The Discussion Begins, Disagreements Hinder the Plan

Firelight danced across the tent walls, casting a faint gleam over the melted snow along the edge of the sand table. Chen Wuya poured the last handful of fine sand onto Eaglebeak Gully, then drew his fingertip down the slope, leaving a slanting mark. Without looking up, he said quietly, "At midnight last night, six more fires appeared over there. The cooking smoke was nearly twice as thick as the day before yesterday."

The generals who had been murmuring inside the tent fell silent at once.

"This isn't a remnant force making camp." He lifted his eyes and swept them over the crowd. "They're reorganizing. They haven't retreated—they're redeploying their defenses."

The moment he finished, someone on the left gave a cold laugh. The general was broad and stocky, his left arm wrapped in old bandages. He sat unmoving on a low stool. "So what if they're reorganizing? We've fought for three months, slaughtering our way from the refugee camps to the mouth of Broken Dragon Valley. The brothers' bones are about to fall apart. Now you say the enemy is coming again, and we have to fight immediately? Who's going to fight? With what?"

Chen Wuya recognized him—an old general from the border army, surnamed Li. In the last battle, his shoulder bone had been shattered by a wolf-toothed mace, and it still had not healed. Chen Wuya did not rush to argue. He merely asked, "How long does General Li think we should wait?"

"At least half a month." General Li slapped the table and surged to his feet, his palm pressing heavily against the edge of the sand table. "Rest, replenish supplies, rotate the wounded. We signed an alliance agreement. We should have withdrawn back across the border by now, yet we're planning to push north on