No one touched their food after that.
The lively atmosphere from moments ago had drained out of the room entirely. The smell of roasted meat and fresh bread still hung in the air, but nobody seemed interested anymore.
*Stonehaven.* The name sat over the table like a storm cloud that hadn't broken yet.
Arthur said nothing for a while, his eyes drifting to the map on the far wall. Stonehaven had been missing for weeks. Now they finally had an answer, and it wasn't one anyone had wanted. The city had fallen. Not only fallen — occupied.
He set his cup down, and the faint clink of porcelain against wood seemed too loud for the room. "How many?"
Raymond understood the question at once. "I don't know. The city was too big to see all of it." He frowned, picturing it again. "Hundreds, at least. Probably more."
Cedric adjusted his spectacles. "Any siege equipment?"
"No."
"Supply caravans?"
"No."
"Large troop movements?"
Raymond shook his head again, and the old advisor went quiet.
Arthur's eyes narrowed. "What about the walls?"
That got a different answer. "They're repairing them. I saw orcs hauling stone. Timber too. Rebuilding the watchtowers."
The room went quiet, and that answer carried more weight than any number of troops would have. Arthur leaned back. "Interesting."
"Interesting?" Leon said.
"Very." His eyes stayed on the map, and then he asked the question nobody had thought to ask. "Why?"
Raymond blinked. "Why what?"
"Why are they rebuilding Stonehaven at all?"
The question sat there, unanswered, because the longer anyone thought about it, the stranger it got. Orcs conquered. Orcs pillaged. Orcs burned things to the ground. Rebuilding a city wasn't something they did.
Cedric got there first, his eyes widening slightly. "They need it."
"Exactly." Arthur nodded toward the map. "Stonehaven sits on one of the main routes to Highcrest." His finger traced north. "If the reports on the horde's movements are right — if Highcrest really is the target — then the answer's obvious. They need a supply base."
The room settled into a heavier silence as Cedric laid it out. "Food. Weapons. Rest. Replacements. Stonehaven gives them all of it."
Arthur folded his hands. "They're not rebuilding Stonehaven for us. They're rebuilding it for the campaign still ahead of them."
The weight of that settled over everyone at once. This wasn't a raid the orcs were building toward. It was a siege — a long one, aimed at one of the kingdom's most important cities.
Gareth crossed his arms. "Then why haven't they hit us yet?"
That was the obvious question, and everyone felt the pull of it. If Stonehaven had already fallen, if Ashborne was already weakened — why wait?
Arthur stayed calm. "A few possibilities. They may be conserving strength — the last battles weren't free of cost." Cedric nodded at that. "Or maybe they simply don't see us as a threat worth their attention yet."
Nobody liked that answer. Nobody could argue with it either. The walls were damaged. The surrounding villages were gone. Supplies were thin, soldiers exhausted. From the enemy's side of things, Ashborne probably looked crippled already. New chapters come out on NovelPing first.
"They may think our morale's collapsed," Cedric added quietly.
"They may think they can finish us whenever it's convenient," Arthur said.
Gareth's smile turned bitter. "Arrogant bastards."
"Perhaps." Arthur's eyes moved to Leon, then Raymond, something sharp surfacing in them. "But if that's really what they believe — they've made a mistake."
The room fell silent. Arthur stood and crossed to the map, his finger settling on Stonehaven. "We don't have the strength to retake it now." Nobody argued; that much was plain. "But Stonehaven isn't just a city anymore. It's becoming a fortress." His finger slid to Ashborne. "While it stood, it secured our southeastern flank. Now that flank belongs to the enemy."
Cedric's face darkened at the implication. If the orcs finished fortifying Stonehaven, Ashborne would be forced to split its attention between two fronts permanently — south, and southeast.
Arthur turned. "We can't allow that."
Heads nodded around the table. Gareth spoke first. "So what's the plan?"
For the first time since Stonehaven had come up, Arthur smiled — small, but real. "They've given us time." Every eye went to him, and his gaze settled on Leon. "For the next month, nothing matters more than your ability. We focus entirely on horses."
That surprised even Cedric. Arthur explained without hurrying. "Of every domesticated animal, horses have the most in common with soldiers. Disciplined. Trainable. Already used to taking commands, already spending their lives working alongside people." Cedric's face shifted with understanding. "A hunting hound might become a stronger predator. A bear might become a stronger beast. Neither integrates naturally into a military formation. Horses do." His eyes sharpened. "If a Blood Pact can form between soldier and beast, horses give us the best foundation to build that on."
The room went quiet as everyone reached the same conclusion at once. A stronger horse was useful. A magical beast was useful. But a magical beast working in perfect step with a trained soldier — that was something else entirely. Something that could shift the shape of a battlefield outright. Nobody needed Arthur to finish that thought out loud.
Raymond, predictably, shot to his feet. "Hold on!" A finger jabbed at Arthur. "Weren't you the one who shot down my cavalry idea?"
Leon covered his face. Cedric looked away. Even Gareth's shoulders started shaking.
Arthur just smiled. "Didn't you come back with an even better one right after?" He nodded toward the window, toward the sky where Skyrend had vanished. "You wanted cavalry. You came back with aerial artillery."
For a moment Raymond looked absurdly pleased with himself. Put that way, it did sound impressive. Leon rubbed his forehead — those two agreeing with each other worried him a lot more than their usual arguing ever did.
He raised a hand anyway. "One concern." The room turned to him. "The egg hatched fast because the energy cost was massive. We still don't know how long it takes these things to actually grow up afterward. If maturation takes years, none of this matters."
The excitement cooled a shade. Fair point.
