Rounding up the Roiling Reavers proved to be a far easier task than Jadis had anticipated. Roughly half of the exhausted criminals put up no resistance at all, their demeanor showing resignation to their fate. Many looked too tired or too injured to even attempt to flee or fight and just sat down on the ground, weapons discarded, and waited for the soldiers to bind their hands.
The smaller half of the captured smugglers were less stoic. Some cursed, some shouted, a couple even tried to make a break for it. Those two didn’t get far. Jadis didn’t even have to chase after them. The second they tried to run, a large arrow shot out from the trees above and pierced one man’s foot, pinning him to the ground. Seeing him screaming in pain, the other runner rethought their plan and quickly gave up.
Stavros was one of the stoic ones. He didn’t curse or wail, nor did he resist when Willa took hold of him and efficiently divested him of all of his weapons, pouches, and his helmet. Jadis was interested to see the man’s face for the first time. She was surprised to find that he didn’t look anywhere near as villainous as she had expected.
The leader of the Roiling Reavers was, in Jadis’ opinion, a fairly handsome man. Almond-shaped eyes, a prominent nose, and a thick brow, he looked somewhat brutish, yet nothing about his face was crude or bulbous like Jockel nor sickly and crooked like Legs had been. Stavros looked like the kind of man who probably turned a few heads in bars, especially with how piercingly intense his eyes were. Considering the rest of the company he kept, Jadis had anticipated the half-orc to be covered in scars or inked with evil tattoos. At the very least he should have had a tasteless gold tooth that glinted greedily when he spoke. But no, there was none of that. Just a man with a decently good-looking face who apparently had no compunctions against killing innocent people for money.
In other words, a mercenary.
Putting her thoughts on Stavros’ appearance aside, Jadis made sure to check on all of her companions to make sure all were well and uninjured. To her great delight, wounds had been minimal. Eir had little to do, at least so far as Fortune’s Favored and the soldiers went. Despite the large number of demons, they had been handled relatively easily compared to other recent fights. The results of all their levels and attribute growth were definitely showing, since it seemed even literal mobs of demons were no longer the threat that they used to be. Despite the small size of their company, Jadis judged that her companions were already on the same level as elite mercenary groups, meaning that fielding even a few of them could drastically alter the course of a battle.
“Hey, hey!” A man’s voice caught Jadis’ attention. “I’m still hurting here! Finish up the damn healing you red cunt!”
Dys whirled on the voice immediately to see Jockel, tied up and lying flat on his stomach, yelling at a blank-faced Eir. Even before she moved towards them, the butt of a spear smacked hard against the side of the fat man’s bald head.
“Quiet, you,” Lutz ordered the cursing smuggler. “Be grateful she gave you any healing at all. It’s more than scum like you deserves.”
“My leg’s still half-broken,” Jockel growled up at the soldier. “Do you have any idea how much broken bones hurt? I haven’t been sleeping well for days!”
“I could fix that problem for you,” Dys said quietly, her tone conversational as her steel boot came down a few inches away from the man’s face. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough control of my strength that a good kick will just knock you out instead of killing you. Want to test it?”
“…I’m good,” Jockel replied meekly, the color draining from his round face. “Don’t need sleep that much.”
Dys crouched, the giant axe in her hand coming down with her, its sharp head hovering near Jockel’s neck. She pulled a rag from one of her belt pouches and wiped a small amount of demon blood from the sharp spike on the reverse side of the head.
“Alright then, you know your needs best,” Dys said amiably. “Now, about you calling my girl there a cunt.”
“A thousand apologies,” Jockel quickly rushed out a heartbeat later. “A slip of the tongue, really. Stressful day, you see.”
Dys accepted the apology with a flat hum of acknowledgement, only standing back up after she was sure that the bastard was two seconds away from shitting his pants. As angry as she was with Jockel, she didn’t actually want him to crap himself. That would have just made him stink worse.
After that, Dys hovered nearby, making sure none of the other captured Reavers gave Eir any trouble, verbally or otherwise. Most of them kept their mouths shut and their eyes downcast, though there were two other notable exceptions. Despite her wounds as well as being secured with ropes and steel manacles, the blood bitch still snarled and thrashed like a bobcat caught in a snare. For Eir’s safety, Dys didn’t let her touch the fuming psycho and instead had the priestess pump only a small amount of healing into the woman at a distance, just enough to make sure she wasn’t going to die from some internal injury.
