. Galin hadn’t been wrong - it was nothing special, but it wa better than what her mouth had been filled with. She set her empty cup down and walked toward the steaming wash tub, quickly stripping her rather ragged clothing from her form and lifting herself into the water, sighing audibly in content as she felt the heat of the water wash over her. She dipped her head beneath the surface, wetting her hair, and reached for the small bar of soap that had been placed for her, proceeding to scrub days of grime from her skin and hair.

After all was said and done and she felt much cleaner than she had several minutes before, Katja reclined against the edge of the wash basin, stretching her arms out on either side. It wasn’t luxury comfort, but the water still held heat and it felt wonderful - she was going to enjoy it for as long as she could, since she had a feeling the tasks that Galin was going to set forth for her wouldn’t exactly be enjoyable. She closed her eyes for a moment - only to wrench them open at the sound of the door swinging open and Galin entering what no more than an hour previous had been his bedchamber, and had now become hers. Her immediate reaction was a sort of mixture between a shout and a gasp, and she drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms about them in an attempt to cover herself. For a split second, the panic and fear she had felt earlier returned, until Galin retreated almost as quickly as he had entered - it had clearly been an accident.

When Galin had left the room, she was quick to climb out of the wash tub and dry herself off, padding quickly over to the chest of attire. She fished out a tunic and some pants, both seemingly in much better condition than the clothing she had come in, which lay discarded on the floor - she was still rather unsure what to do with that, but would find out eventually. She picked up a leather chest piece and arm guards that she found in the chest, shutting the lid and setting them down on top for future use. Knowing she had taken long enough already, she walked back into the main room, allowing her hair to fall in damp twists about her shoulders. Her bare feet felt cold on the stone floor, but she wasn’t about to pull on the nasty boots she had just removed from herself, and she hadn’t bothered to find any in the chest just yet.

“Sorry to have taken so long. Been quite a while since I’ve had a proper bath,” she admitted. “Glad to see you’ve not expired from shame.” At that particular moment, she saw the plate of assorted foods he had brought in, immediately stepping towards it and grabbing some of the ham with her bare hands, tearing into it with her teeth. She swallowed the first bite and was about to take another, pausing just before and turning to look at Galin. “I, well. I really haven’t eaten in a while - that wasn’t a lie,” she said sheepishly, her cheeks reddening slightly as she realized that the food hadn’t been offered to her. “Apologies if the food was meant for you, and not for me,” she added, but when there was no protest she ate a few more things rather quickly.

When she had eaten enough to where her stomach was no longer giving her hunger pangs, and she had a half-full cup of the wine he had brought in clutched in her hand, a rather serious expression befell her face. “You’ve been… awfully kind to me, considering hours ago I tried stealing from you,” she said, her face looking mildly concerned. “That only leads me to believe that what you’re going to ask me to do is stupid, dangerous, difficult, or a combination of the three. So which is it? What am I going to have to do for you?” she asked, taking a drink of her wine with a contemplative expression on her face.

“I noticed,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve got eight year old boots that smelled better and I’ll wager that the leather’s cleaner than you were.” He was about to comment about the unfortunate accident moments before when she ripped a piece of ham from the tray and tore into it like a savage animal. Instead of interrupting to apologize for his mistake, he walked over to the sideboard and poured himself a cup of the dry red wine he had come to enjoy during his sojourn in the southern lands. As much as he wanted to return to the north and clear his name, he was, if he was perfectly honest with himself, strangely content in the south, despite its strange ways and soft people. “And the food is for you,” he said, sipping at the wine as she returned to savaging the trencher, “and even if it wasn’t, I am afraid that I would lose a hand if I tried to take any of it now.”

While she was eating, he took a good look at her for the first time without the grime of the streets covering her. With her hair wet, in half light, he could even see a touch of her in Katja, the woman that owned the clothes in the trunk. Galin turned away a moment so Katja could not see the tears that pricked at the corners of his eyes. When he heard her slowing her attack on the food, he cuffed his eyes then turned back to take a seat across the cluttered table from her. “I am kind to all sorts of criminals. You don’t get to lead a company of free soldiers without doing it. Hell, even Cooper was set for a short drop and a sudden stop in the north for stealing sheep, and here he is, leading my archers like a proper soldier. So maybe, I figure, you can do the same. Not leading archers, of course, but making a proper addition to our little company.” Galin took a long pull of the wine then chewed his lip while he tried to form his words. “Pass me that parchment, will you?”

