Creeping silently into the village with implements of murder and pain in their hands, the group of bandits arrived only a few hours after the sun had finally set. Just as we had been told there were several dozen of them, moving into the village in twos and threes and spreading out to secure every building and being within them. In the communal hut it was deathly quiet, the only noises that could be heard other than the muffled speech and footsteps coming from outside was the pot we had placed over the fire bubbling and boiling over. The hisses of the water being burned away into steam by the fire was effectively drowning out any other sounds from within the hut, even if we all weren’t waiting silently for those seeking us out.

  To my hearing, I could almost count the individual heartbeats, especially those directly outside of the hut as their nervousness began making their pulse race with anticipation. There was no fear that I could detect from any of them, but it was uncertain whether it was because of how safe they believed themselves to be, or whether I simply couldn’t smell or otherwise sense it.

  One by one, the smaller group of the bandits entered the hut only after one of their number poked his head around the corner and gave the interior a quick glance. The distance and the shadows between us, compounded by the fact that my hood was pulled over my head ensured that he couldn’t see my eyes but his quick glance would have shown nothing more than a hut filled with people sprawled everywhere.

  “Looks like the scalies really came through this time.” One of them whispered as they entered. We had been expecting a considerable number, but having eleven of them clustering into the hut and just outside its door was not something we had anticipated.

  “They wouldn’t cross us, not after last time.”

  There was an appreciative whistle as one of them moved closer to where Falid sat with his back against the wall. To the bandits he would have appeared to have simply fallen asleep in the sitting position, but his sheer size had drawn their attention anyway.

  “Gods, look at the size of this bastard. They must’ve had to give him a triple dose just to knock him out!”

  “Have you seen some of the snakes around here? Remember Nedrolros? He got bitten by one of the little ones and choked on his own tongue before anyone realised what had happened.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad that all of them are dead. Wouldn’t want to face this fucker in a dark alley.”

  They shuffled about and I slowly closed my eyes as one moved in my direction. Our particular trap had been set with an attention to detail and I hoped that they didn’t look too closely to the way we were all sitting or lying down or notice how we were all fully dressed in our armour. To help with my own illusion, my dagger was unsheathed and sitting in my lap with my hand lightly resting on it, and the other was loosely laying on the ground by my side with my whetstone only a few centimetres away. The others were in other similar states of appearing to have died in the middle of eating or looking after our equipment.

  “Looks like we’ve hit a payday here lads. Their stuff is worth more than the usual flea-bitten villager. The swords alone are worth a lot of gold.”

  “You really think that Brugo and the others are going to sell any of these once they get their hands on them? Fucking idiot.”

  I could feel the one closest to me by the warmth of his body, the way he stirred the air as his moved and smell the way that he had been a long time without a proper shower. Even without my vampiric senses I could hear the shuffling of fabric and the creaking of leather as he knelt down over me.

  “Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt us.” the nearest bandit said, and I felt a pair of hands start patting down the pouches I wore over my armour. His greed was making him blind to the simple fact that I shouldn’t have been wearing armour in preparation for bed.

  “How many of these dead’uns are in here?”

  “Nine?” commented one helpfully and there was a crack as one of his comrades hit him.

  “Since when can you count Depuyon? Someone else give me a count.”

  My heart began racing even as the bandit rifling through my mostly empty pouches began swearing at the lack of anything valuable. One of the other bandits in the room had begun counting, loosing count briefly as he struggled to remember his numbers before reaching the total.

  “There’s only seven in here Rodethe.”

  “Count again. We’re missing one.”

  “I did! I used both hands and everything!”

  “There’s supposed to be eight! Find it!”

  The nervous energy that was building within the hut reached a crescendo as the group of bandits began looking about frantically. This was the one portion of the plan that was the most dangerous but as they were beginning to panic I opened my eyes and stared at the bandit admiring the Stallion Ring on my hand.

  I could almost feel his breath on my face as we found ourselves staring into each other’s eyes and I found myself mirrored in his expression of astonishment. The second of dawning realisation lasted longer that what seemed possible, especially when the sound of choking and a body falling could be heard from the direction of the doorway.

  My assailant died almost before he had fully realised what was happening as the dagger in my lap was buried to the hilt in the bottom of his jaw. The point was somewhere in his skull and I twisted and threw his body to the side as utter chaos erupted in the confines of the hut.

  Viconia had been the only one not physically present inside, and had been the one that they had missed when they entered. Expecting to find nothing more than poisoned corpses they hadn’t bothered to check the wood and thatch roof for anyone that had been waiting for them and the sound of choking had been as a result of Viconia leaning down and stabbing one of the door guards in the neck. Within a split second of her attack I had stabbed my own bandit, and the others had also thrown away any pretence of surprise and attacked.

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  A rapier and broadsword flashed and two bandits went down without the chance to scream as Detane and Alexi cut them down. The bandit acting as the group’s leader was ripped off his feet by an enormous green paw before there was a crunch of bone and cartilage as Mazoga simply punched him in the face. To my right the bandit who had been hunched down over Weebam-Na had been saved from the vicious knife thrust by nothing more than superb reflexes, but it didn’t save him as a reptilian maw snapped closed on his throat and he was borne down by ninety kilograms of Argonian.

  The entire group died in less than three seconds, their surprise complete and all of them entirely capable to stave off the end. Falid killed two by the simple expediency of grabbing one by the throat and simply squeezing with the sound of someone cracking their knuckles, and grasping the other by the back of the head and slamming it into the wall with enough force that I wasn’t sure was shattered worse; the wall or the bandit’s skull. As I leapt to my feet I saw the darkened shadow this was Viconia drop from the roof through the hut’s doorway, wrapping her legs around one bandit as though he was giving her a ride on his shoulders and jamming a knife into an eye before they hit the ground.