The only other smuggler to speak up was the insane trap maker. The man had been grievously injured, far worse than anyone else, even the blood bitch. In all honesty, Jadis wasn’t entirely sure how the man had survived. When Eir had checked him, she’d said he had been down to single digits, only a hair away from whatever afterlife awaited him. The priestess’ powerful healing was still able to save him, though, and once the worst of his wounds stopped bleeding and he looked less like one giant purple bruise and more like an actual person, his weird orange eyes fluttered open and he glanced around in a daze. His gaze locked with Jockel laying on the ground nearby, and he grinned widely at the fat man.
“Did we win?”
“No, we didn’t win, you motherless goat fucker!” Jockel hissed. “What about us lying on the ground while chained up makes you think we won!?”
“We’re alive,” the blond half-elf shrugged, a smile still on his face. “And my trap went off beautifully. That’s a win in my book.”
“Alive, sure,” Jockel said sarcastically. “Healthy as freshly molted smatterlings. That is, up until we’re dragged back to the capital and fucking hanged.”
Jadis supposed Jockel was right, a hangman’s noose seemed likely to be their fate. Not that she was super familiar with Imperial law but considering Stavros and his crew had been stealing a valuable resource during wartime and had, far more importantly, killed several soldiers in the process, the death penalty was the probable outcome of any trial. Or was it? Would they all be sentenced to death, or would there be some form of clemency given for those who had turned themselves over willingly, like Sorcha? There was also the fact that they could serve as decent witnesses to the crimes committed by the renegade soldiers in the tunnels. Wouldn’t their lawyer be able to negotiate a deal for a lesser sentence in exchange for providing key testimony against those soldiers?
Did the Empire even have lawyers?
Jadis shook off the thought of elves in business suits gaining levels in their barrister class via verbally dueling with each other over legal minutia. Both the status of attorneys on Oros and the potential future of the captured smugglers were questions best left for another time. Before anything else, she needed to reconvene with her allies and figure out next steps. Also, they needed to put some distance between themselves and the massive amount of demon corpses they’d just made before more demons were attracted by the smell.
Fortunately, they had already worked out a solid plan for what to do after they had ambushed the ambush. As it turned out, they had ambushed the ambushers while they were being ambushed by another party of ambushers, but the after-action plan still remained the same. Gathering their prisoners and tying them in a line to the back of the wagon, the expedition turned back the way they had come. There was more than enough time left in the day to return to the camp that they had made the day previous, which was an already scouted and more secure area than anywhere they might head further west down the road. As much as Jadis wanted to keep pushing forward, she had yielded to the concerns of her companions. Plowing ahead into an unknown situation with what was likely a large gathering of demons was not a good idea when they had a dozen captured criminals to tow around. In Aila’s words, that was a recipe for disaster, which Jadis had to agree with, even more so considering the ever-increasing demonic activity in the forest.
Before they could get moving back to the camp, there was one small snag they had to overcome.
“You!” screeched the blood bitch. “You rotten piece of discarded afterbirth! You fucking betrayed us! I’m going to rip your spleen out through your eye!”
Eike, as Jadis had learned was the woman’s name, was not happy to see Sorcha. Since the psycho had to be tied up far more heavily than the rest to prevent her from attacking anyone, she’d been tossed into the back of the soldier’s wagon, where Jonas and Sorcha were. That had been a mistake. Jadis and a couple of the others had had to intervene to stop the crazed madwoman from crawling across the wagon floor and chewing on the frightened, panicking goblin. They managed to shut up her incessant howling with a gag, but even then, she was still a thrashing menace.
To be on the safe side, Jadis took Sorcha out of the soldier’s wagon and put her in the back of the Behemoth where Sabina and Eir were riding. She’d proven to be both a well-behaved and honest prisoner, so Jadis felt she deserved at least that much consideration.