Galin took the sheet, a hide that had been scraped down twice and was destined to be burned. Galin could faintly make out the ink marks from the last scraping, a small, precise hand detailing an ambush by Bohari lancers while transporting a dignitary. It seemed like a lifetime ago and perhaps it was for him. He brushed the thought aside and picked up a piece of charcoal and began to sketch the outline of a small castle: an outer bailey, a gatehouse, some stables and storehouses, garrison quarters, an inner bailey with its own gate, and a keep. “So, there may be something we will be doing to get even with the gentleman that decided that it would be wise to pay us in halfway worthless coin. But it won’t be soon, see? We know that right now, the count will be hiring other mercenaries to guard his fortress and doubling patrols through his demense waiting for us to come roaring after him. Instead, we will wait, maybe even half a year, and then we will take what’s ours.

“You, Cooper, and I will take a cart into the town outside the fortress and the rest of the company will wait a half a mile outside the town limits, out of sight. We use the cart to get into the outer bailey, stay there to trade. It will be the dry season then and they’ll need feed for the garrison’s horses, so that will help them not look to closely. We will store our weapons and armor in one of the feed bags and once night falls, you’ll get into the keep for us. Coop and I will do the rest, negotiating with the Count, so to speak. He won’t be breathing come morning, so we will need to make our escape. While you are larking about with lock picks, Cooper and I will be swapping the feed for barrels of shit, if you’ll pardon me. Needs to be carted out of the garrison and no one looks too long at the shit collectors. We stick the silver in one of the tuns and then head out through the gates with the other carters. By the time they notice the rich prick is dead, we will be with the rest of the company, riding like all hell for this lovely place, where we will hole up and protest our innocence. I also have the good fortune to own a magistrate after we saved his plump arse from a bunch of rather damning rumors involving the young son of a noble family, so the courts will find in our favor and the world will continue to spin.”

Galin pushed the map across to her. “Read it well, memorize it, and be ready. I’ll have more details for you in the coming weeks, and probably a few more little tasks. Nothing too dangerous, not til you’ve got proper training. You may be a thief but a half drunk City Guard could have your hide. To prevent that, you’ll be assigned to Cooper with the other new lads, learn enough to make sure you can get out if the going gets rough.” He finished the wine in his cup and set it down in front of him. “So, before you start your glittering career as a soldier of fortune, do you have any questions for me? Nothing too personal or too strange, but I’ll call you and idiot if it’s stupid.” He grinned and grabbed the last olive left on the trencher. “And what a considerate guest you are, saving the last one for me!”

Katja was far too worried about the food in front of her to care much about the jabs Galin made at her, other than shooting him a look with narrowed eyes. When Galin began explaining just what the task at hand would be, and what would be expected of her, she listened with her gaze fixed on him, looking away only to grab a stray olive or take a drink of her wine while he spoke. Her fingers came to rest upon the map he pushed across to her, pulling it closer and having a quick look at it. She nodded her understanding, looking up as he noted her training assignments.

Her gaze followed his hand as he retrieved the last olive left of the meal, and she let out a short laugh. “Believe me, had I known that was there, you wouldn’t think me so considerate,” she said, though it was rather clear that the comment was in jest. “As for questions, I’ll be honest with you - I’m sure there are a million questions I could think of to ask you, some stupid, some not… but to be frank, I’m too tired to put them in words,” she added, her gaze drifting towards the doorway to the bedchamber she had been given. “If you don’t find it impolite, I’d love to be able to get some proper rest - besides, I’m sure Cooper can answer questions I’ve got nearly as well as you can, right?” she asked. With that comment, she drained her cup of wine and set it down gently on the table, pushing her chair out and standing up. “Thanks for the food, and the wine,” she said, flashing him a quick grin. “Oh, you know, and the place to sleep, and the place to bathe, and, well, you know - my life?” she added with a quick laugh. With that she turned and walked toward the bedchamber door, pausing at the threshold and turning around to bid him goodnight, before entering the room and readying herself for sleep.

