As time flew by, no longer bound into night or day, the weather in the valley continued to worsen. The snowfall seemed to only be getting more intense, building up all around them and making it increasingly difficult to move freely. Storm after storm hit the camp, with strong winds threatening to take away their tents and extinguish their fires. It was clear that Winter was doing his best to stop them from gathering and organizing themselves into an army that could actually threaten him.
Daniel worried that this might scare the people and bring their morale down; after all, they had always enjoyed the best of the weather in every season and never really suffered from it or anything else that nature or man could bring upon them. His fears however proved unfounded; somehow everyone seemed to understand that it would only get worse before it got better, and they held on.
A bit later than expected, the convoy from New Sotira and the villages around arrived at the camp, bringing with them carriages filled with weapons of all sorts. There seemed to be enough there for almost everyone, wingman, mermaid or human.
The troops coming to join the new army comprised of roughly a thousand men gathered from all the villages nearby, with people and mermaids coming from as far as Tálas. The latter, would be the first soldiers to join the battalion led by Nemo.
Among the new recruits were the seven former werewolves, who had been the first to recognize Daniel as the Great Lord. Along with their fellow countrymen, they reported before Ari, who had begun sorting everyone out into different battalions and divisions. More people continued to come from all over the kingdom, as word of mouth spread even to the most remote villages of an army gathered to end the siege of Arba and dethrone the White Lord. Soon there were about eight thousand men, wingmen and mermaids, all armed and organized into ground and air troops. The air troops were of course made up entirely of wingmen, who were divided into two smaller groups, one of them led by the Sky-Queen herself, and the other by Séraphin, the prince.
On the ground, Ari divided the main troops into six battalions under the command of his six sons, whom he had trained himself, passing on to them all the knowledge that was once given to him. His sons in turn, began giving their soldiers basic training on sword fight and self-defense.
All the joining mermaids, who had chosen this perilous time for their pilgrimage, formed a separate smaller battalion. There were about seven hundred of them, all armed with what had now become the signature weapon of the sea-people. Most of them had never seen their prince in person, but they had heard of his latest deeds and seemed to be in awe of him whenever he was among them.
The entire army was finally divided into two main units. The first one comprised of three thousand wingmen led by the Sky-Queen, Nemo’s battalion of mermaids and two more battalions led by two of Ari’s sons; about four thousand armed soldiers in total. These would head towards the Northern Gate of Arba, while the second group led by Daniel and Ari, would knock on the city’s Southern Gate. The plan was to try and enter Arba from either of the gates, hopefully at the same time, and for this they needed to separate their forces.