'There is nothing our foes can do to stop us,' said Erlaan. 'It would take twenty days for a legion to march around the mountains, thirty if Ullsaard wants to come up from Mekha, by which time we will be hundreds of miles away. I think it might be a wise course to spread the word of our arrival. We can save time and bloodshed if the towns in our path are given the chance to surrender.'
'And who would you send on such a delegation?' said Eriekh. 'The Mekhani cannot negotiate and you cannot leave the army.'
'You will go,' said Erlaan, pointing at Eriekh. 'You will be my herald, with a bodyguard of, say, a thousand warriors.'
'Your herald?' Indignation wrinkled the aged priest's face. 'I am a hierophant