Mercenaries are rarely used by civilized nations, as they cause more harm than good. The reasons are fairly simple. By the nature of their field of work, mercenaries quite naturally become bandits during dry seasons, and their presence inside of civilized lands breaks down the public order. In addition, even when employed, mercenaries are motivated by personal gain to the extent that they will often raid settlements for no better reason than they want to earn a few coins on the side.
In addition, one cannot trust mercenaries to fight in a disadvantageous situation, regardless of what is paid. There is no greater organization or guild that can punish mercenaries for betrayal of an employer, so such punishments inevitably rely on the ability of the employer to enforce it, which is often nonexistent after a losing battle.
Last of all, mercenaries tend to have low morale relative to their high skills and combat experience. As such, mercenary companies will often break and run at times highly inconvenient to their employers, making them a poor investment for nations or nobles seeking to add to their ability to project military force.
An excerpt from the Premises of War and Economics by Dlantl
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I awoke the next morning before dawn. I had a slight headache due to the lack of sleep, but a surge of qi cleared my body and mind of any poisons that might have built up in my system. I hurriedly dressed and put on my armor, strapping my shield to my left forearm and my saber to my left hip. Once outside, I noted that some of the tents in the main camp were already coming down, and I quickly rolled up my bedroll and those of my deceased companions, tying them with twine before setting them outside the tent.
I found their packs and rummaged through them, taking the few copper and silver coins inside and placing them in the wallet hidden under my chest armor. I picked up all four packs, setting them outside gently.
I then reached up to the top of the tent and pulled a string there, causing it to collapse in on itself. I carefully laid the tent out so that the four support poles and the four roof polls were lined up perpendicular to one another. I rolled up the tent, careful to keep the cloth taut as I went, so that the bundle that remained at the end was as small as possible. I then tied it with twine like the bedrolls and slid it into the canvas sack it had originally come out of before tying the top closed.
With a sigh, I picked up the armor and weapons my fellows had left behind and placed them on top of the sack, along with all but one of the bedrolls. I then placed the straps of the three deceased members’ packs over opposing shoulders before bending down before the bundle. I then hefted it and headed for the quartermaster.
Inside the tower, the quartermaster was taking tents and other supplies from members of the company and placing them in a crates based on what they were. Those crates would later be moved to one of the wagons outside, but that was for later in the day.
When I came in front of him, he took the tent, the packs, the three bedrolls, as well as Niia’s equipment. He then marked out what I had returned on the list before him (I made sure he did so accurately) and gestured for me to go away.
There was no sign of the slave girl from the day before.
I deliberately kept myself from thinking about her fate, as the last time I’d figured it out, my collar dropped me to the floor for thinking about killing the dwarf.
The slave collar used in this world is one of the most evil devices in existence, made using an advanced mind-analyzing enchantment that reads the one it is placed on constantly. If the individual thinks about harming anyone registered as ‘master’ or disobeying them, the collar constricts until the thoughts go away. The collars were expensive at fifty gold pieces each, but Diandra used them profligately to ‘train’ probationers. When we were killed on the battlefield, it was often only the collar that was retrieved.
Normal slaves usually don’t use a slave collar… or at least not one as advanced and refined as the one I was wearing. Most were given a simple iron collar and punished with the lash when they got out of line. Pleasure slaves and slaves who served in a position that required confidentiality were the ones most likely to be collared with one like mine.
I’d caught Diandra betting on how many probationers would die because of the collar that week early on, laughing with his lieutenants as they put down silver and gold on the outcome. Since then, I’d made certain to control my thoughts and emotions as well as I could… but it was wearing me down. I could feel that I was becoming colder, more callous with each battle. I didn’t like it… I felt like my mother wouldn’t recognize me the next time we met at this rate.
I tried not to think about the tens of men and women I’d killed on the battlefield. There was still enough of Tajiri and Iryun left inside me that I could feel guilt and sorrow over it, but the fact that we were trying to kill one another from the beginning made it all-too-easy to categorize those I killed as ‘faceless enemies’.
