Chapter 30
Now that he had Rys’s approval, Grigor put his plan into action.
Over a thousand soldiers swung north, around the mountains that separated Avolar and Anceston. Supply caravans trailed after them for weeks. They carried provisions for winter and navigated the coastal road north of the mountains while the weather remained warm enough.
Most of Rys’s demons went with Grigor. The southern border with the Malus League, protected by Fort Foret, was left to small detachment of Kinadain and soldiers that Grigor had specifically trained for the purpose. A single Malakin provided scouting support.
Rys wasn’t concerned about the League, for the reasons mentioned in the earlier meeting. But if they did surprise him, the Malakin would have a mindspeak connection to warn him. Long-distance sendings could be blocked by talented mages, but Rys had never heard of mindspeak being blocked by anything short of mental manipulation.
In most cases, Mina would be alerted by Leth and his Haunts. They remained active in the League.
The arrival of Grigor and his army was greeted by Lapisloch’s militia. Hundreds of farmers from around the region gathered together in an unruly mob with whatever weapons they got their hands on.
For a moment, it looked as if Rys would be the one conquering the region through bloody violence. Lapisloch would become collateral damage in the conflict between his kingdom and Avolar.
Then the villagers left. No meeting was held between the two sides. Grigor didn’t even wander out to threaten them or tell them that he came to protect them.
Instead, the villagers of the region realized of their own accord what an amazing thing it was that Rys’s army was there to protect them and left to hold a celebration in his honor.
But not really.
In truth, one of Mina’s succubi defused the situation. Nobody had truly wanted to oppose Rys, let alone die. Convincing them to leave with a bit of mental persuasion was child’s play for a succubus.
Rys imagined she probably bitched for hours afterward. Succubi tended to do that when given trivial jobs and weren’t allowed to “enjoy” their targets.
Once things calmed down, Grigor and the Kinadain had moved in and established themselves. Avolar’s army camped at their southern border. They were clearly nervous, but attacking now wasn’t their plan.
For one thing, despite Avolar’s numerical superiority, Rys had a reputation.
For another thing, they likely thought they’d have a huge advantage once winter set in.
And so, the weeks rolled on. Rys’s supply trains continued for as long as possible. Vallis increased the trade pressure on Avolar, while she and Maria spent most of their time in the palace. After the earlier assassination attempt, neither of them were interested in tempting fate with the army up north.
For his part, Grigor waited by Lapisloch’s small port as snow began to fall. He kept only a token force near the agricultural hub itself, and they erected fortifications north of the town.
An actual battle in Lapisloch would be troublesome. Avolar would seize any opportunity to minimize damage to the town itself.
“I don’t understand why we’re risking Lapisloch at all,” Vallis said one miserable winter’s day. “Doesn’t Grigor’s plan put everything at risk? We’re fighting Avolar during winter, while our supply lines are cut off and they have their mysterious connection to the League, and we’re going to let them take the food they need.”
Vallis and Rys stood in the war room again. Tyrisa puttered about, although Rys wasn’t sure what she was actually doing.
Probably nothing. He was beginning to realize that while Tyrisa was good at contracts and paperwork, she wasn’t a good spy.
“If you want to listen in, make yourself useful and take notes,” Rys said loudly, causing the knowledge devil to nearly jump out of her skin.
She glared at him. Despite her anger, she slinked up to the table with pen and paper. Vallis smirked at her chief of staff.
“And you, Vallis, shouldn’t you have brought up your concerns to Grigor earlier? Everybody’s gone now,” Rys said.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I seemed to be the only person who didn’t get it. Last I checked, I don’t have centuries of experience in warfare. Questioning you or Grigor is like reading about an ancient general and saying how I would have totally made a smarter decision.”
“And that doesn’t happen?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
“All the time. It was insufferable when I was training as a mage. You’d think that all problems in history could be solved by sending my classmates back in time.” Vallis snorted. “So? What’s the deal?”
“Exploiting overconfidence,” he explained.
His fingers ran over the figures on the map before them. Most were clustered north of the palace, just over the mountains. This was the region of Lapisloch, an otherwise neutral territory that separated Avolar and Rys’s Kingdom of Kavolara. It was far more arable than Avolar itself, which made it a prized target in this war.
“Avolar want to avoid pitched battle with us, because they don’t have the supplies or manpower for it,” Rys explained. “At the same time, they need more food to last the winter. If they don’t get it, people will starve or riot.”
