Jeri led Tarrin into the village, and Jasana looked around in fascination as they climbed up the hill and were eventually led into a small shop on the west side of the hill. The inside of the shop was bare, but a large table and several chairs occupied the open floor between the door and the counter near the back. Sathon sat at one of those chairs, and Mikos had somehow managed to maneuver his bulk into the room and kneel down on one side. Karn was there, as well as Jak, and so was a sharp-featured Were-kin female with black hair and sharp, dark eyes. Sitting facing the door was Arren, with two of his Ranger lieutenants. Arren had not aged well. His hair and beard were now more gray than dark, and there were dark circles under his eyes. The burdens of being occupied had worn on Arren, it seemed. Arren stood and smiled when Tarrin came in, but his smile dropped slightly when Jesmind came in right behind him. It seemed that Arren remembered Jesmind just as well as he remembered Tarrin.

"Ah good, Jeri found you," Sathon said as Kimmie and Jeri entered behind Jesmind. "Thank you, my boy. Could you go find Thean and ask him to come?"

"Of course, Sathon," Jeri said with a nod, scurrying out.

"The other Were-cats are unnecessary," the female said sharply, disdain obvious in her voice. "Send them away."

"Watch who you order around, woman," Tarrin snapped as he whirled on that female and stared down at her with dangerous eyes.

"Yes, well, this is a meeting not meant for just anyone, Tarrin," Sathon said delicately.

"I am just anyone, Sathon," Tarrin said sharply. "I have no authority in this army."

"Wrong. You are the leader of the Were-cats, and your assistance is necessary to get them to obey," Sathon told him flatly. "That means that you need to be here."

"Fine, but I'm not telling any of them to leave," he said challengingly.

"This is to be a war council, this is no place for a loose-lipped child and your harem," the female objected.

Without batting an eye, Tarrin snapped his paw down and grabbed the female by the shirt. Then he hauled her out of her chair and held her at arm's length before him, her feet dangling a good two spans off the floor. "Your lack of courtesy is wearing on me, woman," Tarrin hissed in a voice that promised all sorts of unpleasant things should she continue. "If you insult my mate or my friend one more time, they'll need six seperate baskets to cart you out of this room. Do I make myself clear?"

"Tarrin, let her go," Sathon commanded sharply.

Tarrin growled and did as Sathon commanded, dropping the female unceremoniously.

"Jesmind, Kimmie, would you please wait outside for us?" Sathon asked in a reasonable tone.

"All you had to do was ask nicely," Kimmie said, flashing the dark-eyed female a flat look. "At least we have manners."

"Too bad they're nothing but bad manners," the female retorted quickly.

"I hope you don't need that one, Sathon," Jesmind said in a brutal tone, reaching down and picking up a very quiet, nervous Jasana. "She's not going to live to see tomorrow."

"I'll have no infighting here, from any of you!" Sathon suddenly roared. "I invoke Druid's sanctuary right here and now! This is now chosen ground, and it will be honored with peace! Do I make myself clear?"

"Very clear, Sathon," Jesmind grumbled.

"As you say," Kimmie said with a snort.

"Audrey?"

"I will honor Druid's Sanctuary," the dark-eyed female said with a frown.

"Tarrin?"

"Alright," Tarrin growled.

"Jesmind, Kimmie, please wait for us outside," Sathon repeated.

"But papa promised I could stay with him!" Jasana objected suddenly.

"He did, but I'm telling you to come with me," Jesmind told her daughter sharply. "Do you want to argue about it?"

"No," Jasana growled. "Alright, mama."

"I won't be long, cub," Tarrin told her. "I can promise you that."

"Well now," Arren said nervously as Kimmie and Jesmind left the building, "I see the time has been good to you, Tarrin. How have you been?"

"Well enough, Arren," he replied with a grunt, sitting back down in a chair that was too small for him. His knees banged on the top of the table as he tried to get comfortable, scooting it a few fingers to the side. "It's unfortunate that we had to meet again like this."

"Well, we can talk after this is over," Arren told him.

"We waste time," Mikos said gruffly. "We must devise a plan to take Torrian."

"And do it without flattening the city in the process," Arren said vehemently.

"There will be damage no matter how careful we are, human," the female, Audrey, said sharply. "The key will be minimizing that damage."

"The first step will be to know where the enemy is, so I think we can all agree that the Aeradalla's going to be a key to any final plans we make," Sathon said. "She can fly over the city and tell us where the Dals are concentrating their defenses."

"If we're going to hold off on plans until then, why am I here?" Tarrin asked acidly. "We can't do anything until Ariana reports. That makes this a waste of time."

"Because she'll just influence the plan we make," Sathon told him. "Now calm down."

"The plan I've been devising is fairly simple," Arren spoke up. "Torrian is a hostile city to the Dals. If we can breach the walls and get in, we can defeat them from the inside. The citizens of Torrian will aid and support us. It will be house to house fighting, but we could overwhelm the Dal garrisons in the city because the Rangers are trained for the guerilla tactics necessary in fighting from house to house in that manner, where the Dals are not. Dals don't function well without officers, and that style of fighting is going to naturally cause the Dal forces to break up into small cells, separated from their chain of command. That gives my Rangers a huge advantage, because they can fight effectively without support from the chain of command. We can chew the Dal army up cell by cell and house by house. That gives us an advantage, and couple it with the Were-kin, Centaurs, and the aid we'll receive from the citizens, and it gives us our best chance of taking the city in the shortest time while doing the least damage. Doing it that way will also cause only a minimum amount of damage to the walls, walls we'll need to hold the city against any Dal reinforcements that arrive. The only problem is going to be taking the keep. They've taken over my castle, and I can attest to how impervious it is to assault."

"If it's so impervious, how did they take it from you?" the female asked sharply.

"Because the city surrendered," he replied with a sigh. "My city was facing an army more than ten times our garrison's size. I surrended to save as many people as possible. They would have destroyed the city and killed all the citizens to take the keep, and I couldn't live knowing I'd have caused something like that."

"Unsound," the female snorted. "You handed them a perfectly unassailable fortress."

"We sabotaged the walls and burned the keep before we left," Arren told her, the pain of having to destroy his ancestral home clear in his eyes. "But it's been a while, and they've managed to repair all the damage we did and rebuild the walls. They even rebuilt the keep."

"Then we'll take the keep the same way that we take the city," Sathon said mildly. "Get inside the walls and take it from the inside."

"How do you propose we do that, Sathon?" Arren asked.

"That's how," he said, pointing at Tarrin. "We have eight fighting Were-cats with us. They can climb the walls, get inside, then wreak havoc while one of them opens the gates and lets in an invasion force. The Dals are going to be too busy trying to deal with the Were-cats to worry about closing the gates."

"Do you think it would work, Tarrin?" Arren asked him directly.

Tarrin considered it. The Dals couldn't easily hurt his kin, and they could terrorize them pretty thoroughly. Tarrin knew the keep's general layout, and Arren could fill in all the gaps. Given they moved together and adhered to a plan of attack, it was more than possible. But asking eight Were-cats to take on what would probably be hundreds of men would leave them vulnerable. Even a human could kill a Were-cat if they took off the head, or severed the spine in such a way that the Were-cat couldn't remove the severing instrument before the heart gave out, or used fire against them. The Were-cats would have no support, no help, and they would be asked to fight vastly superior numbers in what could be open ground.