Freddy and his sister Fredina, whose three and a half parents were more imaginative with a knife than names for children, felt they were good bandits. Certainly, their outfit had all the classic bandit bells and whistles, except they had been ordered to remove most of them because it was too noisy when sneaking up on unsuspecting victims. But their prowess at standing on one spot and looking at things for hours was unmatched, and not just because Freddy and Fredina were two heads sharing a single body, either. They had practiced standing in one spot and staring at things for hours their entire life, ever since their parents had abandoned them at Dunce Town years ago. Since then, Freddy and Fredina had decided to keep an eye out for their parents' eventual, though clearly unfortunately and unintentionally delayed, return.

But, their parents had yet to do so, and so Freddy and his dear sister Fredina had taken up banditing to pass the time. They hadn't even noticed that the Catchfires were gone and some new lot had moved in, because it didn't matter. They just stood on the spot and stared at things, and occasionally attacked a trader when asked.

"Flur ehnyhlur sher?" asked Fredina, a small amount of drool pooling at the edge of her protruding tongue. She had never been the same since their triplet head, Frederous, had been forcefully removed by a trader's bodyguard not two years back.

"Not so far, sister, but I'm still looking." replied Freddy.

"Niiigh high oh."

"Yeah, lovely night. Bit chilly, though."

"Hrmm."

"Mmm."

* * *

Sir Robert, crouching low behind a ragged wooden fence, motioned for the group to stop. And they did, all coming to a halt in a similarly crouched pile stretching the length of the fence down the road a ways. Bert was second behind him, with Doris behind her and then everyone else, with Toddrick bringing up the rear (which someone had teased him about earlier, much to his embarrassment). Sir Robert's elegant face, normally the pinnacle of politeness and pleasantry, had drawn stern and still. Even his moustache had stopped waving in the wind. Bert watched intently as the man popped his head up over the fence, briefly scanned the immediate area, then popped back down to ponder, growing sterner.

They were just outside Dunce Town. The Polite Bandits had approached from the north, leaving the road a few minutes earlier to pick up a side trail that ran parallel into town. It was dark as hell without any source of light, but they couldn't afford to get spotted on the way into town - or so Bert was warned. So, she had allowed Sir Robert to lead her and the band to this small side street, where a few Old World houses still remained ... more or less.

Impatient, Bert popped up as well, peeking over the top of the rotten fence to see what was going on nearby. Not far away, a wide figure with what appeared to be two heads and one neck stump was standing in the middle of the Highway between two Old World signs marking the edge of town. The figure occasionally spoke with itself in quiet tones, but mostly just stared up the Highway. The landscape was masked in the night's thick, inky black, but a distinct orange glow hovered above Dunce Town somewhere deeper in the settlement, and smaller yellow lights pockmarked the perimeter, including where the wide figure with the heads and stump now stood. Dunce Town didn't look like it was too different to when Bert had last passed through years before, but then, she couldn't really make much out to particularly tell.

Bert peered over the fence and stared into the black. "So if we're attacking these guys at night, at what point will they stop and join the fight against Brown?"

Sir Robert, barely visible in the darkness, looked as though his lips creased upwards. "Quite frankly, my dear, that's why we're attacking them."

"Eh?" Bert did not have the patience or the trust in Sir Robert to get messed around. Her human hand felt its way towards the chill handle of her pistol, which they had quite ungraciously handed back to her. It only took a fist fight and some yelling. "Explain."

He did. Sir Robert explained how relations between the Polite Bandits and their Dunce Town counterparts had, well, "broken down" was the term he used rather carefully. The "Impolite Bandits" were notoriously violent and their leader infamously short-tempered, not to mention hideously ugly - like a rotten apple with one misshapen eye carved out the front of it, or that's how Sir Robert described him. To simply march into town and demand a parlay, though it would work for the Polite Bandits, in this particular case would likely result in Bert and Co. getting assailed on all sides by ravenous madmen with axes and whatnot who were both curious and enthusiastic to see what human internal organs looked like. Indeed, negotiating for peace, as simple as it may seem, was so far off the table, it was out the door, down the road, getting on a boat to sail across the ocean and then being eaten by a carnivorous blue whale as a light snack. All in all, it was not going to happen.

"So what are we here for, then?" Bert asked with a harsh whisper. She had to put all her emotion into her voice, because she wasn't sure if Sir Robert would see her glare. "I need allies, not corpses."

"Ah you see, Berty, that brings me to the brilliant scheme I have devised." He sounded cocky, which Bert wasn't comfortable with. She just needed this nightmare to be over. To be back at Smack-dab, kicking Farmer Brown in the face so that she could open up business again, forget he ever existed, and go back to surviving. Was that so much to ask?

"We're going to use an unwritten bandit law, Berty," Sir Robert continued. "You see, everybody knows that should someone challenge a bandit chief to a singular and most bloody of combats, he or she, or it - I won't assume, Gren wasn't human after all."

