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A short exchange with regards to the merits of tea parties over battlefields, and like that, the skirmish had ended in massacre. Perhaps there was one incident, maybe two, in which there may have been a risk to befall the Iron Rose as individuals, but that was all. A risk not on a strategic level, or even a tactical one. Just individuals, lives at risk, but injuries unincurred. An extermination, then, of lesser foes, followed by the doldrums of delivering grace to the fatally wounded, binding those spared by fortune or surrender. No Bandit King, nor Bandit Knights. Just footsoldiers, intoxicated by past successes. Tiresome.

The flaxen-haired knight cleaned her sword with the tunic of another. Polished her shield until it regained some of its luster. Drove weapons discarded by cowards into the backs of the unsalvageable. Some prayed, but their prayers came too late. Some pleaded, but they were already wastes of grace. Fanilly was expecting too much, in truth, from a ragtag mob of inbred idiots who knew nothing but of pillage. [i]These[/i] certainly weren't responsible for the routing of Thaln's military, that much was certain. The Iron Rose knights were a storied order, but they weren't [i]magnitudes[/i] above the army that formed the backbone of the kingdom's defenses. So the bandits were just fools, fools that wasted the lives of all they consumed.

Serenity didn't spare any of them. Reon could judge, and Mayon could pity. Hers' was just the labour of deliverance, and besides, plenty of bandits have already become the smitten thralls of their long-lived troubadour.

[b]"Dame Katerina,"[/b] she called, laying to [i]rest[/i] a pockmarked youth younger than herself. [b]"How fares Sir Rickert's charge? Will he live to see another dawn?"[/b]