“Good, your squad may just be able to survive the next few months.” He said looking me in the eyes.

I raised one eyebrow up in a questioning manner. I had spent countless hours as a kid trying to do the Rock’s eyebrows but only managed to perfect the questioning dad eyebrows (it was the slight lean down… and that charisma). It was weird, I had thought the raised eyebrow was a modern thing but somehow body language transcended time. And my current body language was saying {the hell you talkin’ bout?}.

“You have said enough Corporal alexander” came the voice of the lieutenant.

The Corporal realised he had said too much and came to attention, as did the rest of us.

“Line up” boomed the commanding voice of the staff sergeant from my right.

We quickly formed into two lines separated into our squads. “That was a most impressive performance.” The lieutenant said as he looked at us, his eyes trailing on me just a hair longer than everyone else. “You all worked well as a team and showed an impressive amount of coordination against a much more experienced group of fighters. Most impressive” he said.

“Line back up with the rest of the platoon, so that you all may receive your orders.” The sergeant commanded.

We lined up as before. Waiting for the lieutenant to speak, on our way back we were quietly congratulated by the other recruits as our victory raised the stock of the entire recruit class and not just squad nine.

The lieutenant took a step forward and the battalion quieted down. You could have heard our nails grow, that’s how silent we were; barely daring to take quiet shallow breaths. What came next would be the most important commands we had heard so far and would determine our lives for the next few months and for the unlucky maybe forever.

“This is one of the finest recruitment classes I have ever seen, and I am especially proud of the job done by my platoon in training you. Most of you will be following the sergeant and I back to the capital for further training and your reassignments.” The sergeant didn’t seem happy when the lieutenant mentioned that he would be going back with the rest of the recruit battalion, he wanted to stay behind and fight. “Unfortunately we are at the precipice of war. This war is against the foul magical abominations and those who seek to gain power from the unholy curse of magic. War is brutal, and it is cruel. You will lose people; some of them will be your friends, your brothers in arms. But know this; this is a just war. This is a war to protect; not conquer. To protect those you left at home: your families; your wives; your sisters; your parents and for some even your children. We must stop the scourge of magic or humanity may be reduced to slaves or even livestock for the monsters.

The witch’s powers grow stronger every day, the tales you have heard of the undying are true. They are abominations that keep fighting, well past their deaths. The Duke of Galwydel has turned traitor, after King Uther so generously allowed him to establish himself there after he fled Ynys Manau (isle of Mann). The traitor Tutgwal Theodovellaunus has turned his back on the king and is now assisting the witch. He has sent a portion of his forces into the woods to act as bandits, raiding villages and disrupting supply lines. They have taken control of all of the bandit forces from kingdoms of Rheged down to the Fens.

We will win this fight, because we have to win this fight. We fight on the side of good, protecting the innocent against the cruelties of magic. They may have magic but our armies outnumber theirs by 50 to 1, which is why they have resorted to raiding and banditry like the common criminal thugs they are. We fight a just war and the gods will ensure our victory.” The lieutenant raised up his fist and the rest of us followed.

Over the next few weeks the training became even more intense, the words of the lieutenant had raised the tension levels in the camp, and everyone seemed to be on a razor’s edge. There were more fights and scrapes in one week than there had been in the past 2 months. Everyone was anxious about the war. One morning squad nine was taken aside along with 25 of the Corporals and Privates.

“You have been assembled here as you are the best fighters we have at the camp, your missions for the next year is to hunt bandits. You will go out into the woods and ambush and kill as many bandits as possible in the next year. You will finance yourselves by reclaiming what the bandits robbed, of course that money will have to be returned to the crown.” That last line was a lie. He knew it, we knew it, but we were trying to maintain the façade that we were the good guys.

So we had our orders, we went from cannon fodder to bandit killers. We were small teams of people who go around the countryside hunting and robbing bandits. We were bandits who banditted bandits, we were bandit squared. I didn’t know how to feel about that… it was one thing to kill people as part of an army in battle; but this was murder. The people we were going to kill were also murderers, but I was still made uncomfortable by the orders.

I asked Mark about my inner conflictions, we talked for what seemed like hours; Mark was stoic about what had to happen. He boiled it down to the fact that these were bad men; these people were tasked with hunting the innocent traders, and disrupting the trade of goods. They raided local villages and burned down farms. They needed to be stopped.

So it began.

