Amoria had fallen a long way, and by the time we got to her, she had expired. Nathalie and Erin, the new healer I had bought, had done their best to patch up the wounded, but Lena was still pretty hurt and would need a lot of healing.
When we got back to camp, with the prisoner amongst our numbers, we found the remains of a battlefield, or so it looked to me. There were dead harpies strewn across the clearing, but my men had not come out of it without being hurt either.
As soon as I walked into the camp, I barked orders to Hrothgar, “Take the least diminished platoon, as well as platoon five and six, and go and find the others. Leave the injured here.”
He gave a salute. “As you command, Milord.”
“Milord, I’m running out of mana,” Erin said timidly.
“Take this crystal, and don’t tell anyone about what you discover,” I said and pulled out the mana crystal I had filled whenever I had mana to spare. It was the size of a cherry. Her eyes grew big.
“Milord, it would not be right,” she muttered.
“Use it to save my men,” I said. I watched as she and Nathalie left to do triage, and then turned my attention to Kiril. “You’re in command of maintaining the perimeter. Then take two of the bodyguards and start looting. Have a squad arrange to burn the elven bodies.”
“Yes, Milord,” he said with clear reluctance.
I knew he was not happy about leaving my side so soon after an attack. “It’ll be okay, I’ll keep the two other bodyguards with me. I’ll be talking with the wounded and keep the prisoner with me.”
“As you wish, Milord,” he said. “If we find wounded elves?”
“Tie them up, and bring them here. They’re prisoners, it’s for me to decide their fates, not the men’s, even if the elves did attack us,” I said sternly. He nodded and left to do as I ordered.
I went over to Nathalie, my two bodyguards bringing the prisoner along. She was working on a large man. Almost as big as me. With his blond hair and stature, it would be a good guess that he had a non-human ancestor somewhere.
He had taken a large gash to the chest. From his right collar bone to his diaphragm. The man was clearly in pain, writhing and groaning as Nathalie did her best to close the wound. I put a hand on her shoulder and reached out with my mana. As I started feeding her mana, I said, “Ease his pain.”
“Milord, there are many that need my help,” she said with a strain. She was already getting close to being out of mana.
“And I’ll be here to support you,” I said insistently and sent her a small spike of mana to her pool, instead of feeding it to the healing magic directly.
“Of course, Milord,” she said, and immediately dulled the man’s pain.
A sigh of relief escaped his lips, and he muttered, “Thank you, Milord.”
“You did good today, I’m going to need you moving forward,” I said reassuringly. “We’re going to find the rest of those fuckers and make them pay.”
“Sounds good, Milord,” he said, though not very convincingly.
“It’s okay to be afraid after nearly dying. Just ask this one, I’ve nearly died more than a couple of times. The important part is that you learn from what happened, and make sure that it does not influence you in the future,” I said. He gave me a nod but said nothing further.
We went through the patients as I supplied power to Nathalie, and I spoke with the men. I was considering trying to make a link or bond between me and her, like the one I had with Emma. If it worked the same way, I would have access to healing magic, then I could go from there and get all sorts of other awesome magics.
However, it would have to wait, because the last time I had created a bond, it had drained me completely, and I fell asleep immediately after. Which would not serve anyone at the moment. To combat my own boredness of supplying mana, I chose to stay close to her, because it was more mana efficient, I started to spread my mana out so I could see what her magic was really doing.
It was fascinating how it could make a body whole after having been savaged. That was however not the most interesting thing I found. At first, I thought it was a fluke, and the man had somehow been overlooked, but when everyone else who was supposedly a non-mage turned out to have a mana pool, I knew it was not a fluke.
I compared the mana pools to Nathalie’s and my own, and there was a large difference between them. Something I had not noticed when I last studied Nathalie’s mana pool. The non-magic people all had some kind of barrier sealing in the mana pool, and when I examined Nathalie’s closer, I found traces of there being a barrier there as well. It was just not as complete as the one on the normal folks. When I examined my own mana pool there were almost no traces of the barrier.
It was too early to say anything, but if I had to guess then everyone had a mana pool, and the only difference between those with magic and those without, was whether the barrier was whole or not. The more broken the barrier, the more powerful a mage you were.
It brought up another conclusion. As I had thought about before, it was pretty clear I had the same power as the human priests, yet I could not communicate with other priests. Was that because I did not worship one of the Gods?