I returned to the area near my tent and tied my bedding to the top of my pack with some twine before settling it on my shoulders. We would be marching out within a few hours, once everyone was awake and all the tents and extra supplies were loaded onto the wagons. I didn’t trust my fellows in the probationers camp not to steal my supplies if I left it out too long.
Inside the pack were four days worth of traveling rations, tasteless dried meat wrapped in oilcloth, four blocks of hardtack, and a small pouch of dried fruits and vegetables. I also had a small bottle of whiskey I’d looted during a battle a month before hidden under them, and my spare underclothes and socks were packed on top. I also had a dagger, some fishing line, and a hook, as Diandra often insisted on stopping to fish when we came across a large body of water.
A large waterskin was hooked to a strap on the right side of the pack, where I could easily reach it when needed. I had several spares stuffed in the pack, most of them looted off corpses here and there, but they were empty, as I didn’t want to draw attention. I would fill them with wine or lager when we stopped in a town, and that usually sufficed as a bribe to keep the nastier company members off my back.
While I waited, I sat down on a nearby stump and picked up a piece of dry wood from beside one of the dead fires. I then began carving at it with the thick dagger I kept under my chest armor.
Within an hour, a small statue that vaguely resembled my mother was in my hands, and I slipped it into my pack, wondering vaguely whether I could even be considered her son any longer.
When I was Tajiri and Iryun, my mind was clouded due to the controls placed on it by the trickster god. Tajiri was a highly intelligent young man in his previous life, and Iryun had potential that surpassed his. Yet, neither of them, despite possessing memories of the god in an old man’s form, had been suspicious of the way their thoughts, emotions, and memories were slowly contaminating one another. Neither had been curious about the Mental Contamination skill.
I knew now that Mental Contamination was a skill that only appeared if one was on the verge of madness. The higher the score, the more compromised one’s mind and spirit were. If those two had had the presence of mind to tell someone what was happening, something likely could have been done. The elves and the spirit foxes both had techniques dealing with the mind and spirit that might have been used to salvage them both… or at least Iryun.
I sighed, feeling a bit melancholy. I had memories of being Tajiri and Iryun, and I understood them both at a fundamental level… However, I constantly felt a sense of alienation whenever I let myself recall their lives. I was a fusion of their souls, a new individual born from the fires of their souls’ deaths, and there was nothing I could do to change that.
Worse, from the way Diandra was training me, I had a feeling that what the god wanted me to do was going to be more terrible than I had imagined when I first came into being.
I didn’t know how the god was connected to Diandra, but I could guess. Diandra always leapt into the worst part of the battle, ignoring how both enemies and allies were moving to slaughter as many enemies as possible in as short a time as possible. He never seemed to receive a serious wound, and any wounds he did receive healed in seconds. Most likely, the god had provided him with a Unique Skill in exchange for something Diandra could provide him. My training was probably just a small part of what Diandra did for our mutual patron.
We decamped just before noon, and I walked at the rear of the column, along with the other probationers (including fifty new ones, freshly enslaved, blood-stained collars ripped from the throats of the dead around their necks). We ate the dust of those in front of us, but I was used to that, and I had a kerchief over my nose and mouth, a straw hat low on my head to keep the worst of it out of my lung and eyes. I used my spear as a walking stick, grimacing occasionally as one probationer or another collapsed, only to be pulled up by those around them. If they were left by the side of the road, we would all be punished… for leaving the collar behind. A few of the walking wounded were killed by their fellows when they collapsed, their collar and their valuables stripped from the corpses and distributed to the bullies pretending to be leaders amongst the smallest contingent in the company.
The mercenaries at the front rode horses or in wagons, whereas the low-ranked mercenaries near the middle of the column were nearly as miserable as the probationers, walking through the clouds of dust kicked up by those at the front. Diandra was very clear in delineating the privileges of rank, but he was also clear that once one made it into the main company, their ability would be the only thing that decided rank. There were men in the middle who had been with the company for decades, whereas there were men in front who had been probationers only a year or two before.
Diandra used the incentive of potential promotion to help control the newly-released probationers, dangling hopes of riches and slaves in front of them to keep them loyal to the company.
