“It’s far harder to find reliable allies than it is to find incompetent enemies.” - Saying attributed to Gregorian Aurelius Secundus, General and later Second Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.
Wilhelmina du Riffons clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in annoyance as she caught an enemy’s spear between the short tines near the base of her sword’s blade and the blade itself, using the leverage she had to push the spearhead originally aimed towards her face out of the way. In the same movement, she slashed down using her greatsword which her opponent only barely managed to block with their wooden shield, leaving a visible gash on the shield and forcing them to step back.
Her frustration wasn’t about her enemy in particular, but was rooted more at the lackluster performance of the company’s newer recruits. She had already taken precautions, of course, like stationing those recruits right at the left flanks where they would be shoulder to shoulder with the more experienced Free Lances, and also stationing some of the best warriors – herself included – there to help when needed, so she couldn’t say that the underwhelming performance was unexpected.
But just because something was not unexpected doesn’t mean it could not be disappointing at the same time.
That the newer recruits failed to hold their own even against these otherwise “easy” opponents was a bad sign, and maybe she would need to look into dissolving some of their employment contracts after the campaign. For the present, however, what she needed to do was to help them hold the line together, which was hard enough as the recruits were on the verge of breaking.
Fortunately Wilhelmina had good and reliable friends, as she noticed a ruckus on the enemy line’s left side. Sure enough, not a couple of minutes later, a small group of mercenaries wearing matching white brigandines with the crossed lances emblem of the Free Lances mercenary company emerged, having broken through the enemy lines on that side.
Wilhelmina was familiar and well acquainted with the members of Erycea’s inner circle of friends who usually charged into battle on her side. She looked with a bit of envy at the sight of the four large-bodied therians – Vlad, Tasha, Vera, and Gustav – who blocked the enemy further behind from being able to push back against them by brute force, while Erycea herself led the charge.
The way the mixed-breed therian girl swung her metal truncheons with so much force that one enemy’s spear snapped like a twig when he tried to block her strike with its shaft was something to behold. Wilhelmina knew all too well that a spear’s hardwood shaft was not easy to break. Even if she was to swing her own greatsword with all her might it would take two to three swings to the same spot to cut through such a spear’s shaft.
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Of course, Erycea’s metal truncheons were each more than twice as heavy as her seemingly larger greatsword, the high-purity adamant steel they were crafted from making the weapons far denser, sturdier, and heavier than what most would expect. They were not weapons meant to be wielded by a human, as they would be too heavy and unwieldy for a human to wield even with both hands, much less single-handed like Erycea did.
So Wilhelmina sighed with a tinge of envy once more at her good friend, the other girl’s therian heritage granting her a physique that a human could only be envious about. Their enemies were clearly not prepared to deal with an opponent like Erycea either, as the younger half-therian girl made her point by swinging her other truncheon and causing an enemy soldier’s head to burst like an overripe melon, sending bits of blood, brain matter, and bone splattering over the vicinity.
It was something overly flashy and rather impractical, as a blow with half the force would have been plenty to knock a man unconscious or even kill them, but the intimidating effect from such an excessive display was evident as well. Many of the enemies that got splattered by parts of what used to be their compatriot’s head stepped back almost at once with fright and surprise in their visage, and the pressure Wilhelmina faced on the frontline also immediately decreased by a sizable fraction.
“About time you showed up!” Wilhelmina yelled over the din of the fighting in Erycea’s direction. She also took the chance when her opponent was momentarily paralyzed by shock at what Erycea had just done to kick the man in the stomach, doubling him over and opening the back of his head for a strike. A chance Wilhelmina did not let go as her greatsword’s blade descended and neatly decapitated the enemy soldier.
“Figured you wouldn’t mind a hand!” yelled Erycea back even as she fended off one enemy’s spear using her left-hand truncheon and shattered another spear using the other. The therian girl then performed a nearly acrobatic feat where she stepped down onto a third spear thrust at her and drove it to the ground while kicking high at the face of the soldier whose spear she just shattered.
Except rather than kicking the man on the face, Erycea sprung the claws on her toes and raked the man’s face with them instead.
The enemy soldier screamed like a butchered pig as he stumbled back with deep bloody lines across his face, slicing through his eyes, nose, and mouth, and his horrifying appearance made his compatriots nearby recoil in fright at the sight.
Something Erycea and her little group abused thoroughly as they pushed their way through the enemy soldiers and gathered next to Wilhelmina’s little group at the frontline, forming a unified front with which they resisted the pressure from the numerically superior enemy forces pressing down on them.
The situation with the Silver Eagle’s recruits quickly fell under control with Erycea’s help, and Wilhelmina rotated the recruits that were clearly not ready for more to the back to be replaced by some of the company's reserves.