They say that the Knight-Commander of the Fifth Crusade is so clever that she beat the Hellknights at the game of contracts and that's why Paralictor Derenge works for her now. 

"Wait, we're seriously going to go charging off alone into the incredibly cursed wilderness to rescue the Hellknights?"

"We're obliged by the worldwound treaty," repeats Kalika for roughly the thirtieth time today, not really paying attention.

She spent the morning delegating keeping the main bulk of the army moving in the correct direction, and making Seelah recite the emergency response checklist from memory every five minutes (this is not really an ideal use of Seelah but going anywhere near Chelish worldwound forces would be an even worse use of Seelah, and what's her alternative for a competent response team command? Sosiel? Nenio?) and is now leading the way south along the riverbank, tapping out a metronomic pacing rhythm with her gauntleted knuckles against her breastplate. It annoys her when people walk at an inconsistent speed and screw with her travel distance estimates.

(Seelah, back at camp, is a little bit uncertain she is fully qualified for this job but she is a real spellcasting paladin now with a horse and everything and so she is not per se nervous, and mostly she is really proud of herself. Kalika is like this about the checklists with everyone; a lot of people end up quite demoted after a day of it, but Seelah just got a resigned well, I guess probably you won't all die and a vaguely supportive shoulder-pat. She will absolutely take that.)

"See, this is why no one trusts you, Woljif," Lann admonishes. "It's important to keep your agreements! Even mongrels know that!"  

"First off, who cares," begins Woljif, glancing at the commander in case the answer is 'she does.' 

... TING ting ting ting TING ting ting ting ... 

Right then. "...and secondly, I have read the entire treaty," it was suddenly relevant to his life, okay, plus nobody bothers a wizard with a book in hand unless it's really important and he's a proper real wizard now, he can cast haste, "and it does not say that! The rules about refusing aid to allied forces have dozens of caveats about how you don't have to commit suicide if it won't help and even if you have a reasonable expectation that it'd be possible for you to improve the situation without just dying uselessly, which I think we could totally reasonably claim not to, there's a radius of obligation distance based on the highest circle caster under your command, which is Nenio, and she's not even fourth circle yet, she'd have to be fifth before we'd be in range if Yaker's map was right."

There's a long pause while Lann tries to pretend he understood more than a quarter of those words in that order. 

"Okay, I admit that having wizards around is worth it sometimes," giggles Daeran, admiring this facial expression.  

"I strenuously disagree. Treaty law is boring as rocks." 

"Nenio actually has this really interesting book about how to tell the difference between geologic and elemorphic igneous rock subspecies, it matters for diamond mine stability apparently--"

"Why must you immediately prove me wrong? What did I ever do to you, Jefto?"

"Sorry, sorry." Kalika loves random rock facts and it is doing a number on Woljif's ability to have normal conversations with non-wizard people which was frankly already not awesome. "But seriously, I'm pretty sure it would not be hard to convince an arbitrator that we didn't have to. But we are doing it anyway. Because why!"

... TING ting ting ting ...  

. [Say nothing.]

"Maybe because whatever got a bunch of Hellknights is going to be really fun to fight," proposes Camellia, a little dreamily.

Woljif squints suspiciously at Kalika. "She fuckin would, wouldn't she." 

"Regrettably, yes."