It was an uncommon setup for a mercenary company. Most companies tended to keep the leadership and privileges concentrated in the senior members or within the family group of the commander. However, Diandra was hard on his people, using them up with terrifying speed if they couldn’t adapt to his style of war. As a result, there were only a few remaining at the top from when the company was formed, keeping the force as a whole elite and meritocratic.
We camped that night inside the ruins of a village we’d burned along the way. Several of the surviving probationers from that raid wept inside their tents, and I slept under the roots of a tree outside, not wanting to have to deal with the trouble that inevitably popped up when the mercenaries began to get bored after a battle.
The next morning, I noted apathetically that a few of the new faces had vanished, and several of the survivors looked even gloomier than usual… particularly the women. I’d yet to find a new group to join, but I wasn’t in a hurry. If I chose a group he didn’t like Diandra would just shuffle me to one he preferred, anyway.
That kind of ‘special treatment’ ensured that I was somewhat alienated from the other probationers. It wasn’t favored treatment, since I was always grouped with newbies or those who had trouble keeping up, but that didn’t stop people from seeing it as favoritism.
As proof of that, several of the survivors glared at me as I walked toward the main camp, but I wasn’t interested in getting along with them. The new probationers didn’t yet know who I was, so they looked confused at the veterans’ reactions, but I figured they would feel the same way, soon enough.
The fact that my teams always got wiped out during battle only made things worse… though it made sense, since they usually weren’t even trained before they were tossed onto the battlefield. Worse, I was usually put in a position in line that was practically designed to get me killed.
I figured it would get worse as I got closer to ‘graduation’.
I was right.
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I grimaced as Diandra’s handaxe swept through the space where my head was a moment before, sweeping my spear around in an attempt to take his feet out from under him. But he parried the blow with his second axe, adding force to the spear so that it put me out of balance.
A spartan kick slammed into my chest, and I was tossed several feet away, losing my spear in the process. I drew the saber and used it to parry one axe, then the next, desperately evading the immensely powerful and incredibly swift blows of the werewolf’s weapons.
Diandra was good… not as good as my grandfather was with a sword or bow, but he was probably at a 7 or 8 with his axes. Moreover, his Unique Skill seemed to give him an endless well of stamina, making it virtually impossible to keep up with him.
After a few more exchanges, I was tossed onto my back, an axe stopping just short of bisecting my skull.
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Diandra grinned, his expression cold but approving, “You’ve improved, kid. Another year and you might actually be worth something outside of a slave market.”
Probationers lay strewn across the training grounds, knocked unconscious as a result of Diandra and his lieutenants’ idea of training. I was just fortunate that I actually had a small modicum of skill, or I would have been treated the same way.
I didn’t retort… I was stupid enough to do so a few times early on, and I had it beaten into me that Diandra wasn’t about to tolerate lip from a mere probationer.
I just nodded, and he turned around, heading for the ruined castle we were using as a base.
The castle once belonged to a local Baron, but when he refused to pay Diandra (after Diandra burned one of his villages in a fit of rage), the werewolf decided to punish him by slaughtering his vassals and burning him at the stake in front of his family. The reason the castle was ruined was because Diandra had set it and the lord’s manor on fire while drunk, proclaiming that he was lightening up the party.
To this day, the place smelled like charred wood and death, but I was used to it, after the last few months. Fire seemed to accompany warfare, at least when Diandra got involved.
The region we were in was called the Lost Lands, and there was no royal family overseeing the local feudal lords. Instead, they constantly warred with one another over scraps of territory, so after Diandra murdered the locals, they had no reason to bother trying to reclaim the area. The Lost Lands were full of dead counties and baronies where monsters, mercenaries, or tyrannical nobles had rampaged and left nothing behind.
Once he was gone, I sat down cross-legged and began practicing my sage arts, spreading my sensory web over the entirety of the castle grounds. I could hear the conversations of people in the area and catch glimpses of their surface thoughts using this particular sage art, but the reason I used it was because it was the one that was most efficient for strengthening my spiritual energy and control.
Currently, a quarter of a kilometer in radius was the limit of my range, but I hoped to some day spread it across an entire kilometer.
