“The tales and stories focused on great feats of arms, of the tides of battle being turned thanks to courage and skill, and other grandiose scenes. Few ever even mentioned all that went on behind the scenes to even make those battles possible, the logistics of battle, the effort and precautions needed to transport the food for thousands of men over prolonged periods of time, the troubles and money that went to equipping so many soldiers with arms and armor, and other things often glossed over in favor of depictions of the battles itself.
In truth, it was those who handled the logistics that made those battles possible in the first place.” - Rodolvan Esto Brammimond, historian from Levain, circa 219 FP.
“Since you’re standing by and not cursing their ancestors out I assume they’re doing well enough for your satisfaction,” said Reinhardt as he approached Salicia. The one-eyed woman stood beside a makeshift obstacle course - mostly just some fences and bags of soil placed over uneven ground - where a group of over a hundred mercenaries drilled.
It was an odd drill, for the sensibilities of those who watched out of curiosity. Archers amongst the humans in Alcidea traditionally remained static, often in defended areas as they rained arrows down on their opponents. On the other hand, the mercenary archers were shooting with their bows while on the move, even as they climbed or leapt over obstacles, all without a single pause in their steps.
Reinhardt even saw a couple of them stumble over an obstacle and still loosed their arrows into prepared targets a distance away while they fell.
Similarly, the bows they used were very different from the longbows favored by most human archers. The large size and heavy draw weight of longbows had rendered combat archery mostly a male-dominated profession amongst the humans, as the average female would lack the strength to use them. The bows used by the mercenary archers were much smaller compared to the massive longbows.
They were at most a meter long, barely two-thirds the length of smaller longbow specimens, and their shafts were recurved, sturdy and thick enough to comfortably grip in the middle, while the ends tapered greatly into slim points. That, together with how the archers wore their quivers by the waist instead of behind their backs made them very different from most archers employed in the human lands.
So was the speed with which they loosed their arrows.
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Each one of the mercenary archers held two or three arrows between the fingers of their bow hand, pointed forward, with another loosely nocked against the undrawn string of the bow. When the time came to shoot, they rapidly loosed an arrow, then nocked another from the ones they kept in hand and repeated it rapidly. The mercenary archers loosed all three or four of the arrows they carried in hand within less than two seconds that way, often with a third arrow already in the air before the first even landed.
In contrast, it was considered normal for a skilled longbowman to manage ten shots in a minute.
The longbow naturally had its own advantages, as it had superior range and power. The way the mercenary archers trained prioritized rapid fire and mobility, more in line with the way the current Free Lances have gone as a Company. Fighting alongside the Janissaries years ago had given Reinhardt and Lars ideas, and they had restructured some parts of the Company since.
What Reinhardt saw was merely the culmination of Salicia’s work in training the other mercenary archers over the past few years.
While Salicia herself was mostly human, born and raised in the Clangeddin Empire, and the bow she herself used - an ancient family heirloom - was an impressive specimen of a longbow taller than she was, the one-eyed woman learned her archery not from human methods, but from orcish methods. The one who taught her archery was Grünhildr’s half-orcish mother, who worked for her father as the head of the household guard.
Where human archery generally focused on raining arrows over long distances to a general area while mostly remaining static, the orcs had instead perfected archery in motion, be it on the back of a steed or while on the run. Unlike how human archers often took their time to properly aim their shots, the orcs took aim and loosed all in the briefest of moments, as they took every chance they had to shoot their arrows.
Of course, with the more robust constitution of the orcs the bows they used tend to be larger than what the mercenary archers used, although they used them with equal ease.
Salicia herself had worked as a mercenary who dabbled in the assassination business together with Elfriede and Grünhildr prior to their joining the Company. The one-eyed woman used to lead the drills by example, her long legs moving nimbly over the obstacles while she fired her massive longbow even more rapidly than the others with their smaller bows. At the moment, Alva was the one who led the drill, as he was officially made the acting commander of the Company’s archers.
As for Salicia herself, that freed her from having to direct the Company’s other archers and instead focus on what she does best, namely assassinating high priority targets from a distance, while she herself remained on the move.
“They’re getting there,” she remarked in answer to Reinhardt’s unspoken query with a satisfied nod. The Company’s archers were not the only ones who had been reorganized. Other members skilled with crossbows or javelins had been interspersed amongst the various platoons, while others were trained in the use of such weapons, so as to allow the platoons to strike at range when the situation called for it. “Good enough to let them loose on their own, I'd say. Alva’s proving to be a lucky find.”
“Yeah, had not expected the kid to have it in him to make it so well in this sort of life,” said Reinhardt in agreement to Salicia’s sentiment. When the former male prostitute and his sister had asked to join the Company back at Norouz, he had his doubts. The siblings proved their mettle over the years though, with Kari being part of Elfriede’s unit and Alva now gaining a status just below those of the platoon leaders in practice.