Once we join up with the dark elves, we have some dwarves who can use healing magic begin to treat our captives. Most of them were severely injured, so the last thing we wanted was them potentially dying and losing us our leverage. While the dark elves captured four individuals, our side only captured our one target.

As our captives were treated, I started talking with the dwarven leadership and a representative of the dark elves to get a better grasp of our current situation. The dark elves said they took out thirteen other leaders in the enemy forces and captured four of the more valuable individuals who were unarmed at the time of our ambush.

The next bit of information was probably the most surprising gift we could have asked to receive. We captured their king. Not in the sense of a chess metaphor either. We literally captured the king of Rathland, Besmond III. He's a relatively young man, and appears to be in his late twenties or early thirties. That's basically the best bargaining chip we could ask for. Though I do question how good of a king he can actually be considering that only a handful of elite troops actually tried to protect him during our ambush.

More importantly though, we now need to arrange for some form of negotiation with whatever is left of the enemy leadership. Ideally, we get them to retreat in exchange for releasing some of the hostages after they leave. Though I'm not so sure we'll have an easy time with that. For today, we'll retreat high up the mountain to a few hidden locations to recuperate while we wait to hear how badly the rest of the troops who ran interference fared. Hopefully we can get some information out of our captives while we have them as well.

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Later that night, I have a few dark elves and dwarfs with me while I attempt to get information from our captives. Ultimately, I don't intend to resort to torture because they may be bargaining chips in the near future, but they need to believe that we're willing to torture them if we want to pressure them to release information to us. So I spent some time stone shaping some torture devices like a device called "The Rack" which is a table that uses leverage to slowly pull people apart, an iron maiden, and a bunch of scary looking tools.

We brought in individuals one by one, questioned and threatened them, and then when we felt we got enough information, got the next one and swapped them out. The leaders that the dark elves captured provided us some degree of tactical information like troop numbers and strategies that the enemy was employing, but most of that information the dark elves had already provided us earlier in the day. Ultimately, having a large amount of the enemy scouting force defect to our side provided us with as much, if not more information than the captured captains provided.

Last came their King. We decided to bring him to a different room. Regardless of our feelings on the matter, even the threat of torturing their king might cause a lot of problems down the line. To some degree, this is a negotiation in and of itself. King Besmond himself could technically call off the invasion, but considering the situation, we can't just parade him out to tell the enemy to retreat. They simply outnumber us too much, and could attempt something desperate. If the King died, then we wouldn't have the bargaining chip anymore.

So although I wish this could be the only negotiation we would have to do, in actuality, I'll have to negotiate with the enemy army's active leadership at some point in the near future. Regardless of any of that, I wanted to actually start our conversation off in a way that wouldn't harm our relations any further. Rathland may be our enemy, but smart politics is avoiding war, not engaging in it.

As he was situated at the table across from me, the first thing that I thought to do was actually apologize, "I am sorry about your arms and legs. I hope you have some way to heal them. War is war though, and I would have preferred if we had been left alone."

Stolen novel; please report.

"I suppose war is war. Rathland has many healers capable of repairing my limbs, though I do not appreciate that I'll need to ask them to do so. There is one problem with your statement though, we cannot simply 'leave you alone' after you technically started the war, it would be a smear on Rathland's pride." The King responds.

"You say we started the war, but as far as we know, we haven't engaged in a single warlike action, unless you mean declining your offer to become slaves to your country on no real legal standing."

The King chuckles before responding, "No, not that offer, though I would have found it amusing if you had accepted. That was simply a free political bargain. If no offer was likely to be accepted, given your existing political ties, we simply insisted on a 'deal' that was most favorable to us. If you were foolish enough to accept that, then I wouldn't even have to feel bad, since you'd be too politically naïve to understand the consequences of your choice. No, the actions I'm referring to are your piracy within our seas. Rathland could honestly care less about this small island. We have bigger political aims, and you seemed harmless. Then you started active piracy within our sovereign waters. What did you expect?"

"Look, we can drop the act. Both of us know that we weren't the ones committing piracy, and you aren't going to suddenly convince the dwarves that we are actually the bad guys. Kao Ostark personally verified that we weren't the source of the demon pirates. Though I'll admit it's great cover for your side of the story. It sounds like most countries already see demons as a purely evil force, so it was easy to break any image that we were different by staging a piracy attack."

The King's face gets serious and he stares at me for a few moments, then evaluates the dwarves in the room as well. "Yet only our closest allies actually took up the call of the oldest treaties related to defense from demons. I had thought it was because the other countries considered you too small a threat to mobilize everything. I think we both might be playing to someone else's tune here."

The King looks at me like he expects me to complete his thought. When I don't, he sighs, "Maybe you are too politically naïve after all. Rathland has very little to gain from this attack. An island in a non-valuable location that we can only get an unknown, but likely small number of resources from, and can only access in winter? Why bother wasting this much effort on claiming it? We're primarily a maritime nation, we're no strangers to the difficulty of landing operations, though I'll admit yours had some surprises for us. Likewise, what do you have to gain from piracy when it was fairly obvious before that you were managing your own affairs well enough, you likely wouldn't even be able to sell the stolen goods. We chocked it up to the irrationality of demons based on prior encounters, but having met you directly now I doubt that's the case, though again you seem naïve. No, a third party seems to be pulling the strings."

I think on it for a while. This does make sense, if what he's saying is true. "Then you'd have no trouble with a full retreat, so both of us can preserve our forces to manage this unseen threat?"

"Well, obviously I'm a captive, have been injured, and I have no evidence of the third party, and I'd have a hard time convincing any other country of that notion. The public evidence is quite hard to go against. I'd need some kind of victory to take home. Running a country as a King doesn't mean I don't have to answer to the public or nobility, especially after the losses we've already incurred."

It's my turn to sigh. I can't really disagree with his assessment of his own country, but I can't back down on this either. I'm not going to give them enough to consider it any form of victory. Which means I'd have to send them back with a defeat. "I'm afraid those terms won't work for us, for similar reasons. I hope that whoever we negotiate with from your side is willing to back down."

"Well, unless he's dead, you'll probably be negotiating with my Chancellor, The Baron of Compfur, Darius. Considering he was my political teacher, I doubt his opinion will be much different."

With that, our conversation seemed to be over. The King was taken back to his prisoner accommodations, and I went to sleep. It seems like I'll have to deal with The Baron of Compfur again, I'm not looking forward to that.