“Can we all go back to me coming up with the bad ideas?” I asked, looking around at the people gathered in the cabin. “It’s so much easier when there’s only one insane person in the Clan.”

  That didn’t get any laughs.

  No one was in a laughing mood.

  In the couple of hours we’d been at Mountainside, the Grimdar numbers had increased. More fortifications and even some giant beasts. They were the size of elephants but looked like bears with long snouts, spike tails and bone plates on their shoulders and hips. Weird tan colored fur too. Each was ridden by an armored Grimdar.

  Cavalry.

  We now had to deal with cavalry.

  The elephant-bear things looked tough. There were about two dozen of them. Last count there were two hundred Grimdar. No one could get close enough to get an idea of Levels, but they’d all be above Fifty and below Seventy-Five, which is what the ones at the first Dungeon had been. They could have been higher leveled, probably was a handful there to deal with folk like me, but from what I’d been told, most armies weren’t that high.

  It took a long time and a lot of Resources to get a lot of people above Level Fifty. If they had their full Essences, which I bet most of the Grimdar did not, that was fifty or so Essences for each slot for each soldier. Essences weren’t rare, but they weren’t that common either.

  Then there was the training, armor, weapons, and everything else.

  Even if half-assed it, that was still a lot of time and Resources to devote to a single soldier. So having that many above Seventy-Five would be rare. And if there was a large army, like the Grimdar had, it would be even harder to get all of them above Fifty.

  Armies like the Grimdar focused on quantity over quality.

  There would, of course, be some quality members. Every force had its elites. But most of the Grimdar wouldn’t be elite. But then, neither were my forces. The Solace soldiers were good. The Gray Wolf were okay, from what I’d been told. I hadn’t seen them in action yet. But they still weren’t elite.

  A couple hundred Grimdar were going to be more than my couple dozen Solace soldiers could handle. Hell, that many would be more than I could handle on my own. The power jump from Level Seventy-Five to Level One Hundred was huge, but numbers made up for a lot.

  I sighed, looking down at the map.

  Nathan hadn’t come up with this idea either. It had been Tracey and she hadn’t been happy when she’d presented it. She didn’t like the idea anymore than the rest of us.

  “I can’t just abandon Mountainside,” Hudson said.

  He wasn’t angry, just resigned. He knew the situation up here better than anyone.

  “What’s in the Dungeon?” I asked, staring at the map of the land surrounding the Dungeon and Mountainside.

  Nothing for miles. Lots of big empty spaces. Lots of places for things to spread out and hide in. Just Mountainside as far as civilization went.

  “Different breeds of pangolins,” Hudson replied. “Most are the size of mastiffs. Armored but fairly weak offensively. The mini-bosses are larger versions and the big boss is an elephant sized one. They have sharp claws but are fairly slow. It’s not a particularly hard Dungeon but it’s slow as the damn things are tough to take down.”

  “I hate Pangolins,” Nathan muttered.

  The things were pretty common in a lot of dungeons. Almost as common as Giant Spiders. No one understood why. The creatures, unlike spiders, weren’t native to lands in the north and colder climates, but they appeared in Dungeons all over the place. One of the Dungeons close by Solacetown had pangolins. They were just like Hudson said. Defensively they were tough, offensively not so much. They just took time. Their Dungeons were slow.

  Except for that one, called Darkness Jungle. That place was a nightmare and the pangolins there? They were fast, strong and vicious. Great defense and great offense. I hated that Dungeon.

  Thankfully it was in Fred’s territory so he had to worry about clearing it. Not me.

  “How long do we think before the Dungeon breaks?”

  “Three weeks,” Hudson answered. “Give or take a couple days.”

  It was close enough that the idea would work. I just hated to run the risk. The timing was going to be tight and it would take a miracle to pull it off. But the more I thought about it, the more the plan might just work and be a complete surprise to the Grimdar.

  And the elites they had up here.

  ***

  “So remember the plan?” I asked Nathan, with Tracey standing next to him.

  She just rolled her eyes. He sighed, just giving me that look.

  I held up my hands.

  “Right,” I said, chuckling.

  Of course they remembered the plan.

  The stupid plan that I was glad when I got back to the FBO that I could tell Kat it wasn’t my stupid plan. She’d still blame me anyway.

  “Just be careful and if it goes sideways…,” I said, looking between the two.

  Gary, Harry and the team’s new healer Grant, were standing farther back next to Mason, Sergeant Jenkins and three of the Sunrise Formation elves, Geralio, Terilas and Heris. Aside from Nathan and his team, those elves were probably the most important parts of this whole plan. They were the trump card the Grimdar didn’t know existed.

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  “We run,” Nathan said. “This place is important, but we can always retake it later.”

  “Exactly.”

  I shook his hand, hugged Tracy and waved to the others. I glanced up to the wall to see a guy walking along it. About my height and build, trying hard to be seen but not look like he wanted to be seen, wearing a familiar leather jacket and hat.

