Where he can be joined by a rather familiar face, also mounted on horseback. 

"Iskander! I see at least one of you is setting a good example."

"G'morning. The example of sitting down instead of striding across the landscape in delight at my own physical capabilities? Yeah, she's awful that way, all, lookit me, I can go so fast."

"It makes my feet hurt just thinking about it." 

"She usedta ride more, not because her feet hurt but because she'd trip. Not any more though."

"And here I am without a spell for tripping people. I suppose there had to be a reason everyone always said wizards were better."

"People say that? Where you can hear them?"

"I'm rather a disappointment to a lot of people. Not usually for the magic, though, most people aren't wizards either and they'd have been perfectly happy if I became a paladin like my cousin."

"Well, Ky likes anything that dumps power in her lap - no, I should qualify that, there's probably loads of exceptions, but she likes Galfrey for this reason - but she likes you too on account of those promised ballads. She will be so disappointed if you don't cough up."

That might be the best reason anyone has ever given him for liking his cousin, he's delighted. Or, well - it's not that he's never met anyone it was true of, but you'd need a crowbar to pry the truth out from behind their self righteousness, and the straightforwardness is refreshing. It's not like he has a problem with appreciating bribery. 

"I'll make sure not to disappoint."

The next few days proceed largely without incident. One of Kybele's bloodying expeditions has to come back emptyhanded because the cultists managed to break contact before they arrived, but the ones she actually manages to participate in go reasonably smoothly. There are some deaths among her people, from lucky cultists and disguised demons and in one case particularly awful terrain, but she is never herself in any serious danger of being killed or defeated; it turns out that bringing superior numbers against small and disorganized groups is a fantastic strategy she should continue wherever she can manage it.

Unfortunately, the worldwound is not so polite as to let her continue her rampage indefinitely. In this case, it takes the form of a report from the crusade's advance scouts that the crossing at Villareth's ford is held against their crossing - and by a proper force of demons, to boot.

"How many is a 'proper' force?"

"Hundreds, ma'am, at the least. We weren't able to get close enough to the fort to get a good look inside, though; they spotted us before we made it to the river, and some flying demons rode us off."

"That's not ideal. River crossings under fire are always a complicated affair even when you don't have to take a fort after."

She looks down at the maps spread across the table thoughtfully.

Her range on the paper is not really good enough to do the confetti hurricane thing. Hurry up with that ballad, Daeran's friends. "Recommendations?"

"It looks like there's another ford about a half dozen miles north. It's not nearly as good, no way we'd get the wagons and such across, but we could send an elite strike force to cross upriver overnight and have them in position to hold the other side when the rest of the army is crossing."

"There's definitely a lot of upside there, but it could go badly if they see it coming. They'd be stuck over there with no way for the rest of our army to support them. Worst case scenario, they get surrounded, we lose a bunch of our best troops and then we still have to take the crossing.

"We could take it head on. We've got numbers on them; if we get out archers in position, we can force them to choose between staying behind the walls and contesting the crossing, and then once we have enough people on the other side we can force the fort itself. It'd be bloody, but if we have enough priests in the vanguard to channel we can avert the worst of it and there's not a lot of room for things to go unpredictably wrong."

"We've got a bunch of priests and wizards here, don't we? Couldn't we just make a new ford, or even a bridge where the river is thinner? Then they wouldn't be able to stop us from going across, and nobody has to be at risk."

"I don't like the loss of tempo it would cause to put a few days to that, especially not if someone's in the process of reinforcing them, but it's definitely a good thought."

"How wide a river are we talking here? I might be able to make a bridge, but I'm not enough of an engineer to do a big one, especially since the paper isn't going to hold up in the water and it has to all be above."

"A little over a thousand feet, at Villareth's ford, but it was chosen in the first place because the river gets wider and shallower there. I expect we could find somewhere half the distance without going too far out of the way, but I'm not sure about a third."

"Iffy. I can try it on dry land by way of a test but it'd be pretty visually obvious, a five hundred foot paper bridge, and give the game away to any spying demons."

She thinks about that for about half a minute, then nods decisively.

"No, I think that's worth the risk. Even if you can do it, it's not like we'd have to follow through, so we'll just have to keep a close eye on wherever you're testing it out for spies. And even if it doesn't come in handy at the river, there's a good chance it'll let us avoid problems at the Leper's Mile canyons - even just having the option to cross in places might free us up a lot. Is there anything we can do to make it more likely to succeed?"

"I'm going to be concentrating on the paper, so someone else'll need to be on the spy-spotting... also I'm not sure how to measure five hundred feet without a river in front of me."

"We can have someone standing by with Silent Image. Your average first circle wizard can get a good 450 feet or so out of it, so it should be good to eyeball things."

"Sounds like a plan, I'll start experimenting with smaller models while a test site is chosen and cleared."