“One of the most important prerequisites of battle is to gather as much information about your enemy when you can. The more you know, the better.” - Laiza ibn Estrazo, general from the Assadin Emirate, circa 102 FP.

Since it was already the afternoon when the report arrived, and the best-trained soldiers in Levain were still tired from the exhibition, the emergency meeting quickly ended with a consensus to prepare for departure within the next two days. Fortunately they had time, as due to Reinhardt’s habit of sending his aerial scouts far and wide, the enemy army they spotted would not arrive in Levain territory for another week at the least. Likely more, as part of the report said that they were incorporating more armies from the territories they passed along the way, which took up time.

“Get all the platoon leaders gathered. Call for Rubor and Eranoz too,” commanded Reinhardt that very evening once he returned from the emergency meeting. The council had asked him to join them in the potential fighting, as they keenly felt that they would need every help they could get. Reinhardt had obliged and prepared to mobilize the Company in its entirety.

During the year they had stayed in Levain, the Company had pretty much doubled their number of combatants to over two thousand, mostly by incorporating recruits that had finished their training into the Company proper. There were other cases though where they gained manpower through local recruits who were already experienced.

As the former empire’s territory had been fighting a civil war amongst themselves for around two decades by that point of time, there had naturally been many mercenaries who tried their luck there. Some were large companies of hundreds to thousands of men, some bands of merely a few dozen, while yet others only brought themselves into the fray. Typically, such lone mercenaries would try to attract the attention of a larger force that they would then join, usually after a fitting show of prowess.

Rubor and Eranoz were formerly such lone mercenaries, who after their latest contract – conveniently, working for the very same southern coalition that now threatened Levain – had expired, traveled north as they heard news of the Free Lances, with intention to join the Company.

The ways they ended up making contact were quite memorable, though.

While they were old friends, the two lone mercenaries opted to go their own way into the city, and see which of them could contact the Free Lances first. Since they came from the south, the mercenary’s encampment in the north-west of the city was covered from view by the city walls, so they entered the city and went their own ways.

Eranoz was a full-blooded orc from the northern plains, and he happened to bump into Anatoli and Branka, who was showing his younger cousin around the city. Branka was not too accustomed to life outside the plains, since most of her time since leaving there had been spent in training or the mercenary encampment, so Anatoli took what chance he could to show her around.

As fellows from the northern plains – in Anatoli’s case descended from one – the three quickly hit it off. They further hit it off when they learned each other’s occupations as fellow mercenaries, and Anatoli brought the older orc to the encampment the next day, to introduce him to the others. It was then that they learned that Eranoz’s friend Rubor had also met with others from the Free Lancers, and that his story was by far, the more ridiculous of the two.

Rubor was a therian from Boroes, one that resembled a bearded lizard, who was blessed with a large body nearly two and half meters tall. It was the reason he thrived in the battlefield despite his lack of association with larger groups, as he had yet to find one that he liked. His kind in general was rather promiscuous, so it was not a surprise to Eranoz to hear that he had spent most of the night looking for partners adventurous enough to share his bed.

What did surprise him though, was that Rubor apparently found willing partners who also happened to be part of the Free Lances.

The large therian man had been prowling various pubs and other joints the previous evening, when he happened to run across Alva and Kari in one of them. The siblings also happened to be out on leave, and chatted with Rubor when they ran into each other. The therian mercenary quickly got himself in their good graces just by being his jolly old self, and one thing led to another as they plied the drink through the night.

Needless to say, the three of them found themselves waking up in bed after a wild night with a rather painful hangover.

Even as they sobered up in the morning Rubor was pleased to see that his fellow bedpartners were not exactly perturbed by the drunken bender. Then again, Alva was a former prostitute himself, and Kari also worked in the brothel as a waitress before they became mercenaries. The three bonded quite closely and thus the siblings happily brought their new friend along to the encampment later that day.

Now Reinhardt summoned the two of them since they were some of his more up to date sources of information on the southern coalition. While aerial scouts were great for keeping watch on large-scale troop movements without being noticed, they were all too conspicuous to blend in, so that task was generally left to other spies and agents.

Reinhardt knew that the council likely had their own spies in the south, and those probably also already sent warnings about the military mobilization. It was just that his scouts could cover distance a good bit faster than messenger birds that they ended up reporting first. That, and he was uncertain how many messenger birds sent by the spies even made it out.

Many nations trained hawks and the likes to prey on messenger birds that were not marked as their own, after all.