The members of my new unit were awaiting me when I returned to the probationers’ quarters, which were set up in the ruins of the old servants quarters on the west side of the castle. Oiled canvas sheets were tied over the top of the walls to take the place of the burned roof, and some effort had been made to repair the walls, including the replacing of the rain shutters.
My unit was made up of two oni girls that looked like they were in their early teens and a single spirit fox boy who looked like he was even younger than me. They were the dregs of the slaves obtained after our last battle, in that their basic physical abilities and weapons skills were lower than everyone else. I was training them, but the spirit fox boy, Lean, hadn’t even learned how to use qi, so I was having to spend a disproportionate time directing that part of his training.
The girls knew how to use qi, but they hadn’t been taught how to use mana, so their control was terrible and they had no inherent magical defenses. They were also hopeless with sage arts, not that they would have an opportunity to use them.
Their names were Vei and Vekka, and they were twins. They had red-tinged skin, blue eyes, and two black, curved horns emerging from their foreheads. Like all oni, they were much stronger than they looked, and I was pretty sure they were a year or two older than me. I had them training with the mace and shield, instead of a sword, due to their natural inclinations. Neither was exactly the picture of finesse.
Lean, on the other hand, I had learning how to use a bow, as it was the only weapon he seemed to be able to use without tripping over his own feet. His eyes were good, and he seemed to have a natural grasp of how to aim the weapon. However, at present I was having to focus on physical and qi training to get him to the level where he would be able to use the compound bow favored by the company. Archers were always valued and protected more than the other mercenaries, even the probationers. If I managed to get him to an acceptable level of training and physical ability, he would be taken by the lieutenant leading the archers and be more or less safe.
The girls… weren’t the type to survive. I was pretty sure they would either be killed in their first battle or their second. Oni didn’t have an inherent sense of caution when it came to battle, and it took time and experience to teach them they weren’t invincible in combat, even the ones that weren’t trained.
I was putting in the effort anyway because if they were too weak, they might get me killed. In my experience, having a weak unit was a good way to add to the scars on my body.
I was fairly sure my patron didn’t want me dead, so that was unlikely to be Diandra’s goal. However, I also thought it likely that my patron wouldn’t care that much if I did die as a result of my own incompetence or carelessness.
Diandra seemed determined to beat any such weakness out of me, but I questioned the results… it was getting harder and harder to retain my mental balance. The combination of oncoming adolescence with my frustration with my situation and the fear I inevitably felt on the battlefield was quickly eroding my conscience (what remained of it after slaughtering peasant troops and helping raid villages so many times).
Was that what the god wanted? It seemed likely. A tool that had too sensitive a conscience wouldn’t be seen as reliable by the malevolent being I’d found myself serving. I did as much as I could to help my fellows, and I didn’t participate in the ‘festivities’ after a village was taken, but that wasn’t saying much. I still helped kill those womens’ (and young boys’) fathers, grandfathers, and grandmothers, and I even clapped a collar around their throats when ordered.
We were wintering in a small castle town we’d raided a month before. Snow had not yet begun to fall, but I could smell the approaching cold front, so I assumed we would be snowed in the next day. Most of the villagers had been killed outright, with only the young women, the girls, and a small portion of attractive adolescent boys enslaved instead. The official company members usually had a slave girl (or boy) kept in their rooms, but the probationers were living in the castle barracks.
The barracks were more comfortable than our tents, as the local lord had provided his men with a hot spring bathhouse and well-made straw mattresses with plenty of blankets and furs. However, the smell of blood and fire still tainted them, despite the fact that we had cleaned it out last week.
Most of the probationers were already lying down on their beds when I came in, so I quietly removed my armor and weapons and vanished them into my inventory before heading for the baths.
Inside the baths was a young spirit fox woman covered in stark white scars from head to toe, and two dark-skinned elven women, all wearing collars on their naked bodies. None of us bothered staring at each other’s nudity. We were too worn down by our lives to care about such things, though if it were earlier in the day, it is likely any other man would have propositioned them on the spot.
The spirit fox woman was Ris, and she was formerly Diandra’s sex slave, moved to the probationers unit when he finished with her. Most of her scars came from his claws or the whip he liked to use on his women, and her eyes burned with a cold light whenever she saw him. She was also the only probationer I felt wary of on an instinctive level.
