Aaldorenfeald was not a good country for philosophers. It held few men of the churchly order, and even fewer scholars. No one had time for philosophy, or for the arts, or for anything else deemed unnecessary and wasteful by the conditions of such a stark society. The Aaldoren had always been a people resolute, and their resolution was labour. There was no night's rest more satisfying than after a hard day's work, Aaldorenfeald's people told themselves. This steadfast ideology, body over mind, extended from the lowliest labourer to even Aaldorenfeald's King. It was all the more embarrassing for Grindan Osgar, then, King of the Aaldoren, when in his work, he found his mind drifting to matters of philosophy. He had capacity to console himself, though, for his philosophizing was at least of the constructive sort.

War was a grisly and horrible affair. The pestilence it brought about was just as bad as the terror of the bloodshed itself, and Grindan had always considered it to be the responsibility of any good King to spare his people war whenever it was at all an option. The contents of Grindan's philosophical musings as he perused the papers cluttering his workplace poked at those considerations. With each steward's report read over, each book entry double-checked, each stiff parchment flipped over to leave the Warrior-King's eyes free to see another document, Grindan's resolve for peace lessened and lessened. It was not easy to remain a man of peace with an army assembling at your doorstep, after all: even if, in this case, the army was Grindan's to command. Grindan mused that his own sentiments for peace, dwindling as they were, were moot at this point. Besides that it would be rather embarrassing for a King to send an army of several thousand men hailing from multiple kingdoms back to their homes merely because of a change of heart, the war force assembling and training outside of Rytael as Grindan worked would also hopefully be saving more lives than they'd end. Grindan chuckled at the thought that an army of angry men could ever save even one life, let alone more than they'd kill; Grindan's personality and training was that of a warrior, after all, and so he held no pretenses towards what would occur on the battlefield. Still, though, the rare Aaldoren philosopher trapped inside of Grindan's grizzled frame knew that it was no jest that wars could cause peace. Grindan himself—the warrior, not the philosopher—knew, like all of his countrymen, that his cause alone was the one that would most lead to peace. For all of his doubts about war's necessity, though, never for a half of a moment did it cross Grindan's mind that the necessary war was the one being fought by his enemy. The idea that he was not right was almost as inconceivable as the idea that he could lose.

Stepping away from the letters at his desk, Grindan ascended his way, unguarded and unaccompanied, to the tallest part of Rytael's great manor. Swinging open a solid set of doors and closing them shut again behind him, Grindan found himself immersed in the cool, midnight air of Aaldorenfeald. Below and before him, a field of light as if a spear of stretched out to sunder the night's dark shield, was an immense camp-site, befitting several thousand men's arms. Fires from the hundreds upon hundreds of tents bellowed smoke high into the air, and the men below slept and ate and fought, readying themselves for what was to come for them. Banners of numerous sorts flew high, just barely made out from Grindan's distance. House Osgar's wolf was the most numerous among the flying banners, but it was not alone. Neither was the personification of that wolf, Lord Grindan, alone as he peered over the ledge at the army below. A woman, one of simple beauty, had been sitting atop the tower as Grindan now was whilst the King was in his office. She'd been waiting for him to arrive, and he'd known.

"It's surprising how beautiful a horrible thing can seem to be, isn't it?" Lady Catríona asked, her eyes never leaving the army, even as she spoke to her husband. "These men will have killed at least their own number in foreigners before they arrive back to their homes and families." Catríona paused, then turned her eyes away from the army and to Grindan. "How many thousand are they? How many Aaldoren lives are you sending off to die on foreign soil?"

Grindan frowned, and matched his wife's gaze, turning to face her at precisely the same moment she'd turned to face him. "Zero. I'm not sending a single one of those men off to die. I'm sending them off to kill. The war our country fights is one that will give Lundland lasting peace. As with all states of peace, though, the one I hope to impose will have to be watered with the blood from a soldier's throat." Grindan beckoned to the army, and then changed his frown to a smirk. "They're gardeners, every one. Even those that craft wood or fish. They are gardeners, and God has tasked them with a climactic garden to water."

Her husband's metaphor made Catríona smile. She loved his plainness. She did not enjoy the prospect of men fighting and dying, but Grindan's explanations always managed to sway her. She trusted that Grindan's campaign was not one of vanity. It was a task to be accomplished: just like a garden to be watered, or a field towed. Her eyes focused on those of her husband, and she wrapped her arms around him tight and kissed him like it would be the last time they would ever touch. Grindan reciprocated, holding his wife lovingly, the cold man's affections for the mother of his children showing through his harshness. There was an amount of truth to the idea that this embrace could be the last Catríona ever had from her husband. The night's air that they now shared would be the last shared by them in this season, for the next morning Grindan would be taking his position at the head of the army assembled below them, and going off to war.