When we got back to camp, Taka listened to me and to Kai – Rex remained silent – as we told him all the details of what had happened. Well… not all the details, but the stuff concerning the bandit attack and what I had told the guys as we dried off on the shore. The group’s leader said nothing as we spoke, his face quiet and unreadable as he listened, taking everything in. Occasionally he nodded, and at one point, he added ‘Hmm’, under his breath, but that could have meant anything. When we had finished, he said ‘Hmm’ again and then said, “These bandits are an ongoing problem in your village?”

I nodded fervently. “We pay them off with food and stuff, and then they usually won’t kidnap anyone. But sometimes they need people for… for one thing or another, and it doesn’t matter what we do to pay them off.”

“Must be tough when there’s a bad harvest,” nodded Taka, surprising me – I would have bet that he had never even heard the word ‘harvest’.

“Yeah. Some years there’s hardly enough left for us to eat. The bandits don’t care. If we all starve, there are plenty of other villages they can target.”

Taka’s face, which I always found hard to read, took on a look I had not seen before, making it even harder. It was a grim expression, but also a thoughtful one. His eyes were trained in middle distance, as if he was regarding a far off horizon, or the long lost past.

“Bandits,” was all he said when he finally spoke, a low mutter under his breath, not angry, but… tired. As if he was sick of them. As if he had been dealing with bandits all his life and wanted a break.

“Taka?” It was Luca who spoke, standing over where Taka sat, cross-legged on the ground. Taka looked up to meet his comrade’s eyes and Luca, in a tone far removed from the acerbic Luca I had come to expect, said, “Give the order. You’ll get no quarrel from me.”

Taka giving an order that Luca didn’t quarrel with was practically a first, but in this case, I had no idea what he was talking about. What order?

Taka’s calm gaze shifted to his younger men, his eyebrow slightly raised in question.

“We go where you tell us,” said Kai. “And in this case, it would be a damn pleasure.”

Rex simply inclined his head, the suggestion of a smile tweaking the corners of his moustache.

Taka turned back to me. “After we’ve taken you back to your village, we might stick around for a while. Maybe meet these bandits of yours. I think if we ask them the right way, they might leave you and all the other villages alone.”

“You don’t mean ‘ask’, do you?”

“Not in so many words, no,” admitted Taka.

“You’re going to fight them.”

“Sometimes that’s the only way.”

More bloodshed. It would be bandit bloodshed, of course, but then what happened? The guys wouldn’t be there forever. The only way to make sure the bandits never bothered us again was to kill them all. Was that really what they had in mind?

“There’s a lot of them,” I said. “The gang that troubles us is twenty or thirty people.”

“That’s not so many,” said Rex. “Not if you know what you’re doing.”

“You’re going to kill thirty people?”

Taka met my gaze. “I prefer to see it as saving a village full of people.”

He had a point. But it still seemed impossible. “I don’t want you to die just to help me.”

Luca snorted. “She fancies herself, doesn’t she? Who said we’re doing it for you?”

He stalked off to saddle up his horse, ready to leave. Taka smiled at me. “Maybe we’re doing it a little bit for you. But it seems like the right thing to do, don’t you think?”

“We can’t pay you,” I replied – they were mercenaries, after all.

For a moment, I thought Taka looked hurt but his normal expression swiftly reasserted itself. “There’ll be money enough for us once we reach Lord Krius – a little later than planned, but he’ll wait. There’s no harm in doing one job for free. As long as we’re going that way anyway.”

Of course, they were only going that way because of me, because they had agreed to take me home rather than picking up their money and moving on to their next job, but I decided not to mention that. I was more grateful than I knew how to say. I looked at Taka with tears rising in my eyes.

“I can’t ever thank you enough for this. I would do anything for you…”

As I laid a hand on Taka’s shoulder, I saw his expression change to that gruffer one that always seemed to appear when there was any suggestion of intimacy between us. He shrugged off my hand.

“Don’t get silly. Come on, we’ve wasted enough time today, we need to get moving.”

