AN: If you like what you are reading, you can help by giving my novel Rating.
"Fuck you! I am already a dead man, I am not telling you anything!" the bandit leader moaned with a distorted voice from the 'percussive restructuring' we have done to his face. It has been half an hour since Sir Lucan had been beating the information out of him, and the only solid info we got was his name, Darren, and that he is a deserter from the Valorhelm Dominion army.
I got up from my chair in front of Darren and walked over to him as he looked at me with hatred in his eyes. I gently pat his cheek and said, "Yes, you are a dead man, but only when I say you are." I cast some water magic to form a layer of water in front of him, letting him see his own disfigured face, then I cast a simple healing spell that closed the cuts on his entire body and cleared the swelling and bruises.
I walked behind Darren as he watched in horrified amazement, seeing his face return to normal. I bent down to whisper in his ear, "And at this rate, it will be a long time before I say you are a dead man."
At that moment, I could see the change in his eyes. He now realizes that it was just a matter of how much pain he would have to endure before he is allowed the sweet release of death, and what was left of his overinflated ego had to decide if his spite for me was worth the pain.
Surprisingly, it took another ten minutes or so before he came to the smart decision and told me where his hideout was and how many men were guarding the abducted kids. After spilling all the beans he had, I patted his shoulders with a smile on my face and said, "Thank you for your cooperation. I will kill you when we get back with the kids… but if we do not find any kids, I am sure you know what you are in for if I come back empty-handed, right?"
He had long run out of tears and had already shouted his voice hoarse. The only thing he could do was give me a weak nod. I patted his cheek and walked out the door. Once out of Darren's sight, a cold shiver ran down my spine as I shook myself free from the deranged torturer persona I had put on while interrogating him. It was not something I wanted to do again, but children were involved, and I have no sympathy for these bandit scum.
Getting the info we needed, I selected Sir Lucan and five men-at-arms to guard the bandit boss and take care of things in the village in case any trouble came up, and gathered Sir Ector along with the other men-at-arms to come up with a rescue plan.
***
About a two-hour walk away from the village that Luke had liberated was an old hunter's lodge surrounded by mostly empty tents, and just outside the hunter's lodge were two men sitting on crates with a crate between them with cards on it.
"You got a two?" one of the men asked.
"No, and it is not like I would tell you… You got a ten?" the man opposite him asked.
"No, but I got this." the first man slammed down two cards while laughing in triumph.
The other man just slapped the rest of his cards on the crate in defeat and shouted, "Man, fuck you!" This only made the first man laugh harder.
While the first man was calming down from his laughter, the second man said as he looked at the position of the sun. "Hey, shouldn't the boss and the rest of the lads be back by now?"
The second man looked at the sun's position and replied, "Yeah, should be, unless the boss decided to spend the night with some whore in that village that caught his fancy."
"Well, I just hope they get back soon so that I can rotate to that village where there are real beds and real walls to block the cold, and so we don't need to look after those brats. They are noisy and are starting to stink. Maybe we should splash them with some water to rid them of the stink." the first man said.
"Nah, sounds like too much work." the second man said.
As these two men were talking, they failed to realise that the sound of birds singing, bugs chirping, and even the ever-present sound of leaves rustling in the wind was getting softer and softer over the span of a few minutes, and when they finally noticed, it was already too late.
***
Me, Sir Ector, and two other men-at-arms, crept up to the bandit camp, covered in drab green cloaks we borrowed from the village. As for the other men-at-arms, they had spread out to surround the camp, each with bows at the ready.
At first, I thought we were going to have to wait until evening so we could infiltrate the camp under the cover of night, but it seems like I have overestimated the security of the bandit camp. It seems like just because Darren was a former military, that did not mean the rest of his men had the level of discipline an army man should, former or not.
There, in the middle of the camp, next to a hunter's lodge, two chucklefucks are playing cards, not even bothering to position themselves so that one of them faces the direction of the village we were coming from. For God's sake, you don't even need to be in the military to know that.
But besides my irritation at bandits' lack of standards, I was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I signaled the men following me to get down, and we crawled from tree to tree, and eventually from tent to tent, until we were in pouncing range of the card-playing bandits.
Now, we could just jump the two bandits, but if they somehow used their dying breath to shout an alarm, our rescue mission would turn into a hostage rescue mission. So I used some magic to eliminate that risk factor.
Using air magic, I conjured an extremely porous air dome around the two bandits, and over the span of a few minutes, shrank those holes in the air dome until the two bandits were fully enclosed, isolating all sound in that dome.
Just as I gave the hand signal to the others, one of the bandits clearly sensed something was wrong and started looking around, but by then, it was too late for them as three aura-clad men rushed in and beheaded them.
Now, if the bandit boss is telling the truth, there should be six bandits left: two rotating shifts with the two we just killed, and the other four guarding the abducted kids in the hunting lodge's cellar.