Mercenary

Free Fighter
Also known as City Guards. Early powerhouse hitters that look snazzy. Like their friends the infantries, they will ALWAYS have a decent sword proficiancy regardless of what they are really good at. Makes for a good fallback maneuver.

Male
Male Free Fighters are going to be some of your earliest hard hitters. They start with some of the highest strength scores and best sword skill out of the box. But as far as sparkers go, they are actually pretty mediocre, and as you move through the game, will at some point stop using them for tech sparking. They also have an extra hangout spot at the Avalon pub.

Female
Female Free Fighters, tend to be a point or two behind their male counterparts in the strength department, which blunts their raw damage output a little. However, they also tend to serve as better generalists. Sidhe gets brownie points for counter bait possibilities (she walks in with pretty decent martial arts proficiancy for a bow sparker)!

In Imperial SaGa
There is no mistake saying the Free Fighters are one of the best hitters in the game. Emperor Hector starts out with a whooping 42 attack power with Big Swords, while Emperor Andromache starts out with 38 attack power.But...in High Soldier questions, female Free Fighters are way better than male ones. Why? Achilles finishes off with bad defense and approximately 34 attack power, now, Deidameia finishes with 28-31 attack, but better defenses.But that doesn't mean that our Really, REALLY destructive Hector/Perseus/Hercules aren't better than Gray and Neidhart in their Emperor editions. If you got Achilles, use Harry(Light Infantry) instead, since he has more consistent numbers.As of Romancing SaGa 2, Penelope still is the best High Soldier replacement for an Axe user.