The late start that Taka had decided on was to give the guards of the chain gang, the soldiers of Lord Vulpus, time to catch us up. In early afternoon, we saw them, far below us as our horses picked their careful way along a narrow ridge, a sheer drop to our right.

“Do you think they’ve seen us?” I asked.

“Damn well hope so,” said Kai. “That’s the point. They see us now and they know we’re crossing the border into Lord Lullin’s territory, so they’ll call off the hunt and perhaps will never suspect that it had anything to do with Lord Krius. Either way, by now the general should be home and safe.”

“And you’ve earned your reward.”

“Payment,” corrected Luca sharply. “We’re not bounty hunters. We’re professionals doing a job.”

An hour later, Kai told me that we had crossed into Lord Lullin’s territory and were now safe. I couldn’t tell any difference – the land doesn’t know who rules it, the mountains don’t care, they just go on being what they are. And not just the mountains, Kai also told me that my village is also part of Lord Lullin’s territory. I’d never even heard of him. Kai just laughed and explained that the area my village was in had changed hands three times in the last year. Massive battles, thousands dead, and my village and I didn’t even notice.

When we settled down that night, Taka took me to one side. I felt a butterfly flutter in my stomach as he touched my arm to draw me aside. I looked up into his grey eyes and longed for him to take me in his arms and kiss me as he had before. Just being this close to Taka I found almost overwhelming. But then, I felt similar emotions when I was alone with any of the guys, except perhaps Luca.

But my optimistic daydreams remained just that. Once we were alone, Taka kept a safe distance from me – when I took a step forward, he took one back.

“We’ll be arriving at your village tomorrow afternoon,” he began, his words making my heart leap in my chest with pure excitement. “I wanted to make a couple of things clear to you before we arrive. We’re all dedicated to solving your village’s bandit problem – and you don’t owe us a damn thing for that, it’s something we all want to do – but we’re not wandering do-gooders, Keira, we’re mercenaries.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, that once the problem is solved, we’re leaving to take up Lord Krius’s job offer, and we won’t be looking back.”

I had never assumed anything else and yet, when I heard him say it, the bottom seemed to drop out of my stomach. I didn’t want to say goodbye to them. It wasn’t just the sex; they were different to any other men I had ever known, and I thought that they had made me a different woman. One I liked. Had I thought they might stay? Certainly I had hoped for it. And to hear that hope dashed made me feel suddenly despondent.

“We’re fighters,” Taka continued. “And none of us would be anything else. Money and a fight, that’s all we want from life. Nothing else.”

As he spoke those last two words, his eyes suddenly darted to the ground, as if he could not look me in the eye as he said it, though I could not guess why.

As Taka had predicted, we reached my village the following afternoon. For the hour or so before we arrived, I had begun to recognize some of the scenery and landmarks – the mountains are all the same until the ones that look like home, which are somehow completely different and much better.

I wasn’t sure what reaction I would get, riding into my village accompanied by four handsome, but well-armed, men, but in the event, I don’t think anyone from my village even noticed the guys. By lucky chance, it was my friend Bren who was working in the fields outside the village – probably doing penance for some misdeed – who saw me first. He did a hilarious double take as he saw me, and then, as I watched, his eyes and mouth seemed to widen in slow motion. He dropped the fork he had been digging with and leaped in the air, screaming in excitement.

“Keira! Keira! It’s Keira! Keira! Everyone look – it’s Keira!”

He started towards me, then decided that telling the village was more important and rushed back, then changed his mind again and ran back to me. I dropped from my saddle with the elegance of a well-practiced horsewoman, just in time to be folded into Bren’s loving arms. I hugged him back. Between Bren and I, despite some adolescent fumblings, there had always been nothing but friendship, but it was friendship of the sort that is carved from granite – we would be friends till death and after.

“I can’t believe you’re back. We thought we’d never see you again.”

“I thought I’d never see you again.”

“What happened?”

I sighed. “Long story.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Bren smiled, then looked up at the guys. “Who are your friends?”

“Longer story.”

