Edwyrd stared into his pint.

"...so then you shook down the barman," he said.

"Not shook down," Fourtooth replied, cheerfully. "Him and me and Waz, we had a business arrangement."

The Oldboyz had, in a matter of hours, transformed the tavern. A large new eastern wing, complete with sizeable if crudely constructed rooms, now stood to one side, while the main bar room itself had been expanded outwards and upwards.

The barman was standing behind his new bar, giving everyone frightened looks and flinching whenever anyone approached.

"I just…" Edwyrd said. He hesitated. "I don't want this to become life for us. Visit new places, meet new people, and then punch their faces in. The team needs to learn when it's appropriate to be civil."

Fourtooth nodded towards the circle of orcs in the middle of the tavern floor.

"Thing is, coach," he said. "The boys, they're incredible, they really are. Get 'em onside and you'll never find a more loyal team. But you, now...you need to learn to accept the things you can't change. Orcs are creatures of chaos, with a small 'c'. And they're simple. Fighting's like a first language to 'em."

"What, so I should just let them-"

"Yes," Fourtooth said. "Yes, you should. The next time they get into shenanigans, you just try smiling, shrugging your shoulders, and saying, 'Here we go again!'."

Edwyrd stared at him.

"Here we go again," he said miserably.

"Here we go again!"

"Here we go again."

"That's the spirit," Fourtooth said, and drained his pint.

"How do you stay so laid-back all the time?" Edwyrd asked. "Honestly, it's astonishing."

The Bright Wizard smiled softly.

"Mate," he said. "I'm older than you are. I used to fight in the endless wars. I saw entire regiments of terrified peasants torn apart by ravening daemons from the Warp itself. I lost people I loved to chittering rat-men, watched good men and women being devoured by ravenous hellhounds. I have understood that there is no end but death, and the pain that comes before it."

He stared vaguely into space for a little while.

"Once you've been through that," he added, "you have to make a choice. Get busy living, or get busy necromancing."

Across the room, Cressida grabbed a small man in green-and-gold livery from across a table and headbutted him, hard.

There was a crack.

The Eregstorm Eagles got to their feet.

With a rumble of excitement, the Oldboyz got to theirs.

"Here we go again!" Fourtooth said, from beneath the table.

In situations like these, everyone knows what's supposed to happen next. Someone yells, "Bar fight!". Then someone tries to punch the nearest drinker in the face, but misses and hits someone else. Glasses are thrown. One crafty opportunist hides under the kegs and starts drinking direct from the tap.

Tonight, however, the assembled clientele took one look at the Oldboyz and, as one, made a concerted effort to climb out of the windows to safety.

"Bar fight!" Grobb said hopefully. He was ignored.

Cressida rose from out of the wreckage of the table, cracking her neck thoughtfully. The remaining Eagles observed her, warily, but did not move.

"You see," she said, to nobody in particular, "when I said 'rebuttal', I really meant that I was going to headbutt- ouch."

Edwyrd tried to catch the eye of the barman.

"It's OK," he shouted. "We're not causing any trouble here. No fights, no threats. Nothing to worry about-"

There was a loud splintering noise from behind him that might well have been a brand-new eastern wing collapsing in on itself.