"That's probably why he caught fire," added Doris.

"Yes indeed, quite probably, Doris. Anyway, he or she or it must accept the combat immediately and see it through to the finish, which might I expand on, is typically death. Should the challenger win, then to the victor go the spoils, however spoiled they may be. And so you see, with just a moderate amount of violence to which we are all accustomed anyway, one can easily assume control of the Dunce Town bandits and save our energy on words. Which, might I remind you, will not work on this occasion."

Bert flexed her robotic fingers slowly as she dissected the information. "So you're saying, all we need to do is kill the leader and then the rest of the tribe will follow us?"

"Almost, Berty," Sir Robert chuckled patronisingly. "One individual from our side must officially challenge him first, then we can kill him and take his tribe."

Well, Bert thought, I've certainly heard worse plans. And violence wasn't exactly something foreign to a pacifist like Bert. You didn't get to call yourself a pacifist without understanding how to fight and shoot and yell, because usually you needed one or more of those in order to remind someone just how much of a pacifist you really were. And considering the amount of stragglers, hagglers and other distasteful sorts she'd had to throw out of Smack-dab (literally), what was one more little fight?

"Of course," Sir Robert said again, "a volunteer will need to challenge the chief. And it won't be a, err, civil fight, shall we say."

Bert curled her robotic hand into a tight fist now, staring at it. She listened for the satisfying sound of whirring motors functioning as whirring motors should. "I'll do it."

"Are you sure?" Sir Robert's eyebrows looked raised, or maybe it was just his general forehead wrinkles, it was hard to tell in amongst all the black. "He's a little, hmm. How would you describe him, Doris?"

"Meaty, sir," she replied, smiling sweetly (presumably).

"Yes, wonderful little word. He's meaty, Bert. I think it would be best if someone like myself were to give it a right old go. I've got a bit more experience in both combat and leadership, you understand."

Bert frowned as the haunting figure of Farmer Brown stomped across her brain. Now there was a man who you could describe as meaty. Hell, there was a man who you could describe as the entire bloody cattle farm. She'd never truly consider someone else meaty again, not after an encounter with Farmer Brown.

Her pistol felt cool and comforting in her human hand. Bert knew she was small, especially compared to the hulking great giants that plagued Can't Be Buried. She was toned, sure, even a little muscular, but small of stature. She couldn't tower or loom; her physical presence didn't impose or intimidate. If she walked into a room full of strangers, nobody would so much as notice she was there. That is, not until she opened her mouth and let it be known that Bert had arrived. For if she had one thing, it was her brains. She was sharp, sharper than any axe or whatnot. And quick, too. Maybe not ludicrously so, but quick enough. You only ever needed to be quick enough in the Waste. Never the best, only better. And, most importantly, Bert had one thing that nobody else in the Waste had. She was fuelled on some deep, primal level by sheer, unbridled, terrifying Bertrage. In her mind, that was far superior to any slab of steely muscle slapped onto a dim-witted giant.

"It's my bar," she stated firmly, "and I'll be the one to challenge this chief."

Doris and Sir Robert exchanged a look that suggested they didn't wholly agree. But it was nowhere near as powerful as the determined expression etched into Bert's face.

"Err, are you sure, my dear? I really would advise that you let me take the bullet, as it were," Sir Robert tried. "Not literally of course, because I intend to win."

Bert swung her chilling sapphire stare at Sir Robert and hoped that the darkness wouldn't dare block it. Her blood was already filling with the adrenalin necessary for a full-on Bertrage, and her mind raced with potential strategies for taking down a monster. Hell, it might even be good practice for killing Brown.

Sir Robert opened his mouth to say something else, but awkwardly shut it under the pressure of the gaze. Not even the Waste night could stop Bert's sapphire fire.

Bert wasn't allowing herself to trust Sir Robert just yet. Especially not with the keys to a whole new tribe. The relationship had gotten off to a bad start, and not just because he was a bandit. No matter how good their manners seemed on the outside, Bert had to remember that if Sir Robert's diminished horde were suddenly bolstered by fresh, violent "madmen", there was no telling what he might do, particularly if he felt he had sufficient numbers to challenge Brown head-on without the need for Smack-dab to be involved. She'd lose her army, Sir Robert would probably still get crushed, and she'd be back to square one - which, she most definitely didn't need to remind herself, involved her pretty little head ending up somewhere it shouldn't.

No, she would be the one to defeat the meaty chief. It would be her tribe, her battalion. Bert's Battalion. Hey, that had a nice ring to it...

Bert drew her pistol and clutched it tight. "What are we waiting for? Let's get this over with."

* * *

What do you think about Sir Robert and the Polite Bandits? Are they truly to be trusted, or are they up to no good? Leave a comment with your thoughts! And please Vote, as it helps this book in the algorithm.

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