Aldrath called the war council at the sixth hour of the morning, after the horse recovery operation had retrieved eighty of the hundred and sixty animals and the remaining eighty were confirmed as scattered across a ten-mile radius that cavalry patrols were still working through, after the mage quartermaster had confirmed that the communication crystal replacements were six days away by supply convoy, after the supply depot had been examined and the wolf on its face had been documented and photographed by the artist that the Lord Marshal's office attached to significant campaigns for exactly this kind of documentation.
The war council had a quality that Aldrath's councils had not previously possessed. His officers were experienced professionals and they were sitting in a camp that an enemy force had been inside the previous night without triggering any of the security measures that the Threian camp's defensive organization was supposed to provide.
