The carts creaked. Gisel whined that a leech in his boot had drunk more blood than he weighed. Gunther drilled the map with a look that suggested he wanted to burn the parchment along with the cartographer.
"We took a shortcut," he muttered like a mantra. "Theoretically, we gained time. We should come out right at the Golden Triangle, where the armies of the Houses were supposed to clash..."
We emerged from the tree line. And froze.
Before us, as far as the eye could see, stretched the Battlefield.
A real one. A General Engagement. The kind bards sing about and vultures dream of.
Thousands of bodies. Broken pikes sticking up like bristles on a dead boar's back. Overturned supply wagons. Banners of Grauwald and Berengar trampled into the same bloody mud.
Smoke from the fires was already dissipating. Fat, lazy crows sat on the corpses of knights, picking out the choicest eyes.
"Gods..." the Sergeant exhaled, removing his helmet. "We missed all the fun."
"What fun?!" Gunther shrieked, his voice cracking into a falsetto. "We missed the Harvest! Look!"
He pointed a trembling finger at the field.
"Over there! Coat of Plates! Market value: 4,000 crowns! And there? A Zweihander! Great Helms! That is a fortune! That is the GDP of a small country lying in the mud, waiting for inventory!"
Blood rushed to the Accountant's eyes. Greed shut down his instinct for self-preservation.
"Looting Phase engaged!" he yelled. "Everyone forward! Prioritize 'High-End'! Ignore leather! Alf, get the sacks! Talah, drag that dead baron, he's covered in gold!"
We rushed onto the field like a pack of starving rats sensing cheese.
Alf had already spotted a beautiful, almost intact pavise shield.
Bodo was reaching for someone's ancestral sword.
Talah simply walked toward the shiniest pile of metal like an overgrown magpie.
"Hey, you!" a shout cracked like a whip. "Get out of here, carrion!"
From the smoke emerged a group of riders. Living ones. Wearing clean tabards of House Berengar. The Victors.
This wasn't an army. It was the Honor Guard. Knights and sergeants guarding the battlefield while their servants collected their lawful trophies.
"It's finders keepers!" Gunther shouted, clutching a dead knight's expensive helmet. "Right of first... bah, whoever found it! We found it!"
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
"It is the property of House Berengar!" roared a knight on a massive destrier, spurring his horse toward us. "Who are you? Deserters? Looters?"
"We are a PMC!" the Sergeant tried to explain, stepping forward. "We are neutrals! Subcontractors!"
"Neutrals?" the knight smirked, lowering his visor. "Neutrals stay home and pay taxes. Those who rummage through our heroes' pockets are vultures. Boys, teach them some etiquette."
The Fight... That Never Was.
It was a Beating. A disciplinary flogging.
We couldn't fight. There were more of them, they were mounted, they were the Victors of the Great Battle. And we were a bunch of ragamuffins who had just crawled out of a swamp.
Talah tried to draw his scimitar to defend his honor, but took a halberd shaft to the helmet.
BONK!
The sound was like a bell being struck. Talah sat down hard on his ass, stunned and offended. To the knights, he was just a clown in gilt.
Our Tank, Dieter, simply got a kick from a plated boot that sent him flying into a ditch along with his shield.
Alf was whipped with his own net until he dropped the pavise.
Gunther... oh, Gunther got hit the hardest. He wasn't just slapped with a gauntlet. They took his sack, into which he had already managed to stuff three helmets and a rondel dagger.
"Out!" the knight yelled, chasing us with horses. "Crawl away, rats, while we are feeling generous! Or I’ll hang you on those branches!"
"But the war..." Gunther wheezed, spitting out a tooth.
"The war is over!" the knight laughed. "The Peace Treaty was signed an hour ago! The Berengars won! Order is restored!"
We ran.
Again.
Only this time, we had no trophies, no honor, not even the satisfaction of having "outsmarted someone."
We sat in a ravine a mile from the field of glory.
Gunther wiped his split lip. His Ledger lay in the dust, pages flapping in the wind.
"Peace..." he whispered with the kind of hatred people usually reserve for "Plague." "They signed Peace."
"So what?" asked Otto, hugging his dog. "Isn't that good? People will stop dying."
"You are an idiot, Shepherd," Gunther moaned. "Peace is an economic catastrophe for us!"
He started bending his fingers:
"Patrol contracts will vanish. Weapon prices will crash as the market floods with trophies sold by Lords, not us. Demand for mercenaries will drop by 80%. We are entering a Recession!"
"We were late for the war," Jem stated, touching a black eye. "We got lost on the tutorial level and missed the prize distribution. And now we’ve been kicked out of the banquet."
"At least we're alive," Huber noted philosophically, bandaging his hand. "Those guys on the field are being pecked by crows. And we're going to eat porridge."
"Porridge..." the Sergeant mocked him, looking at his dented sword. "We could have been in plate!"
"Or we could have been in a mass grave," Gunther cut him off, picking up his Ledger and brushing off the dirt. "I'll have to write off the beating under 'Unforeseen Administrative Expenses.'"
He stood up and looked South. Where the horizon was clear of smoke.
The War was over.
The Noble House Crisis had passed.
The Crisis of Oversupply in Security Services was beginning.
PMC "The Bums" walked out of the fire with exactly what we walked in with: a pile of ambitions, an empty purse, a gluttonous Gladiator, and a sharp sense of our own inadequacy.
"We move on," said the Captain, rising. "Peace or war — hunger is always there. And in the North, they say the dead have started rising from their graves."
Gunther froze. His eyes came alive again.
"The Dead? That means... a market for holy water and blunt force weaponry?"
"Possibly, if the rumors are true."
"Then we move out. Death is the only business that never goes bankrupt."
(END OF VOLUME II: "THE GROWTH CRISIS")
MARKET ANALYSIS REQUEST
Volume 2 is closed. We missed the war, but we survived.
Now Gunther is preparing for the Undead Crisis.
Question to the Shareholders:
In your professional opinion, what is the most profitable strategy for the "Necro-Economy"?
-
Selling Holy Water at a 500% markup?
-
Looting ancient gold while zombies eat the villagers?
-
Short-selling the stocks of towns that are about to be overrun?
Leave your financial advice below. The CFO is listening.