That evening, everyone from before got back together for another festive meal although this time the queen of the Human Gruge was there as well together with her closest and best guards. She had recently arrived having her daughters with her together with Medi. Once more they had a big table set up although this time bigger than before. They were right next to the edge of the valley going down, able to see the lights of the skeleton army in the distance. Around the table were wolves as well, having been gather

  As the meal started, Zoala would notice that the spot reserved for Lehtern was empty. That was a bit surprising as Lehtern had some important information. She wasn’t the only one that noticed as Berk motioned for her to come. Normally she and the other generals would be sitting closest to him but with the arrival of the queen, they were moved a bit back.

  She got up and quickly came closer, lending him her ear as he tried to be quiet about it. “Go get Lehtern. It’s better that he’s here when he tells about his findings so it doesn’t have to be retold later.”

  Zoala nodded, bowing towards the queen before turning around and running off to Lehtern’s tent.

  As she left, the archer general Wout would get up as well, following her towards Lehtern. He was a more uptight person and wasn’t really liking the presence certain people and hoped to talk to Zoala about this.

  Right before she would ask if Lehtern was awake, Wout would put a hand on her shoulders softly whispering her name. “Zoala, wait.”

  She turned around, looking at him as she didn’t talk to him that often so it was unusual of him to get her alone. “Is something wrong?”

  Wout knew that this was unusual and tried to be careful about his words, not wanting to offend her possible friends. “What are your thoughts about those humans being at our table?”

  That took her by surprise even more, frowning a bit as she looked at him in the darkness. What do you mean? The royalty? I have no problem with the queen and her daughters being here. We’re trying to get an alliance after all.”

  He quickly shook his head, holding up his in front of his chest to stop her. “No no I’m talking about the other three. Gurgen, Lucas and Demmie aren’t royal or even army people. They’re basically civilians and shouldn’t be here.”

  Hearing that made her a bit mad, she would punch his arm which did hurt but not a lot. “What do you mean by that? Don’t you think that they have earned their place here? Lucas kept the princesses alive all on his own. Gurgen saved Medi and Jackson, even saving Lilly. The only one that might not fit here is Demmie and I believe that he will be useful in the upcoming war.”

  As she explained on why they did deserve to be here, Wout would try to find a reason to show her that they didn’t belong. “Okay, we have the healing potion from Gurgen so why keep him around?”

  “Because we might need more. What… Why do you want them gone so badly?” She started to see what kind of person Wout was.

  “What do you mean? They’re humans. Humans are filth. They don’t care for nature. They only care for what they can get out of nature no matter the cost.”

  Zoala poked his chest as she was very angry now. “Have you even talked to them? All three of them live in a spot in the woods surrounded by trees. None of them cut down a single tree so what are you talking about?”

  He grabbed her hand and looked down at her, obviously trying to hold back some pent up anger. “Come on, you can’t be serious?”

  “How are you serious about this?” Zoala started to feel like there were some other deeper lying problems with his hatred to humans, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. “Go back to the dinner and just enjoy it. It might be the last one that you ever eat.”

  With that being said, she basically ended the conversation there. She turned back to the tent, shaking her head before trying to gather her thoughts. “Lehtern? Are you awake?”

  Right after asking it, the tent opened up with Lehtern standing there. He yawned a bit before coming out, showing that he was awake and had heard them talk. “Yes I’m awake.”

  “Berk was asking for you.” She didn’t want to talk about Wout and his problems, trying to look in the tent to see why he was awake but not at the dinner.

  In the tent were multiple papers lying on the ground and on a small table that had been put there per request. He quickly closed the tent when he noticed her looking in and then turned to face her with a smile. “Sorry dear, even though I trust you, some things are better kept secret until the right time.”

  With a smile and small step he walked to the dinner table, leaving Zoala to quickly follow him. She didn’t though, going to one of her wolves and kneeling down to talk to it. In order to make sure that she didn’t do anything to his tent, h would wait for her to come, giving her a warm smile when she finally did. “Don’t worry, I’m not a spy. I mean I am but you know what I mean.”