“So why are we giving it to them?”
“Because they’ll have no choice but to attack Lapisloch directly if we leave the town wide open.” Rys tapped the open space between Avolar and the agricultural hub. “The harvest has just come in, so a lot of it will still be in grain stores. Now that it’s winter, our supply lines are drastically weakened.”
Tyrisa chimed in, “Everything comes in through the port. If we leave it, they can cut us off. If we defend it, they can take the town.” She tilted her head. “So why didn’t we advance north and take the offensive?”
“One, attacking Avolar in winter would be stupid. Two, even if we struck sooner, the League’s support makes any offensive dicey—we want an advantage. And three, we need Avolar to come off as the aggressor here.” Rys gave them a look.
“Oh, right. Casus belli.” Vallis nodded. “It looks bad if we just start a war, despite all that Kinadain noise.”
“Yes. We’re obviously an antagonist, but plausible deniability goes a long way politically. People are going to see Avolar invading an independent farming region, and not the trade shenanigans we pulled off. How many people outside Anceston thought Compagnon was bad?” Rys asked.
“Err, not many. That’s probably how they got away with laundering the League’s artifacts for so long.” She winced. “So when they attack, you’re heading off to join Grigor?”
The door opened and Fara walked in. Her black tails perked up when she saw Rys, and then began waving back and forth behind her.
“I imagine we’d leave before they attack,” the fox said, having overheard the last line.
After approaching the table, Fara slipped an arm around Rys. He responded with his own arm and an appreciative squeeze of her ass.
Both Vallis and Tyrisa stared at them with barely concealed jealousy.
“I thought you were his bodyguard? Won’t he disintegrate if he spends too long in the sun?” Vallis said.
“I’m not a vampire,” Rys drawled.
“You rose from a coffin the first time I met you,” she pointed out.
“Have I sucked your blood?”
“I dunno. Have you? I’m a heavy sleeper.” She smiled cheekily at him.
Fara slapped Vallis with her tails. “Rys can take care of himself. If you want some of him to yourself, you know exactly what to do.”
“I’m his viceroy. I like to think that I should give advice that stops him from being cleaned up with a broom one day.” Vallis batted away the tails that flew at her again. “Stop that. Seriously, can you head out there early?”
“I can, but there’s no point.” Rys pointed to a bulky device sitting on the far side of the map table. “We’ve acquired a sending device from Tarmouth. Grigor has one of his own. Using it, we can communicate by voice. When the time comes for me to head to the front, I can. Until then, he keeps me up-to-date.”
“Don’t you have mindspeak?” Vallis mused.
“How often does Grigor directly talk to you using it?” Rys asked.
“Never. He always relays things through devils.”
Fara frowned. “He’s talked to me using mindspeak before. We can connect using the mind of a devil, can’t we?”
Chewing her lip, Vallis gave Rys an odd look. “I’ve noticed that you avoid doing that whenever you can. Like, why do you rely on the imps so much when you can just hijack the mental connection of some random devil to talk to anybody?”
“Precisely because I need to hijack somebody,” Rys said. “When you spend as much time around succubi as some of us have, you become inherently suspicious of mental connections. That’s why I like sendings, and these magitech devices. They grant us communication that isn’t reliant on the minds of others, even if they come with their own downsides.”
To Rys, sendings were inherently more secure. One day, he might need to worry about Lacrissa. The sooner he began to prepare for her, the better off he’d be.
“Gotcha.” Vallis nodded. “So—”
A light on the sending device began to blink. Rys switched it on with a flicker of magic.
“General,” Grigor’s voice uttered over the device, crackling slightly.
“I hate this version of the device,” Vallis grumbled, rubbing her temples. “Couldn’t we have bought one of the premium models that can project an image of the user?”
“You told me those were unreliable.” Rys gave her an odd look. “It’s just a voice projection. How does this bother you?”
“I’ve spent my entire life receiving sendings, Rys. It’s so weird to hear them coming out of a box.”
“Do you feel that way about recording crystals?” he asked, bemused.
“Those are different?” she protested.
“How?” Shaking his head, Rys redirected his attention to the device. “Sorry for the delay, Grigor. Has something happened?”
“Mina has reported movement from Avolar. Given the poor terrain and the state of the roads, I expect their army to reach Lapisloch in three to four days,” Grigor said.
Fara stepped in. “How fast can we intervene?”
Grigor chuckled. “I could reach the city of Avolar with my elites within a day. Cutting off their supply lines will be trivial.”
