Ruthless V5Ch56-One-Man Army

With the words that left the Panther Queen’s mouth, much was resolved in a single sentence.

Much was also gained.

[Required conditions met…. Sublime achievement accomplished! New Title unlocked: One-Man Army!]

James flicked the announcement away mentally, but the Panther Queen’s words coupled with the System acknowledgement could not fail to bring a smile to his face.

He could also feel that the System wanted to send him level up announcements—definitely plural—but he suppressed them for the moment as well.

Always a good day when I get more powerful, he thought.

But of course there was something more pressing going on. The Panther Queen, if he did not save her life, was dying from the venom he had injected into her.

“Let’s get you fixed up, then,” James said softly.

He glanced up at Mina, and the two shared a quick look of mutual admiration and affection. He imagined that they were both thinking approximately exactly the same thing at that moment: You are awesome.

Then he set to work on the Panther Queen. He gave her his blessing first, and then he began extracting the venom-laced bone shards from her body. The Queen hardly moved or spoke throughout the process, just watched him with her tired, but still intense, feline gaze. He wondered if she thought he would allow her to die after all, out of some sense of spite. Perhaps she was just fascinated by the process of being healed.

“I have to remain conscious,” she explained toward the end, as if she had finally realized what it meant that James continued periodically glancing at her expression. “I am paying attention so that I do not pass out. Someone has to ensure that when you release my surviving soldiers from the pit where you’ve trapped them, they do not try to take some sort of ill-conceived revenge. Since you did not kill me and usurp my authority, they will not automatically obey your commands. And I believe it would revoke my blessing if one of them were to attack you.” She yawned and added, nonchalantly, “I would rather not die.”

I think I learned that a few minutes ago, when you were negotiating your survival.

“Your mate drives a hard bargain,” said the Panther Queen as if reading his mind.

“My wife,” James corrected, pulling another chunk of bone from a wound on her thigh. “You said ‘mate.’”

“Ouch. Take it as a compliment, Fisher King. She is as fiery as one of us—and of course, she is not human anyway.”

James frowned at that but said nothing. He knew little of the reputation of the Fae as a Race, but it surprised him slightly that a monster was able to immediately notice that Mina was no longer one of the humanoid Races. He supposed it was because her skin had a gentle glow to it, more noticeable in the darkness of night than during the day.

Mina herself had walked off with Rotter and Doppelganger. The three of them were untying the Panther Queen’s human soldiers.

James listened in on the interactions using his superhuman senses. With the Panther Queen lapsed into silence for the moment, there was nothing else for him to do at the moment besides treating her injuries.

“Congratulations, friends!” Rotter was declaring to the humans. “Your days of servitude under the heel of the Panther Queen are over. You have been liberated by the Fisher King!”

There was a mix of reactions to that.

A couple of people cheered, but most of them muttered confused utterances. They didn’t know who James was.

“Umm, thank you for untying us,” said one woman’s voice.

“Slaves of a different master now,” muttered another under his breath.

“It’s not like that,” Rotter insisted. “The Fisher King is a truly kind and generous Ruler. No one is a slave in the Fisher Kingdom. People come and go of their own free will. We stay close because his territory is the safest and most prosperous anyone knows of!”

The ensuing chatter completely drowned out anything else Rotter might be saying.

“Sounds like propaganda,” one voice said.

“How is he different from the Panther Queen?”

“We should be glad just to get away from the Panther Army. Who cares what the Fisher King is like? He can hardly be worse…”

“Is this Fisher King like a giant fish? Or a bird or something? A kingfisher is like a bird, right?”

Another person who thinks Fisher King means a kingfisher, huh? James thought, raising an eyebrow. I thought that was just Samuel. And I’m about seventy percent sure he was just joking at the time.

The fact that they didn’t all know he was human yet was less surprising to James. They had all been tied to trees during the battle, and some of them were positioned so they could not see anything. Doppelganger had not been overly focused on making sure they bore witness to James’s combat achievements.

