"Few people are better at salvaging usable things out of a battlefield than the followers of mercenaries. When your income literally depended on it, you quickly become skilled even in such unsavory practices." - Ruben Osprey, retired mercenary, formerly of Lavian's Birds of Prey.

The next morning, Reinhardt was no closer to a solution to his woes. A good night's sleep - on a proper bed no less! - had helped revitalize him somewhat, and that morning he took Erycea, who had woken up rather early, in his hands and cradled her in one arm as he walked around the place.

Fort Ascher, or what remained of it, was still a complete mess. Yesterday the followers and most of the dependents had at least moved the corpses that blanketed the ground to where the rubble that used to be the walls were.

Fortunately for them, it was easy to sort out the dead. The mercenaries and the dwarves both buried their dead reverently, while the enemy dead were stacked irreverently like firewood.

Today everybody - even some of the wounded mercenaries who were healthy enough to help - worked by that pile of corpses, where they diligently sorted out anything that was still usable from the corpses.

The dwarves mostly just watched, though sometimes a few young ones walked over and asked questions about some of the items the working people had chosen to keep. Sometimes he saw them make disgusted looks when the item in question were things like false teeth made of silver or gold.

Those who worked and sorted the items - mostly the women, while the men did the heavy lifting and disposed of the sorted corpses outside, to be burned later - missed nothing. Even a peasant's personal storage item, tiny pouch or wallet-sized ones, usually just with a handful of coppers, maybe a silver or two inside, were not spared.

Any and all weapons were collected, so long as they were of remotely decent shape, or made out of metal, since even broken swords and daggers could be melted and reforged for other uses.

Quilted or boiled leathers that were too damaged were discarded, the same with tattered makeshift gambesons and the like. Those who died with their armor in decent shape found themselves stripped soon enough, their armor going towards the pile that was the mercenaries' salvage.

Those who only wore poor cloth leggings were better off, but those with proper leather boots soon became barefoot corpses. The same applied to all sorts of belts and bandoliers in decent conditions.

Anything that looked valuable was taken from the dead bodies. Corpses of men and women both were stripped naked to make sure they had no other valuables tucked in somewhere, then unceremoniously dumped at the growing pile of naked corpses and useless items outside the fort.

Jewelry of any sort was immediately removed from their dead owners. Even poor peasants usually had an earring or two, or maybe a ring or pendant, sometimes passed down from their parents. Some who had better positions in the villages had more riches on them as well. Reinhardt noticed one of the Lances' dependents stripping off what looked like a golden ring set with a small diamond from the fingers of a middle-aged female corpse.

Throughout all that, the corpses were handled roughly, without dignity. The workers handled with a callousness born from many similar experiences, with only a few younger ones turning green and puking their guts out from time to time.

As followers and dependent of mercenaries, scouring a battlefield after the fact was part of their work, where the salvage they found would go towards supplementing their finances, or at times just for personal use.

For a mercenary to get a new pair of boots after a battle was a most common sight after all.

Throughout the grim and bloody work - some of the corpses still leaked when moved, the rough handling inadvertently reopening wounds where the blood had dried - Reinhardt had not bothered to cover Erycea's eyes.

It was not the first time she saw such sights after all. If anything he felt both slightly bothered, yet proud at how the grisly sight of so many corpses - and the thick stench of death - had not seemed to bother his little girl in the least.

Beyond her scrunching up her cute nose from the smell, that is.

He had received proper reports from Loren and the other healers while he brought Erycea around. The battle at Fort Ascher had been nothing short of disastrous, for either side involved.

Considering that the dwarven cavalry had been so kind as to wipe out the badly injured zealots left behind in their camps, Reinhardt would not have been surprised if it turned out that they had depopulated the southernmost region of the Holy Kingdom over the past two weeks.

On their own side, it was no less disastrous. The first expedition had practically ceased to exist in all but name. Maybe twenty, thirty men in total could be made to stand and fight out of everyone they had left.

Out of the fifteen thousand total soldiers and mercenaries that entered the Holy Kingdom, barely three thousand were still alive. Over half that number were injured badly and needed intensive care for weeks if not months before they could fight again. If at all. He knew a good number of those injured were crippled beyond most healer's ability to help.

Over a quarter were in medical comas, their life and death still undecided, despite the best efforts of the healers. They would likely have started losing those had the cavalry detachment that rescued them not brought a good fifty healers with them.

Out of those surviving three thousand, maybe two hundred fifty were his people. Barnaby's men came out slightly better, around a third of their original numbers still alive, though many were severely injured. Barnaby himself hadn't yet regained consciousness.

Amongst the dwarves and mercenaries alike Reinhardt often heard talks, wishful prayers that maybe the Silver Maiden, the unliving healer who was known to walk about battlefields, dispensing healing to all she encountered, would pass by.

He knew better than to fall to such wishful thinking. It was not that he did not believe in the tales. He knew the Silver Maiden was as real as it gets, as his late aunt was once saved by her in her younger days.

Reinhardt just doubted he would be so lucky that the living legend herself would happen to walk right then and there and heal their wounded for them. Such a coincidence just doesn't happen in real life, he knew that.

Even so, he couldn't help but to also give a quiet prayer to whatever deity might be listening to send her over if possible.