It took a few hours to get back to the clearing, especially going slow enough for the captured Reavers to trot behind, so the sun was low in the sky by the time they were able to once again set up their encampment. The process was made extra challenging since a constant watch had to be put over the prisoners and extra care had to be given to their treatment. Considering how strong Stavros, Eike, and Jockel were, Jadis made sure to dedicate at least one of her bodies to being near them at all times, at least until a routine had been established and all the prisoners had been secured as best they could be.
It was interesting to see Willa at work with the prisoners. To Jadis’ surprise, she treated them with a decent level of respect and dignity, at least so long as they respected her. No posturing or threats, she just told them what to do and expected them to do it. If they resisted, she used force, but not with any undue violence. It seemed there was a code at work, a policy or rule concerning how prisoners were supposed to be treated.
Willa also took the time to question each prisoner, getting their statements and recording them all down in a logbook. She even interviewed Eike, though that conversation was brief. She even had her soldiers catalogue and bundle each individual’s possessions, tucking them away as confiscated property, but with a tag on the bundle so that it could be returned to the owner at a later date if necessary. Or to next of kin, Jadis supposed.
It was just as Willa finished questioning Stavros that Jay approached the manacled man with a question of her own.
“Do you know what’s in the valley at the base of the mountain with a split peak?”
Stavros looked up at Jay, his face expressionless. For a long minute, he made no move to answer. Jay waited patiently, content to give him as cold a stare back as he was giving her. Or maybe he was just staring at her because she’d taken her helmet off? She hadn’t ever shown her face to him before, so she supposed he was getting his first good look at the woman who had ruined all his big plans.
“There’s nothing there,” he eventually replied. “The maps show no mines.”
“But did you go in there?” Jay pressed. “Into the valley and see what was there for yourself?”
“No,” Stavros shook his head. “We did not. There was no reason to.”
“I don’t think he’s lying,” Aila called out from a few paces away. “There’s nothing there according to his own maps. It wouldn’t make sense for his ilk to waste time in a location with no potential for profit.”
Aila was holding up said map, poring over the smuggler’s notes. While most of them had been securing and transporting the prisoners, Kerr and a couple of the soldiers had backtracked their way to the Reavers’ camp and pillaged it of all useful materials. They hadn’t been able to take all the tents and other supplies, but things like Stavros’ rolled-up maps had definitely been taken back to be analyzed.
“Why?”
Jay turned, looking down at the stoic man. She raised one eyebrow at his blank face.
“Why what?”
“Why are you interested in that valley?” Stavros asked plainly. “It’s just trees and stone.”
“And also a few waterfalls, maybe,” Jay murmured. “Too bad you never went in there. I’d really like to know if there’s a place there where two streams meet before spilling over into five waterfalls.”
“And what would you do for me if I could confirm that such a place does exist in that valley?”
Jay stared at the man. Was he being serious, or was he just baiting her? It was impossible to tell. Stavros’ face was like a solid wall of stone. Inscrutable and impossible to see what lay beyond.
“Probably not much,” Jay finally said after a long moment of consideration. “It’s not like I can just take your word for it, one way or the other. Besides, I’ll be taking a brief look tomorrow, anyway.”
“You mean to take us further west?” the dark man said, the barest hint of inflection in his tone. “I would think you would be dragging us back to Far Felsen with as much haste as you can muster.”
“Not just yet,” Jay denied with a shake of her head. “We’ll head back soon enough. Also, I said that I’ll be taking a brief look. That doesn't mean I’m taking any of you with me.”
“You three still mean to scout west tomorrow then?” Willa asked, breaking off from questioning the blond trap maker.
“Absolutely,” Jay nodded. “But don’t worry, we won’t be gone long. Just a quick look and we’ll return before the sun sets. We’ll move much faster alone. Oh, and Stavros?”
Jay knelt down next to the half-orc. She didn’t try to threaten or scare him, not the way she had done to Jockel for insulting Eir. She simply looked the man in the eye and stated a few truths, making sure there was no confusion or misunderstandings between them.
“I’m not worried about any of you while I’m gone, because as I’m sure you’ve seen, any one of my girls here could shred you to pieces before you’ve gotten even one hand free from those manacles. However, if you or any one of your crew do anything to cause harm to any of my friends or allies, remember that you will then have three Nephilim hunting you down to the ends of the world. Are we clear?”
“As glass,” Stavros intoned.
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