“No matter how experienced you are, it takes some time to get used to a new environment. Skilled commanders know to minimize risks during this period of acclimatization.” - Liang Shi-zu, famed tactician from the Huan Confederacy.

Mercenary Encampment outside the Western Wall

Free City of Levain, Levain City

Central Alcidea

4th Day of the 2nd Week of the 5th Month, Year 19 FP.

Time certainly swept many things aside, thought Astrid ver Hevia as she looked at Levain City just east of the mercenary encampment. An encampment she and her people called home for the past several months.

Barely half a year had passed since the short but eventful war between the two sides that took place around the city, yet the signs of said war had already mostly disappeared as if the event never happened at all. The circle of rubble that used to be the seventh wall of Levain city – as well as the thousands of corpses crushed beneath – had been cleaned in its entirety, and even the ruins of the many buildings that remained outside the sixth wall had been tidied up as well.

Levain’s victory caused a boost of prosperity for the city-state, the tribute and compensation they received from their erstwhile foes filling their coffers anew. Their populace received an influx of migrants from the former Southern Coalition, many of which settled down in the fertile lands that had been left unattended because of a lack of people to work on them.

While most of those migrants still relied on the food handouts from the City itself to survive, their fields already showed plenty of promise, with crops growing well and in abundance, which would hopefully lead to a harvest that would allow the people living on the land to sustain themselves and then some from the fruits of their own hard work.

The Free Lances themselves continued as per their contract, the veteran mercenaries training tens of thousands of Levain’s militiamen in their ways of fighting while also making them go through grueling physical exercise meant to improve their capabilities. It was the sort of training that would have likely elicited a storm of protests had the mercenaries not already shown its results with the previous batch of trainees and accompanied their trainees while going through the workout as well.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Astrid felt that last part keenly, as she and her people had been thrown in with the Levainian trainees and made to follow the same workout routine in all its grueling glory as well.

She had to admit that it was both devious yet also absurdly effective for the Captain to make his own people join the workout on alternating days to show that they too did the same thing as their trainees. Most of the mercenaries did not elicit that much reaction from the trainees, but one platoon in particular always incited all the trainees who saw them to push themselves to the utmost limit.

Said platoon was the one led by Alycea, the Captain’s adopted younger daughter, the young woman from the meeting who bore a striking resemblance to the Captain’s wife. Her platoon had such an effect on the trainees because most of them were in their late teens to their thirties and even forties. Alycea’s platoon was almost entirely filled with youngsters, many of which were still in the middle of their teenage years.

Few things motivated people more than seeing younger people do better than them, doubly so when said younger people were young enough that they could have been their own children.

Astrid had also since learned that the Captain’s adopted daughter was actually his wife’s orphaned niece by blood. What complicated the matter more was that the Free Lances were part of the reason the girl was orphaned to begin with, which was a whole other bag of bones. That said, Alycea seemed to be aware of her background and held nothing but love and admiration for her adopted family, interestingly enough.

Then again, had the Captain and his wife not adopted her back then, the girl would have probably been tossed into some random orphanage, or worse, given how she was a direct descendant of a noble family that had been made pretty much extinct – other than the girl herself and the Captain’s wife, who was an illegitimate offspring of the family head of the time – after the invasion of Theodinaz.

Astrid also learned very quickly that – to her dismay – the mercenaries held themselves to a far higher standard of fitness than Podovniy bothered to train their soldiers to. As such, while her people grumbled about being made to train again at first, they were very soon humbled and beaten down while the rest of the mercenaries who were doing their regular exercise that day ran laps around them.

Then of course the platoons led by the Captain’s two daughters, both of them full of youths, had to further one-up them the very next day and incense the competitive spirit in her people. Many of them trained until they literally dropped from exhaustion and had to be carried to the infirmary that day, and it was a sight that repeated itself often for the first month or so.

Even at the present day, five months after her people joined the mercenary Company, Astrid’s people still lagged somewhat behind the veteran mercenaries, even if they already improved their physical fitness by leaps and bounds in the meantime. At this point they no longer complained about the training, but went at it with a near obsession to finally catch up to the Company’s standards.

Astrid sighed as she finished penning an entry in her diary and closed the book. It was a habit of hers that she had since childhood, and the current book she used has been in her possession for five years. It was one of the very few things she possessed from the place she once called home. Deities willing, maybe she would be able to return there in her lifetime.