“While many in the profession cannot help but to subsist on the short term, often barely making do from one payday to another, planning ahead is vital for those who wish to eventually grow out of that phase, I feel. Of course, you sometimes get a few who lucked out into notoriety and thus, money, but they remain a minority amongst those who managed to build a career out of the profession.” - Hans “The Fox” Mulder, mercenary captain from Ur-Teros, circa 415 VA.
“So, got any plans for the near future?” asked Reinhardt as the evening set in and he invited Guillaume for a meal at the Free Lances encampment. Some people would think that it was an odd thing for mercenaries from different companies to talk about their plans to others, but it was a rather common occurrence, especially with companies who were on friendly terms, so that they could avoid being on opposite sides of a battlefield.
It also happened sometimes between companies that had bad blood with one another, so they could make sure to face the other on the battlefield.
Reinhardt had a rather good relationship with Guillaume, and as such they fell into the former case, where they were matching up plans to avoid potentially facing each other on the field of battle because they signed up on opposing sides. It was not always done, but since they had already met and were in the same place, there was no reason not to do it either.
“Our recruiting and rebuilding’s going to finish in a month or thereabouts, after that Will is considering taking the company back to Algenverr for a garrison contract. That Nunez kid did offer us one for after we rebuilt after all. Nothing like come peace and quiet to further train the greenhorns first,” said the retired mercenary openly. “What about yourself? Can’t help but notice that you’ve been doing some growing, here.”
“Yeah, we’ve had quite a bit of success with our recruitments,” admitted Reinhardt. If things went as planned with the current batch of recruits they got, the Free Lances might well end up doubling their combat personnel. “I’ve budgeted for at least a few more months to weed out those who can’t hack it with the rest, up to a year, while we look for lucrative contracts that ideally won’t push them too hard. I’m thinking the former empire next, as things are dying down on Posuin.”
“Damn. I wish we had that sort of luxury,” commented Guillaume as he washed down his food with a good chug from the flagon of ale. For food served in a mercenary camp, it could be considered positively luxurious, as both the stew and the roast had fresh meat and vegetables in them. All too many companies tried to save money as best they could, which usually led to food that was enough to sustain their people but tended to be poor in taste. “Then again your group needed to have that sort of money going since they got people like you to feed.”
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“The split hurt you that bad, huh?” commented Reinhardt from across the small table. He himself tore into a whole leg of lamb with his fangs, as if to punctuate Guillaume’s previous statement. Where most mercenary companies relied on compact rations primarily of some sort of dried grain with a small amount of dried or salted meat and fish to compensate, the Free Lances always had a large stock of meat with them. They needed it to feed the relatively large amount of obligate carnivores amongst their numbers.
That sort of dietary need could have been troublesome in longer campaigns, if not for the fact that the very same obligate carnivores in question tend to be very good at feeding themselves by hunting on the go. Their combination of high intelligence and excellent physical capabilities meant that their prey – be it some unsuspecting animal minding its own business or their foes on the battlefield – rarely saw them coming.
“Sort of, I guess. The recruitment also took a bit, as well as the amount you had to pay out while everybody’s just idling. Mine couldn’t afford to stay unemployed for so long, hence why we’re heading back to Algenverr soon,” admitted the old knight. “You really got things going, didn’t you? First time I met you, your company’s barely half the size of mine. Now you’re on your way to double my size with a lot of spare coins in the coffers to boot! I’m honestly envious.”
“What can I say? We made some good investments with what we had after Theodinaz. We actually came real close to disbanding during that campaign, you know? Even went down to like, half a dozen effectives total at one time,” said Reinhardt as he related a bit of the story from the campaign long ago to his fellow mercenary. “That’s not even counting me. I was laid out and pretty much out for a good while at the time.”
“Damn. That’s worse than I’ve ever been, and I’m including the times when my ‘company’ was pretty much me and a dozen or so other displaced knights,” said Guillaume with an impressed whistle. “How did you even manage to recover from a situation that bad?”
“We got really lucky, believe it or not,” replied Reinhardt with a toothy grin as he gnawed off the last of the meat from the leg of lamb he was eating, leaving only the cleaned bone. “Those left of us were halfway in despair while sorting out what we could salvage off the battlefield, when one night, a visitor dropped by into camp. It was the Silver Maiden herself.”
“You’re shitting me,” stated Guillaume with a joking tone, until he saw how Reinhardt’s grin never subsided. “No way. For real?”
“The Maiden herself in the flesh. By the morning there must’ve been thousands that she healed up. My company went from eight effectives back to around three hundred, which gave us the ability to continue on with the contract, from which we made a sizable fortune,” said Reinhardt with a nod. “She even took care of some ailments people had for decades and never realized, believe it or not.”
“I swear, some of us just have to have all the luck.”