“The typical method of advancement for most soldiers involved performing feats that caught the attention of their direct superior. These men would in turn report such feats to their own superiors, and so onward until the news reached the top, should it not find itself discarded along the way or subsumed by others to advance their own agendas.

Unless the feat was of such great magnitude that it could not be covered up in any way and had been witnessed by too many, it was often that the credits for such performance to be taken away from those who deserved them by the undeserving.

And people wonder why our military kept getting worse by the generation.” - Silvanista Dehoerren-Favski, Commander of the Imperial Guard of the Clangeddin Empire. Confirmed killed in action in the defense of Maglos the Tyrant, last Emperor of the Clangeddin Empire.

“So how did the kids do?” asked Reinhardt when he saw Ylisera and Alva slip into the mercenary encampment not far from the forest later that night. While the last bandit gang had been saved to blood the rookie mercenaries since they were conveniently there, the rest of the gangs in the vicinity had been thoroughly rooted out by the rest of the Company, who had mostly returned to their camp with captives and loot by sundown.

“Could be better, could be worse,” replied Ylisera with a shrug of her shoulders. She and Alva had traveled ahead of the rest to report in since the others would likely camp for the night in the forest and only return the next day. By then they had confirmed that there were no more real threats to the rookies in the vicinity, and had left the rest of the group assigned to them as observers to keep an eye on the kids. “Mind you, that’s just the rookies. Lil’s boss and her crew did about as expected. The merc blood runs strong in those kids, I swear.”

“No surprise there. Even I can’t handle that girl most of the time these days!” said Reinhardt with a joyful guffaw. While Erycea still sparred often with him and Elfriede, he regularly found himself overwhelmed by his own young daughter, who seemed to have combined his wife’s skill and agility with his own power and ferocity. It was to the point that he lost most of their sparring sessions badly of late, though Elfriede still handed Erycea sound defeats regularly. Even she needed to put in some effort to do that, however. “Any casualties?”

“Around half of the rookies have injuries of every kind, some will need medical attention once they return, but shouldn’t mind waiting the night for that,” reported Alva quietly. Most armies would have looked at his and Ylisera’s past as former prostitutes and never took them seriously. In the Free Lances however, effort and performance mattered, and both of them had relatively high positions in the leadership hierarchy of the Company. “One died, and it was such a silly death too at that.”

“How so?” asked Reinhardt with some curiosity.

“The poor bugger was too afraid to rush in with the rest and had stayed in the back, behind even the rear lines of the formation. The bandits had overshot their first salvo. Poor bugger caught like seven arrows and died on the spot,” explained Alva as he shook his head at the absurdity of the situation. “Also, another ten or so of the rookies expressed their desire to resign, or looked like they’re about to.”

“Pretty much as expected then,” noted Reinhardt. It was all too common for young people to perform well through training, only to chicken out once the real fight happened. He wanted no such types for his mercenaries either, so it was better to root them out this early rather than later. If anything, eleven quitters - counting the dead rookie - out of forty-five was a better number than most batches managed so far. “Any of them caught your eye?”

“The kid they placed in command had a good head, and had some guts, though his plan didn’t work out in the end. He still stood his ground with his men, though,” said Ylisera nonchalantly. The observers had generally approved of Hakim’s performance as a leader. His plan’s failure was attributed to lack of intelligence, as the bandits having a mage that happened to counter his plan was not expected. “So’s his second in command, pretty good snap decisions and kept the morale going when the rookies were about to break. They’ll both need some more coaching, but they seem like good seedlings.”

“I concur,” said Alva with a nod in support of Ylisera’s words. “Those two showed promise. That they had not panicked and lost control when their plan fell apart was probably the best thing we could have expected from rookies like them.”

“What about Ery’s crew?” asked Reinhardt, some parental worry as to be expected in his voice, though also mixed with obvious pride at his daughter.

“Not even one serious injury. Some irrelevant cuts here and there, and armor that will need fixing, but that’s about it,” reported Alva. “Honestly, if I didn’t know they were that young I’d have thought them to be seasoned fighters with how they performed out there. None of them even wavered on what must’ve been their first kills either.”

“To be fair, some of them are well past that by now, though I guess it would be a first for some of the younger kids,” said Reinhardt just as nonchalantly. “The parents of some of the kids had brought theirs out to hunt down some scum within the past year, so I have it on good confidence that like nearly half those kids popped their kill cherry a good while ago.”

“Would that get us into hot water with the Dukes, boss?” asked Ylisera. Even if the ones killed were the scum of society, it was likely within the cities, and would still be considered murder by the law.

“Eh, nobody ain’t gonna miss bastards who aimed for kids anyway,” said Reinhardt with a shake of his head. “Besides, scumbags like those go missing all the time. What’s another missing half-dozen to that anyway?”