“Nah, he’s a human,” said an unfamiliar voice.

“A fucking human?!” exclaimed the previous speaker.

“A human who defeated the Panther Queen… Jesus. What kind of monster is this guy?” This person’s voice seemed to cut through most of the chatter, and the others fell silent as the man spoke. James guessed that maybe he was one of the more prominent humans.

“The kind of monster you can rely on.” These words were spoken in Dean’s voice, the first one of those James heard that he recognized besides Rotter’s. James smiled as he heard it. “He keeps his word. Yes, he decided to go and be a king—but it doesn’t seem like democracy is on the menu in the new world. Given that, I don’t think there are going to be a lot of better options out there for us. Whatever else he does, he’ll keep us safe.”

James’s former boss seemed to have reconciled himself to being a part of the Fisher Kingdom now.

“Oh, hey, Mina,” Dean said. “That is you, right?”

James did not hear the response. Mina must have nodded.

“He’ll treat us right, right?” Dean asked. His voice had a note of pleading.

“Why are you even worried?” Mina asked, her tone slightly frosty. “You know him. You knew him for years.” She lowered her voice, though James could still hear it without trouble. “If you don’t have faith in him, why should anyone else here be anything other than terrified? I still don’t really understand why you didn’t come with James when he went with Alan and Mitzi to get you before. He risked his life to clear out your monster problem, and from the sounds of it, you simply didn’t trust him to lead you…”

“You’re right,” Dean said. “I’m sorry. I do know him. Just, we didn’t part on the best of terms before, as you seem to understand, and even if I might have had a positive opinion of him back when we used to work together, you never really know how people feel about their bosses.”

“Dean, you should know he has never said an unkind word about you,” Mina said. “That Cliff, on the other hand…”

Dean chuckled. “Cliff is a unique guy. Anyway, thanks. I’ll try to help make sure the others adjust well to being a part of the Fisher Kingdom. And I’ll do my best to adjust properly myself, too. Of course, living under James could hardly be worse than being enslaved by the Panther Queen.”

James shook his head with a thin smile.

Damning me with incredibly faint praise. I guess I have a ways to go to win over people who thought they were getting democracy in the apocalypse. I don’t know how you manage that level of idealism. I guess the Panther Queen crushed some of it out of him. The crazy thing is that she thought she was doing a good job, or so she claims. Not that it matters now. I’ve already freed you and your people, I’m not going to go after the Pantherfolk any further to get revenge for some perceived slights against you all back when you lost a fight with her. Now they’re valuable military assets for me. The freedom you’ve acquired is going to have to be good enough. We’re not in the market for revenge.

“What you said about democracy being gone, it’s not quite true,” Mina said.

“Oh, no?” Dean asked. “Has James set up elections recently?”

“No, but you’re free to vote with your feet. James doesn’t make anyone wear a collar or stay in one place if they want to leave. You can go somewhere else with a Ruler you like better, if a place like that exists. Or you can establish a Kingdom of your own, if you believe in yourself enough. As for me, I chose my leader a long time ago. I have no complaints.”

That seemed to shut Dean up, because there was a silence for a while thereafter.

Then the Panther Queen twitched, and James looked down at her. He saw that her wounds were closing up more slowly now than they had earlier, and he frowned.

“You burned through my healing Skill in our fight,” she said, catching what he was paying attention to. “That was part of why I surrendered.”

“You’re good at reading body language,” James said.

“Basic leadership abilities,” the Queen replied. “Did you think I was just some dumb animal?”

“No,” James replied reflexively, with no hesitation. The Ring of Lies warming his finger told him, as if he hadn’t already known, that he had uttered a half-truth. But, as usual, Anansi’s gift to James did its job.

The Panther Queen nodded as if satisfied and said nothing more on the subject. James knew that she believed him. His ability to read body language was also on the high end.

And she had every reason to think he was being honest, considering context clues.

