Kerric the Mercenary: Episode 5, One Last Challenge
Kerric decides that taking on one final job before heading home would be a good idea.
To Kerric disgust, the five remaining captains began discussing where Corman was going and how to cut him off. That was lunacy. Corman must be headed to Aring. With over a day’s head start and Aring being twice as far from here as there, there was no way a non-mounted company could catch him. And it would be their bad luck to catch up with him. Next to his own crew, Corman’s eight were the best there was.
“Who do you think was with Corman? That group was too big for his crew alone,” one captain asked.
These captains disgusted him. They just didn’t understand Corman. He would need no more help to take what guard a nothing like DeSon could put out, than Kerric’s own people would. Corman and his eight, as the people here called that crew, were the best this side of the Black Sand had to offer. All nine of them trained at a Temple far to the south and relied solely on their colnut staff for offence and defense, disdaining armor, or weighted hammer and shield.
Kerric had been on the sideline when nearly a dozen thugs tried robbing one of Corman’s men after he had drank too much a couple years back. Even drunk, he went from using his staff to help him stay upright to using it as a weapon in the blink of an eye. One dozen precise strikes and one dozen men fell without a single wasted move. He might not have been in the same league as Kerric’s men, but it was an impressive feat all the same.
Kerric mused. Were Corman and his men impressive enough to offer a challenge? So far, nothing in the south this trip had. He stood, and most every eye in the place focused on him with hostility.
The captains were easy to read. They believed together they had a chance against Corman. They knew they had none against Kerric, and Kerric wouldn’t have them.
The hostility in his men’s eyes surprised him. Each of his men would have been able to guess Kerric’s thoughts and understood what his standing up meant. They loathed to leave only a candlemark after entering. He understood that, but they were showing that, and not hiding it at all. His eyes narrowed, and he locked gazes with some.
Showing anger at his decision wasn’t permitted. Each hid that anger and stood, too. He would have to do something about that. It might be overlooked here in the south, but not keeping emotions out of your expression would get them and others killed at home. The realization of that came to each of them and their faces became expressionless. It wasn’t just their fighting edge they needed to train back into them before heading home but their mental edge.
Kerric knew much of that was his fault. This trip into the south, more than any other, he had relaxed discipline, both on himself and on his men. They needed this job to help expose where they needed to work the hardest to get back in shape to head home. He started outdoors with his men right behind him.
But outside, Kerric frowned. Tantos wasn’t at his post. Ownar wasn’t back with feed for the Warcats yet. The second was excusable, but not the first. As their Warcats were in the corral, both were still near.
Kerric listened as only he could.
A block down and in an alleyway, he heard Tantos negotiating with someone to clean the stables. He heard Ownar further away and had to filter out more sounds to know what he was saying. He had found a man willing to sell him a Kartoon for each Warcat to eat.
Kerric hid his frown. One of those small herbivores would make a large meal for a person. It would not make more than a snack for the big meat eaters.
It was just one more sign that his men had fallen far too much from what they were when they first got here. He opened the corral, pulled Akrus’s blankets and saddle off the rails, and approached his warcat.
Understanding that the break was over, his massive Warcat snarled
