Judging by the itinerary, this stretch of road ate up a third of the journey's time—yet held less than a tenth of the villages, and likely a smaller share of the people.

Clearly the caravan wasn't running an ordinary trade here. Ordinary trade on this route would bleed money.

And if the business happened to be forbidden, Steward Vincent could hardly blame Derek for demanding... a higher fee.

Vincent hesitated only an instant. It wasn't much of a secret anyway.

"Furs. This country produces them in quantity—prime material for leather armor. Through my master's connections we can trade with several of the mountain villages. So we make the trip."

"So most of the danger on this road comes from the same source?" Derek understood now. This, perhaps, was the real reason the caravan hired guards at all.

Mountain bandits weren't necessarily professionals.

Some mountain villager tied a rag over his face—or skipped it entirely—grabbed whatever was sharp, and became a bandit. The goods he sold you an hour ago, he took back by force.

Still, take a man's coin and ward off his troubles.

This was the job. Nothing about it to fear.

Derek had seen blood before; hill bandits didn't frighten him.

In the end, it was simple: keep your blades sharp, and bandits turned back into hospitable mountain folk. Let them dull, and do not complain when the locals played dirty.

Despise the enemy in strategy; respect him in tactics.

Derek issued his arrangements methodically, and the soldiers who had begun to slack snapped taut again.

The Goat Company's clients out here were few—evidence that its master had only so much influence.

But old relationships ran smooth, and the trading went without a hitch.

The return leg was nearly upon them; only two stops remained.

Which made Derek more vigilant, not less. Nobody paid escort money to watch it wash downriver—danger was budgeted for somewhere on this road.

If it hadn't come yet, it was waiting ahead.

And the last two villages sat deep, deep in the forested hills.

The caravan veterans who ran this stretch regularly had gone quiet.

The company guards gripped their weapons tighter.

Under that kind of atmosphere, the psychological pressure on green troops built fast.

Derek knew the balance: the right amount of pressure sharpened men; too much broke them.

His soldiers were not hundred-battle veterans. They were green recruits with one good shape drilled into them.

Time to bleed off some pressure.

"Relax, lads. Nothing to fear. In my day I cut down more hill bandits than I can count—there's a barbarian's head hanging in my family's parlor this very minute."

The language was vulgar, and the boasting soared past the clouds.

He had ridden on bandit suppressions with the knightly order, true—where his personal count of felled brigands was in the single digits. Barbarians, he had never even seen.

No matter. Nobody here knew he was bragging.

Quite the opposite—a knight's word carried weight.

Derek had spent his entire previous life steeped in web novels. Writing one was beyond him, but spinning yarns for boys fresh out of the furrows was easy.

He told it vividly, gloriously—a proper legend in which so-called bandits fell like cabbages before a knife.

The men's nerves eased. That was the state he wanted.

Better than discovering, at the critical moment, that their hands and legs were shaking too hard to respond.

Whether the bandits matched Derek's telling was anyone's guess—but their actual skill ceiling was certainly nothing special.

Part-time bandits least of all. They had no organization or discipline whatsoever.

There was a rumble. Somewhere up the slope, someone had shoved off a boulder.

It touched not a hair on the caravan. Then the bandits came leaping out in complete disorder.

A few scattered arrows drifted in, feeble and underdrawn. One unfortunate man took a shaft in the buttock; no one else was so much as scratched.

But fear spiked all the same—short weapons against long weapons always felt worse than they were.

Derek was long since ready. The moment the bandits showed themselves he ignored their numbers and strength entirely and bellowed the caravan into motion.

"Circle the wagons! Everyone inside the ring!"

The enemy had barely any archers, and those carried hunting shortbows without real punch.

Under Derek's barked orders, the panicking caravan lurched into position at a painfully slow pace.

Steward Vincent had traveled the length and breadth of the land, but scenes like this were rare even for him.

Derek stepped up and simply seized command out of his hands.

Vincent didn't mind in the least. None of this was his craft anyway.

He could already see the bandits—a straggling hundred-odd. By headcount, his side was hopelessly outmatched.

"How could this happen? I knew this run felt unsafe. I should have hired more men."

In truth, those connections to the Perez household had bought his company a fatter trade route—but setting aside whose interests it squeezed, did he think the other mountain folk wouldn't turn green watching the wagons roll past?

