Leon and his retinue pursued the silver-eyed bandit with ferocity, cutting down many bandits that weren’t able to flee fast enough. All of Leon’s retainers, and even Anzu, spilled their fair share of blood as they cleaved through the raided village. By the time they emerged on the other side, the silver-eyed bandit still fleeing with all haste, at least half of the bandit force had fallen to their magic and steel.

Throughout this all, Leon stayed at least partially focused on the battle happening around the convoy. He was confident in the ability of Heaven’s Eye to defend itself, and even more confident in the likes of Emilie, Maia, Damien Makedon, and the few other seventh-tiers that were traveling in Damien’s entourage. So far, it seemed his confidence was paying off, for Emilie had emerged from her carriage and joined her guards in protecting the caravan, sending deadly rays of light into the bandit ranks that rent and tore through them with ease, adding her substantial power to the similar rays of light from Makedon’s hovering star that continued mowing the bandits down with terrible power. Maia, meanwhile, kept her water dragon surging through the enemy lines, crushing dozens with the weight of all of that water alone, while sweeping many more up into the dragon’s body to be torn apart in various terrible fashions within the water.

At the slightest sign that the bandits were gaining headway, Leon intended to turn back around and return to the convoy, but since that seemed to hardly be necessary, he kept up the pressure on the silver-eyed bandit, pursuing him all the way out of the village’s fields and into the hills.

“How far are we going to follow?” Anshu called out as they left the village.

“Capture their leader!” Leon shouted back, and they redoubled their efforts in pursuing their quarry. For all his power, Leon was having a bit of trouble, for the bandits seemed willing to die in droves for their leader, showing the kind of loyalty or suicidal bravery that Leon found decidedly not bandit-like—perhaps reflecting their past as soldiers of the Cortuban Alliance. Leon found himself unable to just leave any of them be and felt almost obligated to cut them down as they charged his retinue—they were bandits, after all.

As they pressed into the hills and still found bandits charging at them in the dozens to cover their leader’s retreat, Leon found a growing part of himself wanting to meet the man. Fortunately, the silver-eyed bandit seemed to be running low on reserves, and soon enough, only a few bandits remained between him and Leon. Those few remaining were summarily cut down as Anshu, Anzu, and Valeria charged forward, covered by Alix, Gaius, Marcus, and Alcander with their bows. The few remaining bandits had scattered into the hills.

It was only then that the silver-eyed bandit finally stopped running, the only men left at his command being just three to his right and three more to his left. He stood with his back to a short stubby tree, the hills around them largely bare of any vegetation larger than knee-high bushes and dry yellow grass.

“Keep going!” he shouted to his men. “I’ll hold them here!”

His silver eyes didn’t once leave Leon, remaining fixed upon him as he strode through the small valley, his own retinue at his side.

“Or you could all surrender!” Marcus called out. “Spare us all the trouble of chasing you down!”

“You’ve shown no quarter so far, slaughtering all of my people like they were wheat before a scythe!” the silver-eyed bandit retorted.

“Can you blame us?!” Marcus shot back, but Leon silenced him with a raised hand.

With a quick wisp of intent, Leon pulled his sword back into his soul realm and strode forward, telling the others to stay behind. His power was such that he didn’t believe that he was in any appreciable danger, but still, he kept his magic senses projected and lightning surging through his body. If anything did happen, then he’d be ready for it.

But he also wanted to speak with the man who’d gotten hundreds of bandits to throw themselves upon Leon’s retinue to buy him time to escape.

Sensing Leon’s intention, the silver-eyed bandit quietly lowered his blade and took a few hesitant steps forward before some of his last remaining subordinates tried to stop him. But brushing them aside, he continued to approach Leon, with the two meeting in the middle of their respective groups.

Leon started first with an introduction. “I am Leon Raime,” he said. “What might I call you?”

“I am called Santiago de Lagos,” the silver-eyed bandit replied, his tone more questioning and confused than proud.

