When I had been in the chain gang camp, I had chafed under the unending chores of being the serving girl – fetching and carrying, cooking and cleaning.

Now, I took on the mantle voluntarily.

I wanted to do something for these men, and although they all assured me it was unnecessary and tried to take the work from my hands, I insisted. Their needs were relatively few and easy to cater to. I cooked, I fetched water from the mountain streams for them and for the horses; I took off the horses’ saddle, bridle and other accoutrements – stuff that a country girl learns to do at a young age. I collected firewood, I built and lit the fire, I laid out their ‘beds’ for them to sleep. At first, they made attempts to stop me or take over from me, but soon enough it became clear to them that this was not something I felt I had to do, but something I wanted to do. I wanted to thank them and had no other way to do so.

It was wonderful to find these men appreciating my work and thanking me in gruffly mumbled tones. The brash, comradely banter of men who are used to each other’s company gave way a little in deference to my presence and I saw yet another side to the personalities of these complex men, who lived by the blade and by death, yet were not sure how to meet my eye when I helped them off with their weapons. One morning, I was sure I saw Rex struggling to drag a comb through the tangled mane of his black hair.

This change in our relationship made me feel almost domestic in my affection for them – they were my men, all four of them. Maybe that domestic overtone concealed a deeper desire for all four of them that I still did not dare to voice, even to myself.

Thinking of that made my thoughts turn to Taka, with whom I had gone one step further, and I would try to catch his eye, willing those events to be repeated. It didn’t happen, but I could not help noticing that where Taka once would have met my gaze with a mild expression of blank equanimity, I now found him frowning when he caught me staring, dreaming of what had passed between us. His face would spasm briefly into a tussle of frustrated agitation and he would look the other way, sometimes muttering or even barking instructions at the other guys, who all seemed perplexed by this change in attitude of their sanguine leader. Perhaps Taka did not have the same burning desire to lie with me again that I definitely had for him, but I had affected him, and the effect had not worn off.

My chores looking after the guys took up most of my time when we were not riding. When we were, my mind, more and more with every passing day, dwelt on them. I bit my lip as I watched Taka’s muscles tighten, tugging on his horse’s reins, and recalling how those muscular arms had felt wrapped around me. My breaths came short and fast as I watched Kai spring lightly from his horse, as if I could taste his youthful energy on the air. I held that same breath as I secretly spied on Rex shedding his tunic on a warm night, revealing the massive contours of his muscular body, wondering how it would feel to have that weight pressed down on top of me. Even Luca, whose antipathy toward me remained, excited my imagination as I saw him training with his sword, executing parries, thrusts and slashes, his body moving with the rhythmic precision of a dancer, his muscles sheened with a gloss of sweat which shone in the late afternoon sun.

Rightly or wrongly, I was getting a bit obsessed. Waking early one morning, I stole out of camp, heading further up into the rocks to a crystal-clear mountain lake, served by a waterfall that thundered down from the higher peaks. The glacial pool was skin-bitingly cold, and I hoped that a cold bath might cool down or even wash away some of the pent-up desire that was boiling within me for the men who were still – to some extent – my captors. At least, that was what I told myself, there was also at the back of my mind the thought that a proper bath would make me look all the nicer for the guys.

At the edge of the lake, with the sound of the pouring water loud in the background, I stripped my clothes and stepped into the freezing water, feeling my skin contract tightly at the sudden cold. The best way to deal with water like that is not to edge your way in bit by bit, but just to go for it. I dived forward, submerging my whole body then sticking my head back up, gasping as the shock of cold took my breath away. For a while, I bathed there, getting used to the frigid waters, then, as the sun grew higher in the sky and I knew the guys would be waking up, I went back to where I had left my clothes, feeling the brisk morning air pinch at my still wet skin. I roughly toweled off the worst of the wet with an old cloak, then hastily pulled my clothes back on before starting to dry my hair.

“Well, look who it is.”

I started around at the voice, and found myself staring at a man I had hoped never to see again.

“You left us far too quickly last time,” said the bandit with the leering smile and the broad-brimmed hat. “You never gave us a chance to have any fun.”

It was the bandit who had attacked me weeks ago, who had driven me running from the safety of my home, into servitude and danger. And he was not alone.

