Nod. "We can come back and - deal with them, figure out what to do. Just, Leareth is very very scared and I think he might be less scared in a familiar place. Where were you before, is it safe...?" 

"Seemed so. Some sort of supply bunker, I wouldn't know how to direct you there."

"I will Gate us to the nearest safe bunker I have a Gate-terminus at. Leareth has many more than I do." 

She squeezes Leareth hand briefly - he doesn't respond to it at all - and then gets up, looks around for a moment. "Promise, is it safe for me to go steal those spears from the gryphons and ratha that have them? I need to make a doorway out of something to do a Gate, I cannot do it without one the way Leareth does." At least not reliably, and she's so stressed right now, she can barely focus. 

"Yes, they're all stuck."

Nayoki heads over and grabs some spears from motionless unresisting gryphons, and stabs two into the ground doorway-width apart, then takes some rope from a different soldier and uses it to lash a third spear across the top. The makeshift door wobbles but stays put. 

Nayoki casts a Gate to the nearest bunker she's aware of that's definitely not findable from the air and thus safe from any new-arriving troops. It's about seventy miles away in the mountains. The Gate snaps up, opening onto a different low-ceilinged, dimly-lit room, shortly later lit by a mage-light. 

Nayoki bends to lift Leareth under the arms, grunting with the effort. 

While Nayoki is working on that Promise tells everybody that they may sit down and delivers the contingency order about going home if nothing interrupts in the next four candlemarks and tells them that if their lives are in danger from the elements or other definitely-not-Promise-or-Promise's-allies sources they may take minimal steps to protect themselves with no extraneous actions or consequences permitted.

She follows Nayoki through the gate.

Nayoki, very quiet and subdued, lays Leareth down on the stone floor and then finds a spare bedroll on a shelf and gets him rolled onto it and covered up with a blanket. 

Leareth is still shivering uncontrollably from lying on the frozen ground for a while, and still panicking, and vaguely aware he seems to be somewhere else but mostly unable to have directed thoughts about it. 

Nayoki casts a gentle heat-spell, sighs, and squeezes his hand again. :Leareth, I am going to undo the set-command now. Do you want to be unconscious while that is happening?: 

Leareth can only half-parse the question, but nonononono he doesn't want to be unconscious at all, that's pretty much the only thing that could be worse than whatever in all hells is going on right now. 

He's not answering out loud but his shield-talismans are all broken and Nayoki can pick up enough of his reaction to get the gist. :All right. Try to stay calm: She gets started. 

Promise stays out of the way.

 Nayoki has to take her time to avoid damaging Leareth's mind, it's really shoved in there, and she has to pause every so often and try to soothe him until he calms down a bit. It takes her almost half a candlemark to finish. 

By the second half Leareth is a little more oriented and able to at least think, if not move, and he focuses on lying still and staying calm. The staying calm part takes a lot of willpower to maintain, because everything he remembers from the last while is a blur of horrible pain interspersed with losing consciousness and then waking up just in time for more agony, and he can't figure out where he is right now. 

"Finished," Nayoki says finally, it feels like an eternity later to her too. "Leareth, you can move now." 

Leareth sits up. He's holding off on having a panic attack but it's taking effort. 

He looks around. "Promise. What happened." 

"They had Sunspring compulsioned. She did some set-commands but they didn't know I can issue orders in writing or that I had her name so that was wide open and the order to ignore the compulsions worked fine. Most of the army couldn't attack me but they could attack you so for a while after I was done with her I sat on you but they could still zap your feet. I healed you till I'd gotten all their names and could order them all down. They're all sitting up there with contingency orders if I don't go back and clarify matters, now. Sunspring gated us here."

"Oh." Blink. "You got her name - it sounds like that was very lucky." He's trying to think of what to do next, he should be able to think of what to do next, he can be traumatized about the nearly-dying part, and the being set-commanded into helplessness by someone on his own side, later. 

Leareth takes a deep breath. "All right. We need a - plan for our approach, here. Vkandis is out of commission, the army here mostly is, we could - order them to Gate home? Vkandis would not be able to order them back, at this point, I assume." His eyes narrow. "I wonder if Iftel's shield-wall came down." 

"Iftel's shield-wall?"

"The entire country of Iftel has, for the last couple thousand years, been protected by a massive miraculous shield-barrier all the way around, which allows only approved people to cross. It - is why apparently I never knew that Vkandis had a secret army in there." He sounds very slightly sheepish about it. 

"Well, that'll be down if he needs to maintain it constantly and up if he doesn't."

Nod. Leareth spends thirty seconds checking something. "...Out of my scrying range. At least while I am - this distracted." Deep breath. "It...is maybe mostly that I am distracted - that was a singularly unpleasant experience. Promise, I - owe you deep gratitude for healing me." 

"You're welcome."

"All right. I think - probably we have time to wait until I can scry Iftel and learn more." Think. Focus. "We should perhaps consider trying to open communications with an agent of the Star-Eyed, to negotiate with Her and figure out Her current stance?" 

"Yes, probably. It could be they're planning to lure me into an ambush but hopefully now they have some information on how well that worked out for Vkandis - does he not have a nickname, it's weird using his real one -"