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A utilitarian Easterner lands on Vanyel during the Karsite War.
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"Good." Janos smiles and relaxes slightly. "I'm very glad."

His next questions are all prefixed with the same "is it the case to the best of your knowledge" and suffixed with "are you confident your knowledge is good," and amount to:

- What did those early skirmishes look like? Were they pressing inwards towards Valdemaran territory, or falling back?

- Is Karse in fact using blood magic, and (with an apologetic glance to Savil) is Valdemar in fact not?

- Same question about compulsions.

- Has Valdemar taken military action against any countries not already involved in the struggle? Has Karse?

- Does she know about any massacres (of either prisoners or civilians) carried out by either side?

- How about truce violations?

- Murders of envoys?

He'll let her talk if she's spilling useful information about the war, but doesn't intend to press her on that under truth spell.

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Lissa is confident that the Karsites were at least trying very hard to press into Valdemaran territory, though most of their successes there were costly and temporary. Deerford was the worst and it wasn't, actually, that decisive, they would still need to break through quite a lot of inland territory to reach the river or even the nearest major road, and it's winter right now and very difficult to move. 

She cannot herself sense blood-magic use directly but she's been told by Herald-Mages she trusts that it was in use on the Karsite side? And of course Heralds wouldn't use it, that's not even slightly in question. She thinks maybe Arjan could check that himself, if he's a mage - the Karsite mages were generally executing prisoners on their own side of the Border before a battle, hauling in human sacrifices along with their troops is a lot of extra logistics. 

She personally hasn't directly experienced either side using compulsions? Not that she would know, necessarily, if some of the Karsite soldiers or mages she's faced were under compulsion, but she's not sure why they would need to be, they must be plenty motivated to fight already. She's read the Heraldic Laws and obviously those wouldn't be broken here, and there's not much call for compulsions on their side either. (Lissa seems not to have particularly considered all the cases where it would be valuable to compulsion captured enemy soldiers before releasing them.) 

Valdemar has more troops than she would like stationed to protect the Hardornen border, less because Karse is directly attacking them in any authorized army action - she doesn't think they are - but there's just a lot of chaos there, and desperate fleeing refugees can present a threat to local farmers as well. Neither side has interfered with Rethwellan, which is in any case guarding its border very, very thoroughly. 

She's not aware of anything she would call a massacre, though she thinks Karse isn't especially careful about collateral damage. There were several dozen civilian casualties in the initial attack on Horn, and since then the number on the Valdemaran side have mounted to...hundreds, she hasn't had time to check the numbers in a while but it could be in the thousands by now, General Alban would know but he's leading from further north in Dog Inn because it's more thoroughly secured. 

There have not as far as she knows been any official agreed-on truces to violate since the start of hostilities, unless the technically-on-paper peace treaty with Queen Elspeth counts, but clearly Karse was of the opinion that her death left it void. She can confidently say that Valdemar has tried. She lost an envoy from her own people at one point. Presumably they're dead. She kind of hopes they're dead, the alternative could be even worse. 

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"In that case, I'm very sorry, but I only have two more questions for you."

He pauses. "Is your name and rank Major Lissa Ashkevron, and are you Vanyel's sister and Savil's niece?"

 

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Lissa chuckles. "Good to confirm, I guess! Yes and yes and yes." 

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Oh it's so convenient talking to reasonable people. In that case - 

"Herald-Mage Savil Ashkevron, if either of you has a mirror available, would you be willing to cast a Truth Spell on me so I can confirm it is recognizably the same spell that is cast on Major Lissa Ashkevron? That is the last test I have."

And then he can just GO HELP WITH THE WAR EFFORT, and be done with all this nonsense that he has to do to pretend he's a better (or at least less ambitious) person than he in fact is.

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"Clever!" Lissa glances at Savil. "Does it even show in a mirror? I've never thought about that." 

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"It does, yes. I'll go ask the Healers if we can borrow one." 

She leaves Lissa and Janos and heads out to do this, shutting the door behind her. 

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Lissa sits down on the table, legs swinging. "I think we're going to get along," she says cheerfully. "You're - how do I say this - you're careful. Like Van. No wonder you two approve of each other. He's– he's pretty special." She laughs. "Though I'd probably say that anyway, being that he's my baby brother and all." 

