Lacking the will to do things properly is a known failing of other armies. He's not disappointed; being disappointed that your model of reality is correct is among the clearest signs that you've gotten things twisted inside. There are more practical matters to be handled regardless.

"Have the sunrise sword briefed you on the enemies we have been dealing with?"

"They said they took a lot more hitting to take out and that cold iron didn't help as much as it should have. Have you learned anything else about them?"

"Yes. The fundamental issue they failed to recognize was that our foes were not demons at all, but a tribe of Gargoyles. Many of them appear to have demonic blood or empowerment from the fiendish powers, which allows them to overcome much of their weakness to magic, but they are fundamentally mortal. This is why neither blessed nor cold iron weapons find purchase and smites manage only a partial stopgap. The surest antidote we have found, for organizations lacking in magic weapons, is that of a coordinated defense; they have little ability to strike at range, and if enough force can be concentrated it is possible to slay them between when they first dive for a victim and when they take off again. A lucerne hammer is ideal, when they can be brought to bear."

"I'll aim to get you some of those, then, if you don't have enough. And more arrows." And raid their base again; maybe she can kill a bunch of them and take some of the pressure off.

"My unit would find use for another twelve such hammers, arrows up to four thousand, and wands or scrolls of magic weapon up to five hundred castings; I will approve payment for their transportation from citadel Dinyar or purchase them from your stores at up to half again their Arodus market values in Absalom, under the authorization of Paralictor Regill Derenge."

She takes notes, though not anywhere Regill can see them. "Excellent. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss before I go get the second wagon? Or after, I suppose."

"Your crusade's campaign plans, or at least the public details thereof. It seems likely that operating completely independently is inefficient, and if nothing else we could press the demons in multiple places at the same time to divide their response."

"I agree. Do you have a suitable meeting room, or would you prefer to come back to mine?" Hers has the advantage of being able to easily grab her staff if they want additional heads, but if the Paralictor wants his own staff and maps and so forth or just doesn't want to bother with being teleported here is also fine.

"Our meeting tent is sufficiently secure for what I planned to share of our own goals, but it does not fundamentally surpass the second level of security; it's a static location inside the wound and not covered by a sanctum. Whether that is secure enough for your own purposes is something I cannot determine, but I am willing to join you if you deem it prudent."

After he sets things up to ensure the result of him being compromised is the order losing him for its purposes and not risking his unit, of course. There are some things you don't chance when taking an unplanned Teleport.

"Your tent is fine." She'll just not say anything it would be particularly bad for the demons to learn. It might not even be hard, with the much more imminent risk of embarrassment about Regill thinking she said something she shouldn't have.

Then they can head to the Paralictor's tent. Central location aside, it doesn't look any different from the tents around it, so either these particular hellknights avoid excessive ornamentation in their officers or the original was lost or destroyed.

They're both under constant observation on the way over, but not by the people who were keeping watch at the camp boundaries, and the new additions stop outside of the tent itself. They're not cleared for all possible things that could get discussed here, and if she is an infiltrator then the privacy might bait her into thinking it's safe to strike.

Still not an infiltrator! Once they're inside she lays out the crusade's broad objectives of taking territory from the current Wardstone line through Drezen and move the barrier inwards, and how far they've gotten. She doesn't mention the timing of their planned advance or say anything that implies the Gate trick is repeatable.

Regill spends the entire explanation listening intently and assessing. Drezen is an ambitious goal. Potentially disastrously so, if it fails and their army is destroyed far from Mendevian lines, but it at least has the twin virtues of being possible and worth doing if you could succeed at it. It’s also a sign that the crusade planning staff is primarily Mendevian. It’s too focused on symbolism over military pragmatism to be Lastwall’s work- they would have likely suggested making the crusade’s primary focus moving the fortress line up along the Sellen - and too bounded in scope for him to expect it from and adventurer who keeps their own council or esteems’ their party above Mendev’s strategists. 

That’s a good thing for the odds of the crusade staying on course, and bad for his ability to assume competence. It seems unlikely that someone with the ability to source exactly two castings of gate would blow them on taking Villareth’s Ford, which would suggest they have or can get more, but he can’t guarantee it’s not simply a catastrophic blunder. If they’re even being honest in their claims in the first place.

What are the ways the world could be? Call it three, for now. In one, this whole affair is a demonic plot, which is always a good guess for surprising events. It’d be an expensive one to fool the checks they underwent, and he doesn’t think he’s being lied to, but not impossible. In this world, he needs to ensure any changes to his plans don’t get his force killed for insufficient gain, and advantage any plotter obtains is worth less than faking it would cost them.

In another, they’re honest and incompetent, and absent a miracle thousands of crusaders are going to be killed uselessly. Regill has little sentiment for their lives, but losing the better part of the army of Mendev would be an unmitigated disaster for containing the wound. It would be well worth their entire deployment dying, if it meant they could preserve enough of the deployed forces that the wardstone line doesn’t collapse, and it’s his duty as a paralictor to ensure that happens.

