“Many call those of us in this profession murderers for hire. We do not even dignify them with a retort, partly because that is a good way to describe a mercenary anyway. We are people who have chosen to make a living by getting paid to gut another person, and as most will tell you, there is no shame to be found in an honest living.

Even if it means gutting others for coins on the regular. At least we’re not bandits.” - Ardin “Face-Peeler” Zakuin, infamous mercenary from Clangeddin, circa 502 VA.

“So that’s one thing done, at least,” sighed Astrid ver Hevia – she decided to reassume the family name now that they were out of Podovniy’s sphere of influence – in her tent after she brought the remaining hundred twenty-seven followers she had to the mercenary camp and watched them set up tents at an area specified by the mercenaries.

Her original plan was to attempt to distinguish herself in service to the March, but that plan went down the gutters with the disastrous defeat at Levain. Astrid was politically savvy enough to realize that such a defeat would likely mean a lot of instability to happen in the March, with an internal civil war not even that unlikely an outcome. Either way, it was something she was likely to be able to affect, especially since she just got confirmation that the asshole brother of the man who killed her father and brothers would spend the rest of his life working in Levainian mines.

It was something her dear brother-in-law, the current Earl, was unlikely to leave unpunished.

As for her sister who married the scum, that was as much as a lost cause. Astrid knew her oldest sister as a self-serving, selfish wench ever since they were young, and that impression has not changed a whit since. If anything she just prayed that her second sister, the one made to marry the fourth son of the Duke of Galastine, would be able to find her own happiness abroad.

With her own situation, Astrid knew that she was taking a gamble, one that involved the lives of both herself and her people. Still, it was the best option she had which still gave her some hope of improvement in the future. Her other options were to lead her followers to an undignified life as bandits, which she refused to even imagine, or to languish as lowly city guards for Levain, which might be a safe way to survive, but one that was pretty much a dead end as far as her aspirations went.

To become mercenaries was certainly a great risk, but it was one with plenty of possible rewards as well.

In truth, Astrid herself had leaned towards applying as guards in Levain, to allow those who sacrificed their everything to follow her out of old loyalties some secure and safe living. It was those very same people who convinced her to take another path, however, as like herself, many of those people still held dreams of returning to their homeland as liberators one day in the future.

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It was an unlikely dream, and they all knew it, but their sincerity convinced her to fight together with her people to possibly realize that dream one day in the future. She cared not if others would call her dream absurd or foolish. It was something that motivated her people, and for that alone, she would strive to her utmost to keep that dream alive.

For the time being, however, their main priority was to survive, and to blend with the mercenaries that would be their comrades for the foreseeable future.

Said mercenaries actually impressed Astrid, who found them to be completely unlike the typical sort of mercenaries she had seen in the March. While they were certainly mostly rough and uncouth people like most of their kind, there was a certain sense of solid camaraderie and solidarity between them, one that immediately included Astrid and her people in it the moment the therian Captain introduced them as new comrades earlier that day.

Many of the mercenaries – as well as their camp followers – who had been nearby when Astrid’s people arrived happily volunteered to help them set up their camp, which cut the time needed by a good half. By the time Astrid went to her tent to sort out some paperwork, some of her people were already playing dice and cards or sharing food and drink with the mercenaries.

The Company itself was far more varied compared to what Astrid was used to. While the Clangeddin Empire boasted of being an Empire that encompassed all known races, the majority of their inhabitants remained humans, and other races were mostly minorities save in certain cities. It was not the case with the mercenaries, which had such a wild mixture of races that every sort of person could be seen amongst their ranks.

Yet they all worked together side by side like one big happy family, somehow, despite all their differences.

Astrid shook her head to clear her thoughts. She had a few pieces of paperwork to arrange, as apparently the Free Lances were a good bit more organized in that field compared to the typical mercenary company. One of them was her employment contract, an agreement that she and her people would work for the company for a minimum of two years to come, after which point their salaries and benefits could be renegotiated based on performance.

It was surprising enough that a mercenary company of all things offered pay raises based on performance, when the same incentive often dangled by nobles and lords were mostly empty promises, but apparently the mercenaries actually made good on their word. Some of the people that helped hers set up their tents were dark-skinned westerners, who she learned were former slaves after some small chat.

She also learned that those former slaves made better money as mercenaries than her people did as official soldiers of the March, and not by a little bit at that.