The reason why the asshole priest that Emma killed could use silence and fire magic was because he was somehow connected with mancers of that type. Just like I had connected with Emma and gained her power. It would seem to be an overpowered ability compared to the other races’ priests, but with thirteen out of thirty-one Gods being the human Gods, it was clear that they were the Prime Wardens on this planet.
The flash of insight startled me, especially the phrase “Prime Wardens” I used. It did not sound like me, and Emma had never said anything like that either. Where the hell did that come from? Did someone start messing with my brain again? Was that someone an ally or an adversary?
“Milord,” Nathalie interrupted my thoughts. I had been working on autopilot. “Should we start healing the prisoners?”
Looking around, I saw that all our wounded had been tended to, and Hrothgar was back. However, the area where we had placed our dead soldiers looked awfully crowded. I also noticed there were five elves more next to the one I had captured. All of them looked pretty hurt.
“Yes, do that. Just what is necessary to keep them alive, I need to hear a status report,” I said and dumped as much mana into her pool as possible, without wiping myself out.
Heading over to Hrothgar, I called in the seven senior squad leaders as well. I was happy to see that none of them had died, though I recalled two of them had been amongst the wounded.
“Okay gentlemen, give me an update. We start with casualties,” I said. “We’ll start from the bottom and work our way up. Platoon one.”
Platoon one and two were the two platoons that had been in camp, together with platoon seven which was the musket platoon. The senior squad leader cleared his throat, “Platoon one has seven injured, five of them walking, we lost two men.”
I nodded. Could have been worse. Platoon two had not been as lucky according to the report. “Platoon two held off the flankers, but we didn’t have the support of platoon seven. We’ve five injured, four walking, and six dead.”
“Crap,” I grumbled. That was a lot of dead. I turned to the leaders of platoon three and four that had been foraging. “What about you guys?”
“Platoon three took a beating, eleven injured, nine walking and one died before we got to the healer.”
“Platoon four lost two men, and we got a guy who lost his legs. Rest have minor wounds,” the leader of the fourth platoon reported. I had talked with the guy and Nathalie promised me he would be walking again within a couple of days.
I listened to the reports from platoon five and six again, already had them once, so I tuned them out for a moment. I tuned back in when it was platoon seven’s turn to report. “Minor injuries, one seriously injured from an arrow. The muskets kept them at bay, and those that got close were handled by Third Platoon.”
“Okay, so in total, we lost twelve men and one lapomancer. That’s thirteen people too many, but we got ambushed. We had gotten complacent, I had gotten complacent,” I said. “We’ll learn from our mistakes and do better in the future. Now Hrothgar, how many of these fuckers did we kill?”
“Taking into account the ones you dealt with, we managed to kill twenty-two of theirs and have six captives,” Hrothgar reported.
“Okay, so we gave better than we took, I guess that’s something,” I said with a frown. The others agreed. “With the two I killed last night that brings us to thirty. We killed nine when they ambushed us at the lake, and fifteen when they raided the Hold. Meaning we’ve killed or captured fifty-four of them. Meaning that we’re probably only facing ten more raiders unless of course, they got more than a wing placed here.”
“I don’t think so,” the leader of Third Platoon said. “I saw only around a handful get away.”
“Same here,” concurred the leader of Seventh Platoon.
I nodded. “Thanks, see to your men, everyone stays on guard. Finish looting and burn their corpses. Our own we’ll hold a ceremony tonight.”
“Milord, aren’t we going to strike back?” the leader of Second Platoon asked.
“Sure we are, I just need to find out where their camp is, I’ll let you know more when I’m done interrogating the prisoners,” I said and walked away before they could complain further.
Walking up to the prisoners after collecting Ilmadia, who had not been harmed in the attack, I looked them over. Two females and four males. Different scenarios went through my head. I could torture them and then kill them, which would be satisfying but less likely to reveal what I wanted.
I could try and bribe them, but that would probably not help either. The chances of that succeeding were small. Had nothing to blackmail them with, nor did I have anything to bargain with.
Well, almost nothing, I did have one thing, but first I should make that thing look much more appealing than it was. A plan started to form, but first I had to test something, to see if it was even possible.
Standing in front of the prisoners, I commanded in elvish, “Ilmadia, get up here and tell these fine folks what awaits them when I sell them if I decide they’re no use for me. What was going to happen to you, if I did not buy you?”