And in the third, they’re honest and competent, with money and magic to burn and more gates where Villareth’s Fords’ came from. In this case, intervening here is an important opportunity to strike at the demons, and additional intervention might prove sufficient to actually achieve their goals or inflict disproportionate losses on the demons. It’s the best outcome, so he doesn’t trust it, but neither is it wise to ignore it. 

That makes his next course of action obvious. 

“A worthy goal. The order of the godclaw would be honored to contribute to this endeavor. I’ll make preparations to march north, either for Drezen or to disperse any enemy concentrations en route, and attempt to draw the attention of the Gargoyles away from your army.” Hellknights and Armigers are a much harder target than Mendevian conscripts for this kind of force, particularly if the resupply is genuine. “My adjutant will be at your disposal for the purposes of coordination.”

And then he’s going burn some scrolls to get into contact with Citadel Dinyar. He wants someone outside of the wound to do research on this alleged crusade, and also preferably some Signifiers with teleport in case this ends up being a situation where he needs to ensure the evacuation of Mendevian VIPs or their corpses.

"That would be much appreciated. I'll have my people talk to your people about prospects for further provision of supplies and establishing regular communications. Any more threats like the gargoyles shouldn't be able to surprise us both separately. Your redeployment is inevitably going to mean fewer men deployed down here; how much of a concern do you expect that to be?"

"Minimal. The godclaw forces are prepared to hold their position even if we are lost with all hands. With us merely fighting elsewhere, and the need to do without us only temporary, it should be well within their ability to manage."

Not easily so, to be clear; no amount of harsh training will make armigers grow on trees, much less hellknights, and the godclaw has never been a large order. It would be a serious enough blow that they would not have set out on this patrol if death was the certain result unless there was significantly more to gain from it. But traveling through the wound is hardly safe even when you aren't attempting to march straight at a suspected concentration of demonic forces in a spoiling raid, and it would be negligence not to be prepared for it being a trap that got everyone involved killed - there are specific contingencies he does not know and is far too disciplined to attempt to rederive for such an occurrence.

"Glad to hear it. It sounds like you're planning to operate independently with coordination rather than integrate into the main crusade chain of command, is that right?"

"Indeed, though we are prepared to second out specific units including this to the crusade for bounded commitments should that prove advantageous."

It might end up making sense to subordinate the whole group to the Mendev until to Drezen, if it means there isn't confusion about the chain of command and they're trusted to know what is actually needed to make the battle successful - other orders made similar arrangements with the Queen during the fourth crusade, to mixed results - but he's not going to do that until he's heard back from Dinyar and has a better sense of their tactical competence and strategic picture. 

And once they've gotten the agreement to cooperate out of the way, the camp can move back to (slightly less) alert, and she can meet a few of the people in question. His adjutant is unsurprisingly another hellknight, apparently named Yaker. He has the same pitch black armor, but even if he's not particularly tall by human standards he rather towers over the gnome paralictor. He'll take off the helmet so they can do identification checks later as required, like if he returns after vanishing mysteriously; if there's any doubts in his mind about entering the command of a teenager, it doesn't show on his face, and he salutes her with the exact same seriousness and deference he has for the Paralictor.

"Sir, as you command!"

Getting called sir is still weird (and Hellknights are also weird), but she can pretend it's all normal long enough to coordinate on all the military logistics things either of them can think of to coordinate on and then get back to her camp.

The next obstacle on their route to Drezen is a set of canyons called the Leper’s smile, where the Sellen carved its way through a rising plateau. The water from the river and its tributaries, pitted against hard igneous rock, have carved deep and narrow channels into the stone, and in recent years have been joined by the efforts of the worldwound’s acidic rain. This poses three problems to their approach.

Firstly, the narrow river and its irregular depths make it difficult to move barges up, especially since it’s difficult to have animals walking on the bank to move them. Secondly, it means the armies must take a more circuitous path to advance, which often leaves them to choose between copious backtracking and getting too far away to defend shipments. And thirdly, all the winding canyons and caves and blind corners make it the perfect place for an ambush, and while their scouts haven’t reported any signs of it it’s gotten a lot of people on edge.

They had a really good plan for it too, but unfortunately  these things take time to arrange and the crusaders seem incredibly determined not to give them it. They’ll have to find somewhere to recycle it later. 

Anyway, it’s something they’re entirely capable of solving themselves - mostly by unloading the barges until they’re light enough to float over safely and then taking the rest of the goods up by short wagon relay, putting everything really valuable to steal going that way since the soldiers can escort it in force - but it’ll take time off their schedule they don’t want to spend, so if she’s got a faster way they’re all ears.

Not much, unfortunately! She can teleport some wagons or fly over the operation scouting for trouble. Or she could get a scroll of Stone Shape and make the river more navigable, but at a handful of cubic feet of rock per second that's probably more trouble than its worth unless having a navigable river here would keep paying dividends later.

If they can hold Drezen long enough they’ll dredge a channel eventually, but it’s definitely not worth the delay to do it now.

Fair enough; teleporting wagons and providing air support it is then. (Someday she's going to have a good enough excuse to do a giant civil engineering project with magic and when that day comes she will be so ready.)