We had twenty crowns between us, three wolf pelts slung over our shoulders, and no prospects worth mentioning. Tonder sucked money out of the air — lodging fees, water fees, even a charge for breathing in the market square.

  “We’ve hit rock bottom,” Gunther said, watching Jem juggle the last apple. “We need a contract. Any contract. Even cesspit cleaning.”

  “There’s something better,” the Sergeant replied, returning from the square. “A caravan. Heading south to Sonnst. Four hundred crowns and food.”

  “Food included?” Gunther’s eyes sharpened. “That means we can stop dipping into our ‘Strange Meat’ reserves. We take it.”

  The caravan looked respectable from a distance: two heavy wagons drawn by mules that seemed cleaner and smarter than half our recruits. On the driver’s bench of the lead wagon sat a rock of a woman.

  She was indeterminate in age and monumental in presence — a walking blast furnace: broad, warm, and the sort of person you didn’t want to approach from the wrong side. She smoked a pipe and blew smoke rings into the frosty air.

  “You the guards?” she asked in a voice like a heavy door scraping on hinges. “You look like deserters who mugged a zoo. What’s that mutt on him?” She jabbed the pipe at Dieter.

  “Tactical camouflage,” the caravan hand grunted.

  “We’re PMC ‘The Bums,’” Gunther stepped forward, trying to look important. “We specialize in anti?crisis risk management and—”

  “In survival, I see,” she cut him off. “Name’s Martha. If one bale goes missing from my wagon, I’ll deduct its cost from your livers. Food twice a day. Stew. Want seconds? Catch your own game. Questions?”

  Gunther opened his mouth to argue force?majeure clauses and ROI, but Martha blew a cloud of smoke right into his face.

  “No questions. Load up. And keep it quiet. My mules don’t like idiots.”

  Jem clambered onto the wagon, muttering, “I hate escort missions. NPCs always walk slower than you run and faster than you walk. And they always have suicidal AI. I hope this texture has a lot of hit points.”

  The journey took three days — and they were the strangest three days in our corporate history.

  We expected the usual: forced marches, hunger, cold. Instead, we fell under guardianship. Martha didn’t command so much as keep house.

  On the first evening, as we scattered to gnaw on dry rusks, she banged a ladle on a cauldron. “Over here, runts!”

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  There was no rubber ghoul or ‘strange meat’ in the pot. There was thick, hot stew with peas and bacon. The smell made Nasser, our thief?gourmand, moan.

  “Is this… real food?” he asked, unbelieving. “No carrion aftertaste?”

  “It’s food for workers,” Martha said. “Eat while it’s hot. You’ll need strength to die for my goods.”

  We ate. Tobias wept into his bowl; for once the Sergeant didn’t slap him on the back of the head. Nasser licked his spoon until it was thin. Even Vain put down his scalpel and ate, looking at Martha less like a pile of organs and more like a deity.

  Gunther sat with his bowl, and you could read a system crash in his eyes. He was trying to calculate the cost of ingredients, but the warmth in his belly interfered with the arithmetic.

  “She’s investing in us,” he mumbled. “Without guaranteed return. Inefficient resource allocation. Why feed us so well?”

  “This is called a loyalty program, Gunther,” Jem said with his mouth full. “And it works. I’m ready to kill for this woman.”

  On the second day we were attacked — five raiders, a classic “brigands on the road.” They wanted easy prey.

  “To arms!” the Sergeant roared. “Protect the wagons! That’s our soup!”

  This time we didn’t fight for Gunther or for abstract duty. We fought for Martha. For the woman who gave us seconds.

  “Form up!” the Captain barked. “Dieter, show them the new skin!”

  Dieter stepped forward. His direwolf cloak, stitched by the mad Vain, looked terrifying in the gray light. The raider hesitated.

  “Check Resolve: failed,” Jem muttered.

  The bandit didn’t see a man; he saw a beast. His morale crumpled before the first strike. Dieter snarled, getting into character, and the enemy exposed his flank to Knut’s pitchfork.

  Tobias, shaking, raised his crossbow. This time he didn’t run. The ghoul?tooth necklace — or the fear of losing Martha’s stew — kept him steady. Click. The bolt hit a raider in the knee.

  “I hit him!” Tobias squealed. “I dealt damage!”

  Vain worked in the second rank, aiming not for theatrics but for arteries. “Femoral… carotid…” he whispered, delighted by the efficiency of living tissue.

  Martha didn’t dismount. She calmly reloaded a heavy crossbow and covered the rear. Bam. One attacker dropped with a bolt through the eye.

  “Minus one,” she said without taking the pipe from her mouth.

  We crushed them — brutal, quick, fueled by full stomachs.

  “Not bad,” Martha said when we returned to the wagons, breathless. “Messy, but effective. Strip the boots off that one on the edge. Good leather. Collect the weapons. Don’t let good stuff go to waste.”

  “Our kind of person,” Gunther said, nodding.

  On the third evening we reached Sonnst. Martha counted out four hundred crowns.

  “You’re not as hopeless as you look,” she said. “If you survive, look for my caravan. You’re not boring. And you eat with appetite — that’s nice.”

  She drove off, wheels creaking. We stayed behind: fed, paid, and with a strange warmth in our chests that no ledger could record.

  “Income: four hundred crowns,” Gunther said dryly, but his voice was softer. “Reputation with the Merchant Guild increased. Status: reliable.”

  “We earned more than money,” the Captain said quietly. “We earned the right to call ourselves professionals.”

  Gunther watched the caravan recede and scribbled something down.

  “What are you writing?” Jem asked.

  “The stew recipe,” Gunther said. “Ingredient: lard increases squad morale by ten percent. This is critically important technology.”

  We approached Sonnst’s town hall.

  “We have money,” the Captain said. “We have people, of a sort. We have glory. Time to fulfill an ambition.”

  “Which one?”

  “We need a banner. To register the company.”

  Jem grinned at the sunset. “Well then — ‘Viking?Bums’? Next stop: greatness. Or death. Most likely both, simultaneously.”