They looked suitably surprised that I spoke elvish. She began telling them of the horror stories of what could have happened to her, everything from pleasure slave to gladiator, hell one of the options was being used as feed for a Lord’s pets. Meanwhile, I placed my hand on her arm and sent my mana into her body, looking for an answer to how the collar and manacles worked.
Finding her mana pool was no problem, and I was studying it for a while before I saw small thin filigrees of mana connections, all going towards the manacles, except for a thicker one going to the collar. I tried to reach out to one of them, but I was rebuffed harshly. I tried a little more forcefully but was rebuffed even harder. If I had to take a guess, it seemed that the force I was rebuffed was always double of what I tried to probe with.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
However, I could still observe the way it worked and constantly drew power from her mana pool to maintain the enchantment. I was learning a lot of useful stuff for later, but for the moment I had something more important to do.
Opening my eyes I saw that they were all looking at me. I gave them a grin, “Now which one of you bastards wants to kill me?”
“We all do,” one of the males spat, actually spat, at me. Lucky for him, he did not hit me. Otherwise, the example I was going to make of him was not what I had planned, but how long it takes for someone to die after having their tongue cut out.
“Yeah,” they all agreed.
“Good, then you get the chance,” I said, pointing to the man who spat after me. Turning to two of the guards, I said, “Grab that one, tie him down while I’m going to get something.”
I went to get my saddlebags, where I still had the collar and manacle that the dead priest had tried to put on me. With a tendril of mana I looked it over, and as far as I could tell it was the same as the one Ilmadia was wearing.
What I was planning was stupid and certainly a risk, but I needed to know, and I thought it was the only way I would get some answers that might be useful.
When I got back to the prisoners, the chosen one was tied down, meaning it would be easy for me to put the collar and manacles on him. When I observed him with what I was starting to think off as my manasight, though I was using it with my eyes closed, I could see that there were none of the connections that there were in Ilmadia’s accessories. His mana pool showed that he was a non-magic user.
“Ilmadia, get over here and grab my hand, please,” I said and held out one of my hands, while still maintaining a connection with the prisoner. When I felt her grab my hand, I stretched my sight into her body as well. It was a little difficult concentrating on two people before. The times I had done it with Nathalie had been easier, because I had piggybacked on her magic.
However, after a minute or two I got the hang of it, being able to keep an eye on both, even bringing them up beside each other so it was easy to compare. With care, I reached out to the dormant collar, and tried to pull out a connection from there to his mana pool.
It was extremely easy, as soon as I came in contact with the dormant collar it started to come alive, almost, with mana. The mana from the collar was easy to bring to the barrier on the man’s mana pool, but when it got there it stopped. I had to spend another minute to go over what was wrong when I realized it was not bound to any bindstone within range. After rectifying that mistake, by copying from Ilmadia’s link, I tried again and as soon as the collars mana touched the barrier, it brute-forced its way through, making the elf scream in pain.
It was the same for the manacles, though this time he did not seem to receive any pain. However, I wanted to be sure, so I spent maybe ten minutes comparing the two side by side, going over every little detail.
When I was certain that it was the exact same way as Ilmadia’s restraints, I stood back up. The men were staring at me, I even caught some whispers from further away between soldiers. “...see that?”
“...what?”
“...collared the...like a priest…”
“...impossible…detest priests…”
Looking at the two men who had tied down the prisoner I said, “Release his bindings. Do not interfere no matter what he tries to do to me.”
“Milord,” they said, looking at each other, before finally doing what I had asked of them.
I looked at the elf as he slowly got to his feet. In elvish, I said, “You can attack me any way you want. I’m going to stand here, I’m not going to defend myself. I won’t punish you. If you manage to kill me, the five others are free to go.”
“This is some kind of trap,” he said with squinted eyes.
“No trap, take one of my daggers,” I said and threw the dagger at his feet where it buried itself in the ground. Then to my soldiers, I said, “If he kills me, let the five uncollared once leave without a scratch.”
“Yeah, this is a trap,” he grumbled when one of the other prisoners translated what I had said.
“Okay, let me incentivize you,” I said and pulled back my left sleeve, revealing the control bracer. “Do you know what this is?”
“Ye—argh!” he started an answer that turned into a yelp of pain when I used the mildest pain setting on him.
“So for every ten seconds you don’t attack me, I’ll up the pain until you eventually get killed,” I informed him. “Then it’ll be one of those people's turn. So go ahead, attack me.”
With a roar, he picked up the dagger and tried to swing at me, but something held him back, some kind of invisible force. The magic of the manacles, no doubt. He looked confused, as did his compatriots.
