Was doing a friendly fight with Hornet when a bandit (I’m guessing wandering over from the nearby camp) came over to get involved. I drew out the fight with Hornet a bit to see what the Bandit would do, but he just seemed focused on me the whole time, ignoring Hornet. 

Defeated Hornet and backed away after the cutscene to leave room for the bandit to fight me without affecting Hornet. And immediately the Bandit attacked my poor weakened sparring buddy! He tried to fight back and when I realized what was going on I charged in. But I was too late. Hornet fell, making a really drawn out horrible death groan. For some reason I thought he was invincible.

RIP Hornet. I’ll miss all the duels we could have had. I’m not reloading a previous save because I’m doing a (self-imposed) perma death run. …Thanks for the helmet upgrade though I’ll wear it your honor.

I am curious to see if he’ll respawn eventually like some other NPCs do. 

Note: If you notice the weird edit after I went over to the dead bandit, it’s because I cut out the part where I looted his corpse, as it wasn’t relevant. ;)

[KCD2] Hornet is not safe from random bandits