The heat of the midday sun was unbearable. Tanner, his bandaged arm throbbing, leaned over the edge of the low barge to splash some river water on his blistering face.

A log drifting near the boat suddenly blinked.

It was too fast for human reflexes. The water erupted. Jaws the size of a bear trap clamped around Tanner’s torso, crushing his ribs with an audible snap.

Miller lunged, grabbing Tanner’s boot, but the massive reptile performed a death roll. The torsion violently ripped Tanner from Miller’s grip, dragging him beneath the brown surface. The water churned briefly, then settled.

Hake looked up from his ledger. “Note it,” he told his scribe. “One man lost. And deduct his helmet from his widow’s pension. He didn’t take it off.”

To make better time, the Captain hired a local barge to take them up the slow, brown river that cut through the heart of the Basin.

It was a flat-bottomed wooden scow, precariously overloaded with armored men, strongboxes, and a ballista. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, sweating in the oppressive heat.

The river was opaque, the color of steeped tea. Vines hung down from the canopy, brushing against helmets like skeletal fingers.

“I hate boats,” the One-Eared Veteran muttered, clutching the rail. “If you fall off a horse, you hit the dirt. You fall off this, you become fish food.”

Hake was busy writing. “If the boat sinks, armor weight will drown you. Unbuckle your chest pieces. I won’t have company steel rusting at the bottom of a river.”

A scratch in the Basin was a death sentence.

Tanner had snagged his forearm on a thorn bush two days prior. Now, the skin was black and weeping yellow pus. The stench was sickly sweet, like rotting fruit.

The company medic, a man who treated healing with the subtlety of a butcher, examined the arm. “Green Rot,” he declared. “It’s in the meat.”

He didn’t use a poultice. He used a heated dagger. He carved the rotten flesh out of Tanner’s arm while two men held the screaming boy down.

“Better to lose a pound of flesh than the whole arm,” Kroll lectured the pale-faced recruits watching. “The jungle digests you while you’re still walking. Don’t let it.”

The ground itself was a liar.

Boyle was walking point, his massive boots crushing the undergrowth, when the earth simply gave way beneath him.

He didn’t have time to scream before the *thwack* of impact.

Miller ran to the edge of the pit. It was ten feet deep. The bottom was lined with bamboo stakes, sharpened and smeared with something dark. Boyle was impaled in three places, coughing up bright, frothy blood.

“Get me out,” Boyle gurgled, reaching a trembling hand upward.

Kroll looked down into the hole, evaluating the angle of the stakes and the blood loss. He looked at Vess. “Put an arrow in his heart. Don’t waste a good one.”

Vess drew her bow. It was mercy, League style.

They didn’t see the locals. They only felt them.

The jungle canopy was silent, save for the occasional screech of a parrot. Then came a sound like a man spitting a sunflower seed. Pfft.

A veteran spearman marching next to Tanner suddenly stopped. He reached for his neck, pulling out a tiny, feather-tufted dart. He looked at it in confusion, took one step, and collapsed, foaming at the mouth. His heart stopped before he hit the fern-covered ground.

“Shields!” Kroll roared, but there was nothing to block. Just the laughing green shadows.

The League formed a tight circle, thrusting spears into empty bushes. They were an armored fist punching at smoke.

The enemy attacked on the second night. They didn’t use tactics, and they couldn’t be stabbed.

Mosquitoes the size of a man’s thumb descended in black clouds. They bit through linen, through leather, and seemingly through chainmail.

Boyle spent the night slapping himself, his face swelling into a lumpy, red landscape. “I’m being eaten alive!” he wailed.

Vess sat near the fire, calmly smearing thick, foul-smelling river mud over her exposed skin. She offered a handful to Miller.

“It smells like pig shit,” Miller noted, taking the mud.

“The bugs agree,” Vess said. “Pride is a luxury for the cold climates. Down here, you want to live, you learn to look like the dirt.”

