Great. Do they have the luxury of choosing a time?

They do, as long as they don't take too long about it — the cultists could cross back the other way if they really tried, they'd just be facing all the same problems Blai's force is about to face, magnified wildly by the Crusade's numerical advantage.

All right. Strategy decided, he dismisses the little props representing it and they can form up and get a move on.

This battle is bloodier than the last one. The illusions help, but even with the opposing force spending half its effort on accidental (or occasionally deliberate) assaults on each other, the difficulties posed by getting the Crusade's force across the river help them to compensate well enough to take some people down before dying themselves. Casualties are particularly heavy in one of the Condemned units, where the unit commander (not, himself, part of the Condemned) completely abandons Blai's plan halfway through the battle for no obvious reason, getting himself and a third of his troops killed. (Mostly not people Blai personally sent there, though that is where they ended up putting the guy who was possibly spying on behalf of the demons.)

Still, with that one exception, losses are a bit lower than expected, well within the range of what's manageable, and when all is said and done the crusaders are across the river and the cultists are dead or captured.

Great. He wants an analysis from whoever the dead commander who just got himself and a third of his troops killed used to report to, and a shortlist of possible people who might be promoted into his shoes in case he has developed opinions on any of them in the days he's been with this army. Funeral arrangements handled? Sarenrites holding up okay with the prisoner volume? Everybody clear that today was battle spells and the Zone of Truth for anybody they need to put through one is waiting for tomorrow morning?

The guy the dead unit commander used to report to thinks that was very uncharacteristic of him, to the point that he'd assume he'd been enchanted if they hadn't done a sweep for that before the battle. He's pretty sure that's an embarrassingly short analysis so he will also attempt to come up with some other things to say (brief discussion of why he's still not ruling out the possibility of enchantment, longer discussion of what the guy's orders were and whether he could possibly have somehow thought he was following them) but that's the thrust of it.

Appointing unit commanders for the Condemned is especially complicated because in addition to all the other traits of a good unit commander there are additional constraints imposed by (on the one hand) the greater predisposition of its members to cause disciplinary problems and (on the other) the need to make sure they don't appoint someone who's predisposed to be a massive asshole to ex-criminals to a degree that makes them less effective as a unit. The shortlist include this person who had notably insightful thoughts on Mendev's corruption situation, or this person that Irabeth thinks would be a bad pick because he seems very confused about the concept of illegal orders, or this person who has an important second-cousin. There's also this person, who was sent to the Condemned about three decades ago for theft and given a pardon a decade later; he'd be a controversial pick, but he might have a good angle on the situation that the other candidates wouldn't?

Funeral arrangements are being made. The Pharasmins think they should bury them on the Mendevian side of the Wardstone barrier, they're not sure if burying them on the other side is going to run the risk of creating fiendish undead but in their opinion there's no good reason to risk it.

The Sarenrites are more-or-less managing, albeit partially by virtue of the battle having been pretty bloody on the other side and partially by virtue of having a lot of experience working in similar situations, occasionally under much tighter time constraints. (Also, they think the guy who thought he'd be good at talking cultists into repenting is well-intentioned but pretty bad at it; he's the type to think that if he just explains why being a cultist is a bad idea well enough, it'll be enough to talk them all out of it.) 

All the spellcasters are clear on spell allocations.