We departed the camp the next day. Squad nine was a group of 6, led by Mark. We were the biggest squad of bandit hunters, most of the other squads were only 5 people. We headed into the countryside, living off the land, scrounging what we could, buying what we couldn’t scrounge. We were given a pittance, our money source was hunting the bandits and the lack of money was supposed to “motivate” us, the truth of it was that the quarter master was a cheapskate.

We looked like a bunch of poor travellers, not soldiers. This was by design, as we didn’t want anyone to know what we were doing. We were wearing hardy but cheap travelling clothes, we didn’t have shields as travellers didn’t carry shields, and our swords were wrapped in our bed rolls with just the tip of the hilt sticking out. We had spears, but they were disguised. We had a long “walking stick” and a knife which just so happened to slot into the stick and was held in place by a peg. Also the bottom of our walking sticks had a thick metal cap, to make it more durable; also it made it a more effective weapon. Isiah still carried his bow, but it was a hunting bow rather than a war bow.

Actually it wasn’t even a hunting bow anymore. I had a new bow made for him using laminated tempered steel, basically like an old leaf spring suspension, to make a bow. I had added an outer layer of flexible wood to make it look like a hunting bow. The thing was a beast, it had a draw weight of around 150 pounds which was monstrous, but it also caused the arrows to shatter after launch, so I had to reduce the draw weight down to 120 pounds and some more expensive thicker tapered arrows had to be commissioned from the town fletcher, not the battalion fletcher.

The bow was completed at the perfect time. Isiah had the conversation with Amelia. He had explained that he was going on this mission with the squad, and then if he survived he would have to go to the capital. That there was a war on the horizon, and there were going to be lot of casualties. He also explained that war changes people, especially the type of wars we were going to be waging and he didn’t want to burden her. It had been an exhausting conversation, she had cried, gotten angry, turned violent, cried again, then kissed him. Isiah was also upset, he had accepted that this was the right thing but, he was still hurt.

He spent that night in the woods as a cat, hunting. There were screams, mournful howls, and savage shouts only audible to me due to my enhanced hearing. I made my way into the woods about half an hour before dawn and found him curled into a ball on the ground transformed into a house cat. There were tear streaks on his little cat face.

I gently awakened him and waited patiently as he transformed back and changed into a human. After he had cleaned up he looked at me and nodded, he had worked the stuff out within himself and he was going to be alright. I reached into the void space and brought out his new bow. I handed the bow to him. He took a moment to inspect the bow, going so far as to sniff the whole thing several times. He strung the bow, and immediately noticed the difference in stiffness, he tested the bow by drawing the bow a couple of times then he looked at me impatiently, I handed him a quiver full of two dozen arrows. He spent the next hour shooting the arrows, the first few shots missed his target, high, the trajectories were different than he expected. He corrected his aim and continued, by the end of the hour he was able to hit consecutive arrows within one inch of each other at a range of 350 yards, considering the maximum range of the current war bows were only in the 150-200 yard range, this was a huge improvement, and would prove pivotal in our bandit hunting mission.

We were pretty unsuccessful in our hunt for bandits for the first few weeks, we had been in the Mercian forest looking for bandit hide outs to no avail, we were running low on food and money, well only money; we could always hunt the food. But we were tired of grouse, and actually wanted some fresh bread instead of the dried hard bread we had been eating.

We ambled into a town at around midday, looking haggard and worn out after two weeks of unsuccessful hunting. We spent the day cleaning up at the bath house, and selling things like rabbit skins and some of the bird feathers to the tanner and the fletcher, we used that money to buy our supplies and restock. We were sitting in a tavern, eking out the last of our coin and trying to find out the local rumours hoping to get lucky on news of bandits. We were sitting there slowly sipping on some foul tasting ale, whilst Josiah tried desperately to seduce the serving girl. She took one look at the state of our clothes and pegged us for broke and wanted no parts of Josiah.

Jo made a foul comment which earned us all a dirty look from the server. Both I and Isiah slapped him on the back of the head. “I am sorry miss, my brother is an idiot and I will try to keep him in control” Isiah said to the young girl. She nodded her head and went on her way. She returned 15 minutes later with two jugs of ale.

“You all look like you could use a job” she said

We really were in need of money so Mark nodded and Isiah said yes.

“There is a wagon train transporting goods to Leicester, they could probably use some extra hands. It is dangerous work, they already lost a couple of men to bandits.” she said

Mark’s antennae went up at the word bandit, Frank lost the sleepy look in his eyes, Josiah went to open his mouth but I grabbed his elbow, my thumb pressing on the ulnar nerve. He had improved from before, but he was still a dumb muscle head and there was no telling what he might say.

