“Trouble?” Mike asked.

“Not down here that I’ve heard,” Herzer said. He finished loosening Diablo’s saddle and lifted all the gear off, then led the horse to the trough and tied him off. “That was why I was up in Harzburg. Tarson had been taken over by a band of brigands, for want of a better term. They had been raiding Harzburg and the city fathers requested federal help. They got me.”

“That must have been a pleasure for them,” Mike said with a chuckle.

“Yeah, they’d requested a century of Blood Lords, as if we have a century of trained Blood Lords to send. And they had a militia but they’d never founded a local Blood Lord chapter. Or even sent anyone to the Academy. So I got to go whip them into shape.” Herzer laid his saddle, tack and blanket on a railing, then grabbed the rest with his hook and slung it over his shoulder. “Lead on, Macduff!”

“How’d it go?” Courtney asked as they went in the house. She brought over a flagon and set it on the table, then laid out cold pork, cheese and bread.

“Thank you,” Herzer said, taking a slice of the cheese. It was sharp and tangy and went well with a slice of the cold pork. “I’d thought about eating on the road but I figured I’d stop by and you might be willing to feed me something other than monkey on a stick.”

“Not a problem.” She smiled, nibbling at the cheese herself. “And I repeat, how’d it go?”

“Well, it was a little sticky to start,” Herzer admitted. “They’d expected someone… older.”

Mike chuckled and shook his head. “You’ve got the silver sword and the laurel of valor.”

“Which meant just about nothing to most of them,” Herzer said around a mouthful of cheese and bread. “So I just worked at it until they realized they could do it my way or die. I made it pretty clear I didn’t care which. The Tarsons finally attacked the town, where we wiped out most of their fighters, then more or less walked in and took Tarson over. The leader of them had set up a ‘citadel’ made of a free-standing stockade and a couple of log blockhouses. They burned quite nicely with the application of a little tallow and brush.” He frowned at the memory, then shook his head.