Knuckles v.I

You lie to the dying. Knuckles prided himself on telling the truth but his sergeant had told him, what seemed like a hundred years ago 'You lie to the dying.'

So when Teeth asked him to watch after Wisp Knuckles promised he would. Knuckles had come across her before finding Teeth, a footman's hatchet embedded in her skull. Her face had been frozen in a look of surprise, her eyes wide- he closed them gently, a well practiced act, and made a note to come back to her.
Teeth's broke into strained grin, blood spilling out, when Knuckles promised. People were funny, to the best of Knuckle's knowledge there had never been one moment where Wisp had ever shown any affection towards Teeth and yet in his last moments... Something on the horizon caught Knuckle's eye, he tried to peer through the smoke to see it

He felt Teeth's hand go limp. He looked down at his face one last time, stared hard- to try to remember it but knew all the same that he wouldn't be able to eventually, closed Teeth's eyes just like he had closed Wisp's and thought to himself for a moment that the only real intimate bond between the two was that act.

Knuckles worked over Teeth's gear. His hauberk was in tatters but his boots were in good shape. Knuckles pulled them off and unstrapped the vambraces from Teeth's arms, Teeth had taken them from a corpse himself half a dozen years ago. A few coins and a woman's ring from a pouch at his belt and a long knife. Knuckles cut the dead man's belt off and pulled the knife and its scabbard free of the corpse.
A sad collection, but despite the fact their work always brought in coin, no one would ever be able to recover much more than that from any of their remains. 

A mercenary's life dangled a few delusional hopes before them, longevity wasn't one of them. 

Knuckles returned to where Wisp lay, knelt to harvest what he could. Her pockets produced only a few valueless sentimental keepsakes. He pulled her leather breastplate off and left them laying there across her chest.

As he stood Tapper knelt, dirt trapped in the heavy creases of his forehead, sweat had carried the grime off his completely bald pate. Tapper held a syringe in his claw like hands and looked up at him as if to ask permission. Knuckles had liked Wisp but she wasn't anything to him, and after all the dead were dead. He shrugged and left Tapper to his business.

He trudged towards the cart, the terrain a mess of blood and mud. He threw what he had found, except the coins, onto the dishearteningly large pile and sat on the cart's edge. 

He was tired. That was to be expected, the fight-doomed from the get go- had taken the whole morning. The days preceding it had been riddled with skirmishes and preparations and little sleep. He imagined that everyone was as tired as he was. Everyone who wasn't dead.
One by one the sergeants started to collect near the cart. A few leaned on the cart, a few sat, unbothered, in the mud. Almost as a rule the mercenaries only fought when they had to, despite the job description of being soldiers for hire. At the end of any major engagement, which was not exactly their specialty, they did the Tally. Number the dead. Knuckles felt the number would be high.
After some time, two lieutenants arrived. One, his, the female tall and lean, the other Squats - short, and seemed to be almost as wide as he was tall, his eye was swollen shut and there were fingers missing from his left hand, both things were new.
Knuckles stood, and with his rising so did too the other sergeants.
"Hammer?" Mule asked after the missing lieutenant. Squats shook his head. Mule cursed, he and Hammer had been friends. One would assume that brothers-in-arms would be close, but forced company fostered true friends with no more frequency than did circumstance in a normal life. Mule had few friends, Hammer had had only one.
Knuckles asked though he already knew the answer, about waiting for the Captain. Frosty gave him the hand signal for 'negative', Knuckles answered her with a head nod.  Knuckles had known and still it stung. He hadn't liked the Captain, the position did not foster intimate connections but in the twenty years Knuckles had been with the company he had only known two Captains. Continuity bred its own sort of affection.
Whaler spoke next, the thumbs of his huge ham sized fists, tucked into his belt, 'Well, we should settle that issue first.' He postured for a fight. Knuckles groaned internally. Plenty of elections had ended in fights according the stories that made up their history, he could not imagine though mustering up the energy to do so at the moment. He suspected that was what Whaler was counting on, exhausted disinterest.
'No, let's do the count first.' Ribbons spoke up, which was unusual- Sickles, hand on her namesake weapons, inched up behind her, which was not.