"And if he’s not?" Seren asked.

"Then he stays in Percvale until he is," Darion replied. "Which I suspect won’t take long."

Garren was looking at him with an expression that could have meant doubt or concern. Hard to tell with Garren. Maybe both.

The plan sounded great in words but would it be possible to execute?

He was going through it and finding things that could go wrong, things that would make it to not even be executed.

Garren was someone that loved a solid plan, so he usually made suggestions on where things could go wrong, which he would be assured by Darion on why it wouldn’t go wrong or what they could revise from the plan.

"A king held in Percvale while Valdenmoor has no leadership," Garren said softly. "That creates its own problems."

"Less of a problem than letting him go without binding him," Darion said. "And considerably less of a problem than leaving him dead and dealing with whoever comes next angry." He looked at the table. "We capture him, bring him here, let him see what Percvale has become. What it was before his two hundred knights destroyed it. What it will be again. That we’re done with his nonsense. Then we put the oath in front of him."

"And the debt?" one of the senior knights asked.

"Cancelled in the oath. He swears the debt is cancelled and that Valdenmoor will not act against Percvale, its people, or its lands. In exchange, he goes home alive and unharmed, with the full knowledge of what we could have done to him and didn’t." Darion looked around the table. "That’s the trade. He gets his life and his dignity. We get security and the farmland."

The senior knight who had called it ambitious was quiet for a moment.

"If Vera’s oath works the way it worked on you," Garren said carefully, "Then he can’t choose to break it later."

"That’s correct," Vera said from the end of the table.

Garren looked at her. Then back at Darion. "And you’re certain you can take him alive? In the middle of a burning barracks with his soldiers fighting your undead?"

Darion thought about it. The chaos that would follow his plan into Valdenmoor was going to be significant. There would be fire, smoke, screaming and horses panicking. His undead would movethrough it all without fear, without hesitation and without the need to breathe or blink or process what they were seeing.

Would they be able to maintain control? Would the plan hold together once the first arrow hit the first building? Or would it all collapse into a general melee where Aldric slipped away in the confusion and the whole operation fell apart?

He ran it through his head again. The archers in the trees... the accelerant arrows...t he incapacitation bundles... the disorientation cloud... the undead advancing.

In all of that chaos, he needed a small team to break off, find Aldric’s stone building, and extract him before his guards could rally or before he could escape.

It was risky. Every part of it was risky.

"No," Darion said finally. "I’m not certain. But it’s the plan, and we execute it as cleanly as we can." He looked at Garren. "You know where his quarters are in the barracks layout?"

Even though Garren had done many night infiltrations in Valdenmoor, he still didn’t know King Aldric’s building, the place he stayed.

He couldn’t be blamed for that though. He had been somewhere there before, at the ’Palace’ when he first went to explain his situation to the man and how he wouldn’t be able to pay the debts.

But thinking about it now, he didn’t remember where the building was.

And was that where King Aldric slept?

"Separate building on the side of the compound," Garren said. "Smaller structure, stone rather than timber. That’s where Aldric stays. Well guarded. More defensible than the main hall."

"Stone doesn’t burn," Darion said.

"No."

"Then the fire accelerant doesn’t threaten him directly. Which means his first instinct when the barracks goes up won’t be to run. He might hold his position in the stone building and wait for his knights to deal with whatever is attacking." He paused. "That’s where we take him. In the stone building while his knights are occupied with everything else."

Not exactly all his knights, Darion thought. There would be guards. Men specifically assigned to protect the king. Men who wouldn’t run toward the fire because their job was to stay close to Aldric and keep him safe. They would be inside the stone building or right outside it, weapons drawn, ready for anyone who came near.

But his undead wild wolf could handle them. The wolf had taken down a trained knight in the treeline before the man could throw a second spear. It had torn through five wild wolves on the road back to Percvale. A few guards standing outside a door? That wasn’t a problem. That was an inconvenience.

"Who goes in?" Garren asked.

"Me," Darion said. "And the wolf. And six of your best."

The room settled into quiet. The people in the hall had heard a plan and were running it forward in their heads, testing it against what they knew, looking for the place where it broke.

Nobody found it. Or if they did, they decided that what they had was the best available version of what could be done. That the place where it broke was a problem to solve in the field, not a reason to abandon the plan entirely.

Which version could they possibly take instead? This was the only one with any real chance of working. If there were two thousand ways in the universe, only this one made sense. The rest led to dead knights, a dead king, or both.

"We leave at dawn," Darion said.

"Dawn," they all confirmed. In unison. Like they had rehearsed it. Except Vera though, she didn’t say anything.

Darion looked at the items on the table one more time. The bundles. The vessel. The containers. Everything Vera had made.

"Get some sleep," he said. "Tomorrow we end this."