“Some things tend to not click into place until you actually get to do it for real. Only then could you really judge someone’s or something’s mettle, when they were performing their assigned tasks.” - Hans Stroforz, artifact craftsman from the Kingdom Down Under, circa 559 FP.

Astrid realized very quickly once her platoon took their position at the rear guard alongside Alvaro’s platoon that her people might need some more training, or experience, as it was. It was not that they had slacked off during their training, and while she herself was relatively inexperienced – the Levainian campaign was her first real battle – many of her people had fought in the Clangeddin civil war and experienced the battlefield that way.

None of that prepared them properly for a fighting withdrawal while being surrounded by enemies that outnumbered them many times over, however. Some of her people showed signs of nervousness. Mistakes were made where it shouldn’t be or where it was avoidable, all little things that in the end resulted in her platoon performing worse than those beside them.

If Astrid was not fighting right next to them at the frontlines, she imagined that it might not have taken long for the platoon to break or worse, as the sight of a literal army bearing down straight on you was indeed a rather intimidating one. Still, she did her best to encourage her people and to correct the mistakes she noticed, which allowed them to hold on so far, if rather unstably.

Part of the difficulty was the fighting withdrawal itself. It was far easier to fight while advancing towards the enemy, but doing so while moving back was easier said than done. Astrid had heard it often from her teachers when she was young that mastering the retreat was far more difficult than mastering the advance, and now she keenly recalled those old lessons once more.

At least, when she was not too busy fending off the enemy soldiers by the shield-line, that was. Astrid’s platoon took on a more standardized three-layered division, with those at the front holding large shields and shorter spears, those in the middle holding longer spears or polearms, and those in the rear primarily using crossbows or javelins to support the frontline.

Astrid herself had shifted from the frontmost line to the second line after her frequent training bouts with Elfriede and Alycea, choosing to focus on her spear over her shield. She had been working on remastering the basics of her spearplay in the truest sense, as she had learned from Elfriede that the basics, mastered sufficiently, could end up being more dazzling than the fanciest flourishes.

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After all, the blind woman’s own fighting style was exactly that. The basics of swordsmanship distilled to their very essence, executed with mastery that bordered on perfection. Elfriede never relied on fancy maneuvers or flourishes and only used the most efficient and effective moves when she fought, yet she was still one of the most lethal duelists in the company to date.

As Astrid wielded her spear to push away an enemy soldier’s spear in a clockwise motion, she saw a chance and turned the circular sweep into a thrust that caught the enemy soldier in question off guard, her spear piercing through the soldier’s throat before he could react. Then she withdrew her spear just as swiftly, and continued the fight while she yelled exhortations at her fellow platoon members to hold on and keep fighting.

In all honesty, Astrid knew that if her platoon had been assigned to the rear guard on their own, they likely would have collapsed and routed long ago. The main reason they managed to hang on so far was partly thanks to Alvaro and his platoon, who kept their left flank secure and formed a practically immovable wall upon which the enemy assaults broke apart again and again.

When her platoon was faltering, Reinhardt also mobilized his own platoon and took over the right flank of Astrid’s troops, effectively placing her platoon at the center of the rear guard with both their flanks covered by allies. The sight of the mercenary captain personally coming to their aid helped bolster morale, and Astrid kept her people fighting the good fight, whether it be out of embarrassment or otherwise, she cared not.

Reinhardt’s platoon was primarily composed of older people, many of whom had served the company from the previous captain’s time. They were veterans, one and all, and knew the battlefield like the back of their hands, which they showed by the calm and methodical way they fought off the enemy soldiers during the retreat.

The captain himself – his tall stature and unique fur coloration making him easily noticeable even amongst the crowd – fought at the frontlines, his polemace sweeping across enemy soldiers and leaving behind broken bodies and limbs in its wake. He was not the only fierce warrior amongst his platoon either, and the gruesome display they put up together did its job as the enemy soldiers near the right flank were clearly intimidated by their ferocity.

Like that, the mercenaries continued their fighting retreat towards the forest they came out from, those who held the rear guard only breaking formation and turning to run as fast as they could when the others already went into the forest ahead of them. By the nature of their deployment, they lagged behind the others a bit, and the sight of the mercenaries running away incensed the enemy soldiers into chasing them, even into the dark forest.

Once they entered the forest, however, they quickly lost sight of the fleeing mercenaries, and instead only found themselves victims to various kinds of devious traps left all over the place. Ambushes struck seemingly out of nowhere, killed dozens of people, then vanished before the main body of the troops could react. Figures that flitted in and out of their vision like ghosts seemed to tail them along the way, occasionally striking and claiming a victim as their own.

It had not taken more than half an hour before those who chased after the mercenaries in high morale into the forest fled back out in a sorry state, missing nearly half of the people they had entered the forest with.