Raymond snorted before anyone could answer. "Doubt that'll be an issue." Every eye went to him. He leaned back in his chair. "That feathered glutton ate enough last night to feed three grown men."
Leon's eyebrow twitched. "You've known him less than a day and you're already calling him names."
"Because it's true. Why do you think he's not back yet?" He waved vaguely at the window. "Probably gorging himself somewhere."
Gareth barked a laugh. Cedric adjusted his spectacles thoughtfully. Arthur, meanwhile, seemed stuck on one particular part of that sentence. "Thank the gods we're not the ones feeding him."
The room went quiet a beat, and then even Leon had to concede the point. If Skyrend's appetite really was that outrageous, maybe rapid growth wasn't so far-fetched after all. Arthur traded a look with Cedric, and the old advisor seemed to land on the same thought — if these creatures burned through resources like that, maybe they matured just as fast.
For the first time since Stonehaven had come up, the future didn't look entirely bleak. Dangerous. Uncertain. But not hopeless. And for people living on a frontier, that was sometimes enough.
Arthur eventually rose. The conversation had run well past what breakfast usually called for, but nobody minded — too much had shifted in a single morning. Stonehaven had fallen. The orcs were fortifying it. And for the first time since the war began, Ashborne had something the enemy didn't know existed.
He turned to Leon. "You rest today."
Leon opened his mouth. Arthur raised a finger before he could get a word out. "You rest." The younger Ashborne shut his mouth. The faint smile on his father's face left no room to argue. "Day after tomorrow, you transform one mare. Then rest a day. Then another. We move carefully."
Leon nodded, reluctant but unable to argue with the logic.
Arthur turned to Raymond next. "As for you — keep watching Stonehaven. Any unusual movement, any troop shifts, any change in construction. I want it reported the moment you see it."
Raymond grinned. "Leave it to me."
The next two days passed quickly. Ashborne fell into an uneasy rhythm — preparations running quietly behind the scenes, blacksmiths working from dawn well past dark, supplies counted and recounted, the damaged sections of the walls under constant attention. Nobody said it out loud, but everyone felt it: a storm was coming, and the city intended to be standing when it arrived.
The news from the frontier stayed grim. Word out of Highcrest had nearly stopped entirely. Scouting parties sent that direction came back thinner every time, and the few survivors brought back next to nothing worth having. Arthur finally called it off. "No more scouting toward Highcrest." Nobody liked the order. Everyone understood it.
Meanwhile, Raymond kept watching Stonehaven through Skyrend, and each day brought a worse report than the last. The reconstruction was moving at a frightening pace — collapsed sections of wall already rebuilt, shattered watchtowers rising again, temporary camps hardening into permanent ones. The city was turning from ruin into fortress in real time, the orcs working with a speed that made human labor look sluggish by comparison — what would've taken weeks for men, they finished in days.
By the end of the second day, Cedric had a clearer picture assembled: roughly seven hundred orcs occupying the city, nearly a dozen Chieftains, and two confirmed Orc Lords. A serious force. When he laid out the numbers, he took off his spectacles and exhaled. "They have every right to be arrogant." His eyes lingered on the report. "Before the young master's awakening, a force this size would've cost us all a great deal of sleep."
Nobody disagreed. Seven hundred orcs, two Orc Lords, a fortified city — not long ago, that would have been an impossible wall for Ashborne to face. Arthur studied the map in silence, and a faint smile crossed his face. "A perfect whetstone." Cedric glanced over. Arthur's eyes stayed on Stonehaven. "If the plan works, there's no better place to test it."
Raymond had his own concerns, mainly Skyrend. The eagle's appetite had gotten genuinely absurd — every evening he came back from hunting looking a little bigger, nothing dramatic, but enough to notice.
One afternoon, after Skyrend landed beside him with what looked like an entire boar's leg in his talons, Raymond finally said what had been bothering him. "You're getting bigger."
The eagle ignored him completely.
"I'm serious. You feel heavier every time you land on my shoulder."
Skyrend let out an indignant screech, deeply offended by the accusation.
"Don't get chunky on me," Raymond said, and the eagle screeched even louder — the insult had clearly landed. Raymond laughed. If anything, the reaction only confirmed what he'd already suspected: these creatures grew a lot faster than anything natural.
At one point he suggested using Skyrend to scout closer to Highcrest. Arthur shut that down at once. "We know nothing about what's happening there. The forces gathering in that region are dangerous, and I won't risk him there until he's stronger." His tone stayed calm, but there was no room in it to push back. "Let him grow first. We'll take the risk when we actually need to."
For once, Raymond agreed. Even he knew the line between confidence and recklessness.
And so the two days passed — reports, preparation, waiting, the whole city holding its breath without saying so.
Then, on the morning of the third day, Leon strode toward Arthur's office with real purpose in his step. Two days of enforced rest had nearly driven him out of his mind. He was fully recovered now, and more than anything, he finally had something to do.
He pushed the door open with a grin. "I'm ready." His voice carried a confidence it hadn't had a few days ago. "Bring me to the mare. I'm ready for the next—"
The words died in his throat.
Arthur wasn't behind his desk. Cedric wasn't reviewing reports. And Raymond certainly wasn't lounging around doing nothing. All three of them were on their feet, all three looked unusually keyed up, and all three seemed to be heading somewhere in a hurry.
Leon blinked. "What happened?"
Raymond's grin split wide. "The mare." Before Leon could react, he'd grabbed his arm. "She's in labor."
For a second Leon just stared. Then it landed. "The foal?"
"Exactly." Raymond didn't give him a chance to say anything else, already dragging him toward the door. "Move."
For the first time in days, even Arthur's composure broke into a real, genuine smile.
The wait was finally over.