Mercier rubbed his hands together for warmth. By the saints, he was shivering.

And it wasn't because of the air, cold as it was.

It was because of the heads.

They sat atop sharpened stakes all lined in the midst of the road, with faces fixed in an assortment of expressions from sullen boredom to outright terror. To add to the ghastly sight, more than one carrion bird had decided to perch itself on a bloodied brow or split pate and start pecking at this bizarre meal with a hungry curiosity.

The other men shuffled their feet, shifted crossbows and muskets to rest against the other shoulder, and adjusted their sword belts, waiting as their leader dismounted from his horse and approached the macabre display with his large fingers rubbing his chin, much like a critic would with a painting in a gallery of which the artist's message both intrigued and eluded him. Thick in the chest and wide in the shoulder and limb, he was a brute of prodigious scale.

Mercier looked around. Nothing but woods on one side and a grassy plain on the other. He imagined an ambush, fighters coming out from the trees with bows and shields to hit them in the flank, and cavalry on the other side to crash into their other flank and force a rout, and then ride down the rest as they flee.

It would be ironic for bandits to be waylaid by bandits.

Finally, one of the others lost patience and spoke up. "What do you think, Vvulf?" They called out.

The riders thundered into the Hamlet with the dust of the road on them, upsetting a flock of crows into flight as they entered the streets. They numbered a dozen, men and women armed with sword and axe, crossbow and musket. The foggy air of the cold, overcast morning only added to their foreboding appearance.

They were a gang, one of many that came into existence in the lands and between borders where the law had collapsed. Where chaos and opportunity cultivated in the populace breeds of the criminal and the enterprising alike. But this bunch were also an infamous lot. They were called the Twelve Knives, named for the number of dirks and daggers they had left pinned to the chest of a town mayor who dared to tell them what they could and could not do, one for each member.

The people of the Hamlet rushed into their houses and shacks. Window shutters were slammed shut with a bang. Doors were locked and barricaded. A fear of strangers, especially well-equipped ones, and a knowledge of the things that lurked outside the boundaries of their settlement had long since bred in them a predilection for caution.

"Not a hospitable kind, are they?" The leader murmured, raising his gloved hand and making a fist to signal his posse to slow down their horses. Tall and slender, he wore a hat over his red hair and several little rings in one of his ears.

A rider pushed her animal ahead in a gallop so that she was alongside him. "What do you expect, Vultur?" She hissed gleefully, her face burning with excitement. "They hide because they have something to conceal." She raised her voice so that all may hear. "Something that sparkles in the light!"

There was a chorus of agreement from the rest of them. "Loose a single arrow," another rider shouted out in warning, impassioned now. "Shoot anything with powder, and there will be blood and flames!"

"Hear, hear!" The woman agreed. "We'll leave nothing but ashes when we're done!"

Dogs barked in the distance. They quietened when one of the riders raised a musket and fired into the air.

Vultur turned in his saddle as his mount shied to the gunshot. "Merrell, Flint, that's enough! We must let the charade play out, if only for the sake of appearances."

The Twelve Knives slowed down as they came outside The Happy Hangman. On the porch of the tavern were five locals soothing their hangovers with beer. Four of them disappeared at the sight of the dozen. One remained and raised his keg in greeting. "Well met folks," he called out with a smile.

"Well met!" Merrell called back.

Vultur dismounted, while his people slowed down and formed a loose ring behind him. "Fine day for a drink isn't it?"

"No doubt." The tavern patron slowly tilted his head around, taking the Twelve Knives in. "Name's Dismas. What brings you all to the Hamlet?"

Vultur held out both hands, palms up."The tales. They say that this is a land of fortune."

"Do they?"

"They do."

Dismas nodded. "They've got it wrong." He gestured to himself, to his tattered greatcoat, dirty shirt and old boots. "No riches to be found here. Believe me, I've looked."

There was an ugly silence.

"Well, regardless, we intend to stick around," Vultur said slowly. "See the sights for ourselves. Who knows, maybe we might have more luck than you?"

"That," Dismas replied steadily, his smile fading. "Will not be possible."

Vultur chuckled. "Why is that?"

"Because you'll be leaving today, right after this conversation."

Vultur felt his people stir at those words. "Is that right?" he asked.

"Absolutely." Dismas drank from his mug, unperturbed. "You see, up here in this little shithole, I'm what you might consider...an authority figure. Anyone who wants to do anything here has to do it with my consent." He jabbed a finger at Vultur. "And you, and your...company there, do not have my consent for anything beyond turning tail and taking yourself back to the road."

