"I did, commander."

"I need you to ask Paralictor Renth what his recent losses look like. It's probably us, somehow, but - we don't, actually, have fewer people patrolling our stretch of barrier than there were along the old barrier last winter, it's not like they had Woljif either. And these aren't normal winter losses, or you wouldn't be in here puzzling over them. I want to know if the Chelish forts near here are seeing elevated losses, too."

"Understood, commander."

"Cool. I'm gonna go talk to the snowcasters."

The Ilverani squad is one of the many groups that showed up in tiny numbers to assist the crusade after the successful attack on Drezen. Unlike the other such groups, almost nobody had ever heard of them, and they came from the north, not the south. There were only six of them. They claimed to have received instructions to help directly from the goddess Findeladlara, but wouldn't elaborate on what those instructions were. They refuse to bunk with other soldiers - refuse to sleep anywhere in Drezen, actually, even on the island. They refuse to speak to most other soldiers, refuse to buy food inside the city, refuse to use any equipment granted by the crusade, and refuse to patrol in groups including other soldiers. But they do patrol, almost every day, and are the only patrol group that doesn't require endure elements.

Their camp is a few minutes outside of Drezen. Korva can make the walk without wasting someone else's endure elements, although she does need to spend a Tongues to talk to them.

     "Two of our brothers have been slain," says one of them, when she gets there. He's not the one who usually speaks, which has always been the same one before. "We ask leave to take their bodies home."

She nods. "How long will it take?"

     "We do not intend to return."

Feeling sorry for people is a mistake. It was a mistake with Staunton, and a mistake with Nurah, and a mistake with Woljif, and it'll be a mistake if she feels sorry here.

"We still need you," she says, quietly. "Until the spring, we - you're the only people who can go out there without magic. And you're stronger than most of our troops are. If - if you need to go, then you can. But I would ask you to stay, until the spring."

     "You ask us to let their spirits die," says the Ilverani. "We have only six days to return home with them."

"I don't know what that means," she sighs. "But - will a gentle repose help? Sosiel's last for ten days, now. I don't know if it helps with - whatever it is you're doing - but we use them to increase the time that a body can accept a raise dead for."

     The elf regards her levelly. Even if his eyes weren't black and featureless, she doesn't think she could read his expression. "We will accept the spell," he says. "And then we will go. We may decide to return."

She nods. "Okay. - I wanted to ask you. Do you know what kind of demon it was?"

     "Two succubi," he says. "We killed them."

Two succubi. They'd have to have gotten - pretty unlucky, to lose two people to that. Succubi should barely be able to pass through the barrier at all.

She trudges back to Drezen, asks Sosiel to go to the snowcasters and offer them two castings of gentle repose, and starts working on gathering a party to ride with her to investigate the site where they lost the most recent patrol.

She hopes she runs into something to kill.

It's only a half-hour ride to the site, if you're using phantom steeds. Real horses take all day to journey along the barrier and back, but Korva's phantom steeds are both ridiculously fast and capable of ignoring the difficult terrain. She takes Lann, Arue, Sosiel, Aivu, and Ember. No Seelah, because Seelah is currently patrolling with another group. No Daeran, because she doesn't want Daeran to see what she's going to do when she gets there, although if anyone asks it's because he hates phantom steeds.

The troops on patrol seem cheered, whenever they see her racing past. She's trying not to think too much about that. You are not a good commander if you get your people killed for no reason, whether or not the people in question realize it happened.

"This is it," she calls, when they reach the site. "Human blood was spilled here, only hours ago."

She gets down off her horse.

She only saw a part of the spell that Inquisitor Liotr used for watching past events, when they visited Daeran's old house. She had to spend half her time keeping Daeran and the other guests away, and didn't have time to observe the entire casting process. She also doesn't actually know the full set of limitations on the spell, or the circumstances under which it's useful; she hadn't asked. But she's very, very good at spell mimicry, and the violence of this place has only barely faded. So she does successfully copy Liotr's spell, and a ghostly version of the battle plays out for the second time that day.

Four Lastwall fighters, five Mendevians. Eight demons of various types. The demons are not stunned, by the time the party reaches them. They have the sharp edges and distortions of the demons that Xanthir Vang had been experimenting with, and are stronger than they ought to be. Little threat to Korva's party, if Korva were to encounter them, but this isn't Korva's party. The demons win, take a little off the bodies, and then escape, out into the Mendevian countryside.

Her party does, on the way back, get to kill something. A dozen demons come through all together, and Korva and her team swoop in to wipe the floor with them before the stuns can wear off.

It turns out that that doesn't really make her feel better about anything at all.

The member of Iomedae’s staff assigned to escorting Lastwall’s intelligence officers around has been told only that they’re trusted allies. Well, spies for a trusted ally. They are mostly here to be helpful but will also presumably be making a full report to their home which Iomedae is very very confident will not pass it along to Tar-Baphon, or to the Emperor of Taldor, or to anyone else they’re concerned with. The spies won’t speak the language, and should be granted access to most things they ask for which Iomedae’s staff are themselves permitted access to. 

It is hard to imagine what trusted ally is important enough to grant their spies fairly free access to the Crusade command - well, Alfirin, but this isn’t how she operates - but Iomedae’s staff understands it to be the case that Iomedae is, like the other gods, constantly doing things difficult for mortals to comprehend from their limited mortal perspectives, so they go along with it. 

In the morning Caida, a first-circle cleric of Aroden, brings the trusted ally’s spies some breakfast, and a copy of the in-progress holy book which the one who calls himself a historian had expressed some interest in. 

