Still not dead. This is distantly surprising. 

:Yes: 

"Are there simultaneous attacks anywhere else." The glowing chains have vanished by now, they're a short term thing. It's just her sword at his throat and his own apparent conviction that she can do anything.

All of his shields are down - and it's not like they presented any obstacle to the sword before, either - and she can move faster than he can form thoughts. He really wants to Gate out, actually, but this is clearly doomed. 

(He probably could Final Strike - there's no visible cue for that until it's happening - but why. It's just a way to die anyway and incidentally murder the rest of the soldiers he came here to try to save - he wonders about the stranger's healing, if it's too late for everyone she injured...) 

:No: 

He needs to think, orient, and he should probably try to communicate something about how he very badly wanted the ceasefire to work and just also couldn't actually watch from a distance as Shaiknam's absurd stupid decision got several hundred of his people killed, and coming alone was - clearly - a terrible idea but seemed like the best option out of spectacularly awful set of options. Words are still hard, though. 

"Are any of Urtho's other generals actually working for you." She doesn't have a Zone of Truth up, and it wouldn't work on Mindspeech anyway. She's just trying to - even if he's lying - arrive at one account of why recent events occurred which isn't mostly made up of observations that don't go together.

:Not - fully, like Shaiknam. Have an agent in Polden's camp, can slip false information or orders, he - usually falls for that. Shaiknam's second-in-command and - one of their top mages - are also working for me. That is all. ...Discussed this plan with Shaiknam, letting our units through on foot to circle behind the Fifth, he was supposed to wait on my order and I - very clearly countermanded it. When the ceasefire letter came: 

"What were you expecting would happen, here, when you raised the Gate?"

The honest answer is that he had about three seconds to think and very large swathes of missing context on her abilities and was mostly choosing from a limited set of options based on instinct. 

:Thought you would probably kill me: And that he would probably come back, somewhere else, almost certainly very inconveniently and too late to turn the war around, but. :Hoped if I - came alone - you would be uncertain enough of our intentions not to mount an immediate offensive, to - investigate first. ...Hoped I would have time to order my people to surrender. So you would not slaughter everyone. So it would - maybe still be recoverable. ...Wanted Urtho to end the war. Most important thing. Thought you - might be a ruse - but worth gambling. To end the war: 

He signed a ceasefire agreement and then Gated into Tantara's territory in the middle of it because someone else had ordered an attack he hadn't authorized and he could only order his people to stand down at close range?

It's absurd, but she's not actually sure it's more absurd than any other explanation of events she tried to piece together. 

"Right," she says. "Well, Kiyamvir Ma'ar, I am Iomedae, paladin of Aroden, Commander of the Knights of Ozem, and I'm holding you on suspicion of" being a terrifying baffling disaster "Gating into Tantara's territory in violation of a ceasefire agreement which I have been charged with negotiating and maintaining. To whom in Predain should I communicate your capture or begin negotiations surrounding your release?"

He...is kind of failing to be able to think about that right now. This was supposed to be the part where she killed him and he woke up somewhere else. 

Come on. Focus. There has to be an obvious answer to that question that does not actually involve needing to complete any thoughts... 

:The King: he manages, uncertainly and nearly ten whole seconds of silence later. 

(Which is going to go disastrously but this was - basically guaranteed to be a disaster from the moment the idiot Shaiknam decided to– no, in fact he did just straight-up disobey Ma'ar's orders, though in fairness he thinks of himself as a mercenary agent and not actually loyal to Predain. At least it might not be a disaster that ends in the powerful god-worshipping stranger - Iomedae, paladin of Aroden, whatever that's supposed to mean - flattening his country and undoing decades of work. 

...It's bothering him that he still isn't sure if he should have just let a few hundred people die and sent a letter. It feels like it wouldn't have worked but the situation he's in now is ridiculous.) 

Does he seem to have anything wrong with him (he really shouldn't, after the Lay on Hands) or is he just in shock because he's terrified?

Seems like the second thing. He is pretty clearly not at all trusting her claim that she's never killed someone who surrendered to her, is expecting to be stabbed to death any minute now, and is perhaps kind of disoriented by the fact that she hasn't done this yet. 

It makes sense that you wouldn't really have that institution, at all, in a world where you can't prevent a mage from Gating. It's deeply inconvenient how he's definitely going to escape on her the second she is no longer standing over him with a sword. But -

- it's a chance to talk face to face. That's what she was building towards.

"I'm interested in Predain withdrawing its troops from Tantara's borders."

Ma'ar is having to put in enormous willpower, ongoingly, to suppress the reflex to panic-Gate out. If he does that then she will stab him and he will die and that would be an even more ridiculous way for this to go. 