  “Well, that’s a start.” Alexi muttered as he too rose from where he had been sitting.

  Trying not to listen to the chorus of shouted questions throughout the village as they heard the scuffle, I looked about the room as the way how it was filled with death. “Any of them left alive?”

  “I think this one is.” Mazoga replied, grabbing the bandit she had pulled off his feet by the collar. Judging by the way his nose was crushed and face covered in blood, her punch had broken his nose and possibly knocked out teeth. “He might be a bit broken.”

  “Good. We’ll come back for him.” The comatose body of the bandit slapped wetly onto the stones as she simply released her grip on his clothing and armour. It was partially impressive how she had lifted a fully grown man to waist height with a single hand but we had more pressing concerns.

  Our plan was so simple it was almost ridiculous and relied entirely on the assumption that like most other bandits, the group we would be facing would be ill equipped, poorly trained and more used to shaking down defenceless villagers and travellers. Those who had entered the hut had proven my assumption correct for the most part, as they were dressed in little more than a collection of mouldering rags, their armour consisting of little more than boiled leather and padded gambesons that had gone far too long without tailoring and weapons were scrounged together from whatever they could find. In the room I caught glimpses of a handful of bows, the usual assortment of daggers and knives and the odd one or two mallets and repurposed tools and farming implements. They had no chainmail and very little iron and steel armour besides brigandine and rusting breastplates that made Detane’s equipment look polished.

  We were also relying entirely on surprise and the fact that they bandits would not have been expecting resistance such as what we would provide. They definitely had the numerical advantage but they also had the issue where they had to secure the entire village which meant that as long as we struck fast, struck hard and caused as much chaos as possible they would fall to us.

  At least that was the plan. As a group we stormed out of the hut with Mazoga and Falid leading the way in their thicker armour. Within seconds of bursting from the entrance a pair of arrows flitted past and a crossbow bolt lodged deeply into Mazoga’s shield. One of the arrows hit Falid in the shoulder but the incredible ebony plate that he wore left the arrow shattering into splinters as he turned and began to charge the archer who took one look at the towering Black Knight and ran without hesitation.

  Alexi and I paused very briefly after we exited the hut, turning and putting our backs to the wall and boosting Weebam-Na and Bejeen onto the roof. Viconia had already vanished in the darkness and without my vampiric senses there was no hope in following her as she flitted from roof to roof in pursuit of the dozens of bandits scattered throughout the village. For the most part they were clustered together in small groups of two or three, half a dozen at the most and it was this that we had use to our advantage.

  With a portion of our group on the roofs causing chaos with thrown bolts of magicka and spears, the rest of us scattered in every direction. We had to move fast, and within seconds of separating from the others I began to allow the vampire to assist.

  I twisted through the buildings, finding myself thankful for their closely built nature and the cover that they provided. There was a building amount of noise within the village as screams and cries of pain joined the questioning shouts and bellowed orders as the others encountered the scattered bandits. Our discussions in the afternoon with Greejan-Ze had left us in the knowledge that the villagers were unable to help in their conditions and would remain in their homes until it was over in one way or another. This provided us with the ease of knowing that anyone outside of a hut was an enemy and reacted accordingly.

  Ducking around one corner into the wider ‘street’ that passed between the huts in the direction of the Hist, I almost ran full tilt into a bandit dressed in mouldering leathers. “Araonriel! The scalies have betrayed us! The fuckers aren’t-”

  The way my darkened form seemed to grow from the shadows left him reacting with instinct alone and cutting his shout off in mid breath. His eyes widened in realisation as the torch in his hand began falling but before it hit the ground Sunchild erupted from his back and made him grunt from the intrusion of the blade impaling him through the heart.

  A few metres away his comrade stood with a strung bow in hand and arrow gripped tightly by the fletching. Whether it was the Araonriel that my victim had been calling out to I couldn’t know, but the thin featured bosmer gaped as I began dragging my sword free from his dying comrade. At such a distance and with adrenaline rushing through the two of us, there was no time for me to pull my sword clear and rush him in time. His bow was already rising, arrow nocked and the string being pulled back with only my vampiric reflexes between me and death or injury.

  From the shadows above the feeble torchlight there was a sudden whistling of air and before either of us could react a length of wood thudded into the bandits chest and pinned him to the wall. All two metres of the spear had transfixed him neatly through the chest, throwing him backwards and sending the half drawn arrow to flit away into the night. There was a second or two of silence, a strange scuffing sound of clawed feet on thatch and a fleshy thump and one of our Argonian guides leapt between two of the huts before vanishing similarly to the arrow. Even with my vampiric senses I couldn’t tell whether it had been Weebam-Na or Bejeen who had thrown the spear but the adrenaline thundering in my veins left me uncaring despite my determination to thank them later.

  Meanwhile the sporadic fighting was spreading throughout the village and the collections of raised voices and shouts of those not yet faced with a member of our party were growing louder and louder. Expecting a simple occupation of the village and the chance of acquiring tinkets from our bodies, they were unprepared for our attack or the rising screams of pain and cut off excliamations of the dying. They were suddenly left unsure of themselves, scared of the unknown and the chaos we were purposely sowing and as we had also expected they began banding together where their numbers fortified their resolve.

  Led on by my increasing blood thirst and vampiric urgings, I rushed towards the nearest group. Their panicking heartbeats was drawing the darkness of my soul towards them like a moth to a candle even as they began to react.

  “Fuck this…” I heard one of them stammer as a particularly loud scream was cut off by the thunderclap of magicka and a chilling elven laugh echoing from the rooftops on the far side of the village. “Torch the place! Burn everything!”