“Then I’ll stay here for longer,” Rys said. “Update me if they do something unexpected, or once they’re in position.”
“Of course, General.”
Grigor severed the connection after those words.
Nobody said anything for several seconds, perhaps surprised by how suddenly Grigor’s voice vanished.
“Prince Grigor sounds like he could win the war by himself. Is there really any need to fight yourself?” Tyrisa asked.
Vallis shot the devil an unreadable look. In response, Tyrisa puffed her flat chest out and refused to meet her boss’s gaze, instead waiting for Rys’s reaction.
Instead, she got one from Fara. “She might be right, Rys. You can’t spend long outside of the palace. Unlike last time, we have a proper army and two demon princes. Are you really concerned with Avolar?”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I’m concerned with the League. Both sides held back when we fought in the Labyrinth. We caught their necromancer off-guard, but Mave held back. I expected to hear something from him by now, but he’s been silent.”
“Is one mage that threatening?” Vallis asked. “Grigor’s as big as a house, and Fred could probably eat an entire mage tower for breakfast and ask for seconds.”
“Tyrisa, what do you know about mages fighting demons?” Rys asked the knowledge devil, appearing to change the subject.
Her eyes widened, and she scrambled away to grab her tome. The pages flickered as she searched through it. She bit her lip once she found what she was looking for.
“Did you already know this?” she asked him quietly.
“I drink with Grigor and Fred,” Rys said.
She nodded, then answered his question properly, “Human mages are considered to be the experts in fighting demons on Gauron at present. The most dangerous of them can match demon princes. Araunth’s younger brother, Belrauth, was defeated by the grand magister of Gauron’s greatest mage tower 20 years ago.”
Fara’s eyebrows shot up, while Vallis frowned.
“Uh, no offense, but you’re talking about a mage stronger than Maliah Jyarvic himself,” Vallis said. “Rys, Gauron’s greatest mage tower is the Tower of Stars, and it’s also the oldest.”
“Kushan helped build it, didn’t he?” Rys said.
“In the same way he helped invent evocation. There are like four mage towers that date back to Kushan’s reign. Grand Magister Taren Hand oversees the Tower of Stars, and he’s a living legend. His name was on my textbooks.” Vallis smirked. “Are you expecting Maliah to show up in person in Avolar?”
“No. But what happens if one of his lieutenants does?”
She winced, and Fara scowled. Those black fluffy tails of hers fanned out behind her.
“That’s why I’ll be there,” the fox said. “But I take your point. If the League sends powerful mages, you want to be there yourself.”
Rys nodded. “I don’t have any infernals that excel at fighting magic users. That random combat magister helping Compagnon was too weak to threaten Grigor, but I imagine that the League has far more capable fighters than him.”
“Do you excel at fighting mages?” Fara asked.
A nasty grin crossed his face. The women shuddered.
“Right. Of course you do,” Vallis muttered. “Do mages explode when they try to use magic against you?”
“No. I never managed to convince a pair of devils to give me their unique Gift that did that.”
Tyrisa’s eyes widened. “The Darus Twins?”
“No. Although one of them works for the Twins now,” he said. “That’s probably too much information as it is, given you’re going to write that in your book.”
She paused halfway through the sentence she was writing, and a guilty expression crossed her face. “Um, is it valuable?”
“You won’t like me saying this, but you will have a very large bounty placed on your head if anybody ever found the information in your knowledge Gift,” he explained. “It’s never a good idea to explain the secret behind how an assassin’s Gift works.”
The entire reason that Rys had kept his former subordinate, Harah, but his side was because she was so effective. Keeping her that way sometimes required maintaining her secret through raw brutality.
“I… think I’ll leave that out then,” Tyrisa muttered. She flicked her pen over her book, and he felt her magic erase whatever she had written.
“Smart. That’s the entire reason you should maintain a separate knowledge Gift to what is in your head. You can know things that you don’t sell to just anybody.” Rys tapped his temple. “Those secrets can be sold for a lot more, and remain secrets.”
“Is it really a secret if you sell it?” Vallis asked.
“Sure, if nobody knows that you sold it,” Tyrisa chirped with a broad grin. “That’s how business works in Hell. The only things that matter are what others find out about, not what physically took place.”
“I feel like my morals and perception of reality are corrupted with every passing day,” Vallis complained. “Anyway, we need to take care of a few minor matters while you’re still here. I imagine you’ll teleport away the second you get word.”