It's very unfair of her to try to have a strategic conversation with him while she has a sword at his throat, but - this is, in fact, what he wanted. He...will try. 

:I want credible assurances that Tantara will stay out of our borders. And - compensation of some kind for the farms they destroyed in their initial attack and later gryphon raids. We - have a much harder time feeding our population with the land and growing season we have, and it has cost us far more than it cost them: 

Thaaaaat sounds - far better than Tantara could reasonably have gotten if she wasn't here, and she can of course conquer countries on her own but in this specific case that doesn't seem like a reason to push too hard for a peace Tantara likes better. For a more lasting one, maybe. 

"I, too, want Tantara to stay out of Predain," she offers. "They want you to stop using human sacrifices for infrastructure projects and mind control to run the military."

:We have a great deal of infrastructure we need to rebuild, or thousands of people are going to starve this winter: Flatly. :Does Tantara have a better idea for how to supply the power for that. They are welcome to send mages if they want us to have alternatives.:

He takes a couple of careful, even breaths. 

:And - you are welcome to talk to as many soldiers as you like, but - I am confident that eight in ten of them prefer the situation where they and their fellows agree to the oath of service compulsions – and you can check that they are action-affecting compulsions only and not volition-affecting It improves unit cohesion and trust, and I am not very willing to weaken our military capabilities until I have more trust that Tantara is not going to invade us again as soon as they think they have the upper hand: 

"I don't want anyone to starve this winter. It seems to me - if this war is indeed unintended by Predain - that no one in Predain has the diplomatic skill to make it credible to anyone else that they will only violate important taboos of enormous military relevance for infrastructure projects that save thousands of lives and not for conquests."

'While pinned on the ground with a sword at his throat' is perhaps not the time to debate the extent to which blood-magic is or is not actually taboo in all of the many, many places in the world which are not Tantara. 

It doesn't matter, anyway. This isn't a discussion where they will trade logical arguments; he's being held prisoner by a woman who serves a powerful foreign god, who carries a sword that can apparently pierce any kind of magical shielding, who can move fast enough to kill fifty trained soldiers in seconds. She can dictate whatever terms she feels like. 

Who, from all his spy-reports to date, seems to actually want the war to be over? And he continues not to be dead. She is apparently willing to negotiate with the King for his release. Whether he could have talked the King around on the ceasefire with logical arguments is unclear, but backed by the threat of a foreigner who could singlehandedly annihilate them, it's...simpler. A lot of things are simpler that way. 

:I think we could commit to using no blood-magic for the duration of peace talks: he allows. :Use that time to negotiate a more permanent agreement: 

"Thank you. It is not my desire, at all, to leave Predain impoverished, or unable to defend itself. But building a durable peace is very difficult and it will require both sides to give up things that are very important to them, things that will be very possible to arrange for when more trust exists."

He's so tired. 

:I am impressed that you talked Urtho into this: he sends. 

(Urtho isn't someone who will respond to arguments of the form 'the foreign stranger will flatten you if you don't do what she wants.' He's - principled - and usually that's a good thing.) 

"Urtho wants peace too. Do you have any questions for me?" She's really hoping for Mindspeech contact again soon to get another clarification of the situation everywhere else; she misses having Telepathic Bonds with all her key people.

Urtho could have indicated at literally any earlier point that he wanted peace, Ma'ar doesn't say. 

:Do you actually have a line of communication with our King: 

The Tantaran Mindspeakers on site are extremely busy and overwhelmed trying to get long-range communications out to other sites and ground all of the gryphon scout-parties that were further out when this happened and relay orders that General Judeth is barking out as fast as she can. They're kind of assuming that if Iomedae needs to talk to them urgently then she will in some way indicate this. 

One of them will contact her another ten seconds later, though. 

:What's happening? Is it Ma'ar?: 

:Yes, it seems to be. He says that he didn't authorize this and Gated in to tell his people to stand down. We're still trying to salvage the ceasefire. Updates from elsewhere?:

"We do not have a line of communication with your King at this time. I am planning to send the monitor and some of your captured troops once things have calmed down, but if you have a better suggestion I'm listening."

There are in fact no signs of attacks elsewhere. They are having some trouble convincing gryphon scout parties to land and stay there while this is sorted out. They've been in touch with Urtho, who was initially very panicked at the suggestion that she might be about to kill Ma'ar and wants her to try to avoid doing this?? Also he wants to know if there's anything he should be doing, right now. 

Is the Predain monitor okay? She tried to reach him at what must have been a really absurd Mindspeech range, and managed a couple of brief exchanges and then dropped out of contact, which usually indicates a Mindspeaker pushing themselves past the point of backlash into actual unconsciousness.