If she puts effort into avoiding any signs of civilization, she can make it a considerable distance before she runs into anyone, and then it's a hunter who scatters as soon as he sees her.

Eventually she will have put serious distance behind her, though, and even with her belt her horse is getting tired.

Right. She'll slow the horse, then, and start looking for trouble. Well, for civilization. 

The nearest civilization looks like... if she searches... fields? Pretty large cleared space with various small villages; if she has good eyesight she can see a town off in the distance with a stone tower, though it is, in fact, a ways off.

She'll go towards the town. She's ideally looking for an imperial patrol, but if she can't find one she'll hitch her horse outside of town and walk in on foot.

This village is not presently occupied by an imperial patrol!

Then she will bypass it! She's putting anyone she talks to in substantial danger and that's a rude thing to do without good reason. She rather wishes she could speak the language without sprouting enormous feathered wings, that'd be nice, but as it stands her options are mindreading, which she broadly doesn't do to people who aren't her enemies, or wings. 

She will reach another village with an imperial patrol in it eventually, if she keeps searching, but it's going to take a while. Most villages might have patrols pass through irregularly, but do not, as a general rule, have a patrol in them at any given moment. There's more villages than patrols, is the thing.

And it's a very good thing, or revolutions would be pretty impossible. 

She can ride all day, if not keep the horse at a gallop all day, until she sees something noteworthy. The ideal thing is in fact a patrol that is not in a village, on the road, but if there's one in a village she will probably still approach once she finds it.

She's not sure how long it'll be until the absence of the patrol she already killed is noticed, and she really really wants there to be a lot of problems by then such that that one doesn't stand out specifically and such that 'kill everyone near where there were problems' is not within the Empire's capacity. 

She does in fact run into the ideal thing first! Same deal as the previous one; twenty men, officer, underofficer, mage. 

The officer in charge of the patrol will tell her to halt and will then be very suspicious about a horse that looks imperial issue, if he gets that long.

Oh, he does. She'll halt. It's definitely an Imperial horse.

:I identify myself not by name but as a paladin of Aroden, god of civilization. I consider myself to be at war with the Empire, but have not yet had the opportunity to communicate a declaration of such, and I prefer not to start fights in a war I have not declared, lest there was some hope for us to do something other than kill each other right here.:

"Servant of a god, you name yourself enemy of the Empire?"

They are... kind of surprised one person is willing to start a fight with All Of Them? And isn't doing it by stealth?

:Yes,: she says agreeably, dismounting. :Or at least, of the Empire in Oris; I haven't decided if I have broader enmity with the Empire than that. I can explain why I have chosen this path, if you would like to know.:

The imperial patrol is now starting to suspect the road may be surrounded by Iomedae's allies and that she's just keeping them talking as a distraction, and will snap orders to check the sides of the path - 

"Because it is the will of your god. Do you yield?"

:No.: The sword glows.

Then they will attempt to ride her down and/or compulsion her and/or hit her with a lot of fire and lightning.

It is really unlikely to go well for them.

She isn't trying, this time, to take them alive, so she's given the sword speed instead on top of the brilliant energy that lets it go straight through armor both magical and mundane, and she's actually trying to put her weight behind her swing. She's sufficiently busy with this that one of the lightning bolts actually hits her, though she doesn't notice. 

Iomedae enjoys fighting people. This isn't fighting people. This is killing people and she doesn't enjoy it at all. 

She endeavors not to injure any of the horses, though realistically what's going to happen with the horses is that they'll wander off and some villager will find one and take it home and get executed for it. 

When no one is trying to kill her anymore she goes around checking that they're all dead, taking shield talismans, and looking for anything else potentially useful for orienting - written orders? Keepsakes from home? 

There are written things they have on them! One was on an officer, one was on a mage. She can't tell if they're orders or not because she doesn't read the local language.

The younger officer had a little locket with a note in it and a lock of hair. The mage had some paper with sketches of faces. A couple of the troopers had dice, and some of them had jewelry that did not look anything like the locally-manufactured things she's seen. A couple of them had wax tablets with notes that hadn't been erased yet.

She thought about it last night and decided she'd be glad of having started this war if forty thousand people die in it. And if she kills them all with her own sword that's better than anyone else doing it; it's not going to affect her alignment.

It still hurts. She intends for it to always hurt. 

