The old harpy of a pegasus had whipped up a lot of patriotic fervour among her lessers and her greaters on the Equestrian border, south of Firthengart. Citing the troubling military movements within the kingdom that had nothing to do with Equestria, she claimed the griffons were acting in an aggressive manner and that loyal Equestrians must not show weakness. In their turn, Equestrian dukes and barons along the Griffonian borders from the Skyhater mountain range to the Greenwood forest had started building up there, prompting King Goldtooth to do likewise on his side of the border. Likewise cutting off trade on that border, the Equestrian Express freight train has been locked down in the free city of Emeraldshire for days now. If it remained there much longer, things were only going to get worse. More griffons and ponies would be missing out on trade that had been keeping them going; taxes were going to be missed; more nobles great and small along the border would be forced to accede to the demands of their people and powerful guilds to clamour for their sovereigns to do something about it. He could not fathom why the countess deliberately exacerbated this mess. It was only hurting her own economy; she had to have known that. What could she possibly gain from bending the ears of dukes and lesser princes to a fruitless confrontation?