Al was beat, he could not remember what sunlight felt like. He tried to guess how long he had been in the reading room of Blackriver castle, must have been at least an hour.

Letra looked up looked up from his/her, Alaric had made no progress in determining his friends sex, own pile of documents.

"Al, we just started the afternoon shift! You can't be seriously tired already?" The things Alaric had learned first in his new career was that Letra was rumoured to be a demons sent to make everybody else around here seem incapable. The second lesson was that scholars were bad at retaliating against said demon so they avoided him whenever possible.

That included his/her first recruit in the two years Letra had been here. Al sighed again, just his luck. On the plus side Letra knew more than anyone about the city and it's past and was happy to share the knowledge.

Al returned his attention to the piece of paper before him describing a small skirmish about three weeks away from the city. General Summer described the battle with a few lines of badly written words and a couple of grammar mistakes. They had taken a handful of casualties against a force three times as numerous as them, after being ambushed.

Not the most trustworthy report he had come across, but the higher ups loved hero stories so he checked the numbers and filled the losses into his chart then he noted the names of brave fighters that had done their duty exemplary, four of them were dead and one had been given a war name, the Wolf. The name got noted on a fast growing list of heroes the council could praise at the next gathering in two months, if they survived that long.

Lately the names of heroes were replaced faster than the candles in the main building. The numbers he received had a clear message, the war would soon start to escalate. So far the battles had been small with less than 200 soldiers on each side. But according to spies among the guards in Goldhill the amount of new recruits arriving more than matched the numbers Blackriver received.

If the year continued like this the rebels would be outnumbered three to one. It made sense, Blackriver had lots of grain and a wide spread population where Goldhill commanded the actual military and most of the larger cities. The only thing that could turn the tide for the rebels, was the loss of food production in the enemy territory. If the people were starving they would chose food over money any day.

Al looked over the marching map at the wall across from him, four cartographers were mapping every troop movement they heard of while about sixteen more were working on a large wooden disk with the surrounding areas of Blackriver carved into it.

With all the staff the castle was housing Letra and Alaric had been assigned to the second work floor where large maps of especially important positions were carved into wood and maps were redrawn so once the map on the wall was filled with movements they could switch it out.

The whole preparations were amazing, Al would have never suspected the war to be this tactical when it came to simple supply lines. As far as he could tell the entirety of this had been organised by at least five masters of tactics and organization. The library was being restocked with old scrolls of the last few centuries and the soldiers being groomed for a leading position had to undergo harsh training in tactics, organization and had to learn how to read and write.

Letra looked over his scroll again and his stare had Al return to work, he hated his job. The completion of the report took another half hour where he tried to make sense of the equipment and notes found by the dead soldiers.

Samples were on their way, but it would take at least another two weeks before they could get a blacksmith to take a look at them. Lately the quality of equipment found at the raiding parties had decreased, chainmail replaced by sloppily knitted steel plates that were heavier and broke more easily. The swords were of low quality iron and often broke in battle.

Al stopped his train of thoughts, something was happening on a grand scale. Goldhill should have access to high quality materials since they controlled the largest iron mine in the region.

Unless, the material was running out. Alaric shot up and Letra yelped at the sudden movement.

"What the hell Al?" annoyed his voice was slightly higher pitched and he truly sounded like a girl.

"I found something! Something important, is there anyone from the higher ups we can tell?" he was already on his way to the door when Letra reacted, he got off the bench and ran around the large wooden disk in the middle of the room to catch Al before he entered the corridor.

"Al, wait! We still got work to do!" he yelled after him but Alaric had already passed through the door and was now charging through the hallway. By the time Letra managed to leave the room Al had already put some distance between them, his long legs giving him the advantage of reach. Letra, in the meantime had to be careful not to trip over his way to long robe and only made slow progress.

By the time Al had reached the stairs Letra had managed to cover barely half the distance and was already breathing heavily. With a look to ensure he was still behind him Al began climbing the steps with a smile.

After the months of stupendous work he was finally in the position to make a name for himself, If any other scribe had drawn the connection he would have surely heard about it by now. As he reached the highest floor of the castle sweat was soaking his robe, he had to lean at a window and catch his breath.

