“Even the great behemoths could be taken down by a pack of fearless small predators nipping at its heels.” - Old orcish proverb.

“This is kinda… easier than I thought,” said Valeria even as she pushed away a Warforged pikeman with her shield. The man stumbled into his compatriots behind him, who in turn used his own shield to support his ally from the back. It did the pikeman in front little good, though, as Valeria’s spear flashed in and took him at the base of the throat the next moment.

The slave soldiers – she recalled the Captain calling them Warforged – fought with relentless courage and were well trained, but they fought with a certain… rigidity to them. Too used to fighting in formations where they were supported by everyone around them and vice versa, and poorly trained to fight in more independent actions, barring a select few.

Something the young mercenaries from the Free Lances abused without mercy.

“They’re too used to taking orders and following it rather than having to think for themselves. Aunt Sal just handed us headless chickens to finish off,” replied Erycea from beside her. When Erycea noticed the sudden lack of cohesion amongst their opponents, she had instantly made the call to switch from the defensive to the offensive. Her unit followed her command and took the fight to the opposing Warforged, where they found an enemy in disarray.

Salicia’s sniping down their commanders took a heavy toll on the Warforged’s combat effectiveness. It was an issue that happened partly because of reforms instituted by the current Duke’s father, who demanded that the Warforged unit commanders divorce themselves from the frontlines and command from horseback in the rear instead.

That allowed those commanders to gain a better viewpoint of the battle while preventing them from risking their lives at the frontlines, but also inadvertently made them far more vulnerable to a sniper like Salicia who simply headhunted them like she was plucking feathers from a goose.

Even while she traded words with Valeria and passed orders to those behind her with gestures from her tail, Erycea took on one of the remaining Warforged Blademasters as well. The older Blademaster she fought used a short double-headed spear with a metal shaft, but the middle-aged man struggled to defend himself as Erycea pushed him back with vicious attacks.

His metal spear’s shaft was already dented on many places, and even slightly bent near the middle, all of the spots were damaged from his attempts to block and parry Erycea’s assault. The only thing that kept the Blademaster alive was his decades of training and experience as he desperately fought with his life on the line.

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Erycea was much younger, but also far stronger and faster than the man, the paired metal truncheons she held striking with blinding speed and devastating force both. The man she faced might be over thrice her age, but she had also been trained for most of her life by some of the deadliest fighters in the Company as a whole, and had a physical advantage she was none too shy in abusing wholeheartedly.

One of her truncheons struck low, followed by a high strike from the other as she withdrew the first, each contact sending waves of vibrations down the metal shaft of her opponent’s weapon, and more often than not a dent where her blows landed. The older Blademaster tired swiftly underneath her relentless assault, and before long, he made a misstep that Erycea took advantage of in order to finish the fight.

When the older man nearly lost his grip on his weapon after a particularly vicious blow, Erycea took advantage of it by not withdrawing her extended weapon. Instead, she pushed down harder on her opponent’s weapon, which threw him off-balance, leaving an opening for her to take. Her second truncheon flashed past and landed directly on the Blademaster’s left hand, easily bending the metal plates of his gauntlet and crushing both the flesh and the bone beneath.

Even as the man cried out in pain, Erycea reversed the course of her other truncheon and struck upwards with it. The metal bar of the truncheon caught the Blademaster’s helmet just over his temple, the blow lacking the force to crush his skull underneath, but still more than forceful enough to daze the man regardless.

As a result, he never saw Erycea’s other fist coming for his face, the spike-studded handguard of her weapon acting like a set of brass knuckles as they smashed directly into the Blademaster’s jaw. The blow itself shattered the man’s jaw into pieces and knocked his head backwards violently. He dropped limply. to the ground like a sack of potatoes moments later.

Erycea did not finish off the man even as she walked past his unconscious form. Their employer had apparently asked for them to capture some of the senior Warforged if they could. During their rush through the Warforged formation, they had no luxury to do that and just went for the kills, but at that moment, since Erycea overwhelmed her opponent so badly and her platoon was doing very well regardless, she had the time to do just that. It was also why she took so long to take out the man.

A couple of Hakim’s men further in the back of their platoon stopped and tied up the unconscious Blademaster when they passed him. Erycea’s platoon had already caught half a dozen of older Blademasters in their offensive push into the enemy formation so far. Erycea had personally caught two of them, while the rest was caught by her platoon’s main shieldbearers.

After all, as skilled as the Blademasters were, they could do little when a therian that was half again as tall as they were and nearly weighed half a ton just bear-hugged them until their ribs creaked in protest and they lost all consciousness.

In general, that proved to be the downfall of the Warforged they faced. The Warforged were trained specifically to fight against other humans, since that was all they traditionally ever faced. They were completely unprepared for the large number of non-humans that the Free Lances fielded amongst their troops, and lacked appropriate countermeasures to fight them properly.

It was a weakness that Reinhardt exploited as he led the push that broke through the back of the Warforged formation and carved a path to connect the pocket his mercenaries created to Nestor’s first legion at the frontlines. That moment also marked the point where the balance of the battle shifted in favor of the coalition forces.