Tesyb quickly looked around and saw that one more bandit was already dead, while the last two were surrounded by six guards at the moment. He quickly moved to join the melee, gesturing to his partnered guard to do the same.

The remaining two bandits looked around in fear, while trying to stay alive despite being outnumbered four to one by now.

"Fall back!" One of the bandits shouted, probably realising how futile fighting against eight guards was, just before he got a sudden slash to his thigh from one of the guards, making him stumble to the ground. Another guard saw the opportunity and jabbed his sword into the bandit's heart, ending his life immediately. The last bandit looked around for a moment, before throwing his sword to the ground.

"I yield! I give up!" He shouted while falling to his knees and raising both his shaking hands high above him. "Please! Spare my life!"

One of the guards still went to finish him off, but Tesyb called out, "Stop! Don't kill him yet."

"But he tried to kill us!" The guard retorted in anger.

"It's up to the guard captain to decide what to do with him. Tie him up for now," Tesyb ordered, his eyes looking out of the gates, just in case there were more bandits out there.

As two of the guards dragged the bandit away towards a pillar of the watchtower and started tying him there, Tesyb looked up at the platform of the watchtower. "Hyola! You fine up there?"

The redhead poked her face out over the parapet. "I'm good for now, but there's still an archer out there. I can't even climb down until you take him out."

Tesyb nodded as he walked towards the gates, noticing that the bandit had already been tied up securely to one of the watchtower pillars. "Five of you, follow me. The remaining two stay here and bar the gates until we return."

Immediately, five of the guards started jogging behind him with their swords in their hands and shields in front of them as he moved out of the gates doing the same.

Getting outside, Tesyb raised his sword hand up to make the others stop behind him, and looked around the dark cleared land in front of him, which stretched farther than his eyes could track towards the south. Seeing two bodies fallen not far from him, he gestured to everyone to follow behind him, just in case any of them were alive. Reaching there, he saw that the first man had a bolt sticking out of his chest, his body sprawled on the ground. With four of the guards covering the group with their shields in case an arrow was shot towards them, and another guard pointing his sword to the fallen man's neck, just in case, Tesyb bent down and checked the bandit's pulse. Not breathing.

"He's dead."

He stood up and jogged to the other body, but this time he didn't even have to check. There was a large gaping wound on the chest of the man, a bolt sticking out of it. Huh... Must be the work of a broadhead bolt. Grimacing at the sight, he turned around and looked at their surroundings.

Their current location was near the south-east of the village, so it wasn't likely that the archer had gone to hide in the forests towards the south-west. That meant he had to be hiding somewhere in the distant treeline in the south east.

He pointed directly in that direction. "The archer should be there. Follow me!"

As he started running towards the forest, he realised that it probably wasn't a great idea to enter the forest to search a single man in this darkness. Still, this wasn't like the ambush location near Kirnos, where there could be more bandits, bears or even adzees hiding there. This was home territory for them, and the guards going on their mounted patrols of the village surroundings in the evening had confirmed that no dangerous wild beasts were sighted today. That meant the only thing they had to fear was more bandits, but if there were more swordsmen out here, they would have already attacked the gate with the others. That meant it was very likely that the archer was alone. Good for them.

He grinned as he approached the tree line, remembering a kind of deadly hide and seek game which Nokozal's lone archer had played with him in the very first raid on the village in the north-western forests. But it was different now. Today, he wasn't the green recruit of that time, and all the guards with him were far better trained by now. He knew that none of them would freeze in case they found a boar or even a bear in front of them, like it had happened with some of them on the very first journey to Cinran before the winter. He had no doubt that he could trust every single guard to watch his back in case they met some bigger danger, and he was more than confident that with six armed and trained men here they could take out nearly anything.

As he and the other guards entered the treeline, they slowed down and walked with their shields held high in front of them, anticipating an arrow coming towards them at any moment. While the moon wasn't giving that much light, the trees had barely started to get new leaves again, so there wasn't any canopy above them to stop the light. This was also familiar ground to him, since Feroy sometimes brought the guards to train them in the forested hills in the east, so they would have practice defending and attacking in a different terrain as well. Only a week ago they had trained in this very region of the forest. It wasn't like he remembered the exact landscape, but he knew that there was a small hill not far away from them. That had to be where the archer had run off to, so he would have a height advantage over any pursuers, since he hadn't even tried to attack the guards by now.

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He slowed down further as they approached the hill. "Stay alert. He should be up ahead."

Not waiting for any reply, he kept moving further, when he suddenly noticed some movement behind a tree only a short distance away from them.

"There!" He whispered. Holding his sword arm up to stop the others behind him, he rotated the arm in a full circle once, then stood facing towards that same tree with his shield held in front of him. The others immediately took his lead and took a defensive circular formation, their shields held outward, and their backs to each other.