  As they walked to rest, the wolf would go to the tent and sniff at the entrance, going around until he found a favorable spot out of sight and starting to dig.

  Once they arrived at the table, Lehtern sat down on his spot and looked at the queen. He hadn’t seen her before but recognized her from the paintings. “My apologies your highness. Also my deepest condolences for your recent and unfortunate loss.”

  The queen just nodded as she looked at Lehtern before looking down at her glass. The pain was visible seeing how recent it was. “I was told that you were one of the spies employed by this land? Tell me, what makes you such a great spy? You don’t conceal your identity so anyone that knows you will immediately be cautious around you. What am I missing here?”

  “Ah yes, the art of spying on others goes further than being hidden from all eyes all the time. By exposing myself to our allies and mostly to our own gruge, I am given help whenever I need any. People don’t question what I’m doing when I’m around as I enjoy full access to everything required. While other spies make different try to infiltrate amongst other people, I try to gather that information by not being seen.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “I’m not sure how much you know about spying on others but there’s a difference between inland spying and spying on other gruges. If I have to spy on other kingdoms inside our gruge then yes, it’s a disadvantage to be known as a spy. But going to spy on other gruges is more difficult. A human can maybe disguise themselves as an elf but there’s no way for an elf or human to be able to get into the skeleton army or in the Stalter Gruge. That’s where I come in. I’m trained to not be seen in the first place.”

  She would nod, sipping from her drink as she hadn’t thought of that. She then turned to Berk, having an idea that would perhaps help them both. “Berk… I must say that I don’t really know you or your father that well. Political stuff with other gruges was my husband…”

  Talking about her husband still seemed a bit difficult but she would conjure up a pained smile before continuing. “Well… He kept himself busy with that. But as there’s a big threat hanging above us, I hope that you can see that even if we don’t find ourselves being friends that we can at least form an alliance.”

  Berk quickly nodded, agreeing with her as he was interested to see where she was taking this. An alliance between the two was basically already a done deal seeing recent events.

  “I was hoping to make an alliance longer lasting than just for this war. Will you be willing to lend out Lehtern to me to train some spies of our own? I realize that it won’t be in your benefit to train spies for another gruge but… if we had some spies of our own then perhaps we would’ve been able to prevent something like this happening once more.”

  He would nod, looking at her as he was lost in his thoughts. “I can see your reasoning but I must bring up the possibility of you using them against me. Your army is still making their way here so if the skeletons decide to attack early then we might be wiped out before you arrive. You have to understand that if you then defeat the skeletons that you could use our weakened state to defeat us.”

  “Be reasonable man. Even with our combined forces this battle will be absolute hell. You really think betrayal is what I’m thinking of right now?” She sounded offended by this. Her daughters seemed to shrink at her upcoming anger.

  Berk noticed that this wasn’t going the way that it should be going. “No, but I’m rather cautious after what happened a couple of weeks ago. We almost made an alliance with those skeletons. My dad died making that mistake. Yes you’re not the only one who lost someone close to you.”

  Hearing that information made her cool down a bit. She nodded slowly as she took another sip of her wine. “My apologies. I’m not used to external affairs. But to show you that I’m serious about our alliance, I want to marry out my daughter to one of your princes. I’m aware that the one that saved my daughter from the group that killed my husband isn’t from your lineage but I’m fine settling for lower.”

  To her this seemed to be very normal. Marrying out children for alliances wasn’t unusual but marrying them to other species was never done before. Not only that, Jackson would almost choke in his drink when he heard this, being very offended when she said that he was lower class.

  Emma on the other hand got red as she looked at Jackson and then at her mother. She wasn’t sure on how to talk to her about this without offending him even more. “Mother…? You do know that that person is a centaur?”

  She looked at her and nodded with a smile, putting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing her, signaling for her to shut up before focusing back on Berk.

