This chapter is a relief. One thing I always experience when reading  a fantasy novel is the way the author spends so much time fleshing out the world that the story gets completely lost, and the reader has their hand held so much that they lose any sense of imagination. You described enough for me to paint a picture in my head of who these people are and what they're doing, but left out the tiresome jargon so ubiquitous in other stories. Thank you for not changing military rank and file terms either, guaranteeing that I can look these up somewhere and get an accurate description of what you mean.