The men feasted and drank for two more nights until the larders of House Shaw were showing obvious signs of depletion. Jon made good use of that time to reconnect with Elise, and every hour of the day he absolutely didn’t have to be somewhere else he spent in seclusion with her. Eventually Miss Marne’s none too subtle reminders couldn’t be ignored, though, and last night he gave the order to start packing things up first thing in the morning.

Even now, just after sunrise he couldn’t completely focus on watching his rag tag army as they quickly broke camp, because it was far too distracting to watch the steady rise and fall of his lover’s breasts beneath the thin sheets of his bed. He’d seen the men go from asleep to packed in less than an hour plenty of times, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Elise look so beautiful until right at this moment. The way the orange glow of the sunrise made the white sheets almost translucent as the light caught her sleeping form just right was a work of art. It would have made a fine painting, but he lacked the artistry to capture it, and he would never let another man see her this way.

Just now Jon would have given anything to go back to bed with her, but it wouldn’t do for everyone else to be awake while he lounged around half the day instead. So, with a heavy heart, he got up and finished getting dressed while he tried not to disturb her.

It was just as well, he thought as he pulled on his boots. This had been a welcome respite, but if they stayed too long then the volunteers would just chicken out, and the fighters would start to lose their edge. They’d lost men before by staying in one place too long. A week of peace made it hard to think about how long they would have to keep fighting if they really wanted to change something. Jon understood that appeal all too well. It would be the easiest thing in the world to find a quiet little village where no one knew them and settle down with Elise. He didn’t know the first thing about farming of course, but he was sure he could find some way to support them.

All that would have to wait until the war was done, though.

With that thought he stood and kissed Elise quietly on the forehead before he made his way out of the room and downstairs into the hive of activity that was the front yard. By the time he got outside most of the tents hand been broken down and were being quickly and efficiently stowed in packs. Even with the addition, those weren’t very big, though. Other than their brands, and the odd blade, most of the men didn’t have much in the way of belongings. Even armor was relatively rare. There just wasn’t a point in this new kind of warfare. Against massed fire their opponents rarely reached them, and surrender happened as often as a real battle when the rural lords they’d fought up until now saw what they were up against.

Jon made his way slowly through the crowd, offering words of encouragement and jokes as he made his way to the Dalmarin section of the tents. They were easy to find because they were moving slower than everyone else, but they’d learn in time. A dozen green soldiers were just more mouths to feed. They wouldn’t be very useful for a while, but Jon was glad to have them anyway. Everyone had started out like that once. Even him, a long time ago. He quickly banished that uncomfortable thought as he focused on seeming serious for the new recruits.

“Here we are, the point of no return,” Jon said to no one in particular as he surveyed the group.

“Y-yes sir,” said one of the men who couldn’t have been older than 16.

“If you want to change your mind and stay here where it’s safe, now’s the time to do it.” It was the usual challenge he gave the newest volunteers because even though he didn’t understand why it made them less likely to stay behind instead of more, but it certainly seemed to. There was something in a challenge that men responded to, and even in some cases women, though there were less than two dozen of those in his army, and most of them were from the cannery where this had all gotten started.

“No sir,” the boy answered more fiercely than he’d expected, “We’ve had enough of the shorties, the same as everyone else. We’ll never be free until they deal with us fairly.”

Jon looked around the group, meeting everyone’s eye except an older man who was dousing the campfire and a redheaded boy who faced away from him while he broke down his tent. It didn’t seem like they were going to stop doing what they were doing just to listen to him, and he could respect that.

“Remember that, in the days ahead,” Jon said solemnly, “Once you get on that train this afternoon, there’s no turning back. We’re going to blaze a path across the continent, and with every battle we will be one step closer to taking the White City itself.”

Jon turned to leave, but a different man spoke up as he started to walk away and he paused.

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“Umm... sir… Jonathan - I’m not really sure what to call you, but I uh - I had a question.” Jon looked at him. This was someone he’d seen around since he’d been back. He was an older man that had the look of drinking too much on his face which spoke to some kind grief, though Jon didn’t know what. “Some people are saying we aren’t even going to fight a war. That you’ve got a secret plan to lure the enemy as far west as you can, and then you’re just going to bypass them and take the capital while it’s undefended. Is that true?”

Jon smiled. “Well, if that was my secret plan, I couldn’t very well tell you that, now could I?”

