“When you’re in a fight, put away all distractions and focus on the fight itself, lest you ended up as just another corpse to be added to the pile by the time it was all over.” - Zibana Afen Lisuto, champion of the Knallzog Colosseum circa 42-49 FP.

Erycea ducked under a spear that was thrust towards her throat and returned the favor towards her attacker with a strike from her right hand truncheon. While the enemy soldier was too far away for her strike to land on his body, his hand was close enough for her to reach, and the solid metal truncheon struck the back of the man’s hand which held his spear, shattering most of the bones in the palm of his hand.

It was no fatal injury, but she doubted the man would trouble her anymore for this battle, at the very least.

While the parts of the formation near the front were held by Mischka’s shieldbearers, there were not enough of them to hold the entire flank, so Erycea’s and Alycea’s platoons took up the slack, one platoon on each side. Erycea had also arranged for Alycea’s platoon, whose members were younger and less experienced, to take the right flank, where there were less enemies to deal with, while her own handled the left side.

They were spread rather thin in order to cover the center of the formation properly, and fighting while being on the move at the same time was easier said than done. They could not afford to be entangled with an enemy and stop moving, and the platoon as a whole kept shuffling to the side as they fought to keep up with the formation’s advance.

That meant that each person ended up fighting against the enemy that the person next to them fought just moments ago each time they moved, while the person on their other side would deal with the one they fought previously, and so on. It was difficult enough to maintain the formation’s cohesion while on the move and fighting like that, and it was testament to the mercenaries’ training and skill that they maintained good cohesion throughout.

On the other hand the Podovnians they fought were clearly unused to fighting against enemies that kept moving even while fighting against them. More than once, Erycea exploited an opening an enemy had when she took over from Valeria and dispatched them with a quick blow. It also helped that the average Podovnian soldier did not have the sort of budget that would allow them to get the really good weapons.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Erycea’s truncheons, each of which weighed as much as two normal greatswords, were made by a master blacksmith out of high purity Adamant Steel, and were pretty much indestructible. The force she could deliver with her blows was not something poorly made weapons could withstand. As a result, she left behind many broken spears and swords in her wake.

A typical mistake less skilled blacksmiths often made when working on swords was to make them too hard – and thus brittle – after all. It made sense to err on the side of hardness rather than softness, to be fair, but that just meant that poorly crafted swords would likely shatter on collision with a forceful swing of Erycea’s truncheons.

From time to time, she risked a glance towards the other flank, where Alycea’s platoon held the line, but was pleased to see that her younger sister’s platoon held their own just fine. It was the first battle of this scale that Alycea participated in, and as a big sister, Ery couldn’t help but worry about her little sister. Fortunately they mostly had to deal with weaker enemies for the most part.

When they first breached the enemy formation all they had to deal with were archers who had switched to melee weapons. Their relative lack of training with those weapons showed and Erycea’s people shoved them aside with contemptuous ease. Of course, that state of affairs only lasted for a short while as once the formation broke through the archers and entered the enemy’s main formation they had to deal with the actual trained line troops.

Those posed more of a challenge, but still well within the capabilities of the trained mercenaries. They had the initiative and made full use of it in order to keep their enemies off-balance and reacting to them. As such, the mercenaries leveraged their greater individual skill to their advantage and kept their enemies on the backfoot as they kept pushing towards their target.

Erycea knew that she had an easier job at the sides where all she had to do was to hold the enemy back. Her parents, together with Mischka, reserved the most difficult task for themselves. They led the charge into the enemy formation, pushing their way forward as they carved a path for the rest of the mercenaries to follow.

So far they had done so without issue, though Ery couldn’t help but worry a little bit as she knew that they would likely run into the enemy’s elites once they got close to their target, namely the Podovnian Marquis and his generals. The mercenaries simply could not afford to be delayed for long, much less stopped in the middle of the enemy formation, as the numbers of their enemies would drown them before too long if that happened.

Of course, they would give one hell of a fight and take many of their foes down with them if it comes to that, but the fact remained. The assault was a one-way trip where their only chance of survival was to grab or kill the enemy commanders and force an end to the hostilities. Erycea shuddered at the thought of shouldering such a heavy responsibility with the life of over half the company on the line, but fortunately, that was a burden she was exempted from.

It was her parents who would carry that burden on their shoulders as they pushed towards their target, and fortunately, it seemed that their allies from Caroma had also reacted in such a way as to corral their target in one location and blocked their escape route, given the command her father gave to slightly alter their direction of advance.

She could only wish for everything to align properly and for the outcome to favor the company, all while fighting her best fight.