The dispatches from Millbridge reached the kingdom's capital three days later, carried by riders who had pushed their horses along the western road that was now the only route available for communications between the eastern province and the central kingdom.
The council received them in session, which was already in session because the council had been in session for most of the past three weeks, its members drawn from their estates and their offices by the accumulated weight of a campaign that had begun as a frontier incursion and had become something that the council's existing frameworks did not have a category for.