Vultur laughed. "That's cute. I like that." He sniffed and holding a finger in front of one of his nostrils, snorted a wad of phlegm onto the floor of the porch. "That there is what I think of your consent. I reckon you haven't heard of me and my crew and what we do, and let me tell you, you're going to wish you had when we're done."

Dismas raised an eyebrow. "And...pray tell, when will you be done?" He asked mildly.

"Good question." Vultur pretended to think about it. "When I slit your throat. When there's nothing left to burn down. When there's no more fun to be had. In short, when we've had our fill of blood."

Another ugly silence.

Dismas's smile returned, and this time it broadened into a grin. "Rest assured. In the Hamlet, blood is the daily fare."

Vultur half-turned as he heard the loud rattle of chains. It was a mistake. The first shot rang out and he heard one of his men cry out and topple from his horse, and in his shock, he loosed his crossbow bolt into the back of his neighbor, who silently fell forward against the mane of his animal without a sound. With a flintlock in hand billowing smoke and spraying sparks, already drawn, Dismas jogged down the porch steps and flung his keg underarm at Vultur as the man turned back. The leader of the Twelve Knives stumbled away as the beer sloshed all over his face, his boots kicking up mud as he slipped and fell flat on his arse.

Merrell urged her mount forward with a cry of fury, axe in hand as she advanced on Dismas. She raised her weapon with eyes wide alight.

Pain erupted up her arm, and as Merrell looked to it, she caught sight of the sickle digging through the sleeve of her jacket and the flesh beneath, and looked beyond it to see the long length of chain spanning out into the mist.

"What?" she asked aloud, dumbfounded for a moment at the length of the weapon, and then the chain was yanked from the other end and she screamed as she was wrenched off her saddle. Her axe fell into a puddle as she was swiftly pulled along the wet earth and out of sight.

And so it happened. They drifted out of the fog like ghosts, surrounding the remainder of the Twelve: a robed figure with a birdlike mask, a redheaded barbarian woman twirling a glaive, and a bloodied fighter spinning a loop of chain and sickle over his head with Merrell nowhere in sight.

A rider shouted and drew his sword, and a flask spun through the air and shattered against his chainmail. Animal and man were lit ablaze with the crackle of flame as the liquid within spontaneously combusted. Their flesh and joints sizzling as they were incinerated, they both cried out and wreaked more havoc along their fellows with the sight and the smell. The swordsman thrashed about with his weapon still in burning hand. The horse kicked outs its hind legs, hooves sending one of the Twelve into the air with the sound of crunching bones.

Another pair of riders read the situation and as one turned their mounts and made haste for whence they came, abandoning the fray for their lives. It was their misfortune that they charged right into the path of the barbarian, who smoothly sidestepped them and hacked one down in passing with a swing of her glaive. "We got a runner!" She shouted.

"He won't get far!" Dismas yelled back as he drew his dirk. Peering about, he caught sight of a figure in the chaos and hurled his blade overhand without faltering. There was a cry of pain as the weapon found its mark. Taking out another pistol from within his greatcoat, he aimed it at a rifleman who was levelling him up in his sights.

Flint turned around as the shot rang out behind him with a note of finality, for a moment thinking that he was the intended target and relieved as he felt no lead ball strike him in the back. Prompted by that thought and the accompanying sense of dread as he realized the fragility of his mortality, he kicked his horse with the spurs, again and again, urging the animal to go faster as his chest throbbed and throat tightened together in terror.

They should never have come here, he thought. They should never have been so brazen. He knew they should have waited till nightfall and snuck in instead. He knew it was folly to think that there was nothing to be afraid of, that there wasn't more to the stories.

But they were prideful. They were having a streak of good fortune, and like the foolish-minded optimists they were, they thought they had no reason for things to be any different with this enterprise than the ones they've made before.

Flint looked to the open road, where safety beckoned. He grinned, his eyes bright relief. At least he was alive. A coward he might be, but better a coward than a corpse. By the gods, to be alive was a wonderful thing indeed. He could almost cry.

His grin fell when he saw the rider burst out of the fog, bearing down on him from the opposite direction. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the gilded armor and coat of arms emblazoned on the surcoat. His face paled as the rider lifted his gauntlet into the air and pointed an accusatory finger at Flint, as if he was aware of Flint's thoughts, and was reproaching him for being so naïve as to think that he could hope to escape the fate that had befallen his fellow malcontents.

