Redemption of Althalus--chapter 22

So Albron tells Althalus that they have to tell Kahlor about the Not-Tardist. They make some noise about Dweia not being pleased, but it's fine with her, so they do. So now we can add Kahlor to the permanent roster, even though he never has serious opposition.

Convincing him takes a while, and requires a lot of randomness.

What's far more interesting is when one of the shepherds, Salkan, meets Kahlor. It seems that the Ansus have been killing the Wekti shepherds' sheep, and the Wekti shepherds aren't too pleased about it. Basically, all these poor little meek baby boys nobody wanted to protect because of Meekness? Yeah. They're all fucking David. You know, David and Goliath? Slings? Salkan straight up killed the soldiers with his, and is pretty pleased with avenging his sheep.

Kahlor and Althalus quickly revise their plans and start hinting to White Guy that the shepherds might want to start defending themselves. Because. You know. THEY ARE. 

 Also: Kahlor thought a sling was just a child's toy, but Althalus knew all about them. Yes he did. He even used one to kill a man once, and he had the most perfect stone for it, too.

Kahlor decides he needs to do some random scouting. Using the house. By basically opening a door and standing in it, looking around. Because it's a not-TARDIS, what do you expect? And Eliar randomy senses Ghend around, and the whole point of this scene is to show that Ghend is afraid of Althalus because he's "moving too fast".

In reality, I think Ghend needs to stay ahead of Al because Marty Stu-Itis is severely contageous, it's already claimed all the protagonist characters and Ghend is terrified he'll be next.

They report their adventures in spying to Dweia. She's not happy:

“You’re starting to make me cross, Althalus.”

Also, Dweia suggests Kahlor stay for supper because with all this war-planning, the ladies are feeling left out.

Right. Because it's not like a mind-reader and a trained ruler would be of any assistance whatsoever in planning a war.

Andine reverted to hovering, and she filled Eliar’s plate three times before he advised her that he was “full clear up to here” with a gesture in the vicinity of his throat.

Yeah. We're still doing that too.

Once again, Gher recommends they put all the Arums in the house, only make them walk in circles so they think they've been marching for months. Althalus loves this idea, mostly because it would mean that he'd only have to pay for real world time, and my issue with this is the discrepancy between the troop's records and their clan-cheifs are probably the kind of disagreements that end in mild genocide. You don't want to cheat mercs out of pay is what I'm saying. It always ends badly.

Althalus decides that Ghend is scared of Gher because Gher has all the good ideas.

Right.

Kahlor picks Gweti's troops to go into the feild at Wekti because he's the best at forting up. He lays out his entire plan for the boss and they both cackle at the amount of mayhem this is going to cause.

Gweti tries to cheat Althalus. It doesn't work too well for him.

They get the troops moving, and the chapter ends with another of those lyrical archaic not-dreams:

And behold, stern-faced Gelta, Queen of the Night, did mount the hill astride her midnight horse. And her ax of stone did weep, weep the blood of her fallen foes.

Why. Dave. Why.