The elven girls were great beauties, but they had the misfortune to be picked up by Diandra’s lieutenant, a daemon named Graskal. While his tastes didn’t leave physical scars the way Diandra’s did, the fear they showed for a moment when I entered the baths said everything. Graskal liked to pass his women around to his subordinates after a battle, and they were his slaves for almost a year before he tired of them. I doubted they would ever trust a man again, and I didn’t blame them.
I was careful to keep my eyes on their faces and away from their bodies when I had to look, not wanting to make them uncomfortable, and I sat down in the bath with my back to them, both showing some trust and that I had no intention of bothering them.
I still found Ris to be beautiful, but I knew Ris had an intense hatred for her scars. Another one of the probationers had made the mistake of commenting on them, and he had lost his head the next second. Needless to say, I was careful not to actively notice her beauty or the scars themselves.
The hot water of the baths stung the numerous scrapes and bruises all over my body, but I knew the energy-infused waters would quicken my healing. By morning, there would be no sign of any of the minor injuries on my body. It wasn’t effective with larger wounds, but for the kind of damage we received during training, it was sufficient.
Diandra was using that as an excuse to ‘train’ the probationers more harshly than was normal. Since even minor bone fractures would heal within two or three days if one soaked in the baths every night, the few healers in the company had a lot less work than usual. Only the most severe injuries got a look from the healers now.
I took a look at my status.
Name: Iryun Liodosia
Age: 10
Race: Spirit Fox (elven bloodline)
Common Skills: Qigong 4, Sage Arts 4, Magic 4, Farming 1, Barehanded 3, Acrobatics 3, Athletics 4, Staff Weapons 4, Bladed Weapons 3, Bows 1, Axes 1, Shield 3
Passive Skills: Fused Soul (concealed), Mental Resistance 4, Magic Resistance 2, Blunt Resistance 2, Pierce Resistance 2, Pain Resistance 5
Unique Skills: Divine Contract: Artifact Steed 1, Infinite Growth, World Inventory 2
A mere two months with little in the way of serious fighting had not done much for my status. However, the training I was receiving had increased my barehanded and shield skills… though I wished that pain resistance hadn’t gone up again. Two weeks ago, I’d accidentally let slip my feelings on the quartermaster’s behavior, and I’d spent three days in the torture chamber beneath the castle being ‘educated’ as to my place in the company.
The healers had worked with Diandra and his personal torturer to keep me alive and healthy even as they dealt the maximum amount of pain to my body they could without damaging me permanently. I’d had my nails ripped out three times, lightning magic used on my balls, and I’d even spent some time on the rack.
The healers were creepily effective at growing back my nails… and the torturer now wore a necklace of them for some reason. The old man was easily the creepiest individual I had ever met, in either of my lives.
Actually, I knew why… since my soul fused, my nails had become razor-sharp and hard as low-grade steel, taking on a silvery luster that was beautiful enough that I usually took the time to stain them with ash from the fires. Spirit foxes and werewolves sometimes developed similar features, but the silver color was unique to me, from what I could tell.
I flexed my hands at the memories, careful not to cut into my palms with my own claws.
I rose from the bath some time after the women left, heading for the barracks. I dried myself off with rags from the pile left just outside the baths then dressed in a simple loincloth and light tunic. I would put something heavier on before I went to bed, but for now I needed access to my still-wet tail.
I crossed my legs and sat on the ground, bringing my soggy and somewhat forlorn-looking tail in front of me. I then ran a thin-bristled horse brush through my tail’s fur gently, removing any tangles and the bits of dust and dirt that hadn’t been washed away in the baths. Soon, my tail was as fluffy and shiny as it usually was, and I smiled with satisfaction. There was something oddly soothing about caring for my tail.
I ran the brush through my hair and over my ears. This was much easier than my tail, as the fur on my ears was shorter than that on my tail, and my hair was short enough that it was unlikely to get severely tangled. Once that was done, I summoned a heavy tunic and clean gray wool trousers from my inventory, along with two pairs of thick wool socks. I put them all on and headed for my bed, nodding in acknowledgment to a few survivors along the way.