“She doesn’t look pleased to see us.” All four of them were there and now with two extra friends.

“Don’t come near me,” I stammered, trying to sound braver than I felt.

Their leader shook his head. “Should have played the game when you had the chance, kid. Now there’s six of us, and we’re a sharing people, we are – what’s mine is theirs and what’s theirs is mine. So, you belong to all of us, and before this morning is out, you’re going to know it.”

“I’ll scream,” I threatened, backing away but aware that I had nowhere to go but back into the water.

The bandit laughed. “Oh yes, kid, you’ll scream alright. We’ll see to that.”

“And much good may it do you,” said one of the others. “There’s no one to hear it up here.”

I dived back into the water, hoping they might not follow me, but that was foolishly optimistic. As I struck out for the far side of the lake, where the waterfall thundered down, three of them were already in the water after me, their fellows on the shore yelling crude encouragement. I felt a hand close on my ankle, followed by another, sharply pulling and dragging me under. In panic, I gulped in the cold water, choking and thrashing with my arms and legs. By my hair, I was dragged back up again, sputtering and coughing as I tried to breathe. Grabbing my limbs, the bandits manhandled me back to shore, laughing all the time.

They dragged me up onto dry land, all taking their turn to grab me, twist my limbs or pinch my shivering flesh. I struggled to try and get away but the bandits just found it amusing, allowing me to crawl a little ways before grabbing me by a leg or by my hair and pulling me back, or kicking out my arms from under me. I tried not to cry but I couldn’t help myself, hot tears springing to my frozen cheeks.

“She’s cold as ice from that water,” said one.

“Time to warm her up then,” said another, causing yet more laughter.

“Who’s first?”

“The four of us have dibs,” said the one in the hat. “We’ve been waiting.”

“Well, go easy on her. Make sure there’s enough to go around.”

But the lead bandit just leered. “Like hell.”

I scrabbled to get away again, and the man kicked me hard in the stomach so I fell flat on my face, crying with pain.

“Time’s up, kid.” They were the last words I wanted to hear, and, as it proved, they were the last words he would ever say.

An arrow thudded into the chest of the bandit and he dropped to the ground, dead. The rest of the bandits whirled about to look in the direction from which the arrow had come, and found Kai standing on a rock behind them, a grin on his face and his bow in his hand. Beside him, Rex loomed, his massive arms folded, glaring at the assembled bandits.

“Right,” said Kai. “There’re five of you and two of us, but we count double because we’re brilliant and you count half because you are the scum of the earth, so that makes you badly outnumbered. Much as I would like to personally gut the lot of you for the way you were treating this girl – good morning, Keira, we did ask you not to wander off – if you want to run off with your tails between your legs before I count to three, then we won’t follow. One…”

He didn’t reach two. The bandits had obviously done their own counting and decided five against two were odds they could get behind. They rushed the mercenaries and I saw Kai grin as he drew the short sword he wore at his waist for hand-to-hand combat. Rex remained motionless until the first bandit was almost on him, brandishing a spear. But when the spearhead was only a foot away, Rex reached behind, pulling out his double-headed axe and swinging it in a pair of lazy arcs back and forth. The first cleaved the spear in two, the second cleaved the bandit the same way. Kai hurled himself on two of the bandits at once, both armed with swords, his blade was a blur of metal as he fought with them, keeping both at bay.

Rex turned on another bandit, the fifth, who had sneaked off into the rocks, leaping on him from behind, grasping a knife. Rex grasped the hand before the knife reached his throat and flung the man over his shoulder to land on the rocky ground with an unpleasant crunch. Rex finished him off, his fist connecting to the man’s face like an anvil dropping on it, blood spraying up.

To Rex’s left, Kai was still fighting two at a time, moving between them with cat-like grace, dodging their blades or parrying them with his own. The bandits fought furiously, sweat springing up on their faces, lashing weapons at him viciously. But it didn’t matter, though he seemed to be putting in far less effort, Kai was always faster, always seemed to be there to counter their attacks, as if he could read their minds, always one step ahead. He spun on the balls of his feet, his short sword an elegant curve of sharp steel, whipping across the stomach of one of his attackers then jabbing forward through the chest of the second, blood spurting forth from both of them as they fell to the ground in a gory heap.