Confident that they were safe from any surprise attack from another side whether by bandits or a wild beast, he spoke up, "Step!" and took a single step towards the hill, with every other guard following behind him while maintaining the circular shield wall. "Once more. Step!"

Others followed behind him again but he was surprised by the sound of a bird coming from somewhere ahead of him. Huh... That bird shouldn't be making any sound at this time. The moment he was thinking that, there were too similar short whistles, followed by another long whistle.

"Wait!" That was the signal Feroy had taught them to identify friendlies in case they couldn't see each other.

He returned the answering whistle which had been taught to them, hoping - but not really believing that there was another guard out here. There should only be the bandit archer here! It couldn't be that one of the guards was helping the bandits, right? Either way, he couldn't rest easy just yet. "Hold the formation!" He ordered the others, before squinting towards the hill.

"Who's there?" He shouted loudly, his shield held ready in front of him, and his sword poking slightly outwards from the side of the shield.

There was a rustling sound ahead of them, before he saw someone slowly walking towards them with his hands held high. His heart beating loudly, he tensed his considerable muscles and got ready to attack, when the man called out, "It's me, Feroy. Calm down you all!"

Tesyb took a breath of relief, but waited for the man to come closer, and didn't give the order to break the defensive formation to the guards, just in case it was a trap of some kind. However, the man kept walking slowly towards them and before long he was close enough for him to confirm that it was indeed the ex-mercenary, who also had a warbow and a quiver slung around his shoulder.

"What the heck are you doing here?" Tesyb asked in surprise, his heart only slowing down now.

Feroy gave an approving nod seeing that the guards were still holding their formation. "There are no other bandits here. Come on! Let's jog to the village. They might need help."

Tesyb nodded, and the other guards started following behind the ex-mercenary who had already started running slowly.

"I was out to take a walk in the forests," Feroy explained as they kept jogging. "When I heard the horn being blown, I stayed out here just in case there were any stragglers coming back, and that's how I found the archer, who is biting the dust now. We'll send someone here tomorrow to take care of the body."

Tesyb nodded, glad that the archer was taken care of. "But why were you taking a walk out here anyway? How did you even know that bandits were going to attack tonight for you to wait for the archer here?"

The ex-mercenary snorted. "How the hell would I know that! I've been out here every night, waiting for the day when Torhan's group attacks us. That's a damned big group, and they might have the numbers to hold a full siege around the village if Baron of Kirnos provides more men to them, so any intel which I can bring from out here would help us a lot in dealing with that raid."

Tesyb gave a nod as he kept running, wondering if this man really was a ghost or something. How did he even have the stamina to stay awake all night? He looked to the man jogging on his side as they approached the gates. "But... but what if there were more men out here? They could have easily killed you!"

Feroy laughed loudly. "I'll be damned if some bandits can find me in the middle of a forest! I've lived in the wilds for more than a decade, ya know? I'll deserve to be killed by them on the very day when I'm spotted in a forest."

Tesyb just shook his head at the insane man, as one of the guards called out for the gates to be opened.

Before long, they were barring the gates from the inside once again, after dragging the bodies of the dead bandits outside the gates for now after stripping them of anything useful. Feroy immediately asked for a full report of what had happened here, and Tesyb recounted everything, making sure to tell Hyola's contribution of killing two bandits before they even reached the gates, as well as the bandit they had tied up nearby, who was still looking at them in fear, his mouth bound up as well.

Feroy nodded. "Well done, everyone! Lord Kivamus will be proud of you all."

The guards beamed at the praise before the ex-mercenary pointed at the watchtower platform. "Two more of you climb up there for tonight so there are more eyes on the tower to keep a watch around us. The rest of you stay alert in case there is another attack, although I think it will be quiet for tonight, since I don't think this was Torhan's group."

Feroy handed over the warbow and the quiver he had taken from the bandit archer to one of the guards. "Take it with you to the top of the watchtower for now." Gazing at the tied up bandit for a moment, he added, "I'm going to the baron's manor to give the report to Lord Kivamus. I'll send someone to bring this bandit for interrogation later on."

With that, Feroy started jogging towards the north, while the rest of the guards settled in for a long night as they sat with their backs on the pillars of the watchtower. Tesyb ordered two of the men to climb up to the platform with the warbow - one of whom had some practice with a bow - while also sending a mug of water to Hyola from the barrel full of water kept nearby. Once everything was taken care of, Tesyb took his place next to a pillar as well, feeling glad that everything had gone well.

To be fair, he realized that by now, the village was simply not the same place as it was before the arrival of Lord Kivamus. Now they had a strong palisade wall around the village, as well as watchtowers to provide early warning. There were also more than enough trained guards now, and with new crossbows being provided to the guards every week by the carpenter Darora, he was confident they could take on anything! This was a completely new feeling after living in fear of bandits and wild beasts attacking his home in the night for most of his life, but he liked this confident feeling! A lot!