Mark was ready to provoke Gustav, and then murder him in front of everybody to cement Johan’s authority in the group. Arthur would back his play.

  Gustav saw Mark walking towards him and got a little pale, approaching his hand to his own sword—suddenly, he didn’t seem so confident…

  Some of his men also got ready to fight, with grim expressions on their faces. Others seemed to consider just now what they had been signing up for…

  But then a young woman walked in the middle of it all. She was about twenty years old, pretty, with her long, blond hair pulled back with a piece of cloth. The ill-fitted medieval clothes she was wearing were too big for her, and it seemed as if she had dressed up in her big brother’s clothes.

  “I also want to go back to the battlefield,” she said. And when she noticed the looks of surprise on the men around her, she added, “What? If the whole business of the Classes and Skills is true, I want to be strong.” She pointed to the forest. “Most of the soldiers out there are murderers, and I’m not stupid enough to believe they will have very educated views on women. So I refuse to be weak.”

  She looked at Johan and continued talking:

  “In our old world I had tools to defend myself. My daddy taught me to shoot. Aim at the head, he always said. If somebody comes at you with bad intentions, he is less than a cockroach, so always aim at the head. And don’t hesitate.It happened once, you know? And I did not hesitate.”

  She looked at Mark and Gustav, who still kept an eye on each other.

  “So if you boys have stopped seeing who has the biggest… sword. Maybe we can come back and get some weapons for everybody. If we grab all the holding bags, we’ll probably have enough space for a couple hundred swords.”

  Arthur smiled and approached her.

  “Emily, I think it’s great that you want to defend yourself. And I’ll gladly teach you some moves when we’re back...”

  Emily? Mark thought, then he remembered she was the girl who had been riding with Arthur during most of the day. But not the girl who had gone out of the tent with him… So something had happened there. I’m sure you would love to show her some moves… Mark thought with a smirk, always happy to see his friend failing in love affairs. It helped to keep his massive ego anchored in reality.

  Arthur continued:

  “And yes. I’m fucking awesome and could probably protect you all with my big, powerful sword...”

  Somewhat anchored in reality… mentally added Mark.

  “But this is…” Arthur kept talking. “And everybody should really fucking make an effort to process it…” he looked around, “THIS IS A FUCKING STEALTH MISSION!” Some birds started flying away from the trees surrounding them. “We cannot have twenty people walking around in the forest and hope nobody will notice us!”

  Arthur continued:

  “We are going to recover one specific item. A fucking magic book, as stupid as it sounds, that will help us open new ways to protect ourselves. We cannot, and I want to stress, we cannot hope to pass unnoticed if twenty people are walking around in the forest.”

  Johan approached him and whispered something in his ear. Arthur listened for a few seconds, scowling. Then whispered something back. Johan whispered again in his ear, with some urgency. Then Arthur rolled his eyes and sounded angry when he said:

  “Everybody who wants to come can come,” he pointed with a finger at Gustav. “But you better be able to carry your own weight. I’m not babysitting anybody. We’ll be leaving in ten minutes.”

  And he walked away, entering one of the tents.

  And suddenly, for some reason Mark didn’t quite understand, they were going to walk through a forest filled with armies, surrounded by people who didn’t quite like them. People they were about to attack just a few minutes ago.

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  “Better start mingling...” Mark muttered.

  “What?” Tobias asked. To his credit, he had seemed willing to back their play. Now he let go the hilt of his saber with obvious relief.

  “Start mingling,” repeated Mark. “Make friends. Loyalties are not yet formed, not really. These people are following this Gustav because they are afraid. They need somebody to protect them. To guide them. So let’s start making some friends.”

  It will be less likely they will stab us in the back if they know our name, Mark thought, but didn’t say out loud to avoid worrying Tobias.

  Mark eyed the group, and approached the three guys who seemed the least hostile.

  “So… have you seen the idiot from the statue?” he asked them, pointing back, where an even bigger group than before was looking up and trying to find a way to bring the lookout down.