Most of them returned my nods, despite how much I was disliked by the ‘veteran’ probationers. They recognized my ability, but they saw me as a death-bringer, as my unit seemed to be wiped out with every major battle.
As long as I wasn’t placed next to them in the order of battle (an unlikely occurrence, as I usually ended up on the tip of the spear or the most vulnerable part of the line) they cared little what I did. The members of my unit were considered to be the walking dead, so no one bothered conversing with Lean and the others.
I sat on the edge of my bed and was about to burrow under the covers when Lean and a werewolf girl who looked to be around seven or eight approached me. The girl was collared of course, but she wasn’t a probationer. Only those over the age of ten were allowed to become probationers, and the children under that age were slaves until they were used up or they reached that age.
She was a near-human variant, with her tail, ears, and lengthened canines the only signs of her origins. Her yellow eyes were full of fear, and she was quivering as Lean brought her before me.
“What did you do, Lean?” I asked wearily. The slaves from the village all belonged to official members of the company, and they certainly weren’t allowed to enter the barracks without their master accompanying them. Lean had only recently turned ten, and he hadn’t developed any signs of sexual maturity, so that wasn’t the reason he’d brought her in.
I hated to think of what the troops had already done to her, but there were no exceptions to the fate of those captured and enslaved by Diandra’s company. The only question was who had ended up owning her in the end after everything was done.
Given her reactions, she hadn’t managed to attach herself to one of the kinder (relatively speaking) members of the company.
“I found her hiding in the midden, and I-” He began to explain before I interrupted him.
“Lean.”
He stood up straight at the coldness of my voice, “Sir?”
“You shouldn’t have brought her here. If her owner discovers you tried to hide her, you’ll suffer a far worse fate than a quick death. Worse, you’ll bring that fate down on the rest of us,” I said coldly. Several other probationers had moved up behind Lean, and I felt a faint sense of pity for what was coming next.
It was Ris that moved first, her hand erupting from Lean’s chest in a spray of blood and gore, her claws piercing his heart. Two others drove daggers up between his ribs and into his lungs, ensuring that he was beyond healing. The other two were both from the older group of probationers, elves of around fourteen years of age. Their emerald eyes were flat and emotionless as they tossed Lean to the ground and grabbed the slave girl by the arms, dragging her out of the barracks.
“Sorry, Iryun,” Ris said apologetically, her eyes meeting mine empathetically, though we were both careful not to let our consciousness stray toward what, precisely, we were sorry about. Lean was too young to have to perform this kind mental gymnastics to get around his collar, so it didn’t stop him when he thought about doing something stupid. As a result, he was now dead, and his body would be tossed in the midden where the girl had been hiding.
I shook my head wearily, “Nothing you could do about it, Ris. Lean was a dead man walking the moment he didn’t present the girl to the nearest officer. Better that we deal with it here than spend a week listening to him scream.”
It was a waste… after all my efforts to get him to safety, he ruined it with a single poor decision. I would have thought someone who had spent a year as a slave would have figured out just how bad an idea helping an escapee was, but I supposed I had valued his common sense too highly.
“Captain Diandra isn’t going to be happy about this,” Ris said worriedly. Her eyes were filled with old fear, and I reflexively reached out and caressed her head gently in the same way my mother had as a child. Anger briefly flashed in her eyes before they softened. She closed her eyes and sat on the edge of the bed as I soothed her as gently as I could.
My positioning was awkward, as she was somewhat taller than me, and she was unwilling to sit close to me. However, I knew that I probably wouldn’t have another chance to do something for her again, as she was unlikely to be this vulnerable in front of me in the future.
She opened her eyes a few minutes later and gently grasped my arm, removing my and from her head with visible reluctance, “Thank you… I think I needed that.”
The blood had dried on her right arm, but neither of us cared much for that. The scent of blood was our constant companion in this mercenary company, after all.
She rose, briefly looking back at me as she headed for the women's side of the barracks. I ignored the hostile gazes of the other boys and men who had an interest in her as I quietly stripped Lean’s corpse before pulling him over my shoulders.
I headed for the midden, the boy, the child's cold, dead weight heavier than it truly should have been.