“Why does my head hurt so much?” Pause. He held a hand to his forehead. “What’s going on? Where am I?” He blinked his eyes clear. “Who are you? Why am I tied up? What—”
I stuffed a piece of cloth back into the rabbit beastman’s mouth. The horse beastman beside him struggled in his restraints, muffled voice leaking out from his mouth. It would have taken too much cloth to stuff his mouth, so we tied it together with rope instead. Knocking out the two beastmen commanders had been easy, and tying them up had been even easier. The tough part was making sure nobody would come inside while I was interrogating them. Thankfully, I overheard some of the lower ranked officers ordering the other beastmen not to disturb the commanders until dinner time.
I looked down at the commanders. So far, I hadn’t had any luck interrogating beastmen. Beastmen were remarkably resolute and I wasn’t expecting these commanders to have loose lips, especially after everything we had heard from outside the tent. The rabbit beastmen, or Lago Sylvil, wanted to regain their spot on the Council. They weren’t going to ruin their reputation by working with invaders any time soon. And the horse beastmen, or Cabal Equ, did not seem to care about the other tribes all that much. They had come to fight invaders and wanted to go back to their homeland as soon as possible. And now that both of them knew that they were fighting this war on behalf of their god, any chance of driving a wedge between them by exploiting differences wasn’t going to work. Still, we had heard a lot from them while outside the tent. The only thing we had to confirm was the location of Mount Smoke.
“Why does the great elf—Cas, not interrogate his captives properly?” asked Taoc.
“If you’re talking about torture,” I said as I met the deep voiced rabbit commander’s gaze. He was giving me a steely glare. “Then it’s because it is both inhumane and ineffective.”
“But if the information is vital, we would be sparing a lot of lives by extracting it from these two,” said Kol. “You say torture is immoral, but is it not more immoral to let our people die unnecessary deaths? Once we know Mount Smoke’s location we can steal the Book of Annihilation and stop this war before it even begins.”
“We will find Mount Smoke anyways, don’t worry about it. If these guys were discussing all of this all the way out here, we should learn a lot more from careless conversations deeper inside the Horde’s heartland,” I said. “If anything, getting false information from these guys here could be more dangerous. Think about it, wouldn’t people say whatever they had to say to make the pain stop if you were torturing them? Whether that information would lead us on a wild goose chase or to Mount Smoke is impossible to know unless we went and checked it in person.”
“Would they really lie to us when we hold their lives in our hands?” asked Kelser.
“Of course they would. You heard what they said, their job isn’t to defeat us, but to stall us for as long as possible. If the ceremony succeeds, they will have completed their mission. Sending us off in the wrong direction would give them more time and we wouldn’t have the time to come back here to punish them either,” I said. “Besides, they’re beastmen. They won’t give in so easily.”
Taoc frowned. “We should at least try to ask them something. There would be no point in tying them up, otherwise.”
“I tied them up so we could take them away and hide them in a forest or something. Then we can sabotage this camp and force them to move to another defensible location further back. If we keep doing that at every checkpoint we can make it so they have no choice but to keep falling back. And since we travel faster than they do, we will never have to fight them, and nor will the United Army,” I said.
“Well, I’ll give it a try anyway,” said Kol as she stepped forward and plucked the cloth out of the gagged Lago Sylvil commander’s mouth. “Speak, beast! Where is Mount Smoke?”
The Lago Sylvil glared with his beady black eyes and snarled, “I do not know why you mock me so, demon, but I will not yield to your vile torture!”
“Oh wait, one second,” I said as I waved my hand. “I forgot I cast magic on their ears so they wouldn’t be able to hear us. Carry on.”
Kol frowned. She continued in the language of the beastmen, “Your fake god is not worth dying for, beast. Give us the location of Mount Smoke and we will end this war before any blood is spilled.”
“Do not try to anger me with sacrilegious words, demon,” said the Lago Sylvil commander in his deep voice. “We will water our soil with your vile blood and throw your lifeless corpses back from whence they came. My people will never yield to invaders! Not even…” He turned to me with a somber look. “…if they are led by a legendary elf.”
The horse-like Cabal Equ commander’s eyes widened as he heard his companion’s words and looked at my face. It was strange seeing surprise on a horse’s face, so I chuckled lightly and scratched my chin.
“I see they aren’t telling the general populace about me. You must have found out the same way you found out about the ceremony and the Book of Annihilation. But did they tell you that your side is also being led by an elf and a demon?” I said.
I saw the commander’s eyes widen a little before settling back down again.
“Oh, so you didn’t know about it. Your Council isn’t as important as you thought it was. This is not your battle, my friends. It is a battle between my party of heroes and your god’s minions. I could try to convince you that your god is evil and is almost certainly up to no good with this ceremony or whatever, but I don’t have the time nor patience. You have already told me that Mount Smoke is on the far side of your lands and that you have set up defensive fortifications to slow down the United Army. Those should lead us right to Mount Smoke like a trail of breadcrumbs. So instead of worrying about all of that,” I said as I leaned closer and raised my hand. “Why don’t you two get some rest?”
---
After dropping off the unconscious commanders in a little thicket outside of the scouts’ perimeters, I returned and set fire to some tents and fortifications. The soldiers had been busy preparing dinner, but when they saw the fiery inferno eating up their wooden spikes and guard towers, they ran to try and put it all out. I took the opportunity to go to the other side of their encampment and burn their supplies and let loose all of their fast traveling domesticated monsters. By the time the soldiers would realize what had happened, they would not have the resources to man this outpost against any approaching enemy. And without the commanders, they wouldn’t be able to decide which outpost to retreat to until we were long gone and ready to sabotage the next outpost or defensive fortification.
Over the next week or so, our party rushed through the lands of the Singing Horde, destroying encampments and outposts, and scattering supply lines for their farthest forces. We took every opportunity to eavesdrop on important conversations, which helped us piece together the entire strategy of the Horde, as well as the complex politics of the Horde’s tribes and the Council. We tried to interrogate a few beastmen, but once it became clear not even the weakest of tribes were willing to provide any useful information, we decided to save our time and stopped interrogating the beastmen at all.
We learned, through eavesdropping, that there were rumors of divine authorization for this war. This had stopped a lot of the worst criticisms that the beastmen had had towards their leadership, with many small families evacuating and willingly burning their own crops before leaving. No tribe wanted to step out of line in a war sanctioned by the God of Music himself.
Kol and Taoc were making amazing progress with their magic, and Kelser’s spells were getting stronger too. My new magic was finally beginning to take shape, and I was confident I would be ready by the time we reached Mount Smoke.
Finally, we overheard a beastman general talking about the location of Mount Smoke. After knocking him out and sabotaging his outpost, we began racing towards the volcano where the final battle would take place.
Drop a heart!