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"Care in planning, speed in execution, courage in crisis." It's much worse poetry in Hardornen than in the imperial language. "Herald Vanyel is an extremely reasonable person, with admittedly the unfortunate exception of self-preservation. I've already told everyone else, but I may as well tell you - if he ends up in one of your posts, please make sure he has bodyguards?"

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She snorts. "I'll certainly try my best! Hard to get him to listen to me - siblings, y'know?" She tilts her head to the side. "You got any siblings back in the Empire?" 

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"I have a great many cousins." Some of whom regularly try to kill him! Three of whom he aided and abetted the assassinations of! One of whom is the best general alive! "I suspect that that is close, for some purposes."

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"I'm not close with any of my other younger siblings. Come to think of it, Savil mostly doesn't speak to my father. I guess it's kind of just me and Van who have anything in common." 

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This is the point at which Savil gets back, with a small, slightly dented copper hand mirror. "Will this do?" 

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He nods at Lissa. Yep, matches his pattern, too. "You're the only ones fighting Karse?" he says, voice slightly wry -

And then he is saved from Lissa's reply by Savil's arrival! "Yes, thank you."

And then he'll wait to be truth-spelled, check that the halo is present and that the spell cast seemed to be the same one as on Lissa, and start murmuring statements to himself in the Imperial language, all of which are about extremely banal claims in his past and one of which is false enough to make the truth-spell go away! This, at any rate, is his plan.

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The Truth Spell shows up in a mirror! Not very clearly, but probably this is mostly the fault of the mirror's quality. 

It stays up for all the things he says that are basically true, and vanishes for the definitely-false statement. 

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Excellent! In that case, it's time to see just what he can do.

He nods firmly. "Then in that case, I am prepared to wholly commit to Valdemar's cause; land and weather willing we can have the war over by next winter. If we have time, I'd like to see the state of the army, camp, and river today, but -" he glances at Savil "- you're very busy and I don't know if you have the time, today."

(He's desperate to do it, actually, but he doesn't want to stretch Savil's patience with him any further.)

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Savil shrugs. "I don't have time to do it myself, but there are some meetings I should have while I'm down here anyway, you might as well get someone to show you around Horn and over by the river. Lissa, can you take care of that?" 

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"Sure!" Lissa would sorely like to do it herself, though she can't really justify it, but– actually there's totally an argument that she's better placed than anyone else to answer his questions as they come up. And no one can actually stop her. 

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"Excellent." He bows slightly. "I will depend on you, then, Major Ashkevron."

All right. Just what are the winter conditions of the Army of the South Trade Road like?

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From what he can tell, not great! 

The town of Horn itself is heavily overcrowded. Not that the townspeople seem to mind; it's clear that a number of them are profiting from the situation. On the main street, in addition to the shopfronts that must predate the war, there are stalls selling a wide variety of services: haircuts, clothing repairs and tailoring, laundry, boot-polishing, and so on. 

Most of the Guard force is still camped in tents, though they're relatively permanent-looking installations. They're clearly putting a lot of effort, and probably magic, into maintaining adequate latrine facilities. 

The river, which runs almost right next to the road, is mostly frozen over. North, the road itself is kept sort of clear, using a mix of magic and nonmagical snowplowing and application of grit. It's not very cleared; a person on foot could go on easily, a person on horseback without too much difficulty; a single wagon could pass, but would be substantially slowed. You could not march an army up it, not at this time of year, not without throwing a lot more effort and magic into clearing it properly. 

Janos can't get a good look at road to the south; the Guard garrison is mostly on that side of the town, shielding it, and Lissa doesn't take him through. 

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That is actually much better than he was afraid of! Towns that become military bases often are overcrowded, and latrine facilities are what really matter. If the river's frozen over and the road south is impassible to armies, the Karsites would need either a lot of magical transportation or experienced winter troops (Janos has learned not to underestimate just how fast ski- and snowshoe-equipped troops can move if they grew up with the winter), and both are unlikely on the scale required. He's going to want to look at the organization of the camp (Imperial legions are trained to pitch their tents in a neat grid then build a palisade around it, but most of the rest of the world isn't that organized) and ask a lot of intelligent-sounding questions about where they're getting heat from (firewood supplies?) and what they're doing for forage for horses and how they're bringing in supplies and what they can do to cope if there's an unusually heavy snowstorm or word of light Karsite raiders or...

He's also wondering about troop equipment; he assumes they're less heavily armored than imperial soldiers, if metal's more expensive, but do they have crossbows and artillery and field engineers, and if so, what do they look like?