The next morning, Katja fitted herself with the leather armor that had been in the chest in her room, and reported to training with Cooper, along with several other new recruits. It seemed their training was rather self-explanatory, but also rather necessary. It included elements such as the proper method in which to wield your chosen weapon, ways to dodge enemy attacks, formations, and other things that would help them to stay alive while in the field - though not necessarily in depth enough for them to fight on the front lines. This training went on for weeks, it seemed, and Katja’s routine became rather monotonous - sleep, wake up, eat, train, eat, train, eat, bathe, sleep… day, after day, after day.

One particularly brisk morning, Cooper had paired the recruits off for a bit of sparring, to practice parrying the weapons they had been designated. Katja found herself paired off with Aelfric, a fairly well built young man who had been equipped with a morningstar, while she yielded a simpler version of a mace. Following Cooper’s commands, the pair went about it rather smoothly, until Aelfric swung at an inopportune moment, the morningstar headed straight for Katja’s face. Instinctively, she managed to lean backward away from the hit, though one of the morningstar’s spikes caught her cheek, slicing open the pale flesh just below her eye. She fell back onto the ground, the adrenaline coursing through her body enough to keep her from immediately feeling the pain of the blow.

Cooper walked swiftly over to the pair, cracking Aelfric on the back of the head with a swift smack from an open palm. “Form today, you dolt, not swingin’,” he said, while Aelfric doubled over before regaining his balance on his feet. “Alright down there?” he asked Katja, who nodded quickly.

“Fine,” she said, getting back to her feet. “Just lost my footing when I dodged him,” she added. She leaned down, dusting her leggings off, and noticed a few drops of blood fall into the dirt. She straightened back up and brought a hand to her face, wincing at the sting as her dirt-covered fingers came in contact with the wound the morningstar had left. “Damn,” she cursed, wiping at her face with her sleeve, which proved to be an unintelligent move as the wound was a bit deeper than she had expected. The off-white sleeve of her tunic came away covered in red, and she glanced up at Cooper, who seemed to be holding back a chuckle.

“Didn’t lose your footing, lass, you took a cold piece of metal to your cheek,” he said. “Go get yourself cleaned up, before the training yard looks like a butcher’s block, and take the rest of the day,” he instructed, to which Katja immediately opened her mouth to protest.

“I don’t need to miss training, I’m fine to continue,” she added, but Cooper merely pointed to the keep’s entrance, which Katja took as instruction to get moving.

Blood still trickling down her cheek, Katja turned to head back inside the keep, knowing that following orders would be in her best interest. As she walked off, she could hear Cooper shouting to the rest of the recruits to get back to work. Once back to her quarters, she readied a bowl of water and a cloth. She spent the next several minutes dabbing at the gash on her cheek, dipping the cloth in the water to rinse the blood from it. When the blood had stopped seeping out, she patted at the wound with the dry end of the cloth, before setting everything down. She took a look at herself in the dusty mirror off to one side of the room and frowned - the gash was about an inch and a half long, and rather deep - but nothing that would need stitches. It would heal on its own given time, but would likely leave a faint scar.

She sat at the edge of her bed, loosening the buckles of her chest piece, discarding it on the floor. She had just begun to remove her tunic to change into one that didn’t have sleeves smeared in blood, when she heard a bit of movement in the room adjacent to her bedchamber. Dropping the hem of her tunic, she walked over to the door and pushed it open, only to see Galin at the main table.

She walked out into the room, and over towards the table, her boots heavy against the floor. “Galin,” she said, grinning as she walked over towards him. “Been a while. How’s… whatever it is you’ve been up to?” she said, shrugging her shoulders as she awkwardly attempted to make conversation with the man that had spared her life. Since she had begun her training with Cooper, she had hardly seen him other than in passing - but here she was, midday and not on the training grounds, affording the opportunity for her to run into him.

“Men. The nerve of them…”

Maria, the Adelunan wife of Owen Cooper, muttered to herself as she inspected the washing from the basket she had taken from the garrison quarters. Half the men, she thought, made it their mission in life to cover their clothes in as much filth as humanly possible with a heady mixture of stale sweat, spilled beer, whatever they had eaten throughout the week and the gods knew what else. And on top of it, some of the garments were so threadbare that she was worried that the washing would remove the grime that probably held them together. Some of the tunics were distinctive enough that she made mental notes to badger the individual soldiers about their cleanliness when she returned the clothes to the garrison. She had learned enough of the Highlanders’ language from Cooper to be able to curse a man for a full minute without repeating herself and some of the men would learn that within the day.

