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Eskil would be annoyed about being beaten to the ink if he were not so proud.

When the noise burns down he finishes the plan properly. The main southern road, taken openly, because a delegation that sneaks is a raiding party that lost its nerve. Garrik's forest trails held in reserve and spoken of to nobody, in case the hall goes badly and thirty men need to be elsewhere before dark. The timing, pegged to the cold snap the farmers on the eastern road have been predicting for days, because frozen ground carries a wagon better than mud.

He does the roster name by name, because this council needs to hear that it is a restructured plan and not a tantrum. He gives them every name and the reason behind every name, and the reasons are sound. The objections dry up one at a time as the room comes to the grudging realization that this is the plan and the only way to go is forward. Even Vigdis runs out of energy. She sits back in her chair and puts both hands flat and says nothing, which from Vigdis is the nearest thing to approval Eskil has ever received.

Then Eskil says the thing that costs him.

"Bohdi stays in Valen."

The room goes quiet.

Behind him, Bohdi does not move.

The air changes. A held breath, a stiffening in the muscles of the shoulders that Eskil cannot see but can feel the way he has always felt the man at his back, and then it settles. It settles because Bohdi is a professional, and because Bohdi trusts him, and because the man has stood behind that chair for fourteen years and has not once questioned an order given from it.

Eskil does not look at him. He looks at the council.

"Valen needs somebody who can hold it by force if it comes to that. The prince is a ruler and there is nobody in this kingdom I would rather leave this throne with." He lets that land. Lets the council hear what it means, because it is not a compliment he has given before, and Morgan deserves to have it said in front of every person who advises the crown. "He is not a deterrent. There is exactly one man I trust to stand behind my brother and make an ugly decision inside a second, and he is not riding south with me."

Then Bohdi's voice comes from behind him, level and steady and carrying the whole of thirty years in it.

"As you say, my king."

It is what Bohdi always says. It means what it always means. But there is something underneath it tonight that the council will not catch. It is gratitude, and relief, and the quiet sound of being told he may stay where he is needed instead of choosing between his duty and the man sitting two seats down from his king.

Eskil nods once and moves on, because if he stands in it any longer the thing in his chest will become visible, and he has a reputation.

He is deep in the order of the hall, going through which men stand where and who speaks and in what sequence the terms are to be read aloud, when Indrie speaks.

"I'm going with you."

Eskil closes his eyes. Briefly. Only long enough to collect the patience he is going to need for the next five minutes, which is approximately how long it is going to take to lose an argument he hasn’t even started.

He opens them and looks down the table. Indrie is sitting next to him with his hands folded neatly in front of him and his back straight and his chin up. Eskil has learned to read that exact arrangement of a small dark-haired man in a chair, and what it announces, every single time without exception, is his own defeat.

"Absolutely not," Eskil says.

"You cannot ride five days south into an enemy stronghold in winter without a healer," Indrie tells him. His voice is perfectly calm. There is no tremor in it. There is no plea in it. It is the voice of a man stating a fact. "Rengara needs its king alive. If you will not take Bohdi, then you will take me."

"I can ride wherever I fucking please.”

"You can," Indrie agrees, evenly. "And you can do it with a healer beside you, or you can do it without one and explain to your kingdom why their king chose pride over survival."

Eskil stares at him. The audacity of it. The absolute unblinking nerve. Three seasons ago this man could not meet his eyes across a dinner table and now he is dressing him down in his own war room.

Seren leans forward. "The healer is right, your majesty." Her voice is measured and careful and precisely calibrated, the way Seren's voice gets when she knows she is about to put her shoulder behind someone else's argument and wants the push to land. "Thirty men in winter with no healer is a delegation with a casualty rate nobody at this table is prepared to pay. Frostbite alone will take fingers. A hall that turns on you will take worse."

Eskil looks at Seren with considerable displeasure, which is what a man feels on being flanked by his own council after spending twenty minutes leading it.

Then Morgan, in a voice that is still gravel from the bruising but is entirely precise in every word. "We have no other healer of his caliber. Not in the barracks. Sending the king into that hall without one is negligence, not strategy."

And then Vigdis, who five minutes ago called the whole thing reckless and who has disagreed with every breath Eskil has drawn since he could walk, leans forward and says, "I for one cannot agree to a play in which we send our king and thirty of our best into that hall without support."

Eskil would like to put his own head through the table.

These people cannot agree on a grain tax. They cannot agree on a border patrol rotation. They have spent six months locked in furious debate over who gets the good chair at a feast. And the instant the question in front of them is whether Indrie rides south, the entire council becomes one voice and one mind and is prepared to overrule its king unanimously and without hesitation. It would be impressive if Eskil were watching it happen to someone else.

"Fine," Eskil says, through his teeth. "The healer rides south."