“Annoyances aren’t worth your attention. It is best to just do away with them and never again give them a piece of your mind.” - Saying attributed to Xaliburnus the Conqueror, First Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.

“-And therefore with the power invested unto him by the Great Deities themselves, His Most Bodacious Majesty, High King Garland the First demands your unconditional surrender into his infinite wisdom and mercy! Any resistance is futile and will be met with Divine Wrath!” claimed the messenger send by the local warlord whose likely self-proclaimed title was far too long for Reinhardt to even care to recite.

“What should we respond with, Boss?” asked Astrid from near where Reinhardt stood. The woman clearly struggled to hold back her laughter at the idea of a warlord who reigned over a few villages and like two hundred people giving himself such grand titles. “Do we shoot the messenger? Or do we give him something to take back to ‘His Most Bodacious Majesty’?”

“Eh, shooting the messenger’s bad manners,” replied Reinhardt in the negative though he did not chastise Astrid for the suggestion either. “That said, giving him a message to take back might make this idiot of a warlord more emotional which will likely make the job easier for you. Pen me a reply that tells him exactly where he can shove his so-called divine investment in as flowery a language as you can, will you?”

“Will do, Boss. Be back in a bit,” replied Astrid with a wide grin on her face. She left towards the wagons that waited for them in the back and returned around ten minutes later with a rolled piece of parchment. “Here you go. A very flowery ‘Fuck you and go shove your titles in your arse’ as requested.”

“Most excellent,” replied Reinhardt with a toothy smirk as he received the roll and then handed it over to Salicia. “Sal, do me a favor and deliver this to that guy, will you?”

“Sure, give me a moment,” replied Salicia as she slipped one of her arrows through the center of the roll and then used a piece of twine to tie the ends of the roll of parchment tightly to her arrow to make sure that it wouldn’t fall off by accident. Then she nocked the arrow on her bow, took aim, drew, and loosed in one quick motion.

The arrow she loosed landed just to the side of the messenger, definitely close enough to give the man cold sweat.

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After a while the messenger gingerly stepped down from his horse and picked up the arrow before he rode away, likely to deliver the message to his lord. Reinhardt already knew that the result would be, so he gestured to the platoons arrayed next to him for them to shift to a more alert state, though not to battle readiness yet.

The enemy was still far away, after all, and there was no need to tire themselves out while waiting for the enemy to arrive.

It took another hour or so before the warlord – easy to notice since he was pompously riding on a horse while his army walked on foot – and his army arrived and formed their lines across from the mercenaries. The warlord rode a little further forward before he turned towards his men and started shouting all sorts of encouragement while painting the mercenaries as weaklings and savages and whatever else.

Reinhardt didn’t bother to let him finish his oh-so-bombastic speech, though.

“Sal, all yours,” he said simply.

The unsuspecting warlord had brought his army roughly five hundred paces away from where the mercenaries were, around a quarter of a kilometer. He probably felt safe at that distance, as most archers would be hard-pressed to hit a barn at that distance. Unfortunately for him, Salicia was present and most definitely had no issue with that distance.

Salicia just wordlessly nodded, nocked an arrow to her bow, took aim and drew it to its full extension at the same time, then loosed. The arrow flew over the distance in mere moments – it was close enough that she did not need to resort to her magic – and struck the warlord right in the throat. He toppled off his horse before the baffled faces of his army.

“Tch. Was aiming for between the eyes. He moved,” complained Salicia when she saw her handiwork.

Reinhardt just snorted in amusement before he gestured for Astrid to lead her platoon to clean up the enemy troops that were just starting to panic over their warlord’s sudden end. Astrid led her hundred-plus men forward in a solid formation, and Alvaro led his Warforged as they followed Astrid’s platoon from a short distance away.

The enemy force outnumbered them, but had poor organization and even worse equipment. By Reinhardt’s estimate Astrid should manage to scatter them with just her troops. Her orders were to avoid killing too many if she could help it. A lot of the warlord’s troops were likely just peasants who were caught up in his shenanigans, though there were likely some loyal ones in the bunch.

They likely stood little chance against the trained mercenaries, either way. Astrid’s platoon was entirely composed of former Podovnian soldiers, so they already had a solid base to build upon, and after a year of training, they were ready to be blooded upon the Company’s foes.

What followed was so one-sided Reinhardt was uncertain if it even qualified as a fight at all. A few loyalists attempted to exhort the panicking and frightened rabble to battle, but were quickly silenced by skillfully thrown javelins or well-placed crossbow bolts from Astrid’s platoon. Those deaths were all it took to convince the rest of the warlord’s “army” that they were involved in something well above their paygrade and should instead turn tail and run for their lives.

So they did just that, and after less than a couple minutes of “battle”, the warlord’s army scattered away with the winds while the mercenaries just watched and laughed at them.