“Where can we find this wagon train, we didn’t see it when we came through the village this morning.” Isiah said.

“They were stationed outside the south gate, the man leading the wagon train is sitting over there with that burly man” she said pointing over to the other side of the tavern. We thanked her and she went away after winking at Isiah, her hips swaying from side to side, not at all gently.

Isiah looked away embarrassed. Both Jo and Frank looked at him in anger, for very different reasons. Mark looked at Isiah and chuckled ruefully. I was looking at those hips. They really were some top notch hips, connected to some top notch… never you mind.

Mark was the leader of the squad but Frank was the eldest and looked more tough than Mark. Frank went up to the leader of the wagon train and talked to them about needing men. They talked for about five minutes before Frank signalled for us to walk over. The burly man sitting next to the wagon driver introduced himself as Redmond; he was a mercenary troop leader for the Red Tailed Mercenary Company. Redmond looked like a bear of a man, huge chested, massive bushy brown beard, but he had very sharp calculative eyes. He looked us all over and he asked Frank “Why aren’t you all in the king’s army?”

“We were in the army, we all did our five years and got out. We heard rumours of war on the horizon and wanted no parts of it. So we were moving north, into the Maetae lands (kinda Scotland-ish). I have an aunt up there, I thought she could help us start anew.” Frank replied back, this was a well-rehearsed lie that we had all memorised in case we were ever questioned about our backgrounds.

He looked at all of us, and thought over the story; eventually he accepted the story as plausible. He and Frank continued negotiating our fee. Frank proved himself to be a very good negotiator as he managed to get us a salary of 50 silver, each, for 2 weeks work. Taking the stuff to Leicester and making our way back towards the port of Londinium with whatever they bought in Leicester.

I haven’t yet explained how money worked in the 6th century. Largely it was the same as when the romans left, the main currency was still a silver coin, except it wasn’t called denarii anymore. The coins used were: iron, copper, large copper, silver, small gold and gold. There were 4 iron bits to a copper, 4 coppers to a large copper, 2 large coppers to a silver, 25 silver to a small gold and 2 small gold to a gold. The most basic coins were the silvers coppers and iron, a villager would be lucky to ever see a gold coin. Even though the currency value of gold was 25 and 50 silver, the nobles rarely let any gold out of their greedy little hands. This actually made the street price of gold to be double its currency value.

The average annual salary for a Corporal in the army was 750 silvers…+ loot. Privates like us (oh yeah in all the excitement I forgot, we were Privates now) made about 550 a year + less loot than Corporals; so 50 silver for 2 weeks was almost double our salary. Also we were desperate for money. So we temporarily became part of the Red Tailed Mercenary Company. Bonus, we were more likely to face bandits, I mean the red tails had already been attacked before, so the chances were good that they might be attacked again.

We became part of the Red Tailed Mercenary Company. No we didn’t have to wear a red sash on our belt to identify us; we had shields and helmets (which I didn’t wear). We were pretty easy to spot; also we were wearing chainmail over our clothes now. We had previously been wearing them underneath our clothes, which was warm and uncomfortable. Chainmail and helmet wearing guys carrying swords and shields; we were pretty easy to identify. Our shield did have a red bird on it though.

The wagon train left the town the next day. We were the new guys so we got the worst jobs, night duty and rear guard. It took us 2 days to get back to Leicester, but we stayed out of the city, hidden away as our backstory wouldn’t hold up if we were recognised. The caravan was in Leicester for 5 days trading away salt, spices and luxury goods, and loading up new cargo.

The new cargo was barrels of beer. My beer. The beer I had taught Ian how to make. There were other stuff too but, it was my beer. That Ian made me pay full price for.

We travelled back down towards the south towards post roman London. It was going to take us 7 days to get there and so far the trip had been uneventful. We had made discreet contact with our Leicester command post to find out how the others were doing and we found out that only one squad had managed to find bandits, but the ambush had failed there had been a battle and in the ensuing battle 2 were mortally wounded. It was as if the bandits knew we were coming.

It was on the 11th day of travel, only 3 days from reaching London that we finally met our bandits. And just like that, all my previous thoughts of bandit hunting being akin to murder was gone. We weren’t facing jimmy two shoes and 5 of his friends on horseback. This was an entire platoon of 40 well trained soldiers.

I heard someone beside me in the most calm voice exclaim “Fuuuuccck”