He kept that smile as he walked away, letting them think they were in on some great secret, but as he walked to the stables to gather a few things from his saddlebags and say goodbye to his horse, he reflected that the only secret here was that that rumor had lasted so long. It was an idea that he’d had, a long time ago, but even before he shared it with people he’d already decided it wouldn’t work. A small force like his might be able to take a city of that size, but they could never hope to hold it, and eventually every soldier they didn’t fight on the way there would come back to haunt them.

Regardless, it had started as almost an inside joke with Rian, but it had quickly become something more. Jon didn’t try too hard to banish it though. It was a good escape valve for the imaginations of the men, and the idea that he would use the dwarvish train system to circumvent the armies on the field wasn’t entirely different than what he was actually going to do with them, so it was fine with him if they decided to frame him as a secret military genius. The truth was the opposite. He was just a man with a grudge and a couple of good plans, one of which revolved around a very specific battlefield that he would need to face the bulk of the enemy strength on if they had any real hope of victory.

He fed his horse one last apple as he thought all this through. They were getting close now. So close he could smell it, but sadly because of the size of the boxcars involved and the amount of men and supplies he needed to take, there was no room for the wagons and horses. Just squeezing in half a dozen mules that were an absolute must for the plan was going to take some doing.

The walk to the burned out wreck that had once been the station in the cool air was not the relaxing stroll that it would have normally been because the whole town was swarming with activity. Once upon a time, when he’d walked to work to start his days with Boriv, he’d see less than half a dozen people, and it the winter he’d see none at all, even though this was the main street of Dalmarin. This morning though, everyone was out, looking to get an early start.

Some were loading gear, trying to buy last minute supplies from one of the shops, or finding a place in one of the cars up front. Jon wasn’t concerned about that. Half the men would be riding on top of the rail cars, and even if that was a little scarier, they would still be infinitely more comfortable than those that wedged themselves into dwarvish passenger compartments. Even after they took the two spare cars off the spur and hooked them on to the rest of the train they would still only have 11 cars to work with. For anything else that would have been all the space in the world. It was almost enough to fit half of Dalmarin’s harvest, but over two hundred men took up a lot of room, and any way he sliced it there simply wasn’t enough space for the men, their ammunition, and their supplies.

Jon worked with a dozen men for most of the morning to try to solve this problem, and the answer turned out to be rope. Once they’d loaded all the cars to bursting, and heaped the coal car as high as it was safe, they started loading crates on to roofs and covering them with some impromptu netting to keep them there secure. When all was said and done, Jon looked over the work, and he was sure that he’d never seen anything less dwarven in his whole life. He was sure if Kaspov knew what he was doing he would walk all the way from Khaghrumer and shoot Jon himself, but at least he’d get a good laugh from the site of what Jon had done to this poor train before that happened.

“Well, you think you can get her up to speed with that much cargo?” Elise asked, surprising him.

“Not a problem,” Jon answered, not entirely sure if that was true as he turned to her.

“So is there room for two up front?” She asked hopefully.

“There’s room for three dwarves or two people that like each other very much,” he answered, watching her smile broaden as he spoke, “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to ride further back in one of the cars with everyone else. I’ve asked Rian to save you a spot on—”

“What, why?” she asked, confused. “Don’t you want to spend some extra time with me… I mean it’s a long way, and if we were alone, well…” The promise of her words lingered in a way that was just enough to make him blush, but it would be hard to explain to her all the reasons that was a bad idea. The engineer's cab got incredibly warm, and as easily as he could solve that problem for himself, it would be far more risky to try to regulate her temperature as finely.

“That will have to wait until tonight I’m afraid,” he answered with a shake of his head. “If you’re in there with me then I can hardly shovel the coal and turn the valves.”

Disappointed, she left with nothing but a lingering kiss, and he watched her leave for a moment before he whistled and walked to the cab. It was cramped enough that being in here with anyone would be practically impossible, no matter how desirable it might be. The engine was simmering somewhere well below the operational range, but it still had enough steam for him to pull the cord and issue two stiff blasts on the whistle.

That was everyone’s five-minute warning. That was all the time he needed to open up the furnace and start shoveling in a dozen pounds of coal. He thought about just using magic to heat the boiler, but that decided he should save his strength. From here on out that would be a wise policy, just in case.

Who knew what they would find around the next bend in the track.