“What happens to captives whose home nation refused to ransom back for whatever reason? Well, that really depends on the captors, honestly. Some would just execute them to save themselves the hassle, but more commonly, those captives would be put to work in the mines or the likes, usually as long as the war continues, though they were commonly released after the hostilities were all over. Not always the case, though.” - Karl Angud, retired former mercenary.

Shortly after Reinhardt took out that pair of knights, the Kolain soldiers broke. Those who were encircled started laying down their weapons and surrendering en masse, while those further behind who were still blocked by Mischka’s platoon started turning tail and running away one after another in a hurry. Even the knights that remained gave up the fight.

The reason for their morale breaking was not related to their being encircled, or those behind unable to assist those further ahead. It was all because their liege lord, the one they had sworn to fight for, had escaped the battle ahead of them like a coward, a sight that was the last straw that broke the teetering morale of the soldiers and knights still locked in combat.

Before long, the Kolain soldiers further back had either knelt down in surrender or ran away towards the nearby forests. Reinhardt ordered no pursuit for those who were escaping, and instead, he led his mercenaries and the home guards to round up the surrendered foes. All in all, the battle at Aldenstadt had not lasted more than half an hour from the beginning to the end.

The defenders took negligible losses. Less than ten mercenaries lost their lives, while the home guard only took around a hundred casualties, mostly injuries. The Kolain soldiers on the other hand had at least a thousand dead, counting those that had been wiped out in the ambushes by the platoons he sent out days ago, and nearly half their army had surrendered, resulting in there being more captives than there were home guards and mercenaries to take care of them.

After a quick discussion with Daleeni and former Viscount Adenauer – the former noble had actually taken up arms and joined the fighting, and proved quite a deft hand at it too, surprisingly – they decided to tie up all the captives for the time being and to decide what to do with them later once reinforcements from Levain arrived.

They were still busy tying up all the captives they had when Fatimah returned as well, dragging behind ten captives with them, none other than the escaping Earl LeCroix and his ten knights, which made Reinhardt approach the former Viscount once more for his advice.

“So we got the enemy leader, one Earl named Severen LeCroix of Kolain, by his own admission,” reported Reinhardt to the former nobleman. “Are we going to keep him for ransom, or do you prefer to report him as an ‘unfortunate’ casualty of the battle?”

“LeCroix… LeCroix… ah, him! He’s relatively worthless, and I think not even the Marquis he now worked under would bother to ransom him, so it should be safe to get rid of him. The fool had an equally foolish heir, if I remember my reports right, so if he died in battle his former domain might be stolen from his heir by others. Some internal dispute for the enemy is never a bad thing,” replied Bernd Adenauer after a moment of thought. “You captured his knights too, right?”

“I think they all either died fighting or were captured, at least as far as I could tell,” replied Reinhardt. “Why?”

“There is one old knight amongst LeCroix’s retainers that’s known to be an excellent strategic mind, who usually served as his general. I would daresay that that knight is the reason why the troops from Kolain won so many accolades in the past decade, and also the one who led them to their victories in the first place,” explained the former nobleman. “He goes by the name of Edwin Carns, maybe around fifty to sixty, should be easy enough to single him out on account of his age.”

“You’d like to offer him a chance to work for us instead?”

“No, the man is a known loyalist to LeCroix, having served the family since the previous generation of Earls,” said the former nobleman. “I want him dead, and ideally I would like to see his head with my own eyes to be sure.”

“Let me inform my subordinates to check the surrendered knights for that one, then,” noted Reinhardt with a nod of his head. He then turned to leave to where the mercenaries were directing the home guards on lining up the captives into neat lines. “I’ll be right back.”

As it turned out, Reinhardt did return rather quickly, not five minutes after he had left, with Elfriede in tow. Elfriede and Erycea, along with Nicole and Fatimah and their respective platoons had already rejoined the rest of the mercenaries by then. Reinhardt had just started asking the captives about the mentioned Sir Carns when the captives gave him odd looks and asked back on why he’s asking about someone he already killed.

A quick check with Elfriede’s group finally told him what had actually happened, as it turned out that when Elfriede made an assassination attempt the previous night, she had unwittingly killed and decapitated the person in question, unaware of his importance to the Kolain army. She had only made the attempt in the hopes of scoring a commander’s head or two to fuck with the Kolain army’s morale, but had not realized that she took out their general.

“Is this the right man?” Elfriede asked to the former noble – now councilor – as she nonchalantly brought out a human head from her storage. The head had long stopped bleeding, and the face was locked in a visage of unwillingness, but it was enough for Bernd to confirm that it was indeed the old knight he had been looking out for.

In the end, Bernd Adenauer paid the Free Lances a sizable bonus – out of his own pockets – for the old knight’s head, whereas the Earl was soon executed, with a mutual understanding amongst themselves to say that he was killed in the battle. His head was later exchanged for another bonus from the Levain city council, who were naturally surprised to learn that the mercenaries they sent ahead to help defend Aldenstadt had not only defended the town, but had even defeated and routed the attacking army, all by themselves.