She buries them, the locket with the man who was wearing it, and cuts tufts of all their hair, and burns them over a campfire and prays to Aroden and to Anathei. To Anathei she prays for the redemption of these souls and all souls, and prays that everyone bound to Evil paths will see a better way, and prays that she will see a better way. 

To Aroden she lays out paths in her mind for where to travel next, for whether to declare herself openly to the Empire (or its agents who she doesn't predictably kill thirty seconds later). He didn't refresh her spells so she can presume intervention here is very expensive for Him. She's not going to ask for a hug. 

Then she'll go looking for another patrol. Even farther from her village and her church.

She can probably find one! It is very likely to go the way the last one did.

Iomedae has some principles she holds to even when she has no idea what the local principles around good conduct in war are, and then a lot more principles that are 'given that some people are trying to coordinate around that, I will help them do so'.

The principles she will hold to always are that she will not start a fight in an undeclared war, she will not pretend to be a noncombatant or even leave it ambiguous, she will not mention she has healing without specifically disclaiming whatever protections hold for healers, she will do everything in her power to accept a sincere surrender, she will try very hard to not kill slaves and camp followers and children, including children trying to kill her, she will assume responsibility for the welfare of anyone she takes prisoner, she will not pick a site of battle where bystanders might be endangered unless the alternatives are even worse on that dimension, she will not torture people, she will not force people to fight for her, she will not give people cause to fear torture or damnation or reprisals against their loved ones, she will not leave people to die slowly unless they want her to do that, she will pass along last messages and last intents as best she can, she will offer people time to think before they die if there is reasonable opportunity. 

Many people who are as Good as she are much less strict, because several of these are rules you can only have if you aren't seriously in doubt about whether you'll win any fights you get into. These are not the restrictions laid on Knights of Ozem (well, many of them are, but not all of them). These are the things that anyone, in any world, can expect of her personally. 

She will spend the rest of the night and the first half of the next day tracking down and killing Imperial patrols. She uses Keep Watch rather than sleep. She acquires new horses because her pace is very punishing for horses even when they are enhanced to the point of absurd stamina.

If survivors of imperial patrols try to run, and/or send someone to send messages, and/or some small fraction that does not die in the first twelve seconds tries to surrender, does any of this, under the circumstances, let them live?

The problem is that the sooner word reaches the Empire the sooner this gets much uglier. With no survivors, it'll be a long time before the Empire has any idea what they're facing. With even one, they could probably scry her tomorrow. 

And how much she should be willing to pay to avoid that grounds out in the general morass of unknowns ahead of her. On the one hand if the Empire has the resources to stop a paladin of her power, then they will probably eventually stop her, and there'll be a lot less bloodshed if it's sooner. On the other hand, it's not hard to imagine scenarios where they could stop her now but not in a month. If she finds the existing rebellion, for example, and it has some wizards who can shield her from scrying while she sleeps, and transport her by Teleport around the country. 

And then there are the benefits - and the costs - of having it known that the terror stalking the Empire's patrols will accept surrender from its soldiers. 

Ultimately there are compelling strategic reasons to throw a knife after people who are fleeing to warn their compatriots, so she does, but they are insufficiently compelling to make her willing to kill someone who actually surrenders even though she does expect it'd reduce how ugly this war is, on the whole, if the Empire is not warned for a long time.

When you've decided that accepting someone's surrender meaningfully increases the odds of losing the war but is worth it anyway there's a little knot to iron out inside yourself, where you don't want people to surrender, because you expect to get more of what you want if they don't try it; where you'll show them mercy reluctantly because they tripped a rule you have to follow. Iomedae does not like knots like that inside herself; they seem dangerous.

So once she's made the decision to accept a surrender if she's offered one she thinks about it, about - the thing that she's choosing, when she chooses that, choosing to maintain a little thread by which they could collectively navigate to something better even if she suspects they won't. She thinks about the officer who asked 'do you yield', because - it means something to them, too, not something where they wouldn't subsequently have put her to death but something, and she doesn't understand them, and she does not want to be killing them blindly in the dark without even any willingness to notice if there might be something better.

She thinks about it until there's no knot inside her and when someone actually attempts to surrender she is glad.

He does not look like he expected that to work, and honestly is still kind of expecting to be tortured to death back at wherever her base is? Just, you know, he and everyone else were definitely going to die if he didn't... and everyone else is still dead...

(he's slightly in shock.)