"Amongst people in our line of work, hope has always been the best motivation to go on. Hopes for riches to enjoy life with. Hopes of finding fame, maybe cushy employment with some rich nobles, or even hopes of making yourself a noble through deeds of arms. All those helped us mercenaries sustain our spirit, as we lived from one battle to another, selling lives, ours or otherwise, for coin." - Ingrid Edelstein, Captain of the Free Lances mercenary company, circa 1 FP.

Two days had already passed since they escaped from the ambush that had killed the rest of their companions. Reinhardt and the forty-five survivors with him made their way south, towards Fort Ascher. The going was slow, as they dared not take the main roads, and the rugged hills or the dense jungles they had to go through on the way slowed their progress noticeably.

They had only covered less than half of the previous three-day distance in those two days, and already they saw some unsettling signs. There were armed men and women patrolling the roads, which they avoided with great care along the way.

At a glance those men and women looked little more than some ragtag militiamen being made to do work the soldiers were too lazy or busy to handle. Reinhardt thought otherwise. He remembered all too well that the horde that had ambushed his group were mostly similarly attired.

Thanks to the natural talents of the few therian members in his group, they had managed to avoid those patrols without being noticed. The Holy Kingdom of Theodinaz's beliefs had advocated human supremacy, and other races weren't welcome in their lands.

Fortunately that also meant that their soldiers had nobody capable of detecting the presence of others by scent from hundreds of meters away, nor did they have people whose eyes were so sharp, they were practically natural spyglasses.

Reinhardt's nose wasn't the sharpest of the bunch, but it was still far keener than human noses, and twice he had caught patrols from well beyond visual range by the faint scent carried through the winds.

Hannah had helped notice a few more with her sharp eyes. The young girl - she wasn't even twenty yet if he remembered right - was a hawk therian, a rather rare breed in these regions. She was a poor combatant, with her fragile bones, but her ability to scout from the skies was priceless to mercenaries like them.

She had been shot down during the ambush, and had only survived because the others had carried her while they ran - not that hard a feat, given how light she was - and administered to her injuries as best they could.

Even so, Hannah's wings were badly injured, as she broke one of them and a leg on her fall as well. Even now, Kasimir mostly carried her around on his back as they tried to return to Fort Ascher.

Her sharp eyes proved that she was worth all that trouble, as they had allowed the group to evade several patrols without being sighted. Even the few who had grumbled at first - they had lost relatives or loved ones to the ambush - quieted down and thanked her since then.

The fact that there were patrols on their way back was horrible news to Reinhardt. It meant that their enemy likely intended to hit the fort as well, and had not wanted any survivors to warn the fort ahead of time. They also made their trek back more difficult by a good bit, forcing the group to take one detour after another.

In the end, it was dawn of the fifth day after the ambush before they got anywhere near the vicinity of Fort Ascher. Reinhardt stopped in his tracks, as his nose caught a whiff of a scent in the air. He sniffed a few times, before he turned to his group of survivors with a serious look on his face.

"Smoke," he said with a low voice, which elicited a hiss of anger and concern from the group. That morning, the wind blew from the south, which meant the smoke came from the direction of Fort Ascher. That was definitely not the sort of news any of them hoped for.

A couple hours later, they saw the fort in the distance. Obvious signs of damage were present on the walls of the fort, and many areas showed signs of a recent outbreak of fire. More damning were the multitude of dead bodies scattered around the fort. The distance was still too far for even Hannah to tell who held the fort at the moment, as they couldn't see any flags raised from it, but she could tell that the dead bodies were dressed similar to their ambushers.

Even so, that the fort was so damaged, with parts of it burnt, some of the smoke coming from the inside, meant that the attackers must have managed to get inside before, if they weren't the ones in control of the fort now, that is. Reinhardt wished to do nothing more than to run for the fort to check the safety of his wife and child, but he forcefully restrained himself.

The group spread themselves more, as they continued onwards. They moved slower, more cautiously, under the assumption that they might be walking straight to an enemy-held fortification.

Less than an hour later, probably a few kilometers from the fort, they spotted it. Men and women garbed much like their ambushers had camped by every road that led towards the fortress.

There were not that many of them, maybe fifty or so in each camp, clearly intended more for warning than to block the road. Despite that, there were too many such camps that there was no way for Reinhardt to bring his group of forty-six past them without being noticed.

Reinhardt gathered his group in some dense jungle a kilometer or so away from two such camps. He looked at each of their eyes in turn, before he knelt by the ground, and used his innate magic to create a very crude map of the vicinity on the soil.

"This is where we are," he pointed with one claw. Then he drew a line from their position towards one of the camps, one situated at the mouth of a trail leading into the dense jungle, and made a cross with his extended claw. "This camp is likely our best chance to make a breakthrough and run to the fort. It is partially covered from sight by the jungle, so the nearby camps would likely react late. Our own approach also benefits from more cover as well. Any questions?"

"What are the odds that the fort has fallen into enemy hands?" asked Kasimir with a glum look on his face. His father was in the fort when they left, as he was an armorer, not a mercenary, and he was worried for his safety.

"Low. They wouldn't have set up these camps if they controlled the fort, and it's also far too impractical if it's all meant to be a trap," replied Reinhardt quickly. He tried to make his voice sound as level and certain as he could, even as his own heart dreaded the possibilities. He had to project a strong front for his people. "Any other questions?"

"So we just break our way through, then run? Why not just run from between the camps instead?" asked Nicole, a young girl who only recently joined them as a mercenary. Much like many in the group, her parents had been mercenaries as well, and she had grown up alongside them.

"Around half in each of those camps had bows with them," said Hannah in reply. "If we just tried to run from between two of the camps, we'd be well within bow range of both camps. That wouldn't have ended nicely."

"Thanks, Hannah," said Reinhardt with a nod to the injured girl. "So that's the plan, boys and girls. We hit fast, we hit hard, then we run before the rest can get to us. Any questions? No? Very well. Prepare yourself for battle."