The spies are curious whether and when they will be given actual assignments here. For classified reasons they are expecting to be here for a secret-but-nontrivial amount of time, and would like to be useful while they’re here. The leadership of the Shining Crusade has as much of a sense of how long that will be as they do, and a good sense of where people with their skillsets would be most useful. Though it sounds like maybe the person they would have ultimately reported to is Marit, and he’s not here at the moment?

Caida can’t guess what assignments they will be given; Iomedae has been negotiating with Aroden (well, probably she was negotiating with Aroden for like five minutes and the rest of the time has been recovering from negotiating with Aroden, but he doesn’t say that) and it seems like something she’ll convey instructions on once she’s done with that. In the meantime they’re just supposed to help the representatives get oriented and learn what’s going on here, which will probably be useful for a wide range of possible assignments. 

(What is this trusted ally situation? He’s so confused.)

Kovets is here with the crusade in Marit’s absence. Kovets is the spymaster for liberated Encarthan - not Molthune Province, which they gave back to the Empire once they retook it, but from the Three Pines River up to the Path River. …he’s not clear on where they’re from, and what they know already.

That’s classified.

Where they’re from they are military spies though, if the Crusade has the distinction between military spies and political ones. If it doesn’t that shouldn’t be a problem, but if it does it probably makes more sense to assign them with the crusade’s military spies rather than the civilians.

How is the Crusade going? For that matter, where are they, can they have some maps? They traveled here via magic so they don’t actually know where here is.

Kovets is probably taking over Marit’s reports while he’s here though he’s normally the civilian spymaster. They can absolutely have some maps! They’re north of Urgir, having been planning to punch into Canterwall this season before deciding a week ago to take up a more defensive posture here instead.

…the Crusade is going spectacularly well, of course. It is the noblest and most cleanly fought war in the history of the Empire, and it is against an enemy so evil and so dangerous that when he first began his campaign of conquest the world despaired and many were inclined to let him roll over half of Avistan even though he was going to kill and enslave them all. In that order. But then Iomedae, who is going to be the goddess of Good actually winning, showed everyone that Tar-Baphon could be beaten, by beating him repeatedly, and now everything’s going well. Well, you know, war is hard, there’s cold and hunger and hardship, but they’re winning, which is what matters, and soon the world will be free of Tar-Baphon and his reign of terror and everyone can go back to building things instead of desperately defending them.

He is aware that this sounds slightly implausible but he can show them the old maps. They really are winning.

Wow! That sure is an impressive change in the maps. How much of that is Iomedae personally, vs. the other high-level adventurers, vs. the rest of the army?

He’s not really sure that you can distinguish like that. Iomedae is the reason there is an army here and the reason there are other high level adventurers here. There were high level adventurers before her, and armies, but they weren’t beating Tar-Baphon. On the other hand if she had to just do it personally without backup or an army then it’d stick when he’d kill her, which he still can do if he is willing to expend a lot on it. 

…it was pretty rough when, for a year or so a few years back, the Crusade didn’t have an archmage. 

Oh, what happened there? Their archmage is Alfirin, right, did they not have the diamonds to resurrect her?

No, this was when she was eighth circle. Their archmage was Arazni, who came from Heaven to help Iomedae win the Crusade. She was - not quite a god, and Iomedae not quite a god yet, but together they were definitely more than a god. Arazni could kill armies herself in the space of two, three minutes. But most importantly she could counterspell Tar-Baphon when he showed up, not with eight people clustering Greater Dispel Magic but just herself.

She died. When she died they were really constrained on what all the high level wizards could do because Tar-Baphon got bolder, they had to be ready to counter him, and they could no longer do it without vastly superior  numbers (plus of course they lost Arazni’s own twenty extremely powerful spells a day). That meant - no more regular Mansions, no more wizards digging trenches with a single seventh-circle spell, no more Mass Invisibility for whole units on the morning of an important fight or occasional Control Weather for better marching conditions. 

And then Alfirin made ninth, of course.

Huh. So Arazni died, and the crusade had no archmage for a couple of years, and now Alfirin’s at ninth. How does Alfirin compare?

Well, she’s not halfway to being a god. Probably. But Tar-Baphon cannot safely show up anywhere, and problems that take a Tsunami or an Incendiary Cloud or a Disjunction or eight mansions get solved. It’s also great for recruiting mid-tier wizards, right, those always want to hang around an archmage and see what they can pick up, though Alfirin’s never taken an apprentice.

Never? Why not?

Presumably because she hasn’t met anyone she’s sufficiently impressed with? Probably if you are an archmage and spend your time with Iomedae and Arazni and the Shining Crusade command who are all legendary heroes, other people end up coming across as fairly disappointing. 

“Well that’s no reason not to take apprentices! My brother’s a smith and it’s not like the scrawny kids he takes on are impressive when they start. They are when they’re done, though. That’s the point.”

Well, they could propose it to Alfirin, or he can ask her for them if it’s of particular interest. She in fact hasn’t taken apprentices though.

They suppose it’s not really of particular interest, and they don’t want to trouble her, but they’d expect Iomedae would have, if not directly ordered it, at least regularly gently suggested it. Or maybe directly ordered it! They don’t know how things are done around here.

Alfirin is formally contracted with the Crusade for spellcasting, not in Iomedae’s command. This has always been true, or at least as long as Caida’s been around which is more than a decade now, it’s not a new thing since Alfirin became an archmage. Obviously things that Iomedae needs to have happen happen and spells Iomedae wants cast get cast, you can’t run a war if you can’t count on that being true, but he doesn’t know the precise underlying formal commitments and wouldn’t expect them to extend to ordering Alfirin to take an apprentice if she didn’t care to.

Interesting! Is this standard for wizards with the Crusade?