“Santiago de Lagos,” Leon said, a smile of appreciation on his face. “Are you the man in charge of all the bandits in these parts? Or is that someone who’s with the rest of the brigands getting slaughtered back at my convoy?”

Santiago’s handsome features contorted into a fierce scowl, but then softened a moment later into an almost self-deprecating grin. “Technically speaking, I’m in charge,” he claimed, his accent light and lilting. He spoke his r’s with a prominent trill, and his l’s were given a light emphasis that Leon found fairly pleasant.

“Only ‘technically’?” Leon inquired, one of his eyebrows rising slightly.

“Only ‘technically’,” Santiago affirmed. “I was their commander when we were soldiers. I led a force of ten thousand. Those who accompanied me to the village were those whose loyalties I had no cause to doubt.”

“Sounds like there’s quite the story there,” Leon noted. “Would you care to surrender to me, and then accompany me back to my convoy? It looks like those whose loyalties you didn’t fully trust have almost been entirely wiped out, and I’d like to continue on my journey as quickly as possible.”

“If I don’t care to surrender?” Santiago asked.

Leon responded with a dangerous smile, and his retinue, who were all close enough to easily listen in, assumed slightly more threatening postures. Santiago’s few remaining bandits, on the other hand, looked like they were only one or two more bad glares away from bolting off into the hills as quickly as their legs were able to carry them.

Getting the picture, Santiago sighed, and his armor was pulled into his soul realm.

“I’ll surrender to you, Leon,” he said, to the shock of the men at his back. “But I want your guarantee that my remaining people won’t be harmed further.”

“I can’t guarantee that entirely,” Leon honestly replied. “Whether or not anything more happens to your people will depend upon them, for I don’t want them to leave this place only to return to a life of brigandry. If they surrender, too, though, then we might be able to work something out.”

“What can you work out?” Santiago said with a derisive snort. “You’re Heaven’s Eye! You don’t get involved in internal affairs of nations! You’re obligated to turn us in!”

“I would caution you against thinking too hard about this, Santiago,” Leon whispered. “Way I see it, you have two choices: either you and your followers surrender here and now, or you don’t. You get to live at least a little while longer in the former, but you’ll die right here in the latter. Make your choice…”

Santiago scowled, but he only needed another moment of thought. He summoned up his courage and declared his choice to Leon.

—

Leon marched through the raided village with the captured bandits, his small retinue more than enough to keep Santiago and his half dozen fellows under control. The remaining members of Santiago’s force had scattered into the hills, numbering only a couple hundred compared to the thousand or so that he’d started with. Throughout the village lay the bodies of those that Leon’s retinue had cut down, burned and torn apart by their magic.

Some of the villagers who’d hidden themselves came out to watch them pass, watching on in shell-shocked silence as the leaders of the men who’d laid such waste to their village were paraded down the main road.

Leon noticed that, to his credit, Santiago didn’t avert his gaze, though he didn’t relish in the attention. He got the impression that Santiago wasn’t the sort of man to second-guess his decisions, taking responsibility for his actions and their consequences.

Seeing if that impression was accurate, though, had to wait until they returned to the convoy about ten miles away.

With their prisoners, it took a longer time for Leon and his retinue to return than it had to reach the village—long enough that by the time they reached the Heaven’s Eye guards at the front, any fighting further back had already wrapped up.

Having kept an eye on it from afar, Leon knew that Maia and Emilie had held nothing back in their defense of the convoy, slaughtering the bandits that attacked them with greater viciousness than even Leon had done in the village. Piles of corpses lined the road near the middle of the caravan, where the bandits had focused their assault.

As they walked down the road, now accompanied by additional Heaven’s Eye guards to keep an eye on Santiago and the other prisoners, Leon couldn’t help but turn toward the silver-eyed man and ask, “What were you trying to accomplish here? If it was killing all of your people who weren’t ‘loyal’ to you, then it seemed to have worked out quite well…”

“That was part of it, yes,” Santiago admitted without shame. “My control over my people has been slipping of late. Honestly, I’m just not cut out for banditry, and those who remained with me after our desertion were those who were more inclined towards it than I ever was. There were a few strong commanders, though, who were more brutal than I am, and more and more my people were listening to them instead of me. I never wanted to attack your caravan, but greed clouded the eyes of my comrades, and my hand was forced.”

