Kris considered the question. The freed slaves were in the process of tying the rope that had bound them to one of the stronger looking trees. Tsleeixth seemed to be taking charge of the process though he frequently glanced at Dax as though seeking guidance. With in a few minutes they were climbing down into the ravine. A few seemed frail and exhausted enough to be at risk, but the mixture of fear and hope carried them down anyway.

“Vorn…,” Kris mused as she watched the progress of the escaping slaves. The name was bitter on her lips, especially given that a few minutes ago she had the chance to kill him after months of pursuit and she had botched it.  If she had only sent the first arrow into him… well the Thaelmor might have killed her if she hadn’t struck hard. The Legions had learned those lessons the hard way. Still it burned on her soul that he had escaped.

“Yes I came to kill him, that's why I did…this,” she made a gesture to the blood spattered roadway, though it seemed a lot more inconsequential with the bodies cleared away. Belatedly she realised she hadn’t fished the arrow from the Mer’s body and cursed the loss of a good shaft for now reason. The septims she had taken from her victim would replace the shaft, but any scout lamented the lost of ready resources.

“He used to be a Captain in the Sixteenth, the Sixteenth Legion,” she explained, as she fastened Dax’s breastplate over her own armor. The Lizardman was sufficiently large that the plate fit without difficulty, though it took some fiddling with the straps before it hung anything close to comfortably. It also made her look more like a mercenary, though she doubted any of the Thaelmor could have described her from the brief glimpse they had of her. Vorn was another matter, but it was vanishingly unlikely that he would be leading a party to recapture slaves. Vorn was a snake, not someone to lead from the front with sword aloft. 

The last slave was now out of sight, so Kris looped the rope around Dax’s wrists and tied a rudimentary knot. It would be easy enough for the Argonian to slip if he was of a mind. She supposed if the guards checked closely enough they might object, but she doubted they would judge her based on her knot craft.

“Towards the end of the war we started finding ourselves outsmarted, ambushed and out guessed. At first we thought it was bad luck…” she grimaced in disgust. How many simple Legion funerals had she attended for people who had been sent into battle on Voss orders.

“We were fighting in the Colovian Highlands, it was touch and go but we had to defend the approaches to the Imperial City,” Kris explained, lost in the memories of those desperate days battling the seeming invincible Aldmeri Dominion.

“One night Vorn comes to us, orders us up and into marching order, claiming its a surprise offensive. We march away and half an hour later the Aldmeri cavalry ride right through and roll up the whole Imperial line. The bastard sold us all out. We put it together afterward, the way he always had money, they way he always seemed to be away on some mission when it really dropped in the pot. He had gone over to the cursed Aldmeri months ago…” she paused to spit into the ravine as she walked along behind her supposed prisoner. So many dead because of Vorn, because they had all trusted their captain.

“We got disbanded at the end,” she went on as they rounded a bend, making their way along the road to Black Light. Nearly half of the Legions had been disbanded following the hateful peace they called the White Gold Concordate. Proud units just turned out without pay and told to go to homes they hadn’t known in years.

“But I heard that Vorn was still around, living it up, and I figure I owe it to all those who bit the Septim to even the score.”