  My back-ups. Extras that I kept around, just in case. Not that there was much that could damage my jacket and hat. Especially the hat. That hat was the strongest piece of equipment I owned. Maybe the strongest in all of Solace.

  But the guy was doing a good job of looking like me.

  I felt naked without a hat on. It’d been a long time since I hadn’t worn it. But wouldn’t do for any Grimdar scouts, and they had to have scouts nearby, seeing two of me. Might ruin the whole plan.

  Wearing plain clothes, not even armor, and no hat, I boarded the Phoenix’s Feather. Sunie was already on board. It was just us and the crew going back. Everyone else was staying. They’d be joined by the couple dozen more soldiers the Feather would be bringing back.

  Had to make it look like we were fortifying the place, getting ready to make a push.

  Which we kind of were. Just not the push the Grimdar thought we’d be making.

  Once I was on board, the gangplank was pulled up and the ship took off.

  I quickly walked below decks so I could put my hat back on.

  It felt weird not wearing it.

  ***

  “I…,” Maria started to say, angry, but stopped. Her expression turned contemplative as she thought, holding up a finger to keep me from interrupting. “That’s not a bad idea,” she finally said.

  I didn’t speak, just staring at her for a couple seconds, processing what she said.

  “You like it?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She leaned back in her chair. We were in the command tent, just the two of us. “It’s dangerous and risky.” She looked at me. “Are you sure you didn’t come up with it?” I just glared. She shrugged. “It’s not the best, but for the situation, it’s the best we could do with the numbers we have available.”

  She leaned forward, pulling a notebook close. Opening it, flipping a couple of pages, she looked at a bunch of numbers. It was one of the linked notebooks. I figured Donovan had the paired one back in Solacetown.

  “Yeah, we can spare a couple squads and arcane cannons, help sell it.”

  “Great,” I said. “What else is up?”

  “The portal is done,” Maria said. “John arrived yesterday and got it going this morning. We should start getting more troops tomorrow.” She pushed the first notebook away, pulling another closer. Opening it to the last page, she started reading from the list. “Still no sign of Caulfield.”

  He’d given Tracy and the hunters the slip. Which was very difficult to do. Turned out the guy had an escape item on him. We were trying to figure out how to track it, but chances are it was too late. He was lost.

  I knew we’d see him again. He was no doubt holed up with the folks responsible for this mess. They probably weren’t too happy with him. I kind of hoped maybe they’d take their anger out on him. But most likely he weaseled his way back into their good graces. Which is really what I wanted.

  I wanted the bastard nice and healthy when I finally caught up to him. I wanted him to last a good long time when I started pounding on him. The healthier he was when we started, the longer he’d last.

  “Have the spies found anything?”

  “Not yet,” Maria said sadly. “Theresa whatever-her-name-is, the Gray Wolf’s Dungeon Coordinator had skipped town before Payton had even gotten here. She seems to be the only smart one out of the bunch, understanding what us being here meant.”

  “There has to be others still around.”

  “Probably. We’ll find them.”

  “Yep. I have no doubt,” I said, standing up. “Let’s go look at the portal.”

  ***

  The dock on the land side was a big thing. Large enough for a capital ship, which honestly, I didn’t know which of our many ships in the fleet were considered a capital ship. That’s just what Maria had told me and I nodded along. Was the Phoenix’s Feather a capital ship? There were two ferries and a couple of smaller boats, patrols for the lake, docked there. Soldiers and sailors doing soldier and sailor things.

  We boarded one of the ferries, which was basically a large barge. Way bigger than needed for just the two of us. I mean, way, way bigger. It could fit six or so squads and a bunch of equipment. We could have taken one of the smaller ones, but I figured Maria would bring a bunch of stuff back.

  She wasn’t one to waste time. So if we were making a trip out, the trip back would be fully loaded.

  It was a short trip from dock to dock. The island wasn’t large, covered in mostly rock, with just the beach at the front and to the side. A dock had been built there. Not as big as the largest thing docking would be the ferry.

  Walking down the dock, glaring at the soldiers that saluted me because they damn well knew better, I could see a glow from around the side, along the other stretch of beach. That would be the portal. More soldiers streamed our way, a couple porters and sailors carrying chests and stuff toward the ferry. It was always weird to see people physically carrying stuff when everyone had other-dimensional inventories, but lower leveled the dimensions were smaller and had weight limits. So sometimes things needed to be carried.

  All those were too busy to salute me. Which was good.

  We turned the corner around a rocky outcropping and saw the portal against the cliff face. A large oval ringed in crackling energy. A light blue with bolts of white streaking around the edges. Inside I could see Solacetown.

  And Kat.

  She walked out the portal, saw me and walked right over. No ‘hi’ or ‘how you been’. I could tell from her expression she was not in a good mood.

  “Good, I don’t have to track you down.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You need to go to Crossroads. And bring Sunie with you.”