“I feel that the drive to excel at everything they do that people often have nowadays is in a manner of speaking, a fallacy they have trapped themselves into. People all too often look down on those who only achieved mediocre or average results, and often exhort themselves to be better, yet they fail to realize that it is all those mediocre and average people that allows our society and nations to function as it is.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“Let me guess,” said Reinhardt as the three of them walked across the camp towards where the prisoners were being kept. The meeting site was actually placed on the north side of the camp, closer towards the main gate the mercenaries entered and exited from, while the prisoners were kept near the southern end where it would be harder to escape from instead. “You want to talk about your platoon’s performance in the earlier battle?”

The mercenaries had practically made a fortification deep in the forest, though it was not one that would stand up to any actual military combat. For the most part, the camp was only surrounded by fences meant to fend off the wild animals in the forest, to keep them from disturbing the mercenaries while they slept. Of course, most of the time, any wild animal that strayed too close to the mercenary camp ended up in their cooking pots instead.

Foraging and making the most of their surroundings was an old respected tradition amongst mercenaries after all.

“Yes,” admitted Astrid with a downcast look on her features. She was all too aware that her platoon had likely failed to perform satisfactorily on their appointed task, given that Reinhardt had to interfere and support them in person at the end. She was still uncertain how the Free Lances as a company handled such matters since this was her first true battle with the Company, so her nervousness over the issue was palpable.

“If you’re thinking that you’ve failed or that your people did poorly or something along those lines, perish the thought,” said Reinhardt, which caused Astrid to look up with surprise clearly visible on her expression.

Reinhardt seemed to have expected such a reaction given his toothy smirk.

“In all honesty, your platoon performed just about as well as I would have expected from people who had only joined us for a year and had yet to face any grueling battles with the company,” explained Reinhardt. “That you failed to hold up your side of the rear on your own is not your fault, and a failure might not be a failure when you have backup nearby, keep that in mind.”

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“We still failed at our task, in the end, though,” argues Astrid with some confusion in her voice. “I’d have been brought in for reprimands or punishments by my superiors back at the Podovniy army back then under the same circumstances.”

“We do things differently here, as you might be able to tell by now,” replied Reinhardt, the smirk never leaving his face. “Your platoon joined us under rather different circumstances from most of the others. Everyone of your are former soldiers, and you all had years if not decades of training. That means we have a lot of bad habits to weed out of you people as well.”

“A lot of that was done during your basic training, but some things would only really be driven home if you’ve experienced it in actual battles. That upstart high king or whatever we dealt with in Lavianey doesn’t count, since that’s not something I’d even deign to call a battle at all,” he continued. “Your people are still a bit too detached in the wrong way, perhaps some of them still have some unwarranted pride as they had been soldiers for a long time or whatnot, don’t they? A bit of a drubbing is just the sort of thing they needed to get that out of their minds.”

“So you put us in the rear guard while expecting us to fail!?” asked Astrid, not out of anger – she was aware that in such a situation the fault would be on her side, and her platoon failing would have endangered the company as a whole – but more out of bafflement. “Just to teach some of the more stubborn people a lesson?”

“You were not alone, as you’d recall. Worst case, if your people failed to perform as expected and broke, my platoon would have taken over yours and covered our retreat,” replied Reinhardt nonchalantly. “As for Alvaro and his people, they are not worth worrying about. Those people would rather die than fail, at this point. Even if they had to hold the line by crawling on the ground and biting the enemies’ ankles they would probably have done it.”

“Everything in a battle is a calculated risk anyway. I merely found the last battle to be one suitable to help temper your platoon with acceptable risks,” he added with a shake of his head. “We will need everyone working at their best for this campaign. I suspect that this will be a long one, given how many people our enemies have, so getting your platoon to the right mindset needed to be done sooner or later.”

“I… I guess I get what you mean, Sir. I’m just not… used to this yet, I think,” replied Astrid somewhat haltingly. The way the Free Lances treated a foray into the midst of an enemy army many times their number as an opportunity to train some of their people was baffling to her, with good reasons. It was the sort of thing she would have never even considered doing.

“Well, you’ll have time, I’m sure. We got a long road ahead of us still, anyway,” noted Reinhardt with a nod. By that time, the three of them were nearly where the prisoners were kept. “When you return to your platoon later, help me alleviate their worries. Tell them that they did well.”

“I will, Captain,” replied Astrid. “And thank you for the thought.”