“If you didn’t want to do this, then why did you raid that village?” Leon inquired.

“As a distraction,” Santiago explained. “I thought that my people in the village would’ve been able to draw your mages away from your caravan, giving the main force enough space to make their assault, and then vanishing back to our safehouses before you could do any real damage. Clearly I was wrong…”

“That seems like quite a bit of danger you placed yourself in for a plan you didn’t support,” Leon observed.

“Maybe,” Santiago conceded. “I thought that if the raid went well, then great! If it didn’t, then I’d at least be rid of dissidents in my ranks.”

Leon stole a quick glance back, gauging the effect Santiago’s words were having on the other six that had been captured alongside him. To his surprise, none of them seemed surprised by his words, lending some credence to the idea that they were his most loyal men.

Before Leon could continue, he felt Maia’s attention hit him like a tsunami, and he turned away from Santiago toward his river nymph lover, who sped down the road within a relatively small water dragon, knocking over a few piles of dead bandits here and there as she went. Following behind her and struggling to keep up was Emilie, Elise, and a host of other Heaven’s Eye guards. Leon also noted that Dame Maxima was slowly making her way toward them, stoically cleaning blood off of her weapon as she did. Damien wasn’t, however, and seemed to be taking charge of the clean-up in Emilie’s stead.

Leon didn’t get much of a chance to look around further, for Maia exploded out of her water dragon, letting it dissolve back into nothing, and leaped into Leon’s arms. He caught her easily, and they embraced tightly, though briefly. Santiago behind them watched with an expression of shock and fear that Leon hadn’t seen on him since he’d first shown up at the village.

A moment later, Emilie arrived, and less than a minute later, Dame Maxima. Leon refrained from explaining or asking for explanations until they gathered with Santiago in one of the carriages that had been reserved for some of Emilie’s concubines. The men had been cleared out, though, so that the carriage could be converted into a prisoner transport, and the rest of Santiago’s captured bandits were escorted away, to be held in Heaven’s Eye’s custody until they could decide what to do with them. Leon’s retinue, too, went back to their own carriage, though Valeria and Elise both joined Leon, Maia, Emilie, and Maxima with Santiago.

As they were getting settled, Leon decided to check in on everyone else before dealing with the captured bandit.

“Everyone all right?” he asked the carriage. “Any casualties to speak of?”

“None on our front,” Maxima stated neutrally. “These feckless cravens kept far away from Her Highness’ carriage, though I think that Dame Asiya might find that disagreeable.”

“She does? Really?” Elise asked in disbelief.

“I think when she heard of everything going on outside, she wanted to head out and fight,” Maxima explained. “Something about working off some frustrations.”

Leon nodded his head, understanding Asiya’s desire. She was still grieving, and part of that process involved quite a bit of anger. He supposed that she hadn’t gotten much of an outlet on that front, lately.

“I’ll go and talk to her later,” Elise decided, speaking almost to herself. Turning her attention fully back to everyone else, she added, “It seems that everyone else in our caravan is fine. No injuries that haven’t been fixed by our healers, thank the Ancestors.”

“No casualties of note?” Leon asked, seeking confirmation.

“None,” Elise affirmed with a smile of pride. Her eyes then turned toward Santiago, a hint of derision sparkling within. “Seems these bandits weren’t that coordinated, despite being former soldiers. Blinded by greed, maybe? Lax discipline?”

Santiago shrugged, brushing off her judgment. He seemed remarkably relaxed, given his situation. However, his expression froze on his face as Maia added her piece.

There might’ve been more casualties, the river nymph said, had I not acted when I did. I sensed their attack and slaughtered all those who came for us.

“We had much more space to work with once Lady Naiad began doing the heavy lifting,” Emilie whispered with a look of gratitude. “Besides, it seemed like killing our people wasn’t their goal; they seemed quite fixated on our horses, though they never got close enough to a carriage to steal so much as a bell off their harnesses.”

