"I surrender."
The Slave-Lord Knight panted hard, waves of heat rolling off his body.
He glared at Captain Reyne. "I'm yours, along with all the spoils here. I'm willing to pay a ransom for myself."
Captain Reyne raised his left hand, signaling his companions to stop attacking. "Drop your weapon."
The Slave-Lord Knight tossed aside his massive axe, which gouged a deep crater in the ground.
The Slave-Lord Knight had given up resisting, but nearly all his men were already dead. The survivors had been herded together and crouched trembling on the ground like the slaves nearby.
"Do Holy Knights have a rule against killing enemies who surrender?" Annan asked Rofi.
The young Necromancer, whose excitement at the corpses strewn everywhere had been showing, hurriedly regained her composure. "Captain Reyne has always upheld the Holy Knight's creed. He doesn't kill enemies who've dropped their weapons."
Annan nodded and emerged from the woods, walking over to the slaves locked in cages.
"Are you villagers from around here?"
"Lord Holy Knight, we're villagers!" cried the villagers who had watched the battle from inside the cages. "Please let us out!"
They were easy to distinguish from the actual slaves by their clothes, their expressions, and the numbness on their faces.
But the cages held only men and elderly people. As for the women and children...
Annan looked toward the tents where crying could still be heard. A tent flap opened, and Skeeter, the Deputy Captain, emerged with a grim face.
"What a pack of animals!"
Annan walked over, but Skeeter tried to stop him from going in. "Mr. Olmedo, you shouldn't look..."
"It's all right."
He wasn't a child. After so many battles, he had seen mountains of corpses and seas of blood with his own eyes...
Annan lifted the flap. After a