“Those who fail to treat the bereaved properly are those who would lose faith from their people, sooner or later.” - Old folk saying.

“Here, take this to your family, and do tell them that I’m sorry for your loss, Ven,” said Reinhardt as he passed on a small storage artifact to a young woman who kept looking at him, then at the artifact, and back again as if she was unsure what to do. “To be clear, I’m not telling you to get off and look for a different job. Your slot in the company will still be there when you return, as long as you still want it, but I am also saying to take this chance to think things over together with your family. This kind of loss is not pleasant for anyone involved.”

Ven – short for Venarillia – was the youngest of four siblings. Her father had been a veteran of the company who decided to call it quits after Theodinaz, where he ceased being a mercenary but continued working with the company as a training instructor in the years since. Out of Ven’s siblings, other than her oldest brother – who dreamed of becoming a painter instead – all of them yearned to join the company.

And they had done so, to their misfortune.

Ven’s older brother had been accepted into the Third Strike Platoon, while Ven’s older sister joined Alycea’s Platoon. Ven herself had followed the company as part of the reserves, some hundred or so youngsters who had finished their training but had yet to be accepted to the company proper. Most of those reserves were being integrated into the mercenary company as they spoke, but Reinhardt had singled Ven and a couple others out due to their extenuating circumstances.

Namely that all of them had lost family members to the recent fighting and that they would have the unenviable job to bring the word back to the company’s base, where the rest of their families were.

Both of Ven’s older siblings had fallen in the fighting yesterday. Since she was their next of kin and their family was with the rest of the company’s dependents at their base in Algenverr, Reinhardt sent the news as well as compensation for their losses directly instead of waiting until after the campaign was over like he did for those whose families were not part of the company as well.

The other reserves he singled out with Ven were under similar circumstances, and the three of them would travel back together with an injured mercenary who needed to recuperate longer before he could fight again back to their base camp to deliver the news. The injured mercenary was one of the older ones, who volunteered to bring the news to others who had family at the base camp but none amongst the fighting force at the front.

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Grief from losing loved ones never went well, even under the best of circumstances. While Reinhardt was acquainted enough with Ven’s parents and knew that they would not be losing their heads over the loss, he also knew that such experiences could color someone’s perspective. As it was, he was uncertain whether the family – having already lost two of their children – would still approve of the third potentially heading towards the same fate.

There was also the question of whether Ven herself would still be so eager to take her place amongst the company after having lost two of her siblings in one day like that, of course.

It was the sort of unenviable problems Reinhardt would have preferred to defer until after the campaign was entirely over, but he knew that in the case of those whose next of kin was part of the company, news would reach them anyway, so it was better that the news came from him directly rather than otherwise. That way, it gave the implication that he cared for his people, at least.

In an odd sort of way, while he might not care for them as a person – there were over two thousand mercenaries part of the company at the moment and there was no way for him to know every single one of them to begin with – he still appreciated their services on behalf of the company. Another part was as a way to take responsibility, since he was their commander, after all.

The Free Lances had not lost too many people thus far, but they had lost some nonetheless. Reinhardt was confident enough to say that he had done his best, and that the losses were inevitable with the nature of battle. Some people would lose their lives during the fighting, no matter how perfect his commands were, much less in the scale of fighting they were involved in.

Regardless, it was important for him to have the rest of the mercenaries view him as a commander that actually gave a damn about them, if only because it makes things much easier that way. His subordinates obeyed his commands without questioning because they had trust in him, and it was trust he had built with the company over the past two decades, no less.

He was not a fool that would squander that trust by appearing to be uncaring for his people’s losses.

The coalition army had also mostly finished dealing with their dead these days, and were making the final preparations for departure. It took time to make such preparations for an army their size, unless they were to leave things behind to provide the illusion that they were still around like what their enemies did when they fled in the middle of the night.

Reinhardt’s own people already nearly finished their preparation and could march at any moment, barring a few specific cases like the issue with Grünhildr, where Reinhardt decided to wait until the last moment to make his decision. He knew that he was betting on bad odds, but who knew? Maybe some miracle might happen that would change the situation again like back in Theodinaz.

While most would call it hopeful daydreaming, Reinhardt found that such hopeful thinking cost him nothing, as long as he didn’t bet everything on it.