“Kill him already,” the elf I had caught hissed from her perch at the back of the group.
“I can’t, he’s using magic to hold me!” the elf with the dagger tried in several ways to attack me, one after another, but it did not work.
“Why don’t you try and throw it at one of my guards?” I asked. He did that but found he could not. I walked over to him and held my hand out. “Give me the dagger thank you.”
He did so with great reluctance. I ordered him to sit down with the rest, which he did with a lot of pouting and frowning. To the group of prisoners, I said, “These collars and manacles will be your new best friends, no matter which of the options you take. They will prevent you from harming any humans. You heard what Ilmadia told you about what awaits for elven prisoners normally. Now she’ll tell you about how you’ll be treated as my serfs. If you provide truthful answers to my question, I’ll not sell you, despite the fact I could really use the coins.”
I did not listen to what Ilmadia was telling them, because my mind was reeling with what I had just done. Not only did the collar somehow pierce the barrier to access a mana pool of a non-magic person, but it was also drawing mana from it. It was not impossible for me to use manasight with my eyes open or at a distance, it was just increasingly hard.
As he had struggled to attack me, I had seen how his mana pool was getting emptied and was starting to refill. I knew from experience what would happen when your mana pool goes empty. You pass out. That information was huge, it gave me so many possible ideas for how it could be exploited. I would need to do a lot of experimenting when I got back to the hold.
However, first I had a raider problem to deal with. I turned to the elves in front of me. “I can either sell you, or you can tell me where the rest of your people are holed up. If you tell me, I will try to negotiate a surrender, and they’ll become serfs just like you.
“You’ll be allowed to write a message telling your spouses that you’re alive. I’ll even allow you to receive mail from your loved ones. All messages will be read, both inbound and outgoing. This is the best I can offer you. The other offer is that I sell you to let the pieces of shit in the Thirteen Kingdoms do what they want with you.”
“Why the fuck should we betray our people to you?” the one I had caught growled.
“You’re giving them a chance to live. If I have to find them myself, I will kill them all. The longer it takes, the more brutal their deaths will be,” I replied with an emotionless face. Sometimes a threat delivered totally emotionless was even more efficient than one done in anger.
That made me think back on my time here on Camcesa. Looking over my past actions it seemed like I had forgotten that fact. I had been so angry that I had not given myself time to think. ‘Why had I been so angry?’
Sure I had a temper, and could probably keep an anger management counsellor busy year round, but I had never been so out of control angry before. ‘And why am I first realizing it now?’
“I’ll tell you,” one of the males said.
“Fucking traitor!” some of the others screamed.
“My spouse managed to get away with the rest of the survivors, you know Axina won’t let them leave before they killed the summoned one,” he said with bowed head. “I don’t want my spouse to die, so I’ll tell you.”
“Good, let us go and have a chat,” I said and brought the man over to my campfire.
I called Mina over and asked her to read him. After he had acceded, and I slipped into observing Mina’s magic with manasight, I started my interrogation.
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It was the middle of the night, and I was crouching closer to the camp the elves were using. I had only brought Seventh Platoon, Linus and my bodyguards with me. Fifth and Sixth Platoon had the healers with them and were almost a kilometre away and would come rushing in when they heard the first shots. The more people I brought with me, the greater the chance of us getting exposed was.
It turned out that the camp was not in the mountain, but in the pass itself, because there were more than winged elves in the raid. It had just been them raiding only. There were also five lampads, the nomadic elves. They were according to Valyun hardcore killers, obsessed with killing humans, and they had a tradition of trophy hunting.
The one in charge, someone called Axina, was obsessed with being the first one to mount the head of one of the summoned humans on the pole in front of her tent. Since I was the closest summoned human, I became her target. She did not need to kill me herself for it to count, just that someone under her command did.
The lampads all knew magic of some kind. Three of them were ignimancers, one was a healer and Axina herself was a priestess of the Fire Lord. Whatever that meant, but it meant they were dangerous.
On the way in, I crept first armed with a bow, and my eyes changed to that of a cat. It was the reason why I spotted the winged elf in a tree close to the camp. With the use of magic and careful aiming, I managed to pierce the guard’s heart. Just hoped it was not Valyun’s bondmate. Slowly we inched closer to the camp, and before dawn, we were in position.