Leon nodded, grateful to hear that everyone and everything was all right, then finally turned his attention back to Santiago. “So,” he began, “you told me some of your story, but now I want to hear the rest. What was the point of all this? What did so many people die here today for?”

“The Lady has the right of it,” Santiago explained, nodding to Emilie. “Some of my people estimated that those horses were worth their weight in gold, at the very least. For men like us, they’d be brilliant prizes.”

“You’d use them to continue raiding?” Leon asked.

“If I’d gotten any of them, I’d planned on selling them to feed my men,” Santiago retorted, now sounding slightly more indignant. It was the same kind of affronted pride that Leon noticed within Anshu back when he’d interrogated the Indradian and accused him of being a pirate. “We were honorable soldiers!” Santiago continued, his fury starting to rise. “We served with loyalty and distinction! But we were left out to dry so that the armies in the east can grow fat and degenerate off the supplies that should’ve gone to us! Do you know how many of my people starved to death?”

Leon almost thought it a rhetorical question, but Santiago paused, clearly waiting for a response. So, Leon shrugged and said, “There’s no possible way I could know that.”

Santiago, seeming to accept his word, just leaned back in his chair. “None of them did,” he whispered, “because I took action. We were guarding the Alliance from threats from the west, and for our service, we were abandoned! Our loyalty was wasted, our efforts unappreciated. My men started to weaken and fall sick, started to turn on each other out of frustration and desperation. A few were injured, a couple were even killed when arguments got out of control. I had to execute some of my own troops to keep order, but that wasn’t enough. Soon enough, we were receiving neither pay nor food—bureaucrats further in-country probably stealing it all for themselves, I’m sure—and something had to be done.”

“So you turned to banditry,” Leon finished.

Santiago glared back at him, his expression furious, but unapologetic. “We inflicted great pain and distress upon our countrymen here,” he said, “but we survived. And once we raided one village, raiding another didn’t seem quite so monstrous. And then a third, and a fourth. Soon enough, we’d filled our bellies, and taken what we felt was owed us for our service. But we were done serving.” Santiago made like he was going to continue, but there, he stopped, cutting himself off before he could say anything else.

“An interesting story,” Emilie spoke up before the silence grew too awkward, “and while I think we’d all like to hear more of it, you don’t look like you’re in much of a talking mood.”

“More of a ranting mood, I suppose,” Santiago admitted with a smile. “Are we then to decide what to do with me? So, what’s it going to be? Beheading? Drowning? Hanged, drawn, and quartered?”

Leon and Emilie shared a look, and he understood that she was going to leave this up to him. She hadn’t lost anything during the raid, despite its size, so she had no obligations to her people to get vengeance.

“None of the above, I think,” Leon said. “I’d like to speak with you more later, but for now, we’ll be taking you into custody. At the very least, I think the authorities in the Alliance would be interested in knowing that we caught a rebel after a failed attack on our convoy. Maybe we’ll even get a reward for bringing you in alive.”

Santiago scowled, and he stared at Leon through narrow, suspicious eyes. He didn’t argue over his fate, seemingly content to let them dictate to him what would happen, but he was still curious enough to ask, “What more do you wish to talk about?”

“I suppose we’ll find out,” Leon replied.

The man was strong, decisive, and charismatic enough that he kept his soldiers together even long after their turn to banditry. Those were qualities that Leon wanted within his retinue, but he didn’t want to just spring that question on Santiago right now. He needed to get to know him better, first, and then decide whether or not to make the offer. He was a little desperate to fill out his retinue’s ranks, but he also knew that he had to be discerning with his recruits. A bandit, regardless of his reasons for such lawlessness, couldn’t just be accepted without thought.

There were a few days before their caravan entered the Alliance’s heartland. Leon hoped to use those days to sound out Santiago’s mindset a little more, to delve a little deeper into who the man was and if that would mesh well with the retainers he already had. He hoped that he would like what he found.