“The tales of what mercenaries had done for the sake of bounties had been related often, and while some might sound exaggerated, most had a semblance of truth in it. Take for example the tale where a mercenary charged with a small team into the depths of the enemy formation, with only the lone survivor coming back out, the enemy commander’s head in tow.

Bards told of how the man went back to his commander’s office, dumped the head on his desk, counted the gold he was paid for, smiled, and only then dropped dead from his injuries. Sounded silly, right?

It actually happened for real, though. The mercenary in the tales was my dad, and that suicidal charge of his earned a bounty large enough to put both me and my two little sisters through education, and for our family to survive a good fifteen years.” - Damian Noven, Posuin Merchant Guild’s representative for arms trade to armies and mercenary groups, circa 495 VA.

Reinhardt gestured with his tail as he ran - using a set of gestures the Lances had learned to recognize - and had his group catch up to the now-visible escapees while they sneezed and stumbled in the cloud of flour and pepper.

Those bombs were an old item in their inventory, made shortly before he had met Elfriede. Apparently she had once been hired to hunt a mist mage who made a name for themselves as a phantom thief before, and specialized in invisibility.

While Elfriede herself had no need for such a visual aid, they had made a couple of them as precaution in case the thief proved to be able to escape her clutches. They were simply things, merely a cheap fabric bag with a small mana crystal suspended in the middle of its cavity

The bag was enchanted to tear apart on impact, and the enchantment would also activate and destabilize the tiny shard of mana crystal and cause it to explode violently. The explosion would not have done enough to harm most things, but plenty to spread the flour and pepper - packed in at four parts flour to one part finely ground pepper - in the vicinity.

They had ended up not needing them since they caught their target without issue back then, so the bags had just languished in their storage all these years. Until today, that is, as the flour covered the once-invisible escapees and the pepper disrupted the archmage’s concentration, on top of causing some of the horses to stumble.

Reinhardt himself squinted his eyes and breathed through his mouth - he could feel the powdery flour and tingly pepper in the air with his tongue - as he approached the dispersing cloud, with the rest of the group in tow. The disruption would be temporary at best, or so he thought.

Salicia had evidently noticed something amongst the revealed specked figures even from the distance, as a moment later an arrow pierced right through the eye of one of the flickering figures, and the illusion of invisibility as well as the decoy escapees all died out in that instant.

A mist archmage might well be skilled in subterfuge and distractions, but they had little to none in terms of combat capability usually, as the archmage proved unable to do a thing to the arrow that pierced through his left eye and into his brain.

Reinhardt and the rest of his group pounced on the rest without delay, as some of the larger therians simply barreled through the horses from the side, as those who rode on their backs blocked the panicked riders’ attempts to stop them with their weapons.

He himself darted forward as he was one of the faster runners of the group and leapt to the back of one rider, crushing the man between his bulk and the man’s own horse as the poor mount stumbled and fell from the sudden increase of weight on its back.

Even as the horse rolled over its rider, and tripped the one behind it, he had leapt to safety and quickly stood up on his legs even as Elfriede leapt off his back, his polemace in hand as he swatted down the next rider to come his way.

Several others had dropped more of the riders, either by brute force like what Mischka and her kin did, or by other means. Ylisera had dropped a rider as she hurled a javelin accurately into the man’s back, while Rodney from atop Yuri’s back - he was near the back as he ran more slowly compared to the rest - dropped another with a well-thrown axe.

Many of the escapees had clearly panicked and tried to force their way through, but before they could do so, Mischka and Grünhildr - who was on her back all along - as well as Gudrun, Atman, Varilya, Bjørn, Ylisera, and others had arrived by his side, which rendered their attempt to escape futile.

Two of the riders hurled bolts of lightning at them, powerful enough to incapacitate an adult human, but Bjørn and Varilya just took the hits and kept coming, the attack doing little more than scorching a bit of their flesh and giving them an unpleasant tingly feeling at most.

Yuri and Niko, along with the rest of the group had hemmed in the escapees from the back as well by then, and their coordination crumbled as they realized that they were pincered and surrounded, with no escape. The soldiers fought bravely, without fear for their lives, but they were just outclassed and outnumbered.

Reinhardt noticed that some of them had stayed back and huddled protectively around an armored figure in their midst, however. He led the charge himself, as he smashed the kneecaps of an unfortunate horse, which collapsed and dropped its rider right by his feet.

Bjørn by his side finished off the fallen rider for him, his massive cudgel - easily as thick as a human thigh and made entirely of metal - crushing the poor man into a crumpled heap before he could react.

The rest of the mercenaries smelled money in the air, with how some of the soldiers had been so protective of one in their midst in particular, and they all charged straight that way.