The final man, seeing that he was outclassed and now, outnumbered as well, took to his heels. But not fast enough.

“Kai gave you the chance to run,” rumbled Rex, hefting his axe in his hands. “You decided not to take it.”

With a grunt of effort, he hurled the heavy axe – I could barely have even picked it up – and it smacked into the back of the retreating bandit with an unpleasant, meaty sound, its momentum taking the man to the ground. Rex strolled over and pried the axe out of the man’s corpse before dipping it into the lake to wash it off, turning the clear water a cloudy pink.

I had watched the whole thing with a kind of hypnotized fascination, unable to drag my gaze away. I wasn’t a sadist, I didn’t like blood and I wasn’t used to seeing violence like this. Even though I felt that the bandits had deserved it for what they had done to my village and what they had been going to do to me, I still… I didn’t know what I thought. It was the most horrifying thing I had ever witnessed and yet, I was very grateful to my saviors. Perhaps, sometimes, such violence was necessary. Terrible, but necessary.

“You alright?” asked Kai, strolling over.

I nodded, still unable to speak.

“You shouldn’t wander off on your own.”

“I needed to bathe,” I murmured.

Kai shrugged. “Well, I can understand that.” He looked himself up and down, taking in his bloodstained arms, face and torso. “You’re not the only one. Anyway, we’ve got a little time - Taka says we’re leaving later today, since it’s our last day in Vulpus territory.”

“Does he think I ran away?” I asked. “Is he angry.”

“He doesn’t think you ran off,” replied Rex, joining the conversation. “He trusts you. Angry?” He looked at Kai.

Kai shrugged. “He did tell you not to go off without letting one of us know. We’ll tell him what happened. I think he’ll let you off once he hears what you’ve been through.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for…”

Kai held up a hand. “It’s no trouble. In fact, it’s a pleasure. These bandits are the lowest of the low. Preying on women, children and those who can’t defend themselves. They had it coming.”

Had Kai come across bandits before? It sounded like he had. I had always assumed that soldiers were born into the world as soldiers and never went through all the stuff that normal people did, but perhaps I was mistaken.

Kai looked at Rex. “Come on, I’m not going back to camp like this, and as long as we’ve got time, we might as well indulge.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant at first, but then he and Rex began stripping their bloody clothes to bathe in the lake.

“Would you like me to wash those?” I asked, as they took off their tunics.

“Thanks, Keira,” mumbled Rex. He seemed suddenly embarrassed as I took his clothes from him, though whether because I was doing his laundry or because he was naked in front of me, I could not be sure. If it was the latter, he had nothing to be embarrassed about – neither of them did. I tried to avert my eyes as I took their clothes and squatted down in the shallows to wash the fresh blood from them. But I could not help myself, and my gaze kept flicking up as they strode out into the lake, careless of the cold, my eyes caressing the bountiful muscular landscape of Rex, and the tighter, more compact physique of Kai. A tightness in my stomach drew my eyes lower, but they had their backs to me and I was denied the fulfillment of that more wicked desire.

As I watched, the two dived forward into the deeper water in the middle of the lake, denying me the sight of their bodies as they swam strongly across, heading for the waterfall, the water behind them tinted pink by the trail of blood they left.

I finished my washing and placed the clothes on the rocks to dry. As I worked, my mind travelled back to what I had seen. I was getting more of an insight into the life these men led, into a life outside the cozy safety of my village. Which in turn gave me more of an insight into who these men were. More importantly, it gave me an insight into who they were not.

They could have led any bandit gang they pleased, with skills like that.

They could have joined any army. Instead, they worked for themselves, and while they did it for money, there was a dignity and an honesty to the way they worked.

They could have killed me.

There was nothing I could have done to stop them. Instead, they were helping me for no reason at all. This morning they had saved me. What could you say about men like that? Men who could exercise such power, but chose not to. Yes, they lived by the sword and led a blood-soaked existence, but how they lived it spoke volumes of their decency. They were men to be admired. Men to be loved. They were men to whom I was extremely grateful. And I now felt an overwhelming need to show that gratitude.

Letting my clothes fall from me on the shore, I strolled back into the water. The heat inside me kept me warm, so I hardly noticed the icy chill on my skin as I dived forward and swam towards the waterfall, and the men who stood beneath it.