“Oftentimes folly was only discovered once it was all too late to do anything about it.” - Saying by Joaquin Obedayo, philosopher from Posuin, circa 249 VA.

Reinhardt was the first to be forewarned of the impending raider attack.

It was not due to negligence of incompetence on the part of the soldiers under Scipius, to be fair, but more a showcase of a capability most lacked. After all, They did not possess aerial scouts like the Free Lances did, which thanks to Hannah “inviting” some of her fellow tribesmen over, had become one of the largest such units in the continent.

The idea of working with flight-capable therians was nothing new, but in the past, all too many commanders – and often the therians themselves – had desired for a more active combat role for their fliers. Even Hannah had such thoughts when she was new to the Free Lances, though Ingrid quashed those thoughts quickly.

Naturally, such an approach led to heavy casualties amongst the fliers. They were naturally suited to deliver sneak attacks from above, but recovering and escaping from such an attack in the midst of an enemy formation was a whole other thing altogether. As a result, it led to the tribes having a low opinion on mercenary work and actively discouraging their youths from pursuing such work, which in turn led to a very sharp decrease in their presence on battlefields these days.

Certainly, a Wind affinity mage of good enough skill could also serve as an aerial scout, but they lacked some key factors that made flying therians like Hannah so effective at that role. For one, they lacked the sharp eyesight capable of identifying objects as small as a rabbit from a height where they would only register as a dot to those below, or the ability to maintain their flight for hours on end, for that matter. That was before considering the relative rarity of a mage who had the right affinity, trained the right way, had enough power to do it, and was willing to play the role.

As such, Scipius was quite surprised when he saw Hannah swoop down to land on top of a wagon next to Reinhardt and deliver her report calmly.

“Around two hundred incoming from the south, boss, on horseback. Looks like light cavalry, likely raider sorts,” reported Hannah before she caught a waterskin tossed at her from below with one wing-arm’s clawed fingers and drank deeply from it. “They’ll be here in… around five minutes I’d say, give or take a minute either way.”

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“Good work,” praised Reinhardt in turn. “Oi! We got company incoming! Have the archers rotate to the south!” he then yelled at the mercenary convoy. In a show of disciplined precision, the wagons kept moving even while they made way for a dozen wagons to take the southern side of the formation. The lead wagon had Salicia on top of it, as she had been lying down on top of the roof of that wagon.

“So, light opposition I take it?” asked the one-eyed woman as she sat up on the thick fabric that covered the roof of the wagon she was on. “How many?”

“Around two hundred, on horseback. Think your archers are up for it?” replied Reinhardt. Under normal conventions, light cavalry and archers would typically try to stay away from each other. The mobile light cavalry could speedily close the distance and do horrifying damage to the archers, while in turn, the archers could similarly collect their toll in blood while the light cavalry approached.

The archers employed by the Free Lances functioned slightly differently to the more common archer groups employed by the nations of Alcidea, however. Where the traditional doctrine called for archers to be stationary and take well-aimed shots at their targets, theirs prioritized mobility and speed, and were equipped to match.

Instead of the traditional longbows carved out of singular pieces of wood, the over hundred archers of the Free Lances – nominally under Salicia’s lead, but more often led by Alva as her second in command these days – were armed with composite bows crafted by Hogarth, using a combination of bone, wood, and metals as well as some pulleys to create bows that were easier and faster to draw compared to traditional ones.. Those bows also offered roughly the same amount of power in a far more compact package.

Of course, such bows also had their own drawbacks. For one, due to the different materials used to create them, they were more prone to being affected by bad weather and extreme temperatures. From an enchanter’s point of view, they were also far inferior, as enchantment depended a lot on the size and quality of the material used, whereas composite items could not be enchanted as a whole, unlike Salicia’s heirloom bow.

Still, for the purposes that the Free Lances employed their archers, the drawbacks were outweighed by the ease of use and smaller size, which were attained without sacrificing performance. The bows were quite laborious to make, however, as it had taken the smiths under Hogarth most of the past year’s rest period before they crafted enough of the bows to arm their archers, other than Salicia herself, that was.

Then again, she favored her own far deadlier heirloom bow anyway.

Under her command – relayed by Alva to the rest – the archers quickly prepared themselves for the task at hand. Scipius watched rather questioningly as he saw how the archers stood up at the ready in their still-covered wagons, each one having set a bunch of arrows seemingly into the wagon’s wooden floor next to their feet.

His questions were answered once the raiders came into sight. They had used the cover of a small forest to mask their approach, and by the time they were visible, they were only three hundred meters away from the convoy.

By the time they traversed fifty meters, the covered wagons where the archers rode had transformed via some cleverly hidden mechanisms. The “outer” side of the wagons which faced the riders was revealed to be built in the shape of a defensive wall, with crenellations and arrow slits, the outside made of wood lined with metal on the inside.

Behind that barrier stood ten archers in each wagon, each of them holding four arrows in hand, one nocked into the string of their bow, and another three pinched between their fingers. There were no signal for them to take aim and loose, as instead Salicia simply fired the first shot from the top of the wagon she was on – not one of the wagons with the archers, incidentally – and the rest immediately followed in kind.