The air in the Basin wasn’t a gas; it was a hot, breathable soup. The League marched, and within hours, their armor began to betray them.

Rust blossomed on breastplates like an orange plague. Leather straps that had survived freezing rain and goblin caves turned to mush.

“Oil your weapons!” Kroll bellowed, though he too was dripping with sweat.

“Oil costs two silvers a flask!” Hake shouted back from the supply wagon. “Use it sparingly!”

Miller wiped his brow with a forearm that smelled of wet dog and old iron. He looked at his spear point. It was already dulling. The jungle didn’t fight with steel; it fought with chemistry, and the League was losing the war of oxidation.

The gold from the city didn’t last. It never did. The new contract took them south, into the deep emerald hell of the Choking Basin.

To replace the city casualties, Hake had enlisted fresh blood. Among them was Boyle, a massive ex-blacksmith who sweat through his gambeson before noon, and Vess, a lean, dark-eyed woman from the border territories who carried a recurve bow and a quiet disposition.

“Women are bad luck on a march,” the One-Eared Veteran muttered.

“A sword through the liver is bad luck,” Vess replied, not looking up from sharpening her arrows. “I just kill things. Same as you.”

The Captain watched the tree line thicken into an impenetrable wall of green. “Welcome to the jungle,” he told the ranks. “Try not to breathe the water.”

They cleared the city limits, leaving the spires and the stench behind.

The wheels of the wagons hit the dirt road, a rhythmic, comforting sound. Miller breathed in deeply. The air smelled of horse sweat, damp earth, and pine trees. It was a harsh smell, but it was honest.

The city was a place of poison, shadows, and ledgers manipulated by fat men in silk. The road was simple. Walk, fight, survive.

“Good riddance,” the One-Eared Veteran spat, looking back at the walls of Kraghavn.

Miller nodded, adjusting the strap of his shield. He was ready for a real war again.

The League marched for the main gate, a tight, heavily armed formation. The City Watch had barricaded the exit, demanding a “Public Health Exit Toll” from anyone trying to flee the pox.

The Watch Captain held out his hand. “Five gold pieces per wagon.”

The Captain of the League didn’t stop marching. He drew his longsword. Behind him, two hundred men lowered their pikes in unison. The sound of a forest of steel dropping into attack position echoed off the city walls.

The Watch Captain looked at his twenty halberdiers, then at the League. He lowered his hand. The barricade was swiftly opened.

The next morning, Miller noticed red chalk crosses painted on the doors of three houses down the street.

A doctor wearing a beak-mask was nailing a quarantine notice to a post.

“The Sweating Sickness,” the doctor warned the League. “It boils the blood. The district is locked down.”

The Captain took one look at the red crosses. Disease was an enemy you couldn’t stab, negotiate with, or shoot with a ballista.

“Pack the wagons,” the Captain ordered immediately. “We break camp in ten minutes. If the guards try to keep us in the quarantine zone, we burn the barricades.”

Kroll took Miller, the One-Eared Veteran, and a weeping Tanner down to the docks. They found the gang celebrating their new steel in a warehouse.

“That belongs to the League,” Kroll said, pointing to the breastplate resting on a barrel.

“It belongs to the dice now, old man,” the gang leader sneered, drawing a cutlass.

Kroll didn’t argue. He drew his heavy mace and shattered the leader’s kneecap with a single, brutal swing. The rest of the gang backed away in terror.

“Take the armor,” Kroll ordered Tanner. “And since you lost the leather straps, you will carry it back to camp in your teeth.”

The city offered many ways to lose money, and Tanner found the fastest one.

He returned to camp looking pale and strangely light. He was missing his steel greaves and his breastplate.

“Where is your kit?” Kroll demanded, his voice dropping an octave.

“I... I lost it,” Tanner stammered. “Playing knucklebones with some dock workers in the alleys. They had loaded dice, Sergeant, I swear it!”

