“To chase a fleeing enemy into difficult terrain is to gamble with your own lives.” - Old military saying.

“They’re starting to toughen up, boss-man,” reported Egil as the small goblin snuck to Reinhardt’s side. Reinhardt himself was busy as he directed his mercenaries to strike here and there, as they caused more chaos in the Bostvan encampment.

Most of the enemies had placed more importance on stopping the night attack from the Dvergarder forces up front, which was done in force. It was an overt threat Reinhardt had planned out with the young Duchess, where her forces played at being the main threat while Reinhardt’s made themselves look like a distraction.

In actuality, both forces were distractions for Elfriede’s group of assassins, on whose shoulders the success of the operation lay. Reinhardt finally noticed the return of Elfriede’s group as he tangled with one of the Bostvan knights who started arriving to reinforce the rear.

He blocked the knight’s sword with the shaft of his polemace, before he kicked the knight back, and struck down hard. The knight managed to get his head out of the way, but the mace still landed hard on his right shoulder. Armor crumpled beneath the blow, while flesh and bone crunched, with the knight dropping his sword from the pain of his crushed shoulder as he retreated desperately.

Reinhardt had not given chase to the man as he instead blew the tones of a retreat into his enchanted whistle, and watched as his mercenaries gathered from the chaos of the encampment. From high above, Hannah had also caught the shrill whistles, and dropped one last flaming jar, this one with the fabric outside treated so that it burned a bright blue, an agreed-upon signal for the Dvergarder forces to beat a retreat as well.

It had not taken long for the mercenaries to gather for a retreat, and before they left, they hurled the last of the prepared jugs of oil all over the place. The jugs burst apart and the oils inside caught fire almost immediately, which formed an impromptu wall of fire to cover the mercenaries’ retreat.

It was only after they were halfway back to the forest that signs of pursuit came from behind them. While it was dark and hard to get proper numbers, Reinhardt estimated maybe two to three thousand soldiers chasing after his mercenaries, so up to ten times the number of the small detachment with him.

The mercenaries ignored the pursuit of the angry soldiers, and simply ran with best speed into the forest. As they got closer, the archers under Salicia’s command started to give a half-hearted volley aimed at their pursuers.

Whoever commanded the pursuit probably took that as a sign of weakness, and led his forces straight into the forest. Just as over two-thirds of the pursuing force entered the forest however, the rain of arrows intensified and barraged those still outside.

Meanwhile, those who entered the dark forest found themselves stymied by many traps, from pitfalls and snares to swinging stakes and logs, that the mercenaries had set up beforehand. The mercenaries knew the safe routes, while their pursuers could only inch forward the hard way.

It was when the pursuers got deeper in after they spent many of their soldiers as sacrifices, past the traps, and close to where the mercenary archers were stationed, that the ambush was sprung.

The detachment Reinhardt led had turned around and charged their pursuers, with their now-typical shieldwall in the lead. At the same time, the rest of the mercenaries under Lars’ command struck from the sides of the pursuers.

Pincered from three directions with arrows raining from above, the pursuit force soon fell into disarray, and the mercenaries made full use of the chaotic melee to slaughter as many of the Bostan soldiers as they could. They fell into even more disarray when Mischka pushed her way to the commander - still mounted atop his horse - and swatted the man down with her great blade. The man landed in two pieces, in clear sight of many of his frightened soldiers.

At that point, the disarray turned into a rout, as the Bostvan soldiers tried to escape from the forest. They were harried by the mercenaries until they escaped the forest itself, and were still subjected to a barrage of arrows until they finally escaped far enough away from the place.

Out of the two to three thousand that had chased the mercenaries, a third never entered deep into the forest proper before the one in front began to rout. Out of those, maybe half returned, many of whom bore injuries that would get worse without treatment. On the mercenaries’ side, they lost another dozen or so, with around four times as many injured, overall still a very good result for them.

Reinhardt quickly ordered his men to comb the battlefield for salvage and valuables, as the injured were evacuated back to their camp deeper in the forest where their healers awaited. To search for valuables in the dark of the night was a hard task, so they had simply stripped the dead soldiers of everything that looked even remotely valuable or usable and stuffed those items into extra storage artifacts they carried just for that purpose, and left the stripped corpses for the beasts to devour.

By daybreak, the Free Lances had returned to their encampment. Most of the mercenaries simply deposited their salvage for their followers to check and sort, before they went to sleep on the hard ground, tired after a night’s worth of hard work.

That said, not every bit of salvage was equal, as Reinhardt had gathered his officers to discuss the salvage Elfriede had brought with her, namely the necklace of rings she took from the Bostvan officer she killed by the elaborate tent.

Many of their eyes shined as they saw what was stored within those rings, and what it meant for the battle as a whole.

Things were about to change on the battlefront.