With Merdon, Sarel, Shade, and Grot back at their forward camps it was just Red and Skyeyes sitting in the tower trying to devise a way to get through Ardmach's walls. The red-scaled kobold rubbed her eyes and groaned after staring at the map of Avant for literal hours. She had no idea how Verist did it. Through an entire day and into the early evening the witch had no problems going from one piece of paper to another. From the map over to her notes, to some book on the shelf, and back to the map. Skyeyes had effectively checked out several hours ago. His knowledge of magic didn't match either of the mages by so much as half. He was there to try and offer an outsider's perspective, which had fallen off early.

Verist had determined from her samples of the stone used to make the walls that the force compounded the more materials one had. With the amount making up Ardmach's walls, the barrier around the city stretched well into the sky. It wasn't a case of simply appearing overhead and then going down, one would have to use powerful geomancy to raise a mountain next to the peak Ardmach sat upon, and, at that point, it would be easier to just aim a few cannons at the city. For a secretive infiltration, the plan was a complete dud. In a similar sense, going down to the base of the mountain would take so long to get through that they'd be noticed well before surfacing. Unless there were caves already situated under the city.

"That's our best option," Verist said after nearly two days of research. The sun was setting behind her, and the trio were exhausted.

"Caves that the Avantians built themselves," Red confirmed. "According to old legends of escape routes from the city for the royals in case of siege, whereby the royalty would have to exit into the besieging army."

Skyeyes groaned, "Stupid..."

Verist shrugged and carelessly tossed her book aside. "It's that, or we tell the orcs to invest in enough black powder to sink the entire mountain."

Red pushed away from the table and stood up. "We'll call that plan A, and the caves are the plan B we try first."

"Doesn't that make it plan A?" Skyeyes questioned, his first coherent thought in hours.

"No," the mage kobold replied. "It makes caves under a fortress a massive long shot that we don't expect to pay out, but we'll send a scout for anyway." The priest could only hum disgruntledly at that explanation. Though Red was still focused on the planning. "What about the ocean?" she asked. "Avant has a navy doesn't it?" Wouldn't that be a problem for their invasion. She was surprised no one had mentioned it.

Verist, however, shrugged the notion off. "The sea is too far away for them to do anything about our land marches. Sure, they could transport troops, diplomats, supplies, but they could do most of that with magic and take a hundredth of the time to do it. Their oceanic superiority doesn't matter to our campaign, but it's something to consider once we take Ardmach." Any ambushes could happen at a moment's notice with magic, rather than slowly and with warning by deploying troops behind them. For all intents and purposes, the navy was for show in this war.

Red frowned and sat back down. "Okay, so," she paused as she considered everything once more. "That's it, isn't it? We go through the mountain of Ardmach, one way or another."

"I'll keep digging," the witch promised them, "But I can't say I'll find anything significant or useful."

Skyeyes stood up and stretched, a groan freeing itself from deep within his soul as even his tail stood off the ground for a moment. "Then we should report to Merdon," he said, looking at Red.

"Now?" she complained at being forced to stand up again. "It's not like we really learned anything new."

"No, yet it changes how we approach the finale of our campaign," he told the mage. "That's worth planning around even this early."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Verist smiled at the red mage and told her, "Oh just wait, we're moving Merdon's army in a little bit for that plan. Then you can complain."

Red groaned like an annoyed child at the thought. "Fine, I'll take Skyeyes back so we can just move him later," she whined as she stepped over to the priest to start.

Back at Merdon's camp, the human was speaking with the orcs that served under him. Lieutenants in their own right, Grot had told them to listen to Merdon. Which had led to the knight making it sound like everything he said came from the chief-of-chief's himself. It sped things along and kept the orcs from feeling too bad about taking orders from a human. Red and Skyeyes appeared in time to see the camp being set up for the night, while Merdon told the lieutenants about their next move and what they'd learned of Ardmach's plans.

The lot of them seemed more than excited to get back under Grot's command directly, and Red felt like she saw a certain weight coming off Merdon's shoulders at the notion too. He wasn't used to being in command of anything, much less an army. He didn't mind helping out with the planning but when it came to giving orders the man simply preferred someone else to do the yelling.

Once the orcs were gone and out of the way, Red stepped up to give the shorthand of their discussion with Verist. There was nothing she could do about the wall as of yet, explosions might be necessary, pray there was a hidden cave. Merdon sighed, his head hanging in defeat at the notion.

"I guess we'll just have to hope then," he admitted. "Grot and I finalized the details on our troops meeting up as well."

Red crossed her arms and asked, "Yeah?"

"Two days from now, at night. His forces will enter a mountain pass with some sparse tree cover. They'll be coming down here and we're pushing through the middle."

"Won't that open you up to being surrounded?" the mage suggested.

Merdon took a deep breath as his head bobbed once in agreement. "I said the same thing," he told her quietly, "but Grot pointed out that we'll move faster over flat land towards Ardmach directly." He paused for a moment as the sun sunk deeper into the horizon before adding, "We're on a forced march here. We're only resting a few hours the next two nights."

That caught Red off guard. "What? Why?" she practically shouted. It wasn't like she slept all that well at the tower what with listening to Verist for hours on end and having to try and plan a way through Ardmach's walls.

"We've gotten the position of the Eyes' barricade," he told her. "It's several days march ahead, but by speeding up we can push them off balance. Our forces teleport in and we rush down their defenses days in advance."

"And we lose a few dozen orcs to sleep deprivation on the battlefield," she argued.

Merdon didn't have any kind of counter for that. All he could say was, "We'll have to see."

While Red went to find a tent to sleep in, Skyeyes went back to his healers in the makeshift medical tent they had. Orcs were hesitant to be healed by human hands, but the work was never done. A steady stream of injuries were natural on a warpath. Twisted ankles, sore shoulders, backs, feet, things that could be taken care of with rest, but that was not the way of the Martyrs. They took on the aches and pains of dozens and made them their own. Which had sprung into Skyeyes' mind the solution for their forced march. When the last of the orcs were out of the pavilion, the priest gathered his little flock.

"The Whisperer has told me the next two days will be a hard march," he confirmed with his healers. A few nodded, others sighed in resignation. "This will mean tired combatants when the time comes to fight. So I'm ordering a split in our shifts."

The nun that had come to him in the tower months back stepped forward to ask, "What do you mean, good Father?"

Boldly, Skyeyes outlined his idea to them. They would work in half numbers. The first half would take the tiredness from those orcs the night before and then sleep in the supply carts while the army marched. The other half would deal with the usual aches and pains of the day, and then when the next morning rolled around the group that slept would take the days pains, while the ones that stayed awake would take to bed.

"But we will be at half strength for any battles," one of the other priests remarked.

Skyeyes agreed, but told them, "It's a sacrifice we must make, I'm afraid. We can only hope that we'll have the time to rest before the conflict with our enemies arises." Two days of marching at that pace, and then another day's march to meet them in a siege, at least.

"As the Father commands," the nun said with a bow of her head, and the others followed. Skyeyes felt the same weight Merdon did when he saw the Martyrs do that. His fist tightened instinctively at the sight. He needed to be stronger.

They were in the middle of their second day of marching when Verist appeared in a flash and ran towards Merdon. The knight pulled his horse to the side while the army continued, Red sprinting to join the pair when she saw them.

"We've got a problem," the witch panted. "Shade's group has been ambushed."