Finley couldn't yell at Bob for being late. That would be shitty.

But Bob strolled in at least past the time that he should have and it was apparent that he had been working on the circles. If nothing else, the bags under his eyes meant something.

This meeting was for the four of them. They were going to hash out some decisions before they presented it to the council.

They had tracked a large passage through two steep mountains for half a day. That was the sign that they would all meet up.

"We need to figure out if we want to go to the river delta west and then if so do we want to go by air or by sea?"

Bob opened the door. Everyone was already conspicuously looking.

"Valerie."

Bob nodded his head indicating that he needed her to follow him.

Finley sat back, wishing that he had brought some fruit to eat to see the show. Valerie didn't budge for a moment instead. Looking like she needed him to explain himself before she wouldn't even consider the notion of her leaving a council meeting.

"Valerie," Bob said. "They are on the move. I need your brain."

All three of them ran out to check. Bob was holding two blue rocks. He revealed the rocks, both with a representation of an orc on them. There was one of these each on the circles. Then there were two Red rocks that were slightly away from the blue. Finley saw that put the green thing somewhere in the north, If he was catching the meaning of what Bob was doing.

"Does this mean that the one of the death knights is on the move?"

Valerie took knee and brought out her binder of notes, her moving a notebook and a charcoal nubbed pencil. Finley and the two men stood there waiting as she calculated The likelihood of the three of them having to actually do something.

It didn't take long but it felt like hours. He knew because he saw how fast he was scribbling, but he breathed slower and slower.

Valerie did not have a flare for the dramatic. What she did have was a real desire to not be caught with her pants down in the middle of a calculation and have those assumptions turn out to be wrong.

By contrast, Finley had internalized a strong desire to not push the dwarf to go any faster than she could. Some of the calculations that she was making started to spin in his head as he examined them closer. His accounting card, a relic of his first days with the caravan pinged.

He could see numbers solving themselves in the air, grouped into matrices of four and six.

That got his attention.

Uncommon Class Card: Accountant Level 3

Skills:

Writing Level 5

Books Level 4

Mathematics Level 7

Eidetic Memory Level 9

As an accountant, you can store complex mathematical matrices in your head and perform functions on them.

His mathematics skill had advanced by one point, to his estimation. That had absolutely been not what he was intending.

A card level was a card level. And a skill level was a skill level and he wasn't going to turn any of those down. Any one of those these skill levels could prove crucial in the next steps... Steps that he was certain that they wouldn't have to take. He had an itch to do some multiplication, a delicious new experience that was all new to him. It felt like the way that cheese tasted.

Valerie was close to finishing. Finley checked her math, and she was right.

"Where did you get one hundred span from?" He said, making her jump three feet into the air.

"How did you know that?" Valerie said.

"I looked at your notes and sort of knew. That's not something that I did consciously. It was a card skill."

"Right..."

The explanation was going to have to wait. The fact that he could help her with her math now with his accounting card... It meant that they might have more in common that he actually wanted to have with the little dwarf girl. Besides the whole being a survivor of a continent wide zombie apocalypse that is.

"All right, I'm hitting one hundred span. Distance? Speed? What does that mean in practical terms?" Anthony said.

"The death knight is moving."

"No shit, Bob."

"The death knight is moving faster than we can or have."

Finley looked north as if he would be able to see the dragon by this time.

"I have two questions for all of you," Anthony said. "The first question is would it be faster if we were in the river with a wind assist. The second question is how fast can we make this thing go?"

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

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After a ton of grumbling and a short meeting with the entire group, Anthony got the consensus. Then he checked that twice. Then he had the heads of each department as he was calling them check twice. What he did not want to do was leave anyone behind.

That would not suffice.

That death knight had proven itself so capable as to send a messenger. The invitation to single combat, he considered to be behind them. Bob was not going to give him an easy fight. What he was going to do was have the people that work with him make it as difficult as possible to attack them.

One on one? How about one on an Army?

Sighing, Anthony leaned on his goblin commander card.

He set an ambitious plan to make the dragon follow them. It would go through the river delta all the way down to the Southern Ocean. He had Brandon working on the water underneath the ship moving it forward. Then he had a slight lift provided by all of the people that had chosen fire affinity cards. They weren't off the water, but they did make the ship a little bit lighter. The final piece de resistance was the amount of wind they began to pour into the sails. With one of the monks as a spotter, they steered it past around the fjords and then to the river Delta.

Of course, this was asking for them to just light it up because soon after they moved, darkness fell. That was when Stella and Bob began to have to light up the decks and clarify where the river was and where it ended.

Mercifully, the river was deep enough for them to navigate so long as they stayed mostly in the center.

They spent all night like that, working the way downriver using the monks as spotters. It looked like the promised rest that Anthony had really tried to give his guys was not going to appear. In the back of his mind, he added another thing to his to-do list. Of course he would be giving them all vacations. Once they resolved the situation on the southern ocean and got the help they needed... They would establish a real base operations for the next phase of the campaign. At least that was his intent. Surely, every living Dwarf would want to return to their Homeland to reestablish it. Surely any government of any size and they would want to help out.

Their status as chosen might pave the way.

He could only hope.

