"Alfirin told you which three she wanted. - would you like to be unafraid? That is a power of paladins. It doesn't make you mistaken about your odds, just - like a very experienced veteran who is pleased with where he's headed."

It honestly seems pretty fucked up to phrase all of your orders as questions if in fact none of them are questions. It also seems pretty fucked up to essentially assure people that you're going to execute them and then offer them enchantments so that they will be okay with this. He's just going to have to get over feeling upset about any of this, though, because from now on basically everything that happens is going to be enormously fucked up and there's nothing he can do to stop it except stop giving them so much goddamn undefended flesh to attack.

- now that he's noticed that half the questions in this conversation have been orders he is suddenly unclear on whether this is in fact also an implied order to accept an enchantment. He passionately hates being afraid, but at the moment he passionately hates the idea of being stripped of it even more. He can't think of any way to figure out whether that's also defiance that doesn't make him even more vulnerable.

He says nothing.

"If there are reasons to take a different set of people first we are willing to listen and may oblige but we do in fact need to hear the reasons."

"Guim and Oriol still think you might have honor, and the others won't leave without me. We're also the weakest, and most likely to get in the way or be killed if anyone else appears or attacks us, and likely to be safer anywhere else." He has no idea if any of that is true. It might be true or it might be the complete opposite of true and he doesn't know which and doesn't care anymore. He doesn't know why he's still talking.

(Nothing is an order, she has no authority to give them orders until they've surrendered which they notably haven't. Everything she says is backed by the threat of force, which is completely different.)

"We'd prefer not to have a fight, and expect one is least likely if you and Carles go first. I would accept a surrender from your party and then not care who goes first."

What???

"What are the conditions of surrender in this period," he asks, sounding almost bored. They've lost any conceivable element of surprise they may have had. He thinks they have some chance of getting someone into the forest if they all move at once, which he doesn't think they have much hope of coordinating, but who it is will be practically random, aside from "not him", since most of the plausible scenarios where someone gets away involve Carles attacking one of them instead of getting away himself.

"You won't attempt to escape, or spellcast, or resist a teleport. You can retain possession of your things."

"Does the surrendering party get any particular benefit out of agreeing, in these circumstances."

"We'll be less paranoid about who departs in what order, or with which possessions, if we aren't expecting you all to refuse Alfirin's teleport and then try to kill me. It doesn't make me able to offer you a promise about what I'll do if we later learn that you have sold the soul of your firstborn child to Hell or something - which I am not accusing you of, I just don't know very much about this situation which makes it very dangerous to make promises about."

So, no, because their default intent is to kill all of them for things they did before meeting any of these people, and the main thing you offer people when demanding that they surrender is assurance that there is some condition under which you won't just kill them all.

"I'm morbidly curious what exactly you would do if one of us had."

"It would probably involve ensuring no such child is at any point conceived."

Iolanda resolves her blistering fury at her circumstances into a personal resolution to kill Chosen Vallvé very slowly if she ever sees him again, and possibly also some other people.

"Oh, for fuck's sake. If nobody's going to run, then at least don't spend five million years talking about not doing it. I surrender and I'll go with you."

He honestly has no idea whether to take that seriously, but at least if she's lying it's her lie and not his. "Fine. C'mon, Ferran."

Well. He tried.

"Thank you. Your pick of three, then." She is not completely sure she can trust them but - you can't build trust if you aren't willing to extend any even when the stakes are relatively low. 

"I'm not in command." She's not going to glare daggers at Carles because she has enough perspective to know that she'll probably stop being furious with him for failing to trigger a reasonable escape attempt in six to eighteen hours if nothing life-ruiningly terrible has happened to her by then.

Ferran regrets all of the things he's said so far and his new strategy is not giving them any additional information about anyone in the group.

"The three of us'll go."

He'd tell everyone to listen to Ivet while he's gone, but they are mostly not actually stupid, and it probably is a mistake to give their captors any additional information about who is or is not important, or in what ways. The ideal would be to appear to be giving them lots of information while not actually giving any of it, but Carles is not in fact specced for subterfuge at all.

"All right. We'll see you shortly."

She dismounts and holds out her hands. "Hold hands in a ring please."

They do. They even all actually take the teleport.

Great. Iomedae relaxes somewhat once they do that. 

"I don't expect it'll be long," she says to everyone else, "but I have food for anyone who would like it, and can answer questions, though probably with about as much difficulty understanding one another as we've shown to date."

Asking questions is revealing to the enemy what one finds most concerning.

Well the last time he suggested they ask Iomedae something it went TERRIBLY, so his optimism is going to need to take some time to rebound, here.