Landyn walks through the gate with his head hung low as the sun starts to rise and the roosters begin their infuriating wake up calls. The blood and soot smeared on him the night before have mixed with sweat to form an unholy goop that coated his whole body. Under his arm he carries a loose bundle of armor, expensive scale armor looted from the knight they killed, along with her longsword and the ornate scabbard it sat in.
With one hand he undoes the straps holding his helmet and tosses it to the ground. Then, with a deep sigh he falls to his knees, exhausted. He drops the bundle under his arm and with both hands claws at the woolen coif on his head in frustration and desperation.
A gentle touch calms his frantic attempts to free his head of the sweat caked coif.
As his hands fall to his side those same gentle fingers undo a strap he’d forgotten to untie and then remove the coif from his head.
“Welcome back, Sir Tanner.” Vulpes says in a soothing motherly tone.
“The healers… My men… My brothers… Save them, please.”
“It’s alright. It’s alright. The healers are doing everything they can.” Her hands wrap around Landyn’s head as she kneels in front of him. She pulls him close and holds him while everyone around looks on in silence.
Landyn closes his eyes and falls asleep in an instant.
—
‘You learned nothing, boy.
You saw me.
You saw my errors.
You saw my fate.
And you learned nothing!
You fucked up.’
—
*Gasp*
Landyn wakes from his dream. It is long past noon now. He is still in his dirty armor, in a bed that is not familiar.
‘Fuck, Jon… You really have to scold me from beyond the grave now too?’
Landyn thinks in his usual morning daze.
His body is heavy and smelly, so he decides to at least be only smelly. He takes off all the steel he wears except for his sword, he hangs them up on a rack set beside his bed, and then he opens the door of the modest chambers he woke up in.
Rather than the wood floors he expected, he instead finds floors made of expensive stone. He doesn’t know what to call the type of stone, but he knows they’re the same ones used in the keep.
‘The fuck am I doing here?’ Landyn asks himself.
He wanders through the halls a while and at some point the doors on one side are replaced by windows to the garden where he’d talked with Vulpes the day before.
In the garden he finds a large trough full of water. He takes off his shirt and splashes the cold water over himself. The water is so cold it hurts, but he needs that kind of hurt right now.
You learned nothing, boy.
The skinny serf’s son in his oversized chainmail shirt smiles at the glint coming off his falchion. He smiles at him and shakes his hand. The skinny serf’s son is now headless in the dark.
You saw me.
The old cobbler with his long twisting moustache and his billhook stand proud before him. He smiles at him and shakes his hand. The old cobbler with his heart pierced stares at the dirt forevermore.
You saw my errors.
Eagle Eye lifts his eyepatch to reveal fresh blood and torn flesh. His good eye is wide as can be and his tongue sticks out as he cries out a battlecry. His wrinkled hand reaches out for Landyn’s. He tumbles down the cliffside and becomes one with the earth.
You saw my fate.
Rabbit smiles wide with his hare lip and buck tooth showing. He speaks in tongues and shakes his hand. He coughs up his lungs full of blood over Thorvald’s shoulder.
And you learned nothing!
He sees Sir Tanner. He removes his heavy helm and his eyes stare into themselves. He removes his padded coif and with it his skin. Red meat drips with lifeblood and he smiles with missing lips as he shakes his hand. A cold handshake, offered again and again.
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You fucked up.
THUD!
Thorvald’s drunken hand falls heavy on Landyn’s back.
“Come on, Sir Tanner! Let’s drink! Drink to them all! You have to drink the most! After all, you fucked up.”
Landyn gasps and his face turns white as a sheet at the last words to come out of Thorvald’s mouth.
“What’re you looking at me like that for? I told you not to mix us up with noble’s business. You could’ve had us sneak away. You could’ve had us live. You chose coin and red haired noble pussy… and I don’t blame ya. None of us do. It’s our way of living that killed us, not you.”
Thorvald then wraps his arm around Landyn’s neck and drags him along across the courtyard. “Come! Drink with us!”
Landyn is so shaken by his invasive daydream and his old friend’s words that he can’t utter any of his own. It’s not like there’s anything he could say anyway.
He lets Thorvald drag him away to a large hall where the Knight Flayers are drinking and feasting together.
Anna holds Jacob in her lap and feeds him a piece of roast chicken between jokes and laughs.
Viper looks to Anna on his right with lovestruck eyes and turns to Saul to share a drink every now and then.
And, at the head of the table and in the center of attention, a frail-looking Eagle Eye. Proudly displaying his missing eye for the first time in a long time, because he’s lost his eyepatch.
