Halfway to the Valdemar capital of Haven, it seemed that their purpose and reputation had preceded them. People came out of the towns along the way to watch them pass; reservedly friendly, but cautious, as if they didn’t quite know what to expect of a mercenary Company. Kero ordered her troopers to respond to positive overtures, but ignore negative ones. And there were negative responses; old men and women who remembered the Tedrel Wars, and had decided that all mercs were like the Tedrels had been. At least once every time they halted, someone would shout an insult (which more than half the troopers couldn’t understand anyway), someone else would half-apologize for “granther,” and Kero or one of her Lieutenants would carefully explain the difference between Guild and non-Guild meres. It got to be so much of a commonplace, that the troops began laying bets on who the troublemaker would be the moment they entered a town. Privately, Kero was relieved that the Tedrel Wars had been so very long ago—years tended to bring forgetfulness, especially in the light of this new enemy. It didn’t matter so much anymore that the Karsites had hired fighters calling themselves mercenaries—those hired fighters had been just like the Karsites who hired them; they fought with steel like anyone else, and could be killed with that same steel. Ancar had hired mages, about which there were only tales, and every childhood bogeyman came leaping out of the closet to become the adult’s worst nightmare.

So, for the most part, the people of Valdemar came out to see these hired fighters—hired to fight on their side—and came away comforted. These were tough, seasoned veterans, on fast, slim horses like these farmers had never seen before—but they smiled at children, offered bits of candy, and let toddlers ride on a led horse. They had faced mages and won. When someone managed to find a Skybolt who knew either trade-tongue or had a sketchy grasp of Valdemaran, and managed to ask through the medium of painfully slow pantomime about fighting against mages, the answer always surprised the the questioner, for it was invariably a shrug, and a reply of, “they die.”

Kero finally reduced it to a few simple sentences she had the officers teach the troops. “Tell them ‘mages are human. They bleed if you cut them, die if you strike them right. They need to eat, and they get tired if they work magic for too long. And there are things to stop them and things their magic can’t work on—’ ” And then would follow the list of all the little tricks every Guild mere knew; salt and herbs, holy talismans, disrupting the mage’s concentration, spellbreaking by interfering with the components, sneaking up and taking the mage from behind, even overwhelming the mage with a rush of arrows or bodies so that he couldn’t counter every one before he was taken down.