Of course the Fisher King wasn’t assuming things about her on the basis of her being a different Race. Inconceivable. He was the leader of a multi-Race Kingdom, after all…

“Do you know where you’ll go next?” James asked.

“I am a conquered Ruler,” the Panther Queen said in a strangely bittersweet tone. “Where I go next would seem to depend on the wishes of my conqueror.” She looked at him. Another bone fragment popped out of her arm, and her lip twitched in a hint of a smile. “I hope I do not sound ungrateful,” she added. “I appreciate my life being spared. Your wife is correct that the terms of our peace should be one-sided. I am simply trying to be realistic.”

James nodded. “Fair. And honestly, I think our deal is appropriate. It is one-sided, a victor’s peace. But I also don’t want you to be uncomfortable or discontent with our arrangement. Not any more than you have to be. Unless we want to fight again sometime soon, and to the death this time, we both have to live with it for an indefinite number of years. I think what I really want to know is just, where do you want to live? Gradually, more and more of this continent is going to fall under my rule. I will keep expanding my territory, and I would rather not drive you out of spaces where you and your Pantherfolk are living and hunting. So, if you choose a reasonable space to live on, I can try to make my territory circle around it rather than pushing you out.”

The Panther Queen’s face acquired a thoughtful, faraway look.

“I have an idea about that,” she said after a moment. “Someplace down south. Land that humans probably wouldn’t even want but that will serve well enough for hunting and training.”

“Great,” James said. “Listen, I’ve got most of these bone shards out of you now, so I’m going to take a minute to shift the ground and get your people out from under it. That way, you can explain the situation to them while you’re still conscious.”

“You are the boss.” She shrugged feebly. “Thank you for considering my subordinates’ needs.”

It was strange, having beaten her, how all the fight had gone so completely out of the Panther Queen. James didn’t much like it. He guessed that she was an all or nothing person. Someone who had to be dominant—or be dominated—who had to exist in clearly defined hierarchies and relations of command.

James shifted the ground and raised the bottom of the sinkhole to release the remaining Pantherfolk from where they had fallen. There were a number who had been impaled on the spikes that James had lined the bottom of the pit with, and he winced slightly as he saw them—mainly out of sympathy for the Pantherfolk who had survived and remained impaled, still living, rather than from any qualms about those he had killed.

Some Pantherfolk were already healing others by the time James raised the group from their underground cell. Some of the humans, essentially unharmed after the battle, approached the other survivors and began applying healing Skills of their own. Even Mina chipped in.

Cleanup of the battle’s aftermath proceeded well.

Once everything seemed to be stable enough, and the Panther Queen had explained the new power relationship to her subordinates—in her usual blunt, direct style—James gave instructions to the survivors. He told the Pantherfolk and the other nonhumans among the Queen’s forces that they were welcome to stay within this part of his territory until everyone was fully recovered. He directly gave the humans and any others who wished to join them the option of coming to the Fisher Kingdom, though he did not apply any pressure in that direction. There was no sense in depleting the Queen’s allied forces more than necessary.

Almost all of the humans chose to join James. The only exceptions were a few who seemed to have grown extremely comfortable with their collars—and perhaps with their servitude to the Panther Queen.

As day began to break in the distance, the group began the trek back to the core of the Fisher Kingdom.

Despite the violence and brutal negotiations that had preceded it, the atmosphere of the morning was hopeful.

James and Mina walked at the head of the procession, leading the way, slightly distant from the others and talking among themselves.

“There is something I need to tell you, James,” Mina said a little nervously. “I promise it’s good news, but it makes our lives just a little more complicated.”

He knew instantly what she was talking about.

“I think I understand,” James said. “How far along?”

Though there were still threats on the horizon, the Fisher King ignored all his stored up System alerts and forgot about everything he needed to do over the next few months. More than that, James allowed himself to feel hopeful. There seemed to be too much happiness in his present—an overflowing amount—for the universe or the System to rob him of it now.

And Mina’s good news only accentuated that.