“You damn coward! If you don’t have the guts to stand up to your centurion, at least stand up to your own warband.”

“Storm was close to leaving the warband that day, and he would have been right. There can be no loyalty without trust.

“As a soldier you often don’t have the luxury of fixing your mistakes—what’s dead is dead. You can only make sure you don’t repeat them, and so I made Storm my second-in-command that day.

“From that day forward, we’d face difficult decisions together, as one warband. And soon, we’d have to deal with our centurion…”

This and the previous two scenes were inspired by an anonymous question I’ve had in inbox since March, about the warband’s darker history—I never had quite the right idea for it, but I think I’m happy with this one.