"Too often people took those whose trade does not involve violence as weak, easily subdued, just sheep to be sheared. People also forgot all too often that a cornered rat would even bite back at a cat." - Old folk saying.

When Elfriede led the men and women willing to fight with her - not all of them, as some remained behind to guard those who cannot fight - she found that the situation in the fort had deteriorated into a mess.

Naturally, she had not seen it with her own sightless eyes, nor could she sense the entire area of the fort with her magical senses. She just used a far simpler method, namely having someone with sharp eyesight take a look around and tell her of the situation.

Ylisera served that role for her. The young elf - barely one hundred fifty, practically still a teenager by her race's measures - who worked as one of the company's contracted prostitutes definitely had the sharp eyesight needed.

She was also very deadly with a blade, as evidenced by the long, thin knife normally used for cutting fish she held with a reverse grip in her left hand. Half the length of the knife's blade was dyed scarlet with fresh blood, and the elven woman held a finely crafted saber with an ornately decorated handguard in her other hand.

It used to belong to the bitch Elfriede dismembered earlier. Before their group moved out they naturally took the time to strip the dead enemies of anything useful. Their fine weapons and chain shirts were now being used by the best fighters amongst Elfriede's group.

"The dwarves are still holding," said the elven woman. "I see the Graf fighting with them. They're holding by the warehouses and the mess hall. Can't tell how many of them left though."

"And the rest?"

"They set the Legion's barrack on fire, but I see many of them fighting back there. The Brewer's place, also burning, might be empty there, though," reported Ylisera after another quick look. "There's heavy fighting by the smithy and the workshops. I think old Hogarth's there, pushing these shitstains out."

"We head for the workshops," decided Elfriede on the spot. There were not that many enemies left. Out of the ten thousand plus reported early in the siege, maybe only three thousand remained now, though the fort's defenders also took heavy casualties. "Gather our forces, then we fuck these sons of bitches right up the shithole."

Most of their enemies were poorly armed and untrained militiamen. They were brave, sure, zealots one and all with their beliefs driving them forward, but even the dependents of the mercenaries were hard people, used to living near or in warzones.

If they gathered all those able and willing to fight between the three groups' dependents and various camp followers, Elfriede did not doubt that they would be able to at least push back against the enemy, so she led her group towards where the workshops and smithy were located.

There were many enemy soldiers there, maybe five hundred or so, fighting against the craftsmen who refused to just lie down and die. Some of those soldiers turned towards Elfriede's group, and tried to stop them.

Elfriede tore her way through them. These militia soldiers practically had no armor, some quilted leathers or thick cloth at best. Her blades, even somewhat chipped from the earlier fight, tore through their pathetic excuse for defenses easily.

Some fell clutching their slit throats as they slowly drowned in their own blood. Others died more swiftly, as a sharp blade through the heart tends to ensure that. Yet others stared in disbelief at their scattered entrails as it spilled out of their disemboweled abdomens.

Ylisera glided between the enemy soldiers. Her saber and knife reaping lives as she passed. The young elf was very short for an elf, barely a meter eighty or so, but her lanky, slender frame, long limbs, and the graceful way she moved made her look inhuman in an ethereal way.

Elfriede knew that the elven girl was a better fighter than many of the company's active members, but the girl did not like fighting much. She preferred - and some would say, thirsted for - sexual activities instead, which was why she's a camp prostitute and not a mercenary.

Even so, it felt good to have a reliable fighter next to her. The two women led their group as they cut their way through the enemy soldiers. The artisans and craftsmen fighting on the other side noticed their approach as well by now, and intensified their resistance.

It wasn't long before Elfriede fought her way to a place close enough to the other group to sense them through her magical senses. She noticed Hogarth right away. Her adopted father-in-law led the artisans and blacksmiths, the old dwarf pummeling soldier after soldier with a sledgehammer in each of his burly hands.

Despite being over five centuries old, the old dwarf showed that he still possessed a lot of strength in his old body. His bulky frame led the way as he charged the enemy soldiers with a loud bellow, rock-hard muscles forged by centuries of work as a blacksmith swinging the sledgehammers in his hands as if they were mere wooden sticks.

Elfriede also noticed Goran, Ayrie's half-elven father, and master armorer for their company. The slender, groomed men wielded two of the large, thick, pointed scissors he normally used to cut leather with. He jabbed them into people's eyes and throats coldly, as he followed behind Hogarth.

Not fifteen minutes later, the two groups met each other, as they fought together and forced the last hundred or so surviving enemies before them into a panicked retreat, as they ran and stumbled against each other in their haste to escape.

Zealotry and belief had its limits, and for these few, they feared for their life more than they had belief. Elfriede and Hogarth had shown them rather viscerally just how fragile their lives were, and exactly how little they cared for their enemies.

Which was to say, none at all. To them, the enemy existed only to be destroyed.