The next few days passed quickly. Grigor checked in each day, as did Mina. Eventually, the time arrived for Rys to head north.
Avolar had reached the lake that Lapisloch was named after. Tomorrow, they would undoubtably move on the town itself.
Rys imagined that Grigor’s plan was in full swing right now.
“Are you ready?” Fara asked him.
“I’ve practiced this a few times now. I don’t like relying on others for this sort of thing,” he said.
“Can’t say I’ve noticed,” she said drily.
“I dunno, he seems to rely on me a lot,” Vallis said.
“That’s because you’re doing something he doesn’t want to do. Paperwork isn’t exactly a life or death matter,” Fara said.
“I dunno. A lot of my paperwork seems to deal with death lately. Unless all those weapons and food supplies are for a different war.”
The fox shot Vallis a look and earned herself a grin in response.
“Remember Mina’s warning. There are plenty of guards in the palace, but Anceston itself is protected by a skeleton crew and a single succubus,” Rys warned. “If anything goes wrong, retreat into the control room and contact me using mindspeak. I’ll return right away. You might also try contacting the foxes in the nearby village, as they might be willing to help you due to Fara.”
“Didn’t you build that wall to protect us?” Vallis asked, gesturing to the stout stone wall that ran around the outer perimeter of the palace grounds.
“A crippled demon could jump over it in his sleep. It’s mostly there for appearance and to keep out the rabble,” he said with a frown. “Until I get another power slate, I can’t build proper defenses.”
“Gotcha.” She hesitated. “Are you really that worried? They took a swing at me earlier, but Mina thinks they burned a lot of resources trying.”
“No. But only an idiot doesn’t make preparations for the worst.” He looked eyes with her. “Remember your position, and the fact that I make plans for the long run. Nothing is without risk, but I can mitigate it.”
“Right.” She nodded this time. “I’d wish you well, but I feel I should be supporting Avolar given how badly you’ll crush them.”
He rolled her eyes at her. Fara fulfilled his duty, as her tails shifted and she slapped Vallis upside the head with magic.
“I’m higher rank than you, now. That’s insubordination,” Vallis whined as she rubbed her head.
“Did you see anything, Rys?” Fara asked him.
“Nope.”
Vallis grumbled inaudibly under her breath.
Stepping up to Fara, Rys prepared to grab her. Then he paused before doing so.
“You’re not going to shatter my ribs this time, are you?” he asked.
“Would I do that?” the fox said, batting her eyelashes at him.
“You tried awfully hard last time.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled her into an embrace. Her breath caught and her tails wrapped around him. For a moment, he wondered if she was going to pull him into a kiss.
He heard Vallis’s breath quicken as she watched them. If he looked over, he suspected that he’d see her hitching her skirt up. He heard it rustle.
“We’ll be back soon enough, Vallis. Don’t let the paperwork pile up, and don’t spend too much time doing that,” Rys said, not looking at her even as his tone sharpened.
She hissed, and he heard her skirt rustle again. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
Under her breath, she muttered something about “omniscient bastard.”
Then Rys cast a teleportation ritual. A red circle of power rippled around his and Fara’s feet, before shadow swallowed them.
Then they appeared in the middle of what appeared to be barren tundra. The land was bare, save for trees stripped of all greenery. Not a single sign of life showed itself for miles. Mist rose from the icy ground in the distance, blocking their vision.
Rys swore that he saw sea to his left, but couldn’t tell.
“Fuck, it’s cold,” he swore, rubbing his arms.
His body instantly reacted to the shift in climate by pumping magic into every inch of his flesh. Within a few moments, his body temperature felt normal, but he knew better.
Damn this northern winter. How did Fara look so happy and calm, especially wearing comparatively little? She showed cleavage in this frigid weather, for fuck’s sake.
“Don’t grin at me,” he muttered.
“It’s so cute to see you bitch about the cold,” she said with a laugh. “Aren’t you some sort of immortal demigod? How does a little snow bother you?”
He didn’t tell her that it didn’t, at least after the first few seconds. But he still disliked it. His skin tingled uncomfortably, and he felt the constant rush of magical energy throughout his body.
Fara looked around, confused. “I’m pretty sure Lapisloch doesn’t look like this in winter. It’s lowland, so it should be more snow than tundra. This looks like Avolar. Or Sarete, even. Barren, awful places.”
“I’m pretty sure I overshot,” he said. “Let me check.”
