Outside the window heavy snowflakes were slowly passing by, winter had struck fast and hard burying the mountains under meters of snow within days. All communication beyond the new borders had ceased, the carrier pigeons freezing to death before they got anywhere close to their destination.

The last message they had received was from the scouts far beyond their lines, Summer and Wolfe's troop. The message itself haunted Al as he read it time and time again.

"Ambush. Heavy losses. retreating."

His message must have been either too late or the pigeons caught by the enemy. The loss was not as bad as it could have been but it sent a message to his fellow commanders, he was not beyond failure and from now in they would be questioning his decisions again.

In front of him on the table was the notice of heroes in Summer's company.

Summer, commander of the first scouts

Spring, second in command.

Wolf, third in command. leader of the scouts.

the list dragged on, basically everyone left in the old shock troop was on it. With them gone the hero procession at the beginning of spring would be a sad spectacle. They would need to invent a couple of battles and heroes to keep the impression they were winning a war that had not yet truly begun.

He leaned back in his chair, the news just would not stop coming in. The last messenger from Goldhill had spoken about an army of mercenaries that was gathering in the city. According to him it numbered well over two thousand soldiers. The council had immediately begun to form more companies but truth be told even if the entire army of Blackriver would gather in one place they would have difficulties reaching anywhere close to two thousand troops.

If one added in the fact that most of the soldiers in the rebellion had never wielded a sword then the rebellion would lack any chance in a head on fight with the enemy. Currently Blackriver housed about six hundred new conscripts, they were training with the few guards around and waited to be assigned to a division. The battle earlier this year when Al, Cara and Erik had reached the city and the victory over the enemy had drawn in more troops over the span of autumn but they were still lacking troops.

Alaric had hoped for Summer and her men to take over a company each and teach them the ropes but now even that would not be happening. If things went well the new spies in Goldhill would be able to confirm the story about the mercenary army. Or if things went even better there was no army there at all but only a couple of soldiers and a drunken informant that had been scared by the sight of them.

"Are you still up?" Letra asked from the door, his voice sleepy as he entered the room.

"Yeah, still working on a plan on how to solve our recruitment problem." he stood up from the chair and turned to his friend.

"Era asked for you, she might have found a way to balance the scales. Something about the University of Nature and their involvement with magic. you better go see her, she sounded nearly as crazy as you do." Yawning he turned his back on Alaric and walked back across the floor to his own room.

The university? What had those maniacs to over them?

Sighing he put the letter back onto the table and got to his feet, his legs protested and for a second the room began to spin. He had to put his hand onto the table to save himself from falling down.

He really needed more exercise and more free time... perhaps a meal every once in a while wouldn't hurt as well. The moment of dizziness passed and Al got on his way towards the upper chambers where the council and Era had their rooms.

His thoughts circled round the University as he tried to remember everything he had ever heard about the place. They took in children if they showed signs of being touched by the powers beyond the understanding of usual men. Whatever that meant, they had outposts everywhere in the kingdoms and were mostly left alone.

Given the mystery they used to keep out of politics and the extensive reach of their agents they would make for good cover for any agents. Beyond that their use was up for debate, rumours of magic surfaced every now and them but they were mostly from sources not deemed reliable.

Alaric raised his arm to knock on the thick oaken door to Era's study. Then he noticed the thin golden line spreading from the edge of the door, it was open.

"Miss Era? You sent for me?" he pushed the door open and glanced into the room. Papers were stacked as high as Alaric was tall, books maps and other pieces of information in paper form covered everything in the study. The only way to guess what was beneath the cover of sheets was a change in height.

At the far end of the room Alaric managed to make out hair beneath a thin cover of paper, was she asleep?

Careful not to step on anything important Alaric made his way through the room. With every step closer to the desk a sound of faint snoring grew louder, a smile played over Al's tired face.

The untouchable ever composed Era was human after all.

"Ma'am Era? You called for me?" He asked louder this time, the snoring stopped and the heap of paper began moving as the head of the tactical intelligence scholars woke up.

"What? Who? Oh, Alaric, yes.... please come in I'm in the middle of something...." She stopped as she realised he was standing right in front of her.

"Ever heard of knocking Alaric?" Her cheeks reddened slightly as she got rid of the hair in her face.

Al resisted to urge to smile eve wider and nodded.

"Apologize but I did knock and call for you a few times before entering, I feared something had happened to you." He smirked at the last part and could feel her frown deepening and her stare to form lances ready to pierce him at the appropriate command.

"Well, let's get to it then. As you most likely already heard our scouts behind the enemy lines suffered a horrible defeat. We are currently looking for the missing links that allowed such a large force to move unseen by our informants through the lands.

As of now however we will need to form more scouts like the ones we just lost. Their intell and the effect of quick attacks on enemy supply caravans have proven to be a well thought through alternative to open combat. Especially since the enemy has far superior numbers and equipment."

Alaric was not surprised about the formation of additional scout troops. Blackriver lacked the forces to take the enemy head on first and would only succeed if the rebellion of the war was dragged out until the population of Goldhill starved to death.

"So, who is going to train the new troops? As far as I know all our scouts are either dead or locked away far beyond our reach by the early winter." Era had a plan, or something she was hiding from him and the other members of the council.

"Winter is, he and his troops have been recalled before the first snow made any more travel over the surrounding passes impossible." she looked up from a sheet of paper in her hand and her eyes fixed in him.

"Tomorrow at the meeting i will ask for more scouts and resources to train them. After the council agrees because they don't think we have the teachers to follow through you will reveal to have recalled our largest group before the snow. As a reason you can name a new informant in the University of Nature who warned you of the snow."

she paused and Al understood why he was here, after a couple of months among the council members most of his background remained unknown and therefore was perfect to use as a cover.

Era had her own plans and was less inclined to share them with the council than the other council men and women would have liked. By using him as a decoy she could keep an air of mystery surrounding him while she profited from the lack of attention directed at her.

Alaric wasn't sure he should feel honored or insulted by the fact that he was used as a tool in an inter political warfare, probably a bit of both.

"Well, should I be prepared to have done anything else of note while I wasn't looking?" If he wanted to play a larger role in the things to come he would need to get Era to trust him, or whatever was the equivalent for trust for the woman.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him, her eyes seemingly piercing through him. The moment stretched into minutes before she averted her eyes back to one of the papers on her desk.

"Not for now, you may return to your own work. I am sure you have a lot of things to do to send out a rescue party to find the traces of our scout troops in the mountain they disappeared." With a wave of her hand she dismissed the now even more confused Alaric. When he left the chaotic room behind he realised what she had really implied, the enemy was not sure if the troops were all dead. Not that there was a lot of messages from the spies in Goldhill lately, but they might have received informations Blackriver had no access to. A battle transcript, maybe even a count of the dead and wounded enemies.

Maybe some of the soldiers had survived, a faint hope but still something to go on as he returned to his own chambers. He would need to send out multiple encrypted messages to the spies along the mountains to the northwest and to the larger cities, maybe someone could find a clue on what had happened there.