Gabriel’s shoulders hung low, “Can’t we just go back to drinking and sleeping all the time?”

“Ooh, I love that idea!” Vish said.

“No, we bloody well can’t,” Pearl snapped, “Hang on, didn’t you say it was unseemly for a dragon to spend their time pickling your sister’s liver?”

“Yes, but that was before I knew your only other hobby was murdering swathes of innocent people.”

Pearl thought about this, “Yeah, fair enough.”

“So that’s a no to the drinking and sleeping?” Vish asked.

“You know, for the record, I do also enjoy a spot of crochet.”

“Really?”

“No.”

Pearl and her retinue were hugging a low mound that afforded a good view of the road from Badanis to The Tooth. They had run out of prospective recruits in the village, what with them being dead and all, but her new cupbearer had helpfully informed her that caravans frequently travelled the road from Badanis to Jandrir, via The Tooth. Pearl considered this very handy. Gabriel considered this a cock up.

They had been studying the road in the predawn twilight, thus far without success. The non-dragon portion of the battalion long ago stopped pretending they weren’t flipping freezing, and now shivered openly in their armour, hugging their bodies as they lay in the frost-caked grass.

“Would you idiots knock it off? It sounds like someone’s electrocuting a tambourine player back there,” Pearl groused.

“We are not all blessed with the infernal fires of hell coursing through our veins.”

“What was that, cupbearer?”

“I said-,” Gabriel caught Vish shaking his head resignedly out of the corner of his eye, “We’ll try and keep it down.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Movement, your majesty, second bend. They’ve just gone behind those trees,” a guard whispered.

“I saw them first!” the dragon lord declared.

“Your orders?”

Pearl’s face contorted into a snarl. They had talked about this. Her men were going to surround the caravan and force the surrender. She was to stay back, because she was, as Gabriel had put it, “A bit too killy”. She had grudgingly agreed to the plan, but now that she could taste blood on the wind, she was having a hard time reining herself in.

“Grrrryaaah! Fine. We proceed as discussed. Bernie will lead you beautiful fanatical bastards down to that kink in the road there. Do what you must to get them to lay down arms. Mama needs her some more soldiers.”

“Bernie, your highness?” the seasoned captain and de facto leader of the remaining Order soldiers asked.

“Are you hard of hearing, Spear-wielder Six?”

“No, your highness. I will alert… Bernie.”

“Nice, nice. Go out and do me proud, gentlemen. Or, you know, I’ll stab you or something. Just go, shoo.”

The Order troupe, twenty-two strong, slithered as stealthily down the hill as a gaggle of armoured amateurs in bright white tunics are able. They beat the caravan to the ambush point, marginally, and set up on either side of the road, ready to pounce.

Pearl remained on the hill with her cupbearer, mind-mapper and a token guard. She started to wiggle in anticipation as the caravan came back into view.

“Oh dear,” Gabriel said.

“Oh dear, what? Oh dear, why?”

“The band of mercenaries guarding the caravan.”

“Yes, that’s who we’re trying to recruit. It was kind of your idea, remember? Can you believe this guy?”

“Well, yes. No, but yes. What I mean is, I recognise their heraldry. That particular band of mercenaries call themselves The Dauntless.”

“Strong name. I like it.”

“And there motto just so happens to be, ‘Never give up; never surrender’.”

Pearl looked at the band of well-armoured, seasoned warriors, mere moments from walking into her trap, “Ho-ho, this is going to be entertaining.”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“Not quite how I would have put it.”

The caravan and its guard rounded the corner and were confronted by a small phalanx of order soldiers, holding firm behind shield and spear. As the mercenaries shuffled to protect their charge, the rest of Pearl’s men burst from the trees and bushes to the left and right, hemming the carts in with a horseshoe formation. The horses bucked and whinnied at the sight of steel, and the drivers tugged their reins and applied their whips liberally to maintain control. There was too little room for the laden wagons to turn and flee, but The Dauntless recognised this immediately, forming a tight circle, ready to hold their ground.

The Dauntless had organised themselves far quicker than anticipated. Troops from both sides waved their weapons in warning, picking targets and counting heads. A brief standoff ensued, with much banging of shields and determined taunting. Through this all, Bernie’s voice came on the wind.

“Drop your weapons! Lay down your arms.”

They did not.

A man towards the front of the column, invisible beneath a layered suit of bronze-tinted platemail, hefted his longsword and threw it like a javelin at one of the shakier looking order soldiers. The recruit was lifted bodily off his feet, landing flat on his back a cart’s length behind the shieldwall. The other men in the formation turned and looked stupidly at their comrade. He did not get up.

Taking advantage of the ambushers stutter, the rest of The Dauntless pounced. They swung flails, hurled spears, waved spiked balls on chains, and generally made a bit of a mockery of tactical warfare.

