Sortmarkers have been fighting each other for eleven centuries, and that sort of constant warfare comes with a price. Sortmark is a poor and violent land, divided into a hundred feuding states of various size and power. The lack of any lasting central power strong enough to impose order has led to a century of war, raid and counter-raid, and stopped industrial and social progress in its tracks; the battles of today, for all that they are fought with imported rifles and foreign-made grenades, are just as constant and vicious as they have been for a thousand years.
That all may be changing, however, at least for a little while. Torgeir of Novgorod has claimed the crown of Sortmark as Magnus I, and already his rule stretches from the westmost reaches of Sortmark in Hibernia deep into the previously independent steppe principalities. Only a few major powers elsewhere still dispute his title to the crown - Jarls in Kiev, Germany and Scania chief among them - but elsewhere those who called themselves his enemies have been driven out and replaced with loyalists to the new Crown.
Just another episode in a long line of rulers who have tried to unite Sortmark, only for their work to collapse on their death or defeat, perhaps. But for the rest of the world - or at least, the part that is equally violent, but perhaps more developed - an opportunity.
Wars in Sortmark have been a constant affair, but one that rarely involves the common people - only rarely will a lord call out the leidang conscripts to bolster his forces in times of need. Instead, wars are fought by the nobility, by mercenaries, occasionally by foreign proxy troops, and, most famously, by the Hird.
The Hird is a hereditary class of warriors retained by high lords; Hirdsmen are trained as soldiers from childhood, and form the bulk of the standing armies of the major Sortmarker states. They are in every sense an elite class of soldier in Sortmark; a Hirdsman is given exemption from the usual duties of udal-service and other obligations, and the only duty they are expected to do is to fight. And fight they do; by the time a Hirdsman has seen his twentieth summer, he will have participated in a dozen or more raids and will have fought in one or more than one of the constant small fights, ambushes, counter-ambushes or even pitched battles contested in Sortmark. In such an environment, warriors survive, and those who are unfit for the Hird seldom last long in it.
When a lord is driven out of his land or killed in battle with no successor, the Hird does not dissolve; but similarly, career soldiers who, unlike the peasantry, have personal ties of loyalty to an old regime are too dangerous to leave in place or to incorporate into the armies of a conqueror. So when one leader incorporates the realms of many others into his own - as the new King of Sortmark has done - the Hirdsmen of the old state are left with no homes and no state to serve; in such circumstances, a soldier becomes either a mercenary or a bandit.
Those Jarls still opposing the King have soaked up a large part of this newly available group of warriors, but if there is one thing Sortmark does not lack, it is soldiers, and there are many still willing to enter into the service of a foreign realm.
What will you get?
Sortmarker mercenaries will work for little pay compared to the standards of a modern, post-industrial nation. Sortmark is a poor country, and an employer should not expect to find tankers, or fighter pilots, or soldiers skilled with modern ECM and electronic warfare among the ranks of the Hird. What they should expect is warriors; men who have gone to battle in jeeps, or old trucks, or even on foot, since they were old enough to hold an assault rifle.
You should not expect the Hird to replace a division of soldiers in modern, mechanized warfare; the machines of modern war are rarely seen in Sortmark, where there is no industry to support them outside of the very largest cities, and few rulers who could afford to field them regardless. If you are able to use the Hird according to its abilities, however, you will find that there are few forces in the world more valuable in irregular and guerrilla warfare, anti-partisan operations, and all such operations that depend fundamentally not on advanced military hardware and high tech contests of missile vs. computer or submarine vs. satellite, but on the skill and courage of men on the ground.
What will you give?
So Sortmark is poor and a Hirdsman will fight for little pay, it is true; still, the Hird is a warrior class, and they have their own traditions that must be catered to if you wish to retain their service. If such might seem onerous, remember that men who would rather die than surrender are men who win battles, and that such men are not easily come by.
The prestige of owning items taken in battle is as valuable as gold to a Hirdsman, and few would fight for a commander who does not allow them free access to the spoils of battle - most of the time, at least, even in Sortmark it is not unusual for a victorious commander to occasionally spare a particularly valued city, or church or castle from looting. Hirdsmen follow their own officers - mercenaries hired by your nation or corporation would be at the service of your high command, of course, but officers of the Hird command the individual companies. No Hirdsman will set foot in a merchant vessel, nor endure theft of his property or insult of his courage without exacting satisfaction, and a Hirdsman will not fight in a mixed company with conscripts (unless as an officer in command of a unit).
Finally, anyone hiring mercenaries should provide money to the commanding officer, not to the troops individually; it is the prerogative of the leader of a company to distribute wealth amongst his men.
A Hirdsman is a warrior with few matches in the world. Perhaps you do not believe it; ask the citizens of Freidlichen. Ten thousand of the Kievan Hird were hired by Griffencrest Corporation to form the elite of their occupation troops. And when it was over?
Fate leads all men to death, and in time even a warrior's glory fades into history and is forgotten. But the people of Freidlichen will forget the name of God Himself before they forget the passing of the Hird.