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Lissa cheerfully does her best to answer his questions, when the answers aren't visible to his eyes. She's pretty sure that the Karsite army does not have experienced winter troops. They have Adepts, including at least one very talented Adept, but Gating large numbers of people isn't that feasible with Karse's known Gate-techniques any more than with Valdemar's - Karse is if anything slightly behind Valdemar in terms of training Gifts - and Gates are also instantly detectable to the Web, at which point Vanyel or even Savil can distance-cast and blast it. Karse, understandably, has mostly avoided taking the risk even for smaller raids. 

The camp is not organized in a neat grid even a little bit. The tents are pitched in rows with space to walk between, but on a larger scale the layout is haphazard. The soldiers are in fact much less heavily armored than imperial soldiers would be, though most of the higher-ranked officers have shield-talismans. There is no sign of any artillery, and Lissa's reaction to that question is one of surprised awe and curiosity; she's heard of the concept, but only very vaguely. Lissa says that they mostly have archers with longbows; Valdemar can build crossbows, but can't afford the expense to build very many of them. They do have a small number of field engineers who can build improvised rams and trebuchets, but the siege train hasn't actually had much to do at this camp; they're not crossing the border to besiege the nearest Karsite fortifications. 

Firewood and supplies and forage for the horses are all an enormous pain, in winter, but they're managing, with significant help from the villagers of Horn, who know the area. They're having to range further for wood now, but should have sufficient stock of hay to last out the rest of the winter. To the extent it's possible, they use weather-barrier spells, or a less magically costly weatherproofing spell that Savil knows and that makes canvas tent walls more airtight. In a heavy snowstorm, they have enough firewood stored in accessible locations in the camp to last several days, and there are two Herald-Mages stationed here who could contribute magical heating and snow-clearing. They have a number of plans for rapidly responding to advance warning of a raid or larger attack, and drill them regularly. 

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Janos wonders how easy recruiting and/or assassinating their very talented Adept would be! Not out loud, Valdemar might disapprove of assassinations or Imperial recruitment methods. In his head. He is glad that Valdemar has the Gift-advantage; his main worry about smaller raids would be either mountaineers (used to winter conditions) or mercenaries from countries with harsher winters creeping in either with foot or light cavalry, to cut Horn's supply lines. He doesn't expect these to work, not if Valdemar has local popularity, just that it's something to defend against.

Janos thinks that neat grids are good and they might eventually be worth adopting - it's more navigable, and every tent having a home address lets you set up quicker in the evenings and pack up quicker in the mornings, not to mention defend against surprise attacks, and the initial grid and palisade are often a good starting point for towns. It would take a lot of training, though; most of the Empire's rivals haven't managed it.

Longbowmen are excellent! The training costs are immense, though, but the bows themselves are fairly cheap and they're much more effective against lighter-armed infantry (like the kind Valdemar - and presumably Karse?) have than they are against Imperial heavy infantry or Adepts. He's somewhat curious if the preference for longbows and the reduced armor means they have more sword- and spear- men (who can carry large shields, which are much more valuable if you have lighter armor and less penetrating missiles) than tight-formation pikemen, or if the advantage of pikemen against cavalry charges is enough that they're still dominant in the west.

As a substitute for being annoyed at their field engineers for being bad at their jobs, he is going to turn that into being really enthusiastic about how they will shortly be the best field engineers in the best half of the continent. In general, though, he's reasonably impressed; Valdemar may not be used to fighting wars, but the army doesn't look bad at it.

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"Tell me about it!" Lissa says with a dramatic sigh, when he mentions the training cost for longbowmen. "We can't feasibly train new recruits for it at all, so all we've got are the specialists who trained up before the war started, and anyone who came in already competent with a hunting bow. We probably do rely less on pikemen than your Empire does - for one thing, the Karsites are relatively light on cavalry." She grins. "I'm sure the engineers would love to meet you, though I don't think there'll be time for that today if you were thinking you'd head back to Haven when Savil does." 

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"There will be more days," he says, "especially after I'm in better shape to Gate." He's thinking of - equipment, organization, drill... how to make Valdemar's army not just good, but the best. Why would he wield an army that was anything short of the best it could be?

(Also, although he knows this isn't actually true, he feels like he can do much more good here, where there's an army consisting of soldiers who are interested in advice from someone who can help them not die, than he can back in Haven, where the Heralds are non-soldiers running a war because they run everything. The Heralds need his help more, but the Southern Army wants it.)

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