Pearl’s people came around quickly, huddling close together and using spear and sword to tighten the noose around the caravan, but it was clear from the outset that The Dauntless were a hell of a lot more accustomed to people trying to murder them. The Order troops may have been the bit more, well, orderly of the two, but they were not the seasoned combatants the mercenaries were, and proved entirely unadaptable when their formations started to waver and eventually break. With their formation shattered they were as vulnerable as your average rabble of highwaymen.

“What the hell is this?” Pearl said, “Why aren’t they throwing down their weapons and running to my loving embrace?”

“I simply cannot imagine,” Gabriel muttered.

“This sucks. You suck. This plan sucks. I should have just done things my way to begin with.”

With grumbles and complaints still on her lips, Pearl unfurled her wings and dove from the rise.

“No, no, no. This is not good. Not good!” Gabriel said, running after the dragon lord as fast as his weedy legs would take him.

Vish was frowning, “Gabriel, why are you running towards danger? That way is towards danger, Gabriel! Honestly, you think you know a guy.”

Gabriel didn’t hear a word the mind-mapper said, he was galloping full-pelt after the dragon, who was closing the distance to the caravan with devastating speed.

Pearl swooped down on a thermal, her wings tucked tight, and broke her speed between the remnants of the shield wall and the frontline of the defenders. Her wings billowed out behind her, filling like sails, and she gently touched one delicate foot upon the earth before the other. It was a flashy entrance, one that gave everyone pause. Still, she felt the need to announce herself; she did this by uppercutting the man in the bronze armour.

Her fist and forearm shimmered and crackled with energy as she struck the unfortunate gentleman squarely on the chin. He was also lifted off his feet by the attack, just as the man he impaled had been, but the mercenary went with just a dash more oomph.

The Dauntless vanguard skyrocketed over the carts and flew a literal mile down the road.

Gabriel had to take a moment to process that: a literal mile. A whole, damn, mile. You could cook an egg in the time the poor sod was airborne. The only consolation was that the man was definitely extremely dead before his feet even left terra firma.

Pearl was already onto her next plaything.

“Bernie said,” she snarled, “lay down your arms!”

The dragon telekinetically wrenched a tall, mohawked woman’s arms from their sockets and deposited them carefully on the ground.

“There, was that so hard?”

The Dauntless were now very much daunted.

To their credit, the mercenaries made a good show of regrouping, but they now bandied about noncommittally, hiding behind shields and pressing their backs to one another. They knew they were beaten.

Pearl used her magic to garotte a ranger with his own bowstring before left-hooking another fighter straight through the side of a carriage, just to let off a bit of steam, and at that point the fight was officially over. The remaining mercenaries threw down their weapons and they, together with the merchants, knelt in the mud in surrender.

“Now that’s how it’s done! Whoo! Damn, I’m good,” Pearl said, thumping her chest.

“You’re a third-generation creature from the Aether, I would hardly call it a fair fight,” Gabriel panted, out of breath from the run.

“They were winning! I’d hardly call that fair. Which reminds me,” she spun, “What the actual shit, Bernie? You call that an ambush?”

“Sorry, your highness.”

“Gabriel could have done a better job, for Ruby’s sake.”

“Hey, you know my name!”

“Shut it, you,” she turned back to her star soldier, “Treading a thin line, Bernie. Treading a very thin line,” steam erupted from her nostrils when she snorted, “Headcount, now!”

Bernie ran up and down the ranks like a Labrador.

“We lost ten men, your majesty. They lost eight.”

“So, I sent out twenty-two men to recruit sixteen… and I get twenty back?”

Bernie wasn’t exceptionally quick at maths, “Umm.”

“Enough, Bernie, Don’t hurt yourself.”

Pearl put her fists on her hips and sighed. She was sulky. She paced up and down theatrically, mumbling to herself and occasionally gesticulating wildly. It was a bit painful to watch, but infinitely preferable to how the dragon normally vented her rage.

This went on for a bit, with merchants and soldiers from both sides watching Pearl’s inaudible tirade, but then something caught her eye.

“Hang on a moment. Hang on a… moment! Cupbearer, who did you say these guys are?”

“The Dauntless, a mercenary band.”

“Mercenaries?”

“Yes, The Kaden Circle abolished standing armies decades ago to prevent inter-city posturing. It’s not so much a realm as it is a conglomerate of oligarchies, guilds and syndicates. Mercenaries are employed on a temporary basis to keep the peace, fulfil odd tasks and protect the Circle’s interests.”

Gabriel had always had a habit of letting his mouth run. Often, as was the case now, he realised the consequences of that a fraction too late.

“Oh,” Gabriel said.

“So, you’re telling me I’ve been resurrected into a realm where the only army is one that serves the highest bidder?”

Pearl was looking through a human shaped hole that had been punched in the side of a carriage. The sight of bolts of silk and shimmering silverware greeted her. It was enough to make an old dragon’s knees weak.