Page 58 of Traitor Son

But maybe now, even if she couldn’t choose her own path, she at least could go down it her own way.

* * *

To call what happened in the hills west of Tresingale a battle would have been a wild exaggeration.

It was a slaughter. Brisk and ruthless, a barrage of arrows followed by the thunder of heavy horse, with the dreadnaught Jinmin in the front. People called Remin a giant, but Jinmin was nearly as tall, and so massive it was hard to find a horse that could carry him. The hundred bandits had rough shields and threw them up after the first volley of arrows, but they might as well have been waving daisies at Jinmin.

Remin, seated on his black warhorse, watched from a nearby hilltop.

His participation wasn’t necessary, and there was always a small chance there could be a secondary force nearby, or a weapon hidden among the rapidly decreasing number of surviving bandits. Years of warfare had taught him to always hold a force in reserve. But in this case, it wasn’t necessary. In less than fifteen minutes, the remaining twenty or so bandits had thrown down their arms and knelt in the bloody grass.

Then he rode down.

“Who is your leader?” he asked curtly. Almost every man before him had the pale skin and ice-blond hair of Valleth.

The bandits exchanged glances. It was possible their leader was already dead, but curiously, there was one man that no one was looking at.

“Who supplied you?” he asked in his adequate Vallethi, watching them carefully. Again, they looked at each other, but the man fifth or sixth from the left looked at no one, and no one looked at him. “Does that mean your leader’s dead?” Remin asked conversationally, leaning forward over his saddle. “Or ran away? I guess if you weren’t cowards, you wouldn’t have deserted in the first place.”

Now the man on the left was looking. Glaring. Remin sat up, nodding at Juste.

“That one,” he said, pointing. He wasn’t always right about this kind of thing, but even if that fellow wasn’t the leader, the others wouldwonder why he had been chosen. The rest of his knights waded in to split up the other survivors, binding their hands and leading them off in small groups, too far away to see or hear each other.

Remin had learned the principles of interrogation when he was a squire. It was filthy work that usually left him feeling drained and discouraged, no matter what the outcome. But Juste was the best of his men at the task, and very rarely had to resort to actual torture. It was he that had struck upon the idea of separating enemy units and pitting them against each other. It left them wondering what was happening in the other groups. Were they being tortured? Were they talking? Juste made the same offer to all of them, out loud, for everyone to hear: talk, and you’ll live. Or rather, talkfirst,and you’ll live.

Sometimes it was even true.

A disciplined unit could withstand the technique. Remin did not believe he was looking at a disciplined unit.

“Huber,” he said, waving over the master of his scouts. “Send some men to Bram. He should be in Ferrede. Let him know we’ve wiped out the bandits and to expect us there in five days. Send the rest of your men to make sure we haven’t missed anyone.”

The Iron Hills were four days from Tresingale, and the question he most wanted to ask the bandits was what they thought they would accomplish by going there. It was true that if Remin had been away when they arrived, or if he had been incompetent enough not to send scouts out into the surrounding country, they might have succeeded in surprising and overpowering his forces. Temporarily. They had no hope of holding the town.

“We weren’t going to hurt anyone,” said the bandit named Drazhake, in a Vallethi accent so thick that Remin had to look to Juste to interpret. “We were just planning to take some things we need. We’re in a bad way and we can’t go back to Valleth.”

That was a third option: they could have been planning to raid, then retreat. But it was a lie to say no one would have been hurt. Remin’s men would have fought to the death to defend what they had worked so hard to build.

“The war ended a year ago,” said Juste. “You could have accepted the amnesty.”

“No, we couldn’t.”

Loyal enough to Valleth to refuse an amnesty, but not quite loyal enough to finish their service. Remin might have been sympathetic; most of Valleth’s army was composed of conscripts by the end of the war, and it was hard to blame a man for not giving it his all when he was a slave in all but name. And all a deserter would find in Valleth now was an execution. But Remin had offered them a way out. They could have settled peacefully in the valley, or gone anywhere else in the world, and had chosen to stay and be his enemy.

“Who was supplying you?” Juste asked. “We know you didn’t survive the winter on your own. It will go hard with you if you lie to us.”

“Do we look well-supplied?” Drazhake spat. He had a point. The bandits were long-haired and unshaven, with ragged, patched clothing. But they weren’t starving.

“Jinmin.” Juste turned to the behemoth knight standing a few yards away, arms crossed and silently observing. “How many did we capture?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two.” Juste crouched in front of Drazhake, somber as a confessor. He even looked sympathetic. “I’m going to go and ask the other twenty-one men this question, and promise to spare anyone that tells me the truth. Do you think all twenty-one are going to give me the same answer? The stars have blessed you with the opportunity to answer first.”

He let that sit there. The sun beat down on the bare hills, brown rock and iron deposits. Interrogators were gamblers at heart, playing the odds, watching for tells.

“Very well.” Juste stood up. “I’ll go and speak to your friends. Truth is important.”

“You’re going to kill us anyway,” Drazhake said angrily. “Why should I tell you anything?

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