[table][row][/row][row][cell][center][color=2e2c2c]____________________________________________
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[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5588024][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/738562e4-b260-4e43-a770-bfada35e3ce4.png[/img][/url][/center][/cell][cell][center][justify][color=cfbcae]𝕾o at last he'd cast his die. No more uprooting back to Valtrecht if the situation soured. For better or for ill, he would hang with the rest of them.

Ofttimes when Vicquerno had envisioned this moment it had taken shape in his mind as an action in battle: one soldier's decisiveness among many, courage pressed from need like the last drop of wine from the pomace. Ignoring orders from on high, perhaps, to act as the situation on the ground required. Elsewise it was, constructed in his thoughts, not so very different from how it had happened here in the material: a room full of men, the standing, the orating; clarion-voice rising sharp and clear above the mists of reluctant whispers. Either way, sooner than late this war would test not just the mettle but the principles of every man it enlisted. Vicquerno, not fool enough for a moment to think even he would be exempt thereof, could not help feeling that he had just taken his first stand. Which direction wherein to march, what actions to take—merely logistics—but should he have chosen poorly, should his judgment have erred, it befell him now to stand by his mistakes. To atone for every resource squandered, every opportunity missed—every life pissed away in battle. Else in the end he was little better than the hypocrites of the empire.

There was a measure of pride in being chosen, no doubt—in the triumph of his proposal, and a certain measure of esteem earned in the eyes of their sovereign—their sovereign who Vicquerno peered at thoughtfully from halfway down the table. She had not yet tasted defeat in this most righteous venture. When she did, who would she blame? To what culpabilities, if any, would she lay claim? And he looked also round the room wherein they stood: did the same fate await those lieutenants who failed her as those decadent churls who'd stood for what she opposed in this pilgrimage? The cross and the stake, the rack and the lash? Did Ariana's rage, once stoked, know none the bounds of foe and friend?[/color][/justify][/center][/cell][/row][/table][justify][indent][color=cfbcae]As if sensing his question, and eager to buoy it, she addressed him there and then.

[indent][quote][indent][color=white]"Colonel Szaalm, would you care to ride with me on the road? I would be grateful if you would take the time to explain the intricacies of your strategy to me."[/color][/indent][/quote][/indent]
The colonel, himself eager to away from that airless place, back to his camp where there were water and sunshine and a moment's God-given peace, had turned himself with haste toward the door, hat snatched up and very nearly restored to the damp curls of his scalp. The invitation waylaid his hand upon the knocker; a moment's consideration, and the spinning of his heels had scraped up two half-circles of the dust gathered there on the elflord's fine hardwood floor, unswept since the day they'd made a candle of him. Vicquerno accompanied the flounce in his hair, in the tails of his [i]justaucorps,[/i] with his own shallow flourish.

"Oh—I doubt that very much at all, if aught, has eluded Your Majesty," he said, the hand with the hat pressed to his laced-plumped bosom. "But shouldst thou wish to make certain, t'would honor me aplenty to illume what I can. Shall one find thee riding at the fore, as ever?"[/color][/indent][/justify]