He quickly cast a navigation spell, and a glowing red needle appeared above his hand. It pointed south-west.
Fara stared at him. “How… It took you three teleportation attempts to travel maybe 30 miles last time. What the fuck, Rys?”
“I’m adjusting to my regained power,” he admitted. “It’s not like I have lots of time to practice my teleportation these days.”
“True.” She tilted her head. “I didn’t throw up this time at least.”
“I noticed. Do you feel sick? I can wait a few more minutes if you do.”
“Please.”
They waited in silence for roughly ten minutes. Rys felt the power of Castle Aion drain away, but much slower than before.
He hadn’t used anywhere near the full potential of the summoning slate he had added to the control room. Presumably, that allowed him to stay outside the castle for longer. Before, he had been able to stay outside for maybe eight hours at most.
Now, he guessed that he could probably operate for an entire twenty-four hours, unless he pulled some serious stunts. For safety, he didn’t plan to push himself anywhere near that far.
Once Fara gave him the signal, he teleported them to Lapisloch’s port.
Or at least, Grigor had described it that way.
“We’ve been calling this a port?” Rys asked, nonplussed.
“There are ships here, aren’t there? Look, there’s one with our flag.” Fara pointed at a small vessel that flew the flag of the Kingdom of Kavolara.
“Did Vallis commandeer somebody’s fishing boat?”
“You’re being mean. This is an agricultural hub, but we’re talking about a region with literally one town.” She rolled her eyes. “If the archipelago is the boonies, then Lapisloch is the boonies in the boonies. People come here to get away from the rest of the island.”
Somehow, that fact had escaped Rys. He had seen the region as a food producer and assumed that made it important.
“That explains why Tarmouth were uninterested,” he said. “Is Avolar’s port any bigger?”
“No.” Fara shook her head. “They have a few seaside villages like this, and the only difference is that their piers are a little bigger. If they weren’t, no trader would ever sail north. And let’s face it, nobody wants to travel by land up here. It takes weeks to get to Avolar by foot for normal people.”
No wonder they had gone to war once Rys had begun to put pressure on their food supplies. Then again, they had been antagonistic to begin with. He didn’t feel too bad.
Not that he would have anyway. Their willingness to work with the Malus League only made politics easier. He would have conquered them no matter what.
Other than the tiny pier, the port consisted of no more than thirty buildings. It truly was a village. Ditches and rough dirt roads ran out from the village. Barren farmland covered the vicinity.
Rys guessed there couldn’t be more than two hundred people living here, especially as several of the buildings were related to the port itself.
Outside the village, Grigor had set up a sprawling camp that dwarfed the village in size. His army consisted of approximately 1500 soldiers, although this was half the size of Avolar’s force.
Rys strode into the camp. Simple fortifications protected it, consisting of ditches and multiple layers of palisade. There as no single wall or gate. Instead, Rys zig-zagged between the wooden walls while archers saluted him. Stakes lined the front of each wall.
Against magic, a single layer of walls could be blown apart easily. Even ditches could be overcome. Based on Mina’s intelligence, Avolar’s elite knights were all capable spellcasters. A charge by mounted cavalry capable of magic could annihilate a weak fortification as if it didn’t exist.
So Grigor had changed things up. It would be harder for a charge to get through multiple walls at once, and that would leave the horses running headlong into walls and stakes.
“Couldn’t a defensive position like this hold off a force like Avolar’s?” Fara asked.
“Maybe, but you’re bringing up the same point that Vallis did,” he said. “The problem is winning even if Avolar has something up their sleeves, especially if they don’t want to attack us head on.”
“I remember being taught that you need to outnumber an enemy ten-to-one to win sieges.”
Rys snorted. “I hate that figure. It’s such a garbage ratio. That’s the number for cordoning off a city and preventing sorties from breaking through. I don’t plan to starve anyone out, and if Avolar is dumb enough to try, they’ll get a nasty surprise.”
Fara nodded. “It always sounded a little strange to me. How could any general win a battle if they needed ten times the soldiers to take a fortress?”
“Well, the answer to that is mostly by forcing the enemy to leave their fortress.” Rys chuckled. “Do you think Avolar’s army will hole up in Lapisloch if we set fire to Avolar’s farmland?”
“Ah.” Fara’s expression turned grim. “Armies need to be defend their countries, even if they know it’s useless.”
“Yes. A ruler that can’t protect his people won’t remain a ruler for very long, even if he survives a siege.”