Letra was nowhere to be seen, he was most likely still climbing, or had fainted of exhaustion Al was in bad condition after the months of sitting but Letra was off even worse. A door opened and Era walked out, dressed in the heavy black robe of the master of scrolls. Her face had deep dark lines, she was most likely not getting enough sleep, her eyes lit up when she glanced over Al.

"Young Alaric? What are you doing here? Besides drenching the carpet with your sweat?" Al was about to snap something back then remembered her new status. With the old master bedridden she had effectively taken over command of the intelligence staff and was one of the most powerful people in the castle.

"I have found something in last month's reports, something important!" he yapped, still trying to calm his breathing, he really needed more exercise.

"You? Of the hundred scribes working on the scrolls you found something all the others did not?" her skepticism was to be expected, the other recruits he had arrived with had all been sent home. All but the little boy who was still practising reading since he could not be trusted with important letters yet.

"Have you noticed a spike in iron prices recently? I mean a higher spike than we predicted due to our own usage?" Her eyes widened a bit, last week the financial advisor had informed her about a much larger spike in prices than anticipated, Al had been walking by when she had asked him about the mistake in his calculations.

The council had thought it had been made by Goldhill to put another strain on their funds. The orders had been given to send more workers to the mines in Blackriver's own territories not to drain too much gold out of the chests.

"You found the error in Master Jacob's equations?" Her voice was still sceptical, Al was not well known for his math equations his main job was gathering information from all the reports after all.

"No, I found the reason why the iron supply seems to have been reduced quite significantly. Goldhill's mine is running out." The sentence hung in the air, Alaric thought he could see the thoughts behind her eyes racing, the dark lines disappeared when she fully understood the meaning of this.

"Goldhill has lost most of its iron production! They are losing the mines to our soldiers since they thought Ironwell would last them through the entire conflict." Al was taken aback, the aristocrats had named their mine Ironwell? That was most likely one of the least well thought through names he had ever heard.

"I would guess you have a plan as how to use this to our advantage?" she had regained her composure. She was now leaning on one leg and had her arms crossed in front of her.

"Yes I do have an idea, but I want to be part of the commanding structure executing the plan and Letra to come with me." Al gave the whole thing about a one in ten chance Era was going to go for it. Having him be part of the commanders would be the best place to learn how to command and direct troops but for them it only meant a little kid was around when they planned their attacks.

Era looked at him like he had just strangled her father in front of the entire court, a vein was pulsing on her neck. Alaric was about to withdraw his request not to be torn to pieces when she opened her mouth.

"You, want me to promote you to a commanding officer? Because you found a piece of information while doing the job you were thought for? Explain to me how that would help us." her voice was calm, but strained like she was about to start yelling.

Al was taken by surprise, yes he had just wanted to stop reading letters all day long but he had never actually thought about why they should promote him.

"Well... " he started, his mind trying to figure out a way he could make this work. "If I'm a commanding officer I could recruit people as my staff right?" He knew each commander had at least five others helping him but he was playing for time.

Era seemed like she was trying to figure out what he was getting at, "Yes, you can recruit from the staff we have already in place or have candidates validated through our recruitment crew."

In Al's head an idea started to form.

"Well then I would like to use said underlings to gather information about economy and submit my findings to the War-Council. Like I have just proven things like prices of steel will give us clues on how the enemy will react, we will be able to drain their finances and divert troops by attacking high value targets in their own territory." the idea sounded not that bad in his ears and it would open the doors for him to interact directly with the war council. Maybe with their knowledge he could finally figure out where Erik and Cara were.

Era was still sceptical, he could see it due to her eyebrow movement, a slight twitching meant she was still considering.

"I will talk to the council, if things go through you will have to recruit your own team no one will be forced to work under you." with those words she turned around and headed towards the upper part of the main castle, a place she knew he was not allowed to follow.

Behind Al a completely drained Letra fought his way up the stairs, the boy was on all four limbs and as red as a Firepumpkin. Alaric smiled, he would be glad to hear about the potential new division, as soon as he woke up again.

At the top of the stairs Letra had collapsed and was now snoring.