“Nothing gets through a thick skull better than a good hit with a pointy warhammer.” - Old mercenary saying.

Alva stood in a line alongside the other nine archers that shared the wagon with him, bow in hand, one arrow nocked on the bowstring, with another three pinched between his fingers. Like the others, his eyes intently watched the horde of cavalrymen rushing towards the convoy through the arrow slits built into their wagon’s side. He knew that each of his archers had already picked a target in mind and they all just waited for the signal.

That signal came just as the raiders came within two hundred meters from the convoy, a distance those galloping horses could likely cover within fifteen to twenty seconds at most. The signal itself was silent, but Alva’s sharp eye caught the sight of a larger than usual arrow flying so fast he barely registered a blur. He did not wait until the arrow landed accurately in the eye of the lead raider before he lifted his own bow.

There was no need to yell at the other archers to loose, as they already paid attention to his every movement, and once the archer next in line saw him raise his bow, they followed suit, with the next archer noticing that, continuing down the line like a wave. Before a full second had ticked by, Alva already pulled bow to a full draw, took aim while he did so, and loosed an arrow at his target.

A smile graced his lips as he felt how light his new composite bow was to draw, barely heavier than the bow he used for hunting animals in his youth, yet possessing enough power to match a typical war bow nonetheless. In a smooth, practiced motion, he slipped one of the arrows pinched between his fingers onto the bowstring, nocking it as he released the arrow and shifted his fingers to pull the bowstring instead.

The second arrow left his bow before the first even managed to land.

While none of the archers employed by the Free Lances managed to match Salicia’s speed and precision so far – she was capable of loosing four arrows in less than two seconds, and that was while using her heirloom bow, which while heavily enchanted, was still around twice as heavy as the new composite bows used by the rest – they still managed to loose an arrow every second, give or take, with a couple of seconds of delay when they needed to reach down to grab the next set of arrows.

Fifteen seconds was enough for the whole group of over a hundred archers to loose three sets of four arrows each, while Salicia picked off anyone that looked like an officer from the group of riders with extreme prejudice at an even greater rate of fire.

The raiders braved the storm of arrows at first, but by the time they reached within a hundred meters of the convoy, half their numbers were already downed, either the riders having been shot out from their saddles, leaving riderless horses lost with nothing to do, or their horses were shot out from under them, generally resulting in a painful and often fatal fall for the rider.

None of their officers also made it that far.

Intimidated by the still ongoing flurry of arrows headed their way, half the riders turned tail and fled for their lives, with no officers to call them back in line. The other half that were more courageous and had not noticed their allies fleeing behind them tried to brave the arrows, to little success. The last raider that kept charging fell into a heap just in front of the wagons as his horse was show and bucked him off violently.

From the start to the finish, none of the mercenaries other than their archers even made a move.

Reinhardt only ordered some of the infantry – some of the younger recruits – to clean up the mess while the convoy kept moving unbothered. The young mercenaries quickly captured the riderless horses, and stripped the raiders of all their possessions worth something, leaving corpses in soiled undergarments in their wake.

For the times when the raider in question wasn’t quite dead yet, it was quickly rectified with a quick stab to the throat by the youngsters.

In a show of efficiency, it took them less than ten minutes before they rejoined the convoy, which had not even passed through the area yet, due to its size. They quickly deposited the salvage to one cargo wagon – where a clerk noted their names and the items deposited – before they filed into the wagons that they traveled on and continued along with the convoy once more.

The cleanup literally took longer than the “battle” itself.

“You certainly… possess a lot of confidence in your men, Captain Edelstein,” mentioned Scipius once they were underway once more. As he was a military officer himself, he couldn’t help but compare what he had seen just now to what he would have done, before quickly concluding that he wouldn’t have dared to simply rely on his archers to handle a group of light cavalry twice their size like that.

To be fair, his archers were trained differently. They might get ten to a dozen shots off a minute, at best.

“They just did what they’re being paid for,” replied Reinhardt nonchalantly. “We primarily utilize irregular tactics, so we have little use for field archers who are used to standing still and shooting at something far away. Ours are trained to shoot rapidly in bursts at closer targets, while on the move, and we equip them accordingly.”

“An unusual, but clearly effective approach,” noted Scipius. Considering how most forces in the Empire still adhered to the more traditional combat doctrines, he could see that the far more unorthodox Free Lances would be highly effective in such an environment. “I see that Councillor Adenauer is getting his money’s worth with this hire.”

“Thank you for the compliment, subcommander,” Reinhardt replied. “After all, that’s what us mercenaries are for, wouldn’t you agree?”