General Snowe requested the private meeting on the morning after the night assault, and Aldrath granted it because Snowe was the only commander in the combined force whose counsel Aldrath had never regretted receiving.
They met in Aldrath's command tent, the two men who had been fighting the Yohan First Horde longer than any other Threian officers, the tent's interior lit by the morning's gray light and the residual glow of the map lamps that the night's operations had required.
Snowe sat across the table from Aldrath and said nothing for a full minute. The minute was the minute that Snowe used to organize the thing he had come to say, because the thing was not a tactical recommendation or an operational proposal. It was the thing that came after tactics and operations had been exhausted.
"The war is over," Snowe said.
Aldrath looked at the old general.