When the sun rose in the next day, Anthony only slept for a few hours. Despite there being an enormous amount of goats and humans there was more than enough work to go around.

Several goats that had fire bending cards were getting burnt out. The air bending goats broke wind continually that night. The two water bending goats worked themselves dry.

He wasn't fully rested. He could have used a blue ox energy drink and about a triple shot of espresso in his latte. He was still alive and that was all that counted. Not only him, but the entire Caravan was still alive.

"Anthony, a word?" Bob said, coming in from the deck.

"Please give me some good news," Anthony said.

"I'm afraid that I'm all out of that," he said, squinting. "Is it always this dark and gloomy in here?"

"I'm keeping the shades closed because I want to look cool. But also-this is key-Sonya didn't want to get dressed," he said.

A pair of scrubs hit him in the head with about the same strength as a newborn kitten.

"I got you," he said. "No big deal but I just thought you would know that it looks like they are directly north of us."

Anthony's eye twitched.

"Are they now?"

"If we're using the river as a north-south line then yes. It is either on the river or flying over or something."

"More dragons?" Anthony said.

"Almost certainly. No I wouldn't put it out of his way to have some contract with the magical leopleuridon. That we all think is going to come attack us at any point in time."

"You think that Vanessa's going to come over here?"

Bob gave him the look that I meant that he didn't want to answer that question. Anthony blinks and a pair of scrub pants hit Bob in the face.

He stood there, stoically taking the assault. It wasn't everyday that he got to get hit by a master warlock. Heck, Anthony had told her that he was a target so he wasn't surprised.

"Say what you mean," she said mumbling under the covers.

"We don't think that but we can't rule it out and too many things are turning out to be way too correlated or coincidental. Honestly, if I was the Flesh Weaver I'd be tracking us down. Seems like he has powers to do so. This makes him uniquely suited as our enemy because of how much ground we have to cover to get to a safe place."

"This is with us all deciding to head to the Southern Ocean and beyond to try and get some support. Do you think that they any chance to overrun us?" Anthony stood up to finally put pants on. For once, he put his old scrub pants on after Bob handed them back. It was like putting on an old glove, except that it smell like Sonya and in no way was a glove.

In a semi-darkness, He couldn't find his scrub top anywhere, but that was all well and good. He could go bare chested. Everybody had seen him naked and they were all adults a out it except for Valerie.

He took the time to find his shirt.

Out in the fresh bright sun, he reconsidered getting up and also not having black out curtains. He was going to have to ask Andrew if they had paint, or find some paint himself. He was certain that there had been some paint in one of the mansions on the promontory.

He would need to find it when he had a chance.

Moving to the back to the ship he looked to see if there were any dragons on the far horizon. Seeing none, he checked out the riverbeds on either side. It looked marshy on either side as if he was floating through the Amazon. Several large reptiles took a chance to pop up and size them up.

Anthony gawked at the display.

The alligator with six legs had to be the worst of the bunch. Swimming alongside the ship, it made him rethink using the water. They were making good time as the balloon got stitched up and reassembled.

The local fauna were getting to be a bit friendly.

One attempted a bite on the back of the ship, causing him to reel back.

"It's not a zombie. It's a real life six legged gator and it doesn't think that the ship is tasty."

He realized that they hadn't named the ship. Was that a good omen? One of the goat dwarves would know better, and ask to use the old name. It wouldn't capture the magic of what Anthony wanted to do with it.

He looked up, consider his next move.

Far north, he could make out a spout of black flame.

"Alright," he said. "We know that they're coming for us. How do we lay a trap here?"

Bob sidled up next to him, Valerie in tow.

"I told the adjutant that she has to be mindful that we are all adults here. Sometimes that means we will be in various states of undress. We're all basically professionally homeless wanderers right now," Bob said.

"Professionally homeless? That's about right," Valerie said. "Oh fuck. There they are."

Valerie pulled out a silver embossed looking glass to examine their quarry.

"Bob! Are you ready to fuck with these guys?"

"Am I ever. You think that he is just going to lay himself down on a plate for us then?" Bob said, cracking a smile.

Some of the caravan didn't mind killing the undead. Bob and the scouts lived for it, or they were masking some serious trauma. Either one would be enough for him to call in Sonya.

"All right, Valerie. I have one idea. I assume that you have a good idea here as you want to set a trap for them."

"Do you want me to make this plan and then you'll sign off on it? I'm ready for that. Put me in, Coach," she said.

Anthony's side eye game was legendary but he couldn't make heads or tails about how she had known that idiom.

"Stella told me that would throw you off. I guess that means that I owe her a steak or something," Valerie said.

"A plan, Valerie, give us a plan," Bob said.

"Besides running away? Well I guess we could use the natural environment or advantage. If we're down here on the ground, will be easy pickings for them. In the sky they'll have the advantage as they can move faster and turn better. What we need," she said, pointing to the mountains they just passed. "...is something like that where we can catch them. We need to make them fly through that passageway. Then we can find something to spring on them."

"A falling rock trap? Fire trap? Crossbow assault?"

"All of the above."

"This sounds like a goat rodeo, uh no offense Gigi," Anthony said. "Let's see if we can do this. Ring the bell to get everyone up. Playtime is over."