"To end a life is a simple matter. To save a life, is a much more difficult endeavour." - saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

"Hold him steady, don't let him budge too much." Cal commanded as she knelt next to the nearly disemboweled old villager. She carefully washed his stomach wound with clean water from her own stores, while she channeled her magic through touch so that the man did not bled out of his wound, before she slipped a wooden branch between the man's teeth. "Bite this well. This will… sting quite a bit."

The man squirmed and gave a mumbled cry of pain as Cal disinfected his wound with the hardest liquor she had in her storage, before she carefully applied a poultice for open wounds - she had kept the habit where she had all kinds of poultices on her since the days her mother trained her in the arts of a herbalist -, then carefully wrapped the wound with strips of clean cloth.

"He should be fine now, I think." She said, as she turned to address the rest of the awestruck villagers. None of the rest seemed to have any large injuries other than the big, bearded man who still sported a bleeding gash across his face, one of his eyes clearly ruined by the injury. "He will need a lot of rest, and someone will need to check and replace his bandages and poultice every day for at least another week or thereabouts."

The villagers had not replied, most of them still stared at her dumbfounded. Just minutes ago these men had resolved to sell themselves dearly to provide their loved ones an opportunity to escape from the fanatical horde. Now that fanatical horde was strewn all over the forest floor - most in pieces - with only a few badly mangled survivors left over.

After a couple minutes of silence, the old man who Cal assumed might be the village elder stepped forward. She noticed from his gait and the way he held himself that the man definitely had some military experience. Which definitely helped to explain how the villagers got the idea and attempted an ambush on the cultists rather than wait for them at their village.

"We owe you our lives, and likely the lives of our families, young lady." Said the old man as he bowed deeply to her. It both bothered and amused her somewhat when the old man called her a "young lady", since she was most likely older than him. "We shamefully cannot offer much but our sincere gratitude, and should you wish it, a place to rest."

"Take it easy." She said, one hand gestured at her pointy ears, upon seeing which a look of understanding dawned on the elder's eyes. "I didn't help you out for rewards or the like. Just doing my part to help rid the world of some fleabags best drowned at birth."

"Regardless, you still have our endless gratitude." Said the old man as he bowed deeply once again, this time followed by all the other villagers as well. "What should we do with the rest of these scum?"

"What did you do to the one I knocked out when I passed by last autumn?" Cal asked.

"We handed him over to the baron, who tried to interrogate him to find more of his ilk or their bases." Explained the elder. "The baron is of some orcish heritage himself, so he is in no way fond of these lunatics. They kept their mouths tightly shut when interrogated, however."

"Tie up the ones still living and help me drag them back to your village then. Maybe I can try to loosen their tongues a bit." She replied. "I believe I heard you mention that you already informed the baron about them before?"

"We sent a runner as soon as we heard rumors of a nearby village being attacked, but unless the baron somehow had a subjugation force already prepared to march we do not expect to see him return before next month at the least." The next month was still five days away at that date. "Pardon me for not having introduced myself, I am Yeshua Vanderbilt, Aldermann of the village of Poschei."

"Celeysria Ambervale."

"Once again, our deepest gratitudes, Lady Ambervale."

***********************************

The village women and children broke into a cheer when they saw their menfolk had returned alive. Stavos's wife - a dwarven woman - and an elderly lady that was Sam's wife fussed over their injured husbands, but still felt immense relief that they returned at all.

For her part Cal borrowed an empty barn where she had the few survivors of the cultists brought to, with a few tools she asked for gathered from the village. She then barred the door shut after she warned the villagers not to come in no matter what they heard.

"So, any of you shitbags feel ready to spill the beans?" She asked sarcastically, satisfied that some of the younger cultists visibly shuddered at her question. That was a good sign. Fear was something she could work with. "I would call you bastards whoresons but that would be an insult to whoresons everywhere."

"Shut your filthy mouth and just kill us, heathen!" Yelled a female cultist as she spat at Cal, which she just sidestepped nonchalantly.

"And here I was, troubled by deciding which one of you gets to go first… I guess we have a volunteer."

"Do your worst, devil-spawn! A true believer fears nothing mortal!"

******************************

Not five minutes later, that female cultist literally had froth in her gagged mouth as she convulsed in a puddle of her own wastes, all her fingernails and toenails pulled off roughly with a pair of pliers, which Cal just made much worse as she rubbed a mixture of lime juice and salt on the open wounds.

All the other cultists stared at the scene that unfolded with utter horror in their eyes, and when Cal turned to them, they were quite eager to answer her every question loudly, afraid that they would be the next one to suffer should they fail to answer.

In the end, it was with some disappointment when Cal realized that these cultists were too low in the hierarchy to have learned much worth knowing, and the higher-ups were likely more fanatical, like the woman she tortured to unconsciousness earlier, who refused to say a single word even after the torment. With a sigh Cal put an end to the tortured woman as she casually snapped her neck, for at least some of the information she managed to get out of the younger cultists might be of use.

And reinforcements from the baron should be here within a week or so.

********************************

Unexpectedly, reinforcements reached the village of Poschei a mere two days after the battle. There were only sixteen of them, soldiers in mail armor on horses, and when one considered how tired their horses looked, they likely pushed them hard to reach the village as soon as possible.

Cal found out the reason why very soon. The commander of the group, an army captain named Piotr, turned out to be elder Yeshua's son, who left the village to join the military. He had asked to be posted in the barony since the unrest started to escalate, and when the runner arrived, he had departed for the village with his personal guards immediately, with the rest of his hundred-man detachment left to follow them on foot.

He likely would only have ruins of a village and corpses of a family to bury had Cal not passed by when she did even then.

"My father had told me of the great favor that this village - and I personally - owed you, Lady Ambervale." Said the man while he gave her a military salute. "Or should I address you as Grand Marshall Ambervale of the Al-Shan Empire?"

"So how did you know?" Cal asked with a slightly exasperated look. "And lay off with the titles. Please."

"We received reports relayed by the City-States Coalition of your arrival there early in the winter." He explained. "And no offense milady, but a half-elf with your particular features are not exactly… commonplace. Much less one that is a Blood-Affinity mage of your prowess."

"Makes sense I guess. Maybe I really should consider some hair dye." Cal muttered. "So, we have four living cultists in captivity, I assume you plan to bring them back for interrogation?"

"If at all possible, yes. They are quite tight-lipped sadly, and the ones we caught elsewhere so far had not given even a morsel of information."

"For what it's worth, these ones talked. But they are so low in the hierarchy I could not get much of use out of them. Perhaps someone who knows what questions to ask should take them indeed." Cal sighed. "The one higher-up we caught preferred to die than to speak."

"Fanatics, the lot of them." Piotr said with a shudder. "If it does not trouble you, milady, mayhaps you might be amenable to a meeting with the Baron? He would likely want to thank you personally, and we can share any additional information we managed to eke out of the prisoners.

"As for the village, I shall have my men remain to guard them, and have them spread to the other villages nearby once the main force has caught up." He explained.

"That's fine with me. I would like to know more of this cult myself now that I had ran afoul of them twice."