Once, twice, ten times—he could thank the mountain folk for being slow to move. Someone should have hit them long ago.

Had he foreseen the day? Of course he had.

But wishful thinking—and every safe trip before this one—had dulled the risk in his mind.

Besides, more guards meant less profit, and a merchant chases profit to the grave.

Derek had no attention to spare for the steward's remorse. Frankly, he didn't rate the danger high.

Battles were not won by whichever side had more bodies.

He swung down from the saddle. Mounted, he was nothing but a tall target—and this sorry horse might ignore the reins in a charge anyway.

He drew the fine-steel longsword. The caravan still hadn't finished forming up.

"They need time. I'll buy it."

These were ordinary folk, not professional soldiers; their efficiency was painful to watch.

"Form up! Staggered ranks—we charge on my word!"

Iron command, a voice like a horn, and months of merciless drill—

it all paid out in this moment. The spearmen moved on trained instinct, advancing to the word.

Against that shambles of bandits, the spearmen's fighting power was simply crushing.

With a few more men, Derek was confident a single charge would have ended the whole affair.

Even so, the counter-charge went in.

Twenty-odd yards—spears angled just so—precisely enough distance to hit full stride.

Shhk!

The front rank's spears ran straight through their targets. There was no longer any room to dodge.

Momentum broken, a few bandits tried to close in and hack the spearmen down.

Then the second rank's spears slid out to meet them.

Staggered ranks traded away some of the charge's killing power—for speed, stability, and safety.

Thrust. Recover. Thrust.

Hit or miss, the arms moved like clockwork.

The training was showing. A battlefield demanded little in the way of technique—

strength, speed, and a modest bit of skill.

The bandits at the front dodged and hacked at the spear-hafts, trying to cut them down.

And here the mob showed its true nature.

Some wanted to run. Some wanted to charge.

It was total disorder, without a shred of unified command.

A few small chieftains were shouting—each one shouting something different.

The spearmen were still afraid. But dominance loosened muscle; at least their shoulders came down from around their ears.

Derek never stopped reading the field. The bandits were converging on one idea—encirclement.

The caravan had scraped itself into a rough ring. Vincent proved reasonably reliable: he'd left a gap open.

...

"Staggered withdrawal! Watch your footing!"

The spearmen backed off with measured steps. Their savagery moments ago left the bandits hesitating, unwilling to follow.

The little chieftains cursed and shoved and kicked, driving their men forward.

One genuinely fierce specimen led from the front, charging ahead of everyone.

The mountain folk's ferocity was no myth.

A crowd of farmers would have broken by now.

Though if Derek were choosing again, he'd still take the farmers.

Obedience. Obedience above everything.

The Panel could grind combat strength into a man. Obedience was harder to come by.

The bandits were about to crash in and maybe scramble the formation.

Derek did not intend to indulge them.

"Halt—THRUST!"

The spearmen stopped on instinct and stepped in.

Pff! Pff! Pff!

The fastest charger sprouted several new holes, blood jetting out of each.

That did it. The rest of the bandits lost their nerve; not one dared approach.

Only then did Derek walk his spearmen back inside the makeshift camp.

Steward Vincent crowded in immediately. He'd witnessed the whole sequence, and Derek's performance had left him slack-jawed.

He'd worked with more mercenary bands than he could count. Never one this elite, this savage.

Forget fighting power—that counter-charge alone took a courage most mercenaries simply didn't own.

A rare elite few might manage it. But taking commands and striking back mid-withdrawal? He'd never even heard of such a thing.

Otherwise those bandits would never have dared pursue at all.

Force, evidently, was a resource of the first importance—in Steward Vincent's eyes, at least, a supremely useful one.

"Knight Derek! Worthy indeed of the count's own order—I have never seen a warrior of your caliber."

Now he believed the "elite knight" line completely.

Even the earlier bragging was starting to sound plausible.

Once home, he really had to ask around—when had Count Perez's order produced a monster like this?

Derek ignored him for the moment and inspected the spearmen who'd engaged.

No wounds, mercifully. The cheap leather armor had earned its keep: one unlucky soul had taken an arrow square in the chest, but the shaft barely pierced the leather and never broke skin.