  He wasn’t sure on what to say, being dumbfounded by her boldness and the way she just so casually talked about this. “Well… Jackson might not be part of the royal family destined to lead the country but his family is very close to ours. It would be insulting to say that’s he’s unworthy of your daughter. And then there’s the aspect of continuing your bloodline.”

  While that was a fair point, she would wave with her hand that detail away. “Emma isn’t the oldest of the two so if I were to die, Lilly will be the one to take over. I’m not too worried about Emma not getting children.”

  “Mother! This is unac…!”

  Her head turned to her faster than Emma had ever seen. Her eyes piercing into her soul, making her shrink.

  “Yes mother…” Emma shut up, lowering her head as she continued to eat in order to not have to think about this.

  Having shut her up, she would look back at Berk, showing that she was completely serious about this.

  Berk would look around the table, seeing the different reactions of the people around him. With the table being so long, not everyone was involved but hearing Emma yell caused many people to look up. “Perhaps the younger people here should… leave the table while we discus this further?”

  Due to the opposition of her daughter, she would nod. “Sounds like a great idea. Emma and Lilly, time for you two to retreat to our tent. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Quickly and without looking her mother in the eyes, both Emma and Lilly got up, leaving the table. Berk threw a quickly glance at Jackson and Medi, both getting up and heading in the same direction. As they left their plates got collected by some servants and their spots were opened up allowing others to get closer for the next order of business.

  Berk looked at Lehtern, not wanting to continue this discussion for now. “Before we continue, let’s hear if Lehtern has some good information?”

  Once more Lethern was just eating something and was put on the spot, coughing once more. “Uche! Sorry!” He held up his hand as he continued his coughing. As he regained himself, he would drink a lot before gathering his thoughts. “Okay… yes…”

  Due to him sleeping a lot, he hadn’t really be able to prepare a debriefing. He tried to quickly come up with something as his eyes went from the queen to Berk. “Well… I sadly enough only have bad news to bring I’m afraid.”

  Hearing this was to be expected but that didn’t make it hurt less. Berk leaned back in his seat, waiting to be blown away by how bad it could be.

  “So first of all, the reason I’m back so late is because I was taken prisoner by the dwarves. From there I learned a couple of interesting and rather bad things. First of all, we can now be one hundred percent sure that both the Cloud Gruge and the Dwarven Gruge will not be joining us in the war.”

  “Secondly, a deceased dwarven king had tried to cause an uprising and rebel against the skeletons. Unfortunately they failed and are now being tortured in the only way you can torture a skeleton back at their land. The amount of people captured is significant but unreachable for us.”

  “Thirdly… In terms of army size… I think the expectations of what they have is grossly underestimated. Seeing as they don’t eat and since they don’t have children to raise, nobody stayed behind to take care of the lands. Meaning both men and woman are taking part in this battle.”

  “What else… Ah, yeah… If I’m correct than it’ll take another four days or less for their entire army to leave the pass meaning that they will most likely try their hand at an attack sooner than that. I estimate first contact in less than three days.”

  When he was done talking, he looked around for a couple of seconds before starting to eat again. He was hungry and he wasn’t going to let his food get cold.

  For a while, it was silent, everyone mauling over the information and thinking of the future. Berk would sigh and tap on the table with his index finger. “What about the royal family leading the war? Did you see them?”

  Lehtern shook his head, putting down his drink and slowly swallowing before speaking. “No I haven’t. I spend most of my time in dwarven territory and in the abandoned skeleton lands. I haven’t seen much of the army itself.”

  “Hmm, unfortunate. I might be speaking for myself but we have a lot of very far distance family in the Skeleton Gruge and they came from all our gruges combined. I believe that if we manage to take out the leaders that a big part of the army if not everyone will just stop fighting.”

  While what he said was indeed a possibility, it wasn’t a guarantee. The more that they talked, the bigger the crowd became around them, wanting to hear possible future plans. Not wanting anyone to get scared for no reason, Berk called the discussion to an end.