Since I had no wish to tell either story twenty different times to twenty different people, I left it for now and hurried back into town, with Bren beside me, to find my parents. The guys walked behind us, striding confidently along, apparently unaware of the stares they were getting. I was very aware of those stares, especially the ones that came from the young women of the village, whose eyes looked as if they might pop from their skulls at the sight. I felt a sharp twinge of jealousy, and then reminded myself that the guys wouldn’t be interested in them – they weren’t interested in anyone in my village. They were here for the bandits and then they would be gone. Getting attached would be a silly mistake.

I cannot describe the look on my parents’ faces when they first saw me, looks combining disbelief and joy. No more could I describe the feelings in my chest when I saw them, and it would be useless to try. We were in each other’s arms in seconds, the three of us wrapped in one another, tears flowing freely, words spilling forth incoherently as I tried to tell them what had happened and that I had not run away, and them telling me they loved me and I could marry whoever I liked or no one at all, if I wanted. None of it was important – being together again was the only thing that mattered at that moment.

It was later, sitting in my parents’ kitchen with Bren; Ryne, the village headman; and a few other important locals, that I told the basics of my story, including the reason that the guys were here.

“They’re going to help us,” I ended my account. “And they can do it. I’ve seen them.”

Ryne looked up at the guys who stood, solid and silent by the wall. Nothing like them had ever been seen in our little village before, and they were, I guessed, a little intimidating.

“I see.”

My mother was more effusive. “I can’t ever thank you enough for saving our little girl from those horrible men.” My account had, of course, skirted over some details, like spankings and rough sex in the mountains. “You can stay here with us while you’re in town. We’ll make room. Anything you need, just ask.”

Taka smiled gratefully. I imagined he would be good with parents; the sort of man a girl would be happy to bring home to meet the folks. “Thank you. We will gladly accept your hospitality, but helping your daughter was no trial for us.”

“I find that hard to believe,” my father muttered.

“Dad!”

“Well, you are always making trouble.”

“She’s been very well behaved,” said Taka, without a trace of irony.

“About this… thing with the bandits,” Ryne began nervously. “What exactly are we talking about?”

“Best case scenario,” Taka became all business, “we scare them off and make them believe that your village is protected.”

“You think that’ll work?”

“No. But it’s a good first step. Assuming it fails, as I think it will, then they will attack, and that’s when we’ll really scare them.”

“You want them to attack?” asked Sheba, the village’s unofficial matriarch.

“It may be necessary,” nodded Taka. “People seldom believe what they are told, but always believe what they see. I can tell them to stay clear of Stenheim or I’ll kill them, but it’s more effective if they attack, give it everything they’ve got, and they end up losing a bunch of men. That’s what will scare them. Death is the only language these people understand.”

I saw the uncertain looks pass between the village notables, and I was sure Taka saw them, too.

“You want them to ‘give it everything they’ve got’?”

“That way, they’ll know they can’t beat us.”

“How can you guarantee our people won’t get hurt?” asked Ryne.

“You’ll be nowhere near,” replied Luca. The expression on his face suggested that he did not like the people he was talking to.

“We’ll set up an early warning system so we know when they’re coming,” explained Taka. “You’ll have plenty of time to get out and we’ll deal with them.”

“There are an awful lot of them.”

Taka nodded. “We know. This is what we do.”

“If we pay them, they don’t usually bother us,” pointed out Sheba.

“They take your people.” The contempt in Luca ’s voice was plain to hear.

“Not that often,” Sheba countered. “And, while it is devastating when it happens, this sounds like we could lose far more.”

“Better for a lot of you to die fighting than a handful to be sacrificed,” snapped Luca.

“That’s not what we’re talking about,” said Taka sharply. “Do as we say, and there’ll be no danger to your people. And we’ll rid you of the bandits forever.”

“They took my daughter.” The cracked voice came from Elva, the oldest woman in the village, who had seen it all. “More than fifty summers ago. I still miss her. I don’t want anyone else to go through that.”

Ryne looked back to Taka. “Very well. We are in your hands.”