  A few minutes later, and after Mark had started a friendly wager with six of the guys, betting some stuff on whether or not the guy over the statue would manage to get down without breaking some bones, Mark entered the tent and told Arthur that they were ready.

  Arthur came back and established his leadership by ordering some of the men to scout and make sure nobody ambushed the group. He chose the men by pointing his fingers at them.

  “You to the back, you to the left, you to the right. And you… to the front.”

  The one who would scout in front of the group for the first two hours was Gustav. He opened his mouth, probably to ask who had put Arthur in charge, but a glare from Arthur made him shut up fast.

  Unsurprisingly to Mark—because he had told him to do it—Arthur had chosen for scouting the most hostile men of the group. A couple of hours of isolation would hopefully allow them to get a decent relationship with everybody else.

  Some people from the Gamer Battalion wished them luck. And without any further preparation, they walked away from the camp, from the warmth of the fires they had just started.

  Deep into the night.

  They had just managed to walk around the massive fallen statue when they heard a shout of fear, the sound of something hitting the ground, and then some screams of pain.

  The guy above the statue seemed to have found the fast way down.

  Mark cringed a little; he had gambled that the guy would manage to get down without breaking anything—and he was pretty sure he had lost that bet. And one of his daggers.

  “Fuck you,” he told two of the guys who approached to collect. “Nothing’s for sure until we come back and check the idiot for damages.”

  And then, guided by the victory fingers of Johan shining in the sky—which were in the approximate direction of the battlefield—they started their return towards the place they had resurrected in.

  Hours passed. It was easy avoiding the camps of the different armies they found. They had fires and were making a lot of noise, talking, shouting, and in some cases, celebrating.

  It was good they had decided to go back to the battlefield on the first night. Mark was sure that in the future everybody would get more focused and alert.

  They changed scouts a couple of times. Discipline relaxed. Hostility melted away. Easy come, easy gone, Mark thought.

  He felt a little guilty about his first instinct of trying to murder Gustav. Being fair, this group of men—and one woman—had some real courage if they were willing to risk their lives like they were doing.

  I have to remember that these are normal people, not the usual scum I used to surround myself with.

  As they walked, Mark, Tobias, and Arthur moved through the group, one conversation at a time. Finding common ground. Trying to get everybody to be more comfortable with them.

  Tobias approached the guy who had been searched by Eric and the zealots and told him:

  “What they did to you was wrong. When we are back, we’ll speak with Johan and agree on some common ground for how people in the gamer battalion should be treated.”

  The young man looked at him with distrust.

  “I mean it,” Tobias insisted. “I hated seeing what they did. It felt violating.”

  The man softened a little. His hands were shaking.

  “I felt so much… impotence. They came with swords, and suddenly I could do nothing. I couldn’t move. My entire body froze up. They could do whatever they wanted with me. They stopped at searching my belongings. But what stopped them from beating me into a pulp? Or worse? I will never feel like that again. And that’s one of the two reasons I want a sword…”

  “One of the reasons?”

  “Yes. The other reason is the way Eric looked while he did it… The excited smile on that little shit’s face… I will remember that. I will fucking remember that.”

  Gustav approached them and interrupted by saying:

  “Tobias, I keep thinking, and for my life, I cannot see how you killed, or even injured, one of the Mongols. Like, I saw most of the thing. I know Mark and Arthur killed a Mongol each. We all saw it, even if from the forest I couldn’t see the details. But the blood spurting from the throat of the Mongol Mark killed was hard to miss, even from a distance. But I don’t understand how you hit an enemy, when I remember seeing you in the bottom of the hill, just watching without doing anything. Like a coward.”

  Gustav had spoken raising his voice, so everybody in the group could listen to him. Conversations died down, and everybody focused on Tobias, waiting for his answer.

  And suddenly Mark felt some of his cheerful feelings of comradery slipping away. Sometimes your first instincts really are the right ones, he thought with a little regret, thinking that they wouldn’t be having this conversation if he had just stabbed Gustav.

  Tobias didn't know how to respond. He looked like a deer in headlights, and only managed to look around and mutter something unintelligible.

  “Well, I… You know, I…”