"Shit," Flint whispered as the crusader's sword hissed out of its sheath, the blade as white as winter's first snow. "The Light save me."

The echo of the shot faded away along with the rest of the sounds of fighting, till there was only the moaning and pleading of the wounded, and the last gasps of the dying.

Dismas sighed and holstered the second of his pistols. Approaching the last of the Twelve, he began to load the first with powder and shot, glad that his hands were still steady. It always helped, giving his hands something to do so that they won't tremble. He knew the shakes would come afterwards. Being a dangerous man did not make any of the work he did less dangerous.

"Good axe." Merrell's killer scooped up her weapon from the puddle where it laid and hefted it experimentally as he followed Dismas. "Think I'll keep it," he muttered as he threw his chain and sickle over his shoulder.

"Fascinating," the plague doctor murmured as it squatted down and inspected a body.

Dismas shook his head in bemusement at the pair and their individual peculiarities. He looked down at the leader of the Twelve Knives and tutted as he shook his head, like a parent catching a child red-handed. "Have you had your fill?" He asked Vultur as the man sat up and incredulously stared at the dirk protruding from his stomach and the blood blooming beneath and staining the fabric of his shirt, like he was witnessing a divine act.

"I daresay he did," the redhead barbarian answered, standing behind Vultur while Dismas stood in front of him. "Maybe more than he had wanted."

Dismas nodded. "Nothing to say for yourself?" He asked Vultur. "A plead for your life? An apology for your slander? Or perhaps an epitaph for your grave?"

Vultur looked up at him, and stared, his face pale as he tried to work his mouth only to find that he had no words to say.

Dismas shook his head and lifted the flintlock up. "Didn't think so."

The shot rang out for the third time. The body dropped rearward and onto its back. More blood pooled beneath the body and in the mud.

Dismas sighed and looked around at the results of the carnage that had unfolded as a result of his poor tact. It was a right mess of a negotiation, and it was his to clean up. What was it that the Heir had told him about being diplomatic? Nevermind. He was what he did, and he had never gotten those stagecoaches he robbed to give him their trinkets and gold by kind words and entreaties. They had always wanted it done the hard way, with weapons for words.

Yet, all things considered, this was a victory. A trifling victory, but a victory nonetheless.

"You know it won't end here," the plague doctor croaked with a shrill, coming up to Dismas and the barbarian with the bounty hunter in tow. "More will come. These fools just so happened to be the first to try."

Dismas nodded. "I know, Froissart. I know." The former highwayman's gaze wandered to the bounty hunter's newly discovered axe as the wielder tossed it up in a spin before catching it by the handle on the way down. "That's why we're going to send them a message. Any ideas?"

The bounty hunter nodded. "Reckon I could come up with a few. Might need some help with the wording though."

The four of them traded glances. The barbarian shrugged. "I'll go get the Heir," she said.

Pinned on one of the heads was a parchment note with a dagger, and while Mercier was many things, illiterate was not one of them for he had been fortunate to have been given an education before he fell, or to put it better, dove in with the wrong crowds.

Mercier gingerly examined the note, eyes following the writing scrawled by an elegant hand, all the while attentive to Vvulf's watchful gaze. "What does it say?" Vvulf rumbled, his voice as deep as the growl of a beast. "Read it to me. Loudly."

Mercier swallowed and did as he was told. At times he faltered, for the prose betrayed an eloquent tongue, and some words he could not pronounce. "These men and women, both foolhardly and arrogant in immense measure, dared to take the old road, and the old road took them to hell. Pray that those who find this take heed and do not seek to duplicate their misendeavour," he finished. He held it out to Vvulf so that the brigand could see the raven sigil and signature at the bottom. "I think it's signed by the heir to these lands."

For a long moment, there was nought but the sound of the birds in the trees, and the wind rustling through the greenery. It reminded Mercier much of the land he called home.

But home was far, far away.

"I think," Vvulf said eventually. "We are being invited by this…Heir." Vvulf turned towards his men, who stretched down the road close to fifty strong. Those nearest to him stiffened, some stepping back as they caught sight of the hearty smirk on his face. "Change of plans, men! We ride to the Hamlet!"

Thanks for reading! If you want to see more and have ideas, let me know.

Character submissions are also possible.