As dawn came around and the elves started waking up, I tagged each of the five lampads and connected them to the musket ball of each of my bodyguards. Since it was clear who was the leader, mine and Kiril’s ball were linked to Axina. All of them linked for debilitating injuries, but not outright kills.
It was a strain to keep that many links active, but I still had to offer them to lay down weapons. At least the winged elves. I was leary about taking magic-users as prisoners though since I did not have any more collars and manacles. I had sent Second Platoon back to the Hold on the horses, with orders to be quick and get Ethan out here with lots of collars and manacles.
When I gauged that we had all the remaining elves out and about in the camp, and there were some discussions going on, some really heated ones, I gave the signal for the men to ready themselves.
In elvish, I shouted, “We have you surrounded. Give up now, and you’ll live to see another day. The one called Valyun would like for his spouse to live.”
The elves froze for a second, then the wingless elves conjured their magic. That was the sign for me and my bodyguards to fire. The shots hammered into their stomachs almost simultaneously, and I wondered if any of them would live.
I shouted again, “The next time, we target to kill, surrender. Lay down on your stomachs.”
The groaning of the injured elves seemed to be the selling point, and they all lay down. I took one of the squads as well as my bodyguards and approached. We started by securing the lampads, which included binding their wounds, hogtying them, and blindfolding and gagging them. The rest of the elves got their hands and wings tied. We had experimented on Valyun how to best bind a winged elf. Something he had been unhappy and reluctant to help with.
“Who’s Valyun’s spouse. Please tell me it wasn’t the guard,” I said when we were done with our task of securing the camp. In the meantime, the other platoons had arrived, and the healers went to work. Unfortunately, Axina and one of the others died from their wounds before Nathalie could get to them.
“I am,” a tiny voice said filled with fear.
“Good, for his cooperation, I promised him to give you a choice,” I said as I stepped up to her. “You can become a serf and spend the rest of your life with him. You can even have kids. I’ll not order you to sleep with other people, not even myself. I will not sell you, and your kids will be afforded the same benefits. Or I can let you fly away. If I see you on the frontlines again, Valyun dies.”
She needed surprisingly little time to give me an answer. It was not a happy tone she replied in, “I chose to spend the rest of my life with Valyun.”
“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” I said. “Truly, I am. I’m here against my will too, though I can try to make life as comfortable for you as possible.”
“If you knew anything of elves, you would know that it was the only choice I had,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“Valyun’s crimes are my crimes. He betrayed his people, so I betrayed our people. As did his parents and kids,” she explained, when I asked what she meant.
“That’s rather harsh,” I commented, and then went around making sure that everyone knew what they could expect of the next few days. The winged elves walked back to our camp, while the hogtied lampads were carried, uncomfortably, by two men each. They got a lot of small injuries from being dropped frequently.
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It was almost two days later that Ethan came riding into camp, the horses looked worn out from being ridden so much and hard. I greeted him with a, “Did you bring what I asked?”
“Yes, I did, but I’m not yours to command you know. If not for the fact that we were at war, I would not even have bothered, but you got new prisoners of war, I should commend you for that,” he grumbled.
“I’m concerned though, one of the captured people is a priest,” I lied. “You’ve long-distance communication, so it stands to reason they do as well.”
“Well, look who’s thinking for once,” Ethan commented sarcastically. “Don’t worry, the manacles block the ability to communicate with the—with other priests. Just like they block any use of magic without permission.”
“Splendid, he’s right over here,” I said and led him over to a separate area. The tents would block anyone else from seeing the area. Only my bodyguards and the three lampads were there.
“So which one is it? We should start with her,” he commented.
“That one there,” I pointed to one of them, the healer I thought it was. As Ethan bent over the prone and still hogtied man, I pulled the wooden club I had made while we were waiting for them to arrive.
“He’s not a priest,” he commented and turned around with a frown, just to see the club as it connected with his temple. I was on him as he fell to the ground, and gave him another two hard knocks just to be sure.
“Milord!” Kiril gasped, none of my bodyguards knew about this part of the plan.
“Don’t worry, I won’t kill him. I just need to protect myself. Hand me that collar and manacle,” I said and pointed to the accessories Ethan had dropped. To one of my other bodyguards, I ordered, “Alan, go get Nathalie. Think this one will have a bit of a headache.”
I really, really hoped that Ethan had told the truth, and that the orc’s prisoners had been so broken he had also told the truth: That there was no way of breaking the collars and manacles. Otherwise, what I had just done was a death sentence. If it got out in some way, it definitely would be.