Hake looked up from his desk. “You don’t own that armor, Tanner. The League owns it. Which means you didn’t lose a bet. You stole company property and fenced it to a local gang.”

Death in the League rarely came with glory.

A recruit named Vance, hungry after guard duty, bought a cheap clam pie from a street vendor in the lower districts. He ate it in three bites.

By midnight, Vance was sweating and shaking. By dawn, he had purged himself to the point of severe dehydration. By noon, his heart stopped.

Kroll stood over the body, shaking his head. “He survived a goblin cave and a magic beast, and he let a bad clam kill him. Situational awareness, gentlemen. The enemy isn’t always wearing armor. Sometimes it’s wearing pastry.”

At noon, the heavy iron door of the cell block swung open. Hake stood there, flanked by a smug-looking magistrate.

“Unlock them,” Hake sighed, handing the magistrate a stack of coins.

The cell door grated open. Miller and the others shuffled out, heads hung low.

“I hope you enjoyed the accommodations,” Hake said without looking at them, making notes in his book. “Bail was ten silver a head. Plus a twenty percent administrative fee. Plus the cost of the tavern’s broken furniture. This will all be deducted from your next payout. Congratulations, you are now working for free.”

Miller woke up on a cold stone floor, his head throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He had a black eye and his knuckles were swollen.

He looked around. He was in a damp, iron-barred cell in the city dungeon. Tanner was snoring in the corner, missing a tooth. Cobb, the poison taster, was curled up near a bucket.

“Where are we?” Cobb groaned.

“The drunk tank,” Miller said, leaning back against the wall. He felt for his coin purse. It was gone, confiscated by the guards. He sighed. At least nobody was shooting at them.

With their pockets full of silver, the Captain granted the men leave at a high-end tavern near the docks.

The ale was strong, and the tension of the city finally broke. But they weren’t the only mercenaries in town. A squad from the “Silver Griffons” sat at the next table, eyeing the League’s battered gear.

“Smells like sewer rats,” a Griffon laughed loudly.

Tanner, drunk and feeling wealthy, threw a half-empty mug of ale directly at the Griffon’s face.

The tavern exploded. It was a beautiful, non-lethal release of violence. Fists flew, chairs shattered, and Miller found himself happily putting a man in a chokehold over a plate of sausages.

The sand hadn’t even reached the bottom of the glass before the heavy oak doors of the manor flew open.

Valerius’s steward ran out, hyperventilating, dragging a heavy oak chest bound in iron. He dropped it at Hake’s feet and backed away slowly.

Hake popped the latch. Gold gleamed in the sunlight. He counted it with infuriating slowness, biting a few coins to check their purity, while the ballista remained trained on the window.

“The account is settled,” Hake announced, making a neat checkmark in the ledger. “Have a profitable day, My Lord.”

They wheeled the siege engine away.

The League did not litigate broken contracts in court.

Two hours later, Prince Valerius heard a mechanical cranking sound outside his manor. He looked out his reinforced glass window and froze.

The League had rolled a repaired scorpion-ballista out of their supply train and parked it directly on his manicured lawn. The Chief Engineer was currently loading a steel-tipped bolt the size of a fence post into the groove. He cranked the tension winch, aiming it precisely at the Prince’s chest through the window.

Hake stood next to the weapon, holding his ledger and an hourglass. He turned the hourglass over.

The next morning, the Captain stood in Prince Valerius’s study to collect the offensive bonus.

Valerius, sipping tea, smiled thinly. “I hired you to protect my home, Captain. I have no knowledge of any murder at Lord Silas’s estate. It would be highly illegal for me to pay you for such a crime.”

He set the teacup down. “The defensive contract is concluded. You may leave.”

The Captain didn’t yell. He didn’t draw his sword. He just stared at the Prince with eyes that held the warmth of a glacier.

“Understood,” the Captain said, and walked out.