She took nearly a full hour to finish the washing and, as she feared, some of the tunics were beyond the point of mending. One of them was a particular disaster and she tucked it under her arm rather than go through the farce of drying it with the others. Instead, she marched up from the stream below the garrison, right up past the stables to the practice yard where the newer recruits were being given instruction in unit maneuvers before they broke off into individual training. Cooper raised a hand to wave at his passing wife but he saw the pinched look on her face and thought better of it.

As her husband bellowed orders, Maria turned sharply around the corner of the armory and quite literally ran into the man she was looking for with a solid thud. Galin turned away from observing the practice from the armory’s shadowed portico as Maria bounced off his back and was about to excuse himself when the Adelunan launched into a stream of invective that was a creative mix of Adelunan and the Highland tongue, but Galin was about to follow just about well enough. If his translation was correct, he was the son of a motherless goat, was going to make her go grey with worry, and ungrateful for the care she took of him if he would let his tunic get to such a state. To emphasize her point, Maria stuck her arms through two holes in the garment, pushing them up to the shoulder to highlight the extent of the disrepair.

Before he could protest, Maria grabbed him by his arm and dragged him back toward the keep, continuing to curse him under her breath, be he could see the good natured sparkle in her eyes and endured the tirade with good humor. When they reached the chamber he had occupied for the past month, she half shoved the soldier inside and pointed at the chest at the foot of his bed. “Take out anything with a hole in you, you son of a goat, and pile them here. I will decide what to mend and what you must replace because you are clearly without enough sense to do that yourself, you… you…. You man!” Galin looked suitably chastened and upended the chest, letting two tunics and a pair of trousers drop onto the bed. “So few? What in the nine hells do you have against buying a tunic, you northern savage,” she asked before she shook with laughter.

Galin laughed and poured them each a cup of wine as she looked with a mixture of disgust and amazement at his clothes. “To be fair, I’ve got the fancy tunic for meeting the noble buggers in the armory, and trousers as well. So it ain’t as bad is it looks… But I may need another pair, eh?”

Maria glared at him and took the wine. “Another pair? You’re the bloody leader, a fucking lord in anything but title, and you look like a… like a pig farmer with not enough pigs. And it won’t do anymore, especially with the new… what do you say… lassie, yes? The new lassie around!” Maria hoped that her words would have an impact and she was not disappointed. Galin choked a moment and his face flushed and before he could stammer a reply, the spitfire woman continued, like a hound scenting blood. “And since when does a commander take so much notice of the new recruits, yes? That is work for my husband and yet, these last weeks, I have seen you down at the ground, always by the armory, watching. Is it to see all the new soldiers, I wonder, or to sneak a glance at the pretty one, and I do not mean Aelfric?”

“I don’t need to take this from you, woman,” Galin said defensively, color rising from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. If Maria knew then Harper surely did as well and he could only imagine what the pair of them was saying. And if she knew, Galin thought, half the fort knew because Maria, for all her wonderful qualities, was an inveterate gossip. “You… do what you will with those clothes and don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out. I will go to the company offices and draw up and order for new tunics from that tailor on Kingsroad in the capital. Good day, Maria,” he said, his face still beet red, and left her there as she dissolved into laughter that echoed down the hall behind him.

Galin sat heavily at the cluttered table in the chamber outside Katja’s and began to do as he said, drawing up an order for fifty new tunics for the Company so that the men’s shirts would not end up in as sad a state as his had. He was not as fluid a writer as his clerks but he was legible enough, though it took a great deal of concentration. He heard his name but did not look up immediately, waiting to finish forming the words on the parchment. When he did look up, Katja was sitting in front of him and his closed his mouth firmly before he said anything untoward after Maria’s insinuations moments before. “I… uh… aye, it’s been an age, hasn’t it? And what’ve you done to yourself there?” He reached out and traced his finger along the line of the cut without thinking too much of it, then reddened again.

“You’ll be needing something to make sure you don’t end up like me,” he said, self-consciously fingering a scar on his left cheek. He got up abruptly and began to rummage through a small cabinet in the office. “Ah, here,” he crowed in triumph and tossed a dusty, cloth-covered jar onto the table. “Poultice in there will make a scar pretty much unnoticeable. Used to have a proper physician here, mixed medicines and the like, until the plague, but that should still be good. Use as much as you need, of course. No sense in scarring up such a pretty face.” Realizing what he said a second too late, he turned, poured a cup of wine, sunk it, and refilled the cup before sitting down again. “So, how is the training treating you? I hope well, of course, because in a week or two, we will be heading to get the money you tried to steal from me before. Do you think you’ll be a little more successful this time?”

