“What’s his species? Elf? Dwarf? Which dwarf kingdom does he hail from?”

“I’m not sure, but all I know is that humans started the war a long time ago. The reason I asked you to look like a dwarf is because people don’t like humans.”

“I can overcome local bigotry by having pointy ears.”

“But your true form is a dwarf. Ellivore resurrected you last time, remember? And she revealed your true form.”

“Yeah, I guess so. So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“We only saw about 800 people in that camp right there. Are those all his forces? They’re all mages? How many mages are in that group?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, next question. What is the custom for treating a loser in a wizard duel? Or vice versa?”

“Are duels to the death or what?”

“It depends on the alignment of the wizard. If you’re lawful, you work as a slave and work off your debt. If you’re chaotic, usually the loser is executed.”

“I take it property goes to the winner? Okay.”

“You think you want to get involved in a duel?”

“I’m just exploring my options. Duels have one thing in their favor.”

“Suicide?”

“No, they involve a lot less bloodshed than war does.”

“Yeah, but you’re supposedly the head of our parties and you don’t want to go getting into duels. You have to totally separate yourself from a party in order to duel.”

“No, I’m not excited about it, but I’m keeping in mind that is an option for push comes to shove for avoiding bloodshed.”

“The question is: they’re very close to the caves of Alexander, and if we were out and they attacked us and we destroyed most of them, are his mages coming to destroy us?”

“Who, Alexander?”

“No, this Mekhos guy. How powerful of a mage is he? How heavily would he retaliate?” 

“Probably 100 mages. He does have a lot of buddies.”

“Would the battle mages come to our support if they attacked us?”

“If he attacked us first?”

“Yeah, probably. It might be paranoia or it might be overconfidence. Or it might be, it’s worked well for me in the past, it’ll work well for me in the future. Are his mages field artillery or siege artillery mostly? Do they have things like earth-to-air or open tunnel or such? Or are they mostly good at throwing lightning bolts and fireballs.”

“Both.”

“Alright. Well, if we’re gonna go to war, we’re gonna go to war. We’re going to have activity in the cave. We can probably knock out most of his forces immediately. He attacks anything that moves within 10 miles of his camp. We can say we were just wandering by, which we were the first time. Remember when you went to go say hi? And he went after you. The guy’s a lunatic. I’m not going to let some guy terrorize us and say we can’t go to check out the area. We just look like we’re doing a regular river patrol and wait for him to attack us. This guy is looking for a war. I don’t want the war anywhere near Technos. I want to draw his forces out so he stays away from Technos. Remember Sensu? He says you don’t wait for the enemy to come to your front door. You go to his front door.”

“Well, of course, but I want to make sure we’re following the regulations of the war council.”

“You’re a queen, by the way.” 

“I am?”

“Congratulations, sir. Er, madam.”

“So I have to be on the war front now?”

“Yep. It’s in both of our interests to deal with this situation openly amongst ourselves. If you need help or want assistance, we’re gonna be at the aid of anyone in the Technos area. I’m trying to draw us together as a community so large groups will think first before attacking us, and I’m trying to figure out now if that’s a good idea or a bad idea.” 

“So if we beat ‘em back now, we don’t have to worry about them for another year? How long does it take him to replenish his community? I’m talking hypothetically. Suppose he got unexpectedly completely wiped out and executed but came back to life, how long would it take his town to replace its stores completely? I’m trying to get a sense of…”

“There’s no way to get a sense of it, Fred. You can’t do it until you do it.”

“Fred, I’ll make it simple for you. Basically, the 600 in the town? He’s training 600 troops at a time.”

“That’s all I wanted to know!”

“We got our army together in a week, and James says he owes a favor, so we can get some wizards from him.”

“I just wanted to know how many troops I would have to knock out to get him below replacement level. Basically, I’d have to wipe out his army twice.”

“You’re making this way too complicated.”

“Not really.”

“You have to deal with the here and now, not what’s going to happen in the next 18 years. We have 28 times the forces they can throw at us. We have 28k the militia at our disposal and another 6k on top of that in support people, all the farmers and shopkeepers and crap. I’ve been keeping notes on my computer because my back has been killing me. We’re paying like millions of dollars each week right now supporting the troops, so why don’t we send the troops out to their town that’s about ready to fall and see if we can do it in such a way that they aren’t aware of the strength of the troops and have them attack the town? We could have them attack Rivertown or have them attack the cave.”

“Whatever.”

“That’ll give us a chance to plan better later when we go after Mekhos…”

“I said, fine, whatever!”

“Okay?”

“Fine! WHATEVER!”

“So what do you want to do now?”

“Right now I am going to get another drink.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe when I get back I can get some simple answers to some simple questions.”

“You haven’t asked a simple question yet!” 

At this point the manager walks over. She says: “We’re going to be closing in two minutes.”

“Two minutes! Ten minutes?”

“Two minutes.”

“Dang, two minutes. Looks like we’ll have to go to Burger King now.”