"What do we do with a drunken soldier..."

The mercenary Urden was currently half humming, half singing an old working song his previous mercenary company favored when doing menial work like weapon's maintenance, setting up camp, packing up camp and other such idle behavior mostly spent just passing time. Sure enough, having spent the morning counting and verifying that his coin was both good, and in the proper amounts, for this pay cycle, he had turned to preparing for the upcoming conflict. In time with the hummed, occasionally sung, working tune, he ran a whetstone along the main blade of his two handed axe, honing its edge to as keen as he could given the circumstances. It was no blacksmith's work or anything of the sort, but it wasn't like they could expect a forge to follow this warband around so readily. The merchant who had seen fit to attach herself to the band was hawking goods, food with a voucher for pastries after words. He'd already eaten, or the offer might have been more tmepting.

"...Dock his pay with extra duty, dock his pay with extra duty..."

Urden appeared to be in a pleasant mood as he worked away, hefting the axe with practiced ease, examining the main cutting edge of the blade. Setting aside the sharpening stone, he tugged a loose hair out and let it fall on the axe blade, splitting neatly with little resistance. Nodding in approval, mostly to himself, he turned the axe over and started working on the opposite end, the spike that would be far more suited to punching through armor than it was for hacking away like the main axe head would be. So he would work, the sound of the whetstone running over well used, but well kept, steel. Nothing about the weapon was for show, the haft sturdy enough to catch incoming strikes, both ends of the axe head having their own uses. Even the other end had a sturdy steel cap on it to make for a nasty surprise for anyone who thought they were safe from a surprise strike while the obviously dangerous end was away from them. Just one of many different tricks he kept in mind when dealing with your average trouble.

"...Twenty strokes of the captains whip, twenty strokes of the captain's whip..."

Nothing about what Urden had heard so far sounded like bandits to him. They struck fast, sure, but looked for coin and valuables, maybe some living hostages to sell back later or to prevent immediate attacks on them for fear of losing even more innocent lives. Near as he'd heard from around camp, it was anything that wasn't nailed down. If you could pry it up, it didn't count either, apparently. That...that was odd. Corpses weren't worth a lick on their own, and most bounties per head only needed proof. Ears, fingers, things like that, grim as it was to some. Whole bodies though, that was a lot of dead weight, pun intended, to be lugging about. Something was amiss, though end of the day Urden got paid the same. Didn't matter what kind of out of their head bandits, soldiers, whatever was waiting out there for them. Nothing good steel backed by good pay couldn't sort out.

"...Early in the morning..."