“Honestly, if you have to die, do so in your sleep. At least you won’t feel a thing or suffer while it happens. I wish that I could be blessed with such a death myself.” - Saying attributed to Xaliburnus the Conqueror, First Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.

Other than the unexpected incident which Aideen solved before it could jeopardize the mission, things went as planned that night.

One after another, the hardened killers went into the tents set up by the raiders and quietly slit the throat of the occupants, ending their lives before they even realized what happened to them. A few – including Aideen stood guard while others went about the grisly work, but for the most part it went uneventfully. Most of the raiders died in their sleep without ever realizing that anything was wrong.

Near the end, things did get a bit more complicated, but it was not anyone’s fault. A few of the raiders just happened to wake up in the middle of the night and went out of their tent to answer nature’s call at the same time. They were too far for anyone to silence quickly enough and thus managed to yell out in alarm before they were killed.

By that point there were only thirty or so people left out of the hundred plus raiders, though, and the hardened killers and assassins definitely saw little challenge in dealing with two people each, much less when most of their opponents were still trying to blink the sleep out of their eyes. Aideen helped out as well, and within minutes the commotion died down.

All the raiders were dead, while the assassins only had a few small injuries on them, at worst. It was something Aideen handily took care for them in passing as they walked out of the raider camp. The corpses of the dead raiders were left out in the open, and before too long, the smell of blood had lured all sorts of wild animals to the area.

The vultures and jackals would feast like kings that morning.

As for the ones responsible for the massacre, they quickly left the raider camp after their grisly work was done. Since raider groups like these were the more loyal of the older brother’s supporters, being the ones eager to plunder and pillage, removing them would slowly erode his foundations. Once the people he managed to lure by such promises were dead or too intimidated to support his bid for the throne, his power base would crumble all on its own.

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Aideen had to admit that it was a smart way to go about things while minimizing casualties from the civil war. The young Emir probably had enough troops loyal to him to defeat his older brother in a direct clash, but such a battle would likely devastate the small nation’s populace of healthy young people, which would have repercussions for generations to come.

Instead, the young Emir chose to pardon some unsavory elements who supported him and made use of their skills to erode his brother’s foundations. Aideen was uncertain whether the young Emir considered the raiders they just killed deserving of death for being so willing to plunder and pillage their own fellow countrymen, or were just necessary casualties to win the war.

All considered, however, when Aideen thought about how experienced and powerful the killers with her were, people who had all been part of the criminal underworld of the Emirate prior to the civil war, she felt that the previous Emir must have been rather derelict in his rule as well. Most rulers wouldn’t have allowed such a strong criminal underworld to grow under their noses.

Which made the young Emir’s choice of cooperating with them using pardons and rewards a clever masterstroke in hindsight. In one fell swoop he not only gained a strong supporter against his older brother’s forces, but also potentially removed the criminal elements that had plagued his country, even if not in a manner than many would like.

She had no doubt that more than a few people would complain about the criminals being offered pardons and a chance at legitimacy, regardless of their contributions, but that was not her problem to think about. What happened in the future after the civil war ended would be in the hands of the young Emir and Zayid, who she had no doubt possessed contingencies for most situations.

At least, if his predecessors prepared him properly for his role – and considering how they ruled the criminal underworld of the Emirate for generations already, that was likely something they did one way or another – that was what she would have expected out of him. The Lichdom always emphasized the importance of competence to their agents, after all.

Together with the group of killers and assassins, Aideen took part in tracking down and slaughtering a second group of raiders. The second time around, they caught the raiders red-handed, just as they were beginning to raid a village near the border between the territories of the contending brothers. There were only forty or so raiders and they were occupied by the village’s defenders at the time, so the group made a quick decision to interfere right then and there, even if it was a riskier approach than what they usually preferred.

Fortunately the some sharp-eyed villagers noticed their sneaking towards the back of the raider lines and directed the others to intensify their resistance, as they had deduced that anyone sneaking towards their enemy’s back would at the very least, be an enemy of the enemy. Thanks to that, the group reached the back of the raider lines unnoticed and brought down a quarter of the raiders in one synchronized assault.

From there it was only a matter of working together with the emboldened villagers to take care of the rest of the raiders. Some of the raiders tried to flee when they noticed that the fight was turning against them, but the killers proved to be good riders themselves as they mounted some abandoned horses and ran down the escapees mercilessly.