Katja tensed up slightly as Galin grazed a finger near the gash on her cheek, though she winced slightly as the cut stung at his touch. It seemed as though she was unsure of how to react to the gesture, but after a moment she turned away, moving to lean on the back of the chair nearest his, a blush of her own rising in her cheeks. “Training mishap. Aelfric’s heart is in the right place, but that boy gets a bit to excited and doesn’t think,” she began. “Swung his morningstar right at my head! Thankfully, my reflexes are sharp enough that I managed to take just a spike to the cheek… could have been quite a bit messier,” she said, forcing a laugh, though she knew she had been rather lucky if she were to be honest with herself.

She scoffed in a somewhat playful manner as Galin passed his touch over a scar on his own face and got up, clearly looking for something. “You say that as though your face is horribly disfigured,” she said, rolling her eyes slightly. “Believe me, I’ve seen worse,” she quipped, chuckling slightly. “I’m sure it’s not going to be the last injury I get from training,” she continued, still leaning on the chair as he returned with the item he had been searching for - but her eyes lit up when he explained what it was. She reached out to grab the jar, glancing up at him at his comment regarding her appearance, though he had already turned away from her to refill his cup of wine. “Thanks,” she added, turning the jar over in her hands before setting it back on the table, resigning herself to using it later on.

“Training is going well, I think,” she said. “None of the men go easy on me, that’s for sure,” she added. “Though, I think they’d be a bit fearful for their lives if Cooper caught any of us going easy on one another,” she added. “They were a bit hesitant at first, after what they all heard you did to Dermot when he suggested that… punishment for me,” she explained. “‘Best not to hit a lass,’ and all that righteous nonsense,” she scoffed. “That went right out the window when Cooper knocked me on my ass, they realized I was just as fair of game as any of the other men,” she added. “Don’t let that fool you, though… Just last week Cooper had us practicing a bit of hand to hand, and I knocked one boy cold to the stone… Cormac. Busted his nose up right well.” She stood up straight and walked to the other side of the table, leaning across it and rolling up one of her sleeves. The majority of her left forearm was a nasty shade of green, the remnants of a fading bruise. “That was thanks to Peadar, kicked my feet out from underneath me,” she went on, before turning sideways and grabbing the hem of her tunic.

She lifted the tunic up on her right side, using her other hand to hold the front down. A large, dark purple bruise showed against the pale tone of her skin, suspiciously shaped like the boots many of the recruits wore. Though she had been at the keep for a month now, the lengthy period of near-starvation beforehand was still apparent in her physique. Her ribcage was rather visible beneath the bruise, though it had improved considerably in the time she had been there. “That was the thank you I received from Cormac for breaking his nose,” she said, smirking slightly before dropping the tunic down and shrugging. “I’m certainly learning how to take a hit, if nothing else,” she added with a chuckle.

“I think I’ll be ready… but I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the plan you explained to me,” she said, and walked back around the table. She made her way over to the table where Galin had poured himself a bit of wine and poured some for herself as well, walking back over to the chair she had been leaning on beside him and pulling it out, taking a seat. “If I’m not out of line… I’ve a suggestion,” she chanced, and when Galin didn’t protest, she continued on. “The idea of the cart and all, it’s great… but what if we went with something a bit more believable than forage and feed for the stables?” she said. “What I mean is… don’t you think a couple of Highlanders would be a bit more believable if they were bringing in sheepskins instead?” she asked. “It wouldn’t be too hard to come by enough for a cart full,” she said, her gaze tilting up to the ceiling for a moment before her blue eyes shifted back to Galin. “I mean no disrespect. I just know that, were I the one inspecting the shipments entering a protected area, I’d pay a bit less attention to you and Cooper if you had a load of hides rather than barrels of grain,” she explained.

After a moment of silence, she took a deep drink from the wine she had poured for herself and spoke once more. “That being said, if you’ve a free afternoon, Cooper told me to take the rest of the day off, apparently I accomplished my training by bleeding on the dirt,” she said. “I hardly see you on the training grounds… we could spar a bit and you could see how my training has progressed?” she asked, grinning at him slightly, as though she were rather eager to show to him just how much she had learned in the month she had been there.