“It takes a very different skill set to kill a beast than it does to take on a man.” - Ferro Lucius Spaghlieri, fencing instructor based in Levain, circa 692 FP.

While Reinhardt and Mischka led the shock troopers of the Company from the front, Elfriede supported them from the sides, as her smaller group of almost forty men and women – they had replenished their losses and then some in the past five years – split into two groups and looked after their flanks. Each group had their own purpose in this battle. The shock troops were at the forefront and opened the way, while the shieldbearers had fallen back to cover their flanks on the rear side.

Elfriede’s group of killers were one of the groups tasked with getting rid of troublesome individuals from the opposing side if they tried to strike the flanks of the mercenary formation.

She herself led half the group and covered the right flank of the mercenary formation, working in conjunction with Fatimah and her group. On the left flank Ylisera took the other half, where she paired off with Nicole and her scout detachment, which functioned as light infantry in the current battle. Most of the time they just rushed along with the rest of their mercenary brethren, but when a particularly troublesome threat came, they struck.

Three of the Warforged pikemen had dropped their long pikes – useless in the close quarters the mercenaries rushed to – and pulled out their hatchets, about to make an assault to the flanks of the formation when they were suddenly struck down, each with a clean strike to the throat. Their killer was a scarred, one-eyed woman who slipped back into the midst of the rushing mercenaries without skipping a beat.

It has been five years since Katja was practically strong-armed into working for the mercenaries, yet it was not something she regretted at all. The past few years had been the most peaceful and stable her life had ever been, and she even already paid off her bounty from her deducted salary a year ago. She chose to stay with the mercenaries at that point.

During those years Elfriede and the others who worked under her had brought up a point that Katja could not deny. That she was a killer. A talented one at that. Her trying to deny what she was brought her little results, and instead the others pointed out that after some more years of working for the mercenaries and saving up, she could easily retire and live whatever sort of life she wished for.

Elfriede seemed like she had expected Katja’s decision to stay when she expressed her mind back then.

As Katja slipped back into her position in the mercenary formation, she caught a glimpse of movement further ahead. One of the Warforged Blademasters had apparently led a charge towards the mercenary formation together with around a dozen of the hatchet-wielding pikemen, only to be met by Elfriede herself, along with Fatimah and a few of her people.

Warforged pikemen were trained for fighting in formation and cooperative tactics, and given their weapon of choice, favored keeping their enemies more than an arm’s reach away from them. The current situation which the Free Lances had forced down their throats was to their disadvantage, even as many of them dropped their long pikes in favor of the hatchets they used in close combat.

As well-trained as the pikemen were, Fatimah and her people were hardened killers with far more experience than them. The southern woman led five of her Nightstalkers with sword and short spear in hand as they made short work of the dozen Warforged pikemen rushing towards the mercenary flank. The pikemen never stood any chance whatsoever.

With a swift strike of her short, forward-curved sword, Fatimah shoved one pikeman’s hatcher aside, leaving an opening through which her short spear struck like a serpent, straight into the man’s throat. She withdrew her spear from the dying man’s throat the next moment and used its shaft to parry and deflect another blow aimed at her, before her sword flashed over and severed that opponent’s hand at the wrist.

A swift return slice with the forward-curved blade of the sword slit the man’s throat open and caused his scream of pain to terminate in a wet gurgle.

Meanwhile, Elfriede took on the Blademaster. The Blademaster was an older man, his coarse beard already partly turned to white with age, who swung a sword in one hand and an axe in the other with the deft precision of an expert. Elfriede met his every feint and swing with one of her own however, and quickly got the blademaster on the backfoot.

The twin blades she wielded were lighter and more nimble than her opponent’s weapons due to their construction, and their edges far keener since they were made of mithril. Before long, her opponent was distraught as one of Elfriede’s strikes found a notch made by a previous strike on the man’s axe shaft and successfully slashed through the wood cleanly.

With decades of experience, the Blademaster just managed to lean his body out of the reach of Elfriede’s blade even as he delivered a counterattack with his remaining sword. To his dismay however, Elfriede caught the blade of his sword mid-swing between her own weapon’s blade and its crescent-shaped handguard, keeping it stationary for a brief moment.

That brief moment was all she needed to land her blow. The short, scythe-like blade perpendicularly attached to her sword pierced through her opponent’s cheek at an upward angle, the blade piercing deeper into the man’s skull cavity from below even as the upright blade tore his cheek wide open and exposed his teeth and gums to open air.

The fighting only took a brief moment from the start to the end, and Elfriede left together with Fatimah and the rest as they re-integrated into the moving mercenary formation as if they had never left. The only sign of their passage being the dead bodies they left behind, many lying dead with their eyes wide open in disbelief, unaccepting of their fates to the very end.