"And to really put an end to this it's Vigil we have to burn to the ground," says Abrogail, in the voice of a reasonable person.

Which does not make her one. "I do not think we can do that, your Majesty."

"Sure we can! We bribe Arazni! She hates those fucking people as much as I do!"

Cheliax draws down its Worldwound forces to the treaty minimums and has a lot of invisible flying wizards Fireball the forces of the Glorious Reclamation. In the daytime this doesn't go well, because inquisitors can See Invisibility and fire one of the specially-made sniper rifles; at night it's much more of a problem. `

It's not a new tactic, and the Reclamation has all the old responses ready. They camp without night fires, and cover or darken any metal that might catch the moonlight, so the enemy wizards have to come in closer to identify a target; they have their own wizards on night patrol, hoping to catch the attackers in a glitterdust aimed at the fireballs' origins. The only change is that when they succeed it's riflemen trying to shoot the attackers down rather than archers, with predictable improvements to hit rate and lethality. Some of the Chelish manage to both land their fireballs and escape, but even with Cheliax' greater numbers the Reclamation is optimistic about a favorable attrition rate.

Freedom finds military tactics fascinating. For the most part the people who can sit down and explain them to her - the plays, the counterplays, what kinds of advantages are durable and what kinds are altered by guns - are very busy but wherever they are not she'll sit down and talk to them for hours. The non-secret bits she explains on the radio, soberly, including where she's discussing ways that Thrune-loyal forces have an advantage. "We're winning, of course, but there's no point pretending that everything's going our way; no one's going to believe that. If you claim that the war will be won without horrible losses, then when there are horrible losses people might go 'why am I fighting in this war'? So you have to be straightforward. Many people are going to die. We're going to win, though. 

Why do you suppose Cheliax has more people at the Worldwound usually? Because if you have too few, they spend too much time in the field, and they're tired and not combat effective, and they die more. The usual numbers are the numbers that are best for Cheliax in the long run, and now they're eating their seed corn. The forces of Hell have arrived to their aid, and realized they can't meet us in the field because our weapons are too dangerous.

And I'm sure at this point a lot of you are wondering, can't Cheliax steal these weapons? They've tried! But what makes them powerful is that we have ten thousand of them, and the ammunition for them, and by now House Thrune has discovered it can't make them or make ammunition for them. You might think that they can learn how, since people did learn how in the first place, but remember that only slaves, desperate people, and stupid people work for House Thrune, and many of the slaves are now contemplating escape. Invention is the business of free people, defending free countries. Cheliax will be a place of invention once again as soon as it's free."

There's still a wall of hellfire blocking the pass. It must have been an elaborate and expensive miracle, as it does not fade.

There are half a dozen gods who would remove the hellfire as a miracle of their own. The glorious reclamation does not want to try to match Cheliax miracle for miracle, diamond for diamond, even when they can get the miracles from other gods. Cansellarion will look for another way around.

(Catherine could offer such a way, if she was willing to tip her hand to her allies and show a bit more of it to her enemies. She's not at that point, yet. She conjures up seasonal thunderstorms and  unseasonable blizzards to bottle up the Chelish fleets in their harbors.)

There's not really a good way to march around the wall of Hellfire but that doesn't mean it can't be bypassed. Can Morgethai and Clepati do a teleportation circle for them in the morning? Can he count on occasional teleportation circles for supply, or should he plan as if he doesn't have access to those?

"That depends on Nefreti," Morgethai says flatly. She's not delighted about doing a Teleportation Circle - she only has one non-transmutation ninth circle spell a day, and Teleportation Circles are openly advertising that she doesn't have, for instance, a Disjunction - but she's had a few month's warning that the war was coming and wrote a lot of scrolls and Cheliax won't find her wildly more unprepared on a day with a Teleportation Circle than they'd find her any other day.

"Hmmm, does it?" says Nefreti, consideringly. "I guess it's hard to do teleportation circles without telling Alex. I'll do this one, and the first two followup ones for supply, and by the third followup either things will be different or all will be lost."

"Will you elaborate at all if I ask questions about what you just said, or is it a lost cause?"

Nefreti considers this. "You consider all of my elaborations a waste of your time."

"Alright. If I could count on teleportation circles for supply I'd want to hit the Archduke of Menador's army at Kantaria first, but since we can't… Corentyn, I guess. Four miles north."

"No, no, Kantaria's better," says Nefreti.

"I don't see how I can secure another supply line starting from Kantaria in the amount of time you've given me."

Nefreti closes her eyes and makes a pained face. "If ...when you need resupply for the third time ...you don't have anyone and all is not lost, I'll do your resupply, and also personally defeat Rovagug in a knife fight."

"...I find that implausible," on many levels, "But if you promise that advice comes from you being prophetic and not just a whim, I'll do Kantaria."

"The advice is because you are more likely to get what you want if you do Kantaria," Nefreti says. "That's how advice works."

"Okay. Six miles north of Kantaria, on the west side of the river. Can you do that end, if Morgethai gets the end near the army?"

"Yes."

Cansellarion returns to his troops and they spend the rest of the day retreating from the wall of Hellfire. He makes for the passes into Andoran; maybe Cheliax will imagine that, thwarted, he's taking the long way around and letting them consolidate their forces in the east.

Lilia doesn't particularly imagine this is the case. If Andoran too had been training its people on guns over the winter, and was ready to bet everything on this, they'd have joined the initial invasion; since they didn't, they're training their people now and/or waiting for a definitive sign the war has broken in their favor before they swoop in. She tells Abrogail that her bet is it's a ruse, and he's planning on a Miracle or a Teleportation Circle overnight. 

Abrogail smiles grimly in a way that suggests, to Lilia, that she would love to see the Glorious Reclamation try to match her for miracles. 

"We can ring all of Cheliax in Hellfire if we need to."

"But it is a greater service to Asmodeus to crush them without that. …I'd bet on the Teleportation Circle, anyway. You observed that the likeliest explanation of the last year's events is that they have an allied archmage who isn't Morgethai."