With Red-Lip falling to the rebel cause, whatever grand strategy Habadia had envisioned regarding the civil war in Kakunia was utterly derailed. Without a reliable, well-guarded supply line, any deep invasion was a suicide march whose catastrophe would be counted in days.
And they already had some dealings with catastrophes already....
They could, in theory, leave a portion of their host behind to invest the castle and press the main body onward. It was a common enough maneuver when a fortress could safely be bypassed, though it carried the glaring, deadly risk that if the besieging force was broken, the main army's neck was instantly snapped. Every league advanced into enemy territory became a league they would have to fight back through while starving.
And neither Zayneth nor Nibadur held the slightest doubt that the Mad Bull, or that clever Fox in Yarzat, who so many times play the hare, would find a way to cut that knot.