“Eagle Eye …? How are you …?”
Landyn exclaims, baffled.
“I told you he’d come back! I made him promise!”
Jacob shouts from Anna’s lap, looking very righteous and pleased.
“The kid is right! I never broke a promise, as far as I can remember anyway. Meanwhile, you deaf little shits didn’t even hear me calling from among the dead! Maybe you thought I was a ghost or something, ah? I had to crawl to the gates all by myself! Just me and my lonesome left arm!”
Eagle Eye says, raising his arms and revealing a stump under the elbow where his right arm should be.
“Tell you what, Saul was real lucky that Eagle Eye came before us and made a fuss!”
Kale slaps Saul on the back a little too hard and belts out a hearty laugh.
“Yeah, if I hadn’t woken the healers up, they wouldn’t have been here in time to give Saul his fingers back. But I did it for myself as well! I can’t hold my beer when I eat now since I lack the hands. Boy! Toss me another piece o’ bread!”
He shouts and opens his mouth wide, waiting for Saul to toss a ball of bread to him. Saul sighs quietly and slightly embarrassed, but without protest, breaks off a piece of bread and smushes it into a small ball. He readies himself. He centers his aim. He shoots. He overshoots, in fact. The ball lands right into Eagle Eye’s empty eye socket and wedges itself in there.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
The whole table erupts into laughter, including Eagle Eye and even Jacob. The only one not laughing is Landyn, who is unsure whether he is dreaming or this is really happening.
Then, just as the laughter is starting to die down, Kale leans too far in his seat and falls over, taking Saul down with him. And they all start laughing even more hysterically.
“Ah, sorry my little magical friend.”
Kale apologises as he picks himself up and offers Saul a hand. Saul smiles and takes his hand, but as soon as he rises to his feet, his eyes lock onto the door behind Landyn and his smile fades. As more and more people look at Saul turning white as a sheet and then turn their heads to the door, the laughter stops.
Landyn finally turns around and sees a young woman, wearing the blindingly white robes of the healers, sprayed with tiny specks of blood. Her head hanging low and her forlorn expression are all that’s needed to let the others know what news she comes to deliver.
Thorvald grabs a large jug of wine and quickly fills every empty cup on the table. One of those is left in the center and another he takes and shoves it into Landyn’s shoulder to get his attention.
“It’s Rabbit’s wake. Say the toast. Say it like the old times.”
Landyn clears his throat and the room fills with silence. With an uncharacteristic tremble in his voice, he begins:
“Here’s to us, the not-yet-dead. The ones gone won’t hear us mourn and they won’t hear us sing their praises. But for us, the not-yet-dead, we must drink and make happy until we rot! A sellsword dies, but the Knight Flayers live forever!”
“The Knight Flayers live forever!”
They repeat after him. Then they knock their cups together and drink up. The night will be very long this time, especially since they started at noon.
—
Late in the evening, Landyn walks out for a smoke. Behind him is the dim warm light of candles and the echoing cheers and laughs of the party. The men get drunker than usual when one dies so they can laugh for him, knowing he wouldn’t want tears to be shed for his sake.
Still, melancholy takes hold of Landyn and the long drag he takes from his pipe turns into a pained sigh.
‘I fucked up… I had no plan. I thought we’d just go out there and be untouchable like we were some kind of heroes. It was only luck that we made it back. I… don’t think I’m fit to be a leader. Jon wouldn’t have done it like I did.’
“So, you fucked up, eh?”
Thorvald interrupts Landyn’s thoughts with a warm grin, a heavy hand on his back and an absolutely horrible stench of alcohol on his breath.
“...Mhm.”
Landyn nods in resignation after shooting Thorvald a puzzled and annoyed look.
“Well, you fucked up a lot less than Jon did. I’ll give you that.”
“Jon kept us alive for five years. I couldn’t manage it for a single week.”
“Ah, you weren’t there yet but Jon actually inherited a company of 200 men from Karel ‘the Handsome’. Only took him two days to kill off a hundred of us in an orc village. You however, only managed to kill six of us after a whole week. I’d say you’re doing better than him in fact.”
Landyn doesn’t really know what to say. It doesn’t make it any better knowing that Jon was just as flawed as he is, but it somewhat eases the standard he is trying to live up to. His face simply stiffens into a shell shocked visage that stares into the long night.
Thorvald takes him by the arm and forces him to his feet.
“Come inside! Your men are waiting for their leader, Sir Tanner!”
He will rejoin his men and he will drink and laugh and dance even, but one voice will still echo in the dark corners of his mind.
‘You fucked up.’
