It was a freezing autumn rain. It didn’t inspire melancholy; it simply worked against us: turning roads into glue and hole-riddled armor into a refrigerator.

  In the center of the tent, around an old camping table, sat three men.

  The first was the Sergeant. His beard not yet flecked with snow. He was sharpening his sword with a whetstone. Scritch. Scratch. The sound was monotone, like a toothache. The blade was old, jagged with notches. The Sergeant moved the stone methodically, checking the edge with a dirty fingernail. Would it catch or not? If the sword gets stuck in an enemy's rib — you’re a corpse. No romance, just the mechanics of murder.

  The second was the Captain. He was staring at the single remaining silver coin. Heads. Tails. Then he covered the coin with his palm and slowly slid it toward himself, separating it from the common pile of copper. "Management fee," the gesture read.

  The third was Gunther. Gunther didn’t look like a hero. He looked like a man who had optimized his appearance for survival: nothing superfluous, just bones and nerves. He was shuffling parchments, his lips calculating silently.

  "Twelve," Gunther pronounced. His voice sounded like an autopsy report. "Twelve crowns and three days of provisions. Excluding that rusk the Sergeant confiscated from the rat."

  "The rat violated inventory storage protocols," the Sergeant grunted, not looking up from his blade.

  "We are bankrupt," Gunther stated as a matter of fact. "Technically, our enterprise has been liquidated."

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The Captain pocketed the silver coin.

  "We need a contract."

  "We need equipment," the Sergeant tossed the whetstone aside. "We lost all our fighters, and for the new recruits, we only have torn shirts. First arrow — and that's a minus unit. I don’t work with such material."

  "We have no CAPEX budget for equipment," Gunther cut him off.

  Silence hung in the tent. Cold, calculating silence. Gunther picked up a quill. There was no fire in his eyes, only the cold glint of numbers.

  "You are thinking in templates," he said. "'Buy armor.' 'Hire soldiers.' That is the logic of wealthy corporations. And we are a junk asset."

  "We are bums," the Sergeant spat.

  "Precisely," Gunther allowed himself the shadow of a smile. "We are Bums."

  He wrote the word on the parchment.

  "BUMS."

  "Are you mocking me?" The Sergeant frowned.

  "No. I am implementing a Passive Defense Strategy," Gunther tapped the quill on the table. "Think. An arbalest bolt costs 5 crowns. If we brand ourselves as 'Knights', the enemy spends it on us. But if they see ragamuffins? Why waste ammunition the cost of a lunch on a target that drops no loot? They won’t shoot us, Sergeant. They will hit us with sticks. And that increases survivability by 40%."

  The Captain smirked. There was a perverse beauty in this logic.

  "And our reputation?"

  "Reputation will follow. The enemy will think: 'Rabble.' And they will open their flanks."

  Gunther stood up.

  "We will not buy armor. That is a bad seed investment. We will strip it from those who invested in it but forgot to invest in brains."

  "That is looting," the Captain noted.

  "That is Lucrum ex Nihilo," Gunther minted the words. "Profit from Nothing. We start from zero. We are an Aggressive Hedge Fund with high-risk exposure, operating in the violence market."

  The Captain nodded.

  "Write the bylaws, Accountant. Tomorrow I will find some debt capital for initial expenses, but it will be very modest."

  That night, in a dirty tent, Romance died.

  And Efficiency was born.