“In the end, it didn’t matter whether you had done it by hook or by crook, or if sacrifices were made along the way. What mattered was whether you had done what you set out to accomplish or not. Whether it was worth the expenditures and effort spent is a question for later, after the mission was completed.” - “Lady” Genevieve van Exuranto, mercenary from Alcidea, circa 402 FP.

“How is the situation?” Reinhardt asked later that evening once all the platoon members were convened at a meeting once more. The company retreated to their base camp deep in the southern forest after they had driven off their pursuers, the platoons involved in the assault having already reached the camp by the time the ambush teams started to retreat as well. It took until later in the evening before everybody had returned.

“Close to a hundred injured, out of those, nineteen were injured pretty badly and will need some time to recuperate. Most of the injuries are light enough that they can continue fighting, though,” reported Lars, who was responsible for finding out the casualties the company had taken over the duration of the fighting. “Eleven dead, so make that thirty casualties in total, acceptable losses compared to the damage we inflicted, I’d say.”

“I concur,” said Reinhardt in agreement. It might have sounded heartless, but the company had taken at least several hundred enemies down in their charge and injured many more besides, so thirty casualties compared to what their opponents took in losses were indeed an acceptable amount for them. One couldn’t get too sentimental in the mercenary business after all.

“Lady Boss got the target alive, as well as another dozen captives, amongst them being one who could speak common and is cooperative so far. We have taken care to house each of the captives separately from each other as a precaution, and some of my people are talking to the cooperative one as we speak,” added Lars. “The cooperative one seems to be adjutant to the officer we targeted.”

“A stroke of fortune, that,” nodded Reinhardt as he chuckled a bit. The situation reminded him of the headache Nestor and the others at the main base were having as they tried to extract workable intelligence out of the captives they had. Even though some of the captives were cooperative, the language barrier made it difficult to get any truly useful information out of them.

A captive that spoke common altered that dynamic completely, even if her command of the language was somewhat broken and heavily accented, and Reinhardt imagined that Nestor would gladly pay a hefty bonus when they handed over the captives later.

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“Did the enemy army chase after us much or made any extended forays after our assault?” asked Mischka. They knew that Lars and the other platoons responsible for the ambush had repelled those that chased them when they escaped, but were unaware of the situation of the battlefield since then since Reinhardt was the only one with the artifact.

“We seemed to have captured the officer responsible for the right flank of their frontline, so their command chain had been disrupted after our assault,” reported Lars dutifully. “They did regain some semblance of order after a while, but they had not sent any large-scale forays into the forest as of yet. The one foray they sent had been beaten back by the people we stationed to be on guard.”

“That’s the issue with armies sometimes. Too rigid and inflexible,” commented Grünhildr with a chuckle. While good armies indeed possess great strengths, especially if the soldiers were trained and cohesive enough to move as one whole, sometimes they also faced their own issues, like losing someone high in the chain of command with those below them unable to make decisive decisions on their own.

Some armies encouraged more independence and initiative amongst their lower ranked officers, but many still treated them more as tools to relay the command from above to those below them. The invading army was clearly still one of the latter, whilst the Free Lances took a more extreme approach to the independence and initiative part. They were polar opposites in some ways.

“Tell everyone to have a good rest, and make sure to keep up the watch, in case our victims want to try getting even with us, though I doubt they’d do that after two failed forays,” said Reinhardt as he commanded the others. “Friede, come with me after this, we’ll have a chat with that one captive you said could speak common.”

“Got it,” replied Elfriede with a nod.

“Other than that, everyone did well today, keep up the performance and treat your people to some of the better rations we brought tonight,” he added, to the cheers of the assembled platoon leaders. “You’re dismissed, unless you have any concerns you want to address, in which case, stay here and wait till everyone else has left.”

After Reinhardt gave the dismissal, the gathered platoon leaders got up from their seats and left – likely to attend to their respective platoons – one after another. Elfriede naturally stayed with him since he asked her to accompany him after the talk, but another platoon leader also stayed behind in her seat even after everyone else had already left.

It was Astrid.

“May I have a moment of your time… Captain?” asked Astrid with some obvious nervousness in her voice. Her platoon had accounted for nearly a third of the company’s injured and casualties in the earlier assault, and she likely had more than a few things that bothered her mind, given her nervousness. “Apologies if it’s not a convenient time.”

“No, no, I did ask for people who had any concerns they want to address to stay behind, so you did just right in doing so,” replied Reinhardt in a more relaxed tone. “That said, there’s no reason for us to stay here. Walk with us. We can talk along the way.”