Lenore's eyes widen with alarm at the mental image he paints, of being surrounded and overrun by the Ottomans, and she sits up, almost objecting, but she contains her worries as he finishes. Her cheeks flush at the end, both from her concern that things might come to that, and the Ottoman Empire might reach his castle, and from the compliment he gives her.
"I most earnestly hope that we can hobble their advance long before they reach Wallachia, my lord." Her brow furrows with worry, trying to imagine troop movements and advancements, what she knows of all of that. It's of little use. She's a diplomat, not a military tactician. She doesn't have a sense of the size of their army in actual numbers, or even what those numbers would mean. Striga can extrapolate enormous significance out of a few statistics about an army, but to Lenore they're just men, cannons, horses. She has absolutely no idea what the potential reach of the Ottoman army is. "They'll reach here, regardless?" Her finger points down at the floor, eyes flicking side to side as she recalculates.
"I confess, I have no aptitude for military strategy. My interest and skill lies in influencing the people who serve as lynchpins--whether that's the common people or the commander of an army. I ... I would send either a diplomatic envoy or a spy. Both. I know that probably you already have. It's ... I feel that we need to glimpse whatever's at the heart of the secrecy of their Empire. Either to reassure ourselves that it's nothing but human ambition, or to know for certain the nature of our enemies."
no subject
"I most earnestly hope that we can hobble their advance long before they reach Wallachia, my lord." Her brow furrows with worry, trying to imagine troop movements and advancements, what she knows of all of that. It's of little use. She's a diplomat, not a military tactician. She doesn't have a sense of the size of their army in actual numbers, or even what those numbers would mean. Striga can extrapolate enormous significance out of a few statistics about an army, but to Lenore they're just men, cannons, horses. She has absolutely no idea what the potential reach of the Ottoman army is. "They'll reach here, regardless?" Her finger points down at the floor, eyes flicking side to side as she recalculates.
"I confess, I have no aptitude for military strategy. My interest and skill lies in influencing the people who serve as lynchpins--whether that's the common people or the commander of an army. I ... I would send either a diplomatic envoy or a spy. Both. I know that probably you already have. It's ... I feel that we need to glimpse whatever's at the heart of the secrecy of their Empire. Either to reassure ourselves that it's nothing but human ambition, or to know for certain the nature of our enemies."