“Is that your plan?” she raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t talked about much after Lapisloch. Mina has been working away at Avolar with her new succubi, but I don’t know why.”
He winked at Fara. “Don’t you know my preferences? I prefer it when things are presented to me, rather than when I have to take them by force.”
Her tails lowered behind her as she walked, but there was a glint of pride in her eyes. Fara appeared to be impressed—or would be, if he pulled off his plan.
The two of them found Grigor’s tent, which was protected by a group of lesser demons playing cards. They nodded at Rys when he approached. Their eyes widened when they saw Fara, and they shot to their feet.
“Keep playing,” he said.
The demons nodded, then returned to their game.
“What did you do to them to scare the shit out of them? They haven’t acted like that around me for months,” he asked as they entered the tent.
“I’m your sword, which also means I enforce Vallis’s will,” Fara said. “Sometimes I remind the demons of who will torch them if they get out of line.” She smiled wolfishly. “Didn’t you say that’s how you keep the demons under control?”
“I didn’t expect you to take to it so quickly.”
“Ah, but she is exceptionally good at it,” Fred said, butting into their conversation. He looked over at the pair of them from one corner of the tent, peering over his comically small spectacles. “If you are here, you should contact your spymaster, Rys. She has been keen to brief you for hours.”
Rys nodded, then reached out for Mina using mindspeak.
She had situated herself in the city of Avolar, directly overseeing her succubi in the region. Unlike Grigor, she didn’t have a sending device. It was too bulky and the chance of detection too high.
While sendings couldn’t be intercepted by anyone other than the recipient—at least, in normal circumstances—they left noticeable magical traces. A sending was the equivalent of a mage screaming out encrypted messages in the magical plane, in the hopes that their recipient was close enough to hear them.
Naturally, other mages could detect them. Mina suspected that Vallis’s ambush had been triggered when the enemy detected Vallis’s sending.
Mages could also block sendings. The Labyrinth blocked them. Apparently, some mage towers had wards strong enough to do the same. Rys intended to experiment in his palace at some stage.
More interesting to him was the fact that sendings had a limited range. Those “magical screams” needed to be boosted in order to reach their targets. To do this, sending towers dotted the archipelago. There was one sitting in this village, even.
Naturally, a country could shut down sending towers to stop sendings. To avoid this, sending devices had significantly longer ranges. Mage towers had devices with far greater ranges, and the inter-continental vessels that traveled between Gauron and Pharos apparently had some way to store sendings for later transmission. This was the only secure way for the archipelago to contact anyone on the continents.
Fortunately, Rys had mindspeak. Despite his concerns about hijacking the mind of another devil, it did have security benefits.
At least, until enemy succubi showed up. There were always trade-offs.
“Mina, talk to me,” he said.
“Rys!” she chirped in his head, her voice practically purring. “I already briefed Grigor, but this shouldn’t take too long.”
He indicated for her to continue.
“Most of Avolar’s army is near Lapisloch. We’ve evacuated most of the town to the outlying villages and taken what food we can. I don’t think they noticed—although I had Hyrie erase the memories from the people who moved the food anyway.”
“Good thinking. Go on,” he said.
“Once they take the town, they’ll find themselves with way less food than they expected, and entirely reliant on their supply lines.” She giggled. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“It is. They took longer than I expected to move south. Any idea why?”
“I think it’s because they have more new recruits than expected, but be wary of something nastier. I’ve kept the succubi away, because I don’t want to risk any League mages detecting them.” Mina mentally clicked her tongue, which made an odd noise in his head. “You should expect a lot of magic in their army. A couple thousand weak soldiers, but very strong knights and mages.”
Rys noted that down. Sure, Grigor was in command and Fred was here, but it was good for Rys to take over if necessary.
“I’ll need you to start the next step the moment the battle is over,” he said. “Things will move fast, and I don’t expect it to be pretty.”
“I’m picking out your future puppet leader as we speak,” Mina purred. “Just deliver a field of corpses and it will be easy for me, master.”
“You don’t tire of calling me that, do you?”
“I like to imagine calling you it in a very different way.” She giggled. “Anyway, I should go. I can feel this succubus getting horny now.”
That was the problem with mindspeak relays—the devil in question eavesdropped.
Rys wondered how much the succubi affected Mina. She had been a minx before, but how long before she made a move on him?
Before he pondered the question any further, Grigor returned. He entered the tent and nodded at Rys.
“Grigor, Mina says it’s time to move,” Rys said.