The rest were untouched. An inch longer, an inch stronger, as the spearman's saying went—nothing that failed to close could reach them.

Credit the bandits, too. Against a proper force this size—even mere militia—a botched charge like theirs would normally buy horrendous casualties.

Derek pressed straight on to organizing the defense. Weapons were passed out to every hand.

He spread the company guards evenly along the ring; the hands and servants sheltered behind, good for an opportunistic jab or two.

His own spearmen he kept at ready rest. The next assault could come at any moment.

Outside, the bandits dithered, apparently divided by some quarrel.

But they'd taken a dozen-plus casualties. Slinking home empty-handed after that would be unbearable.

One failure was already enough to shake every little chieftain's standing.

After a round of shouting, they steeled themselves to try again.

Chastened by the last exchange, the chieftains sorted out a rough order of assault, meaning to break the caravan's defense in one sustained push.

As for the wagons in their way—those they did not deign to notice.

Watching the bandits prepare no countermeasures whatsoever, Derek's lip curled.

"That's safety, more or less. Do these fools imagine they're an elite army?"

Never underestimate a wagon wall. Even regulars without siege tools would fumble at one.

Derek in their place would simply have brought fire-oil and burned it.

Bandits after money rarely did, granted.

But swaggering straight in like this—did they think numbers alone would carry a barricade?

No slight intended: without several times the manpower and the stomach for casualties, they had no business getting inside.

Unhappily for them, the bandits had neither.

"Knight Derek—should we try negotiating?" Vincent was getting nervous again.

Demonstrate you're too prickly to swallow, then offer silver to make the problem walk away—that was a recognized play.

Strike up a relationship, and this trade road might even become safer in the future.

"No rush. Negotiations come after we've beaten them back. Or do you imagine you can afford their appetite before that?"

Derek didn't even turn his head. The reply was tossed off carelessly—

he knew one more failed assault and these bandits would likely scatter on their own. Negotiation wouldn't enter into it.

At heart, they were a rabble. Nothing more.

Derek could see it plainly: mountain villagers, moonlighting as bandits.

None of which Steward Vincent needed to hear.

Soon enough, howling and hooting, the bandits surged forward again.

This assault bewildered them even more thoroughly than the first.

The storm of spear-thrusts was bad enough—but the few who managed to scramble over the wagons were instantly mobbed and hacked to the ground.

The wagon wall that had looked so useless now stood as their sturdiest fortress.

Vincent was no fool. Reading the field, it dawned on him: perhaps no peace-money would be needed after all?

"So even these bandits are hollow inside?"

At the steward's sigh of wonder, Derek finally allowed himself to turn around, at ease.

If the client decides the work is easy, the price of the work goes down.

So he punctured Vincent's illusions on the spot.

"If it were me: fire first, then wait by the ashes. Not one soul in this caravan escapes.

"If I wanted the goods intact instead—assault at first light, and I promise you'd be caught with your boots off.

"Even brute force, done properly: prepare a few rams in advance, and these wagons come apart in minutes.

"I'll spare you the poisonings and ambushes and the rest of the filthy toolkit.

"The point, Steward: had these bandits been even slightly professional, today would not have gone this smoothly."

By the end of it Vincent was trembling head to toe, and the look he gave Derek had changed entirely.

If this man ever switched trades, would honest folk like us even survive?

Truly, the professional and the amateur were different creatures.

Every coin-pinching thought in his head evaporated. If silver could buy off disaster, pay it gladly—a dead man has no use for savings.

A few more corpses hit the dirt, and the bandits finally broke.

They'd come out to rob their way to a better standard of living—not to die.

So, without any farewell speeches, half of them simply bolted.

The remainder looked around, found the enemy now nearly outnumbered them, and asked themselves what exactly they were still fighting for.

Those with conscience carried off their comrades' bodies. Those without turned and ran.

In the space of a breath, the bandits were gone—eight parts in ten, at least.

Beyond a few corpses too heavy to carry, they left nothing behind.

All around the caravan, men let out the breath they'd been holding and folded to the ground.

Moments ago, they'd genuinely believed today was the day.

Under normal circumstances, who ever met a bandit host that size?

The caravan's losses: a few unlucky men wounded, one unluckier man dead.

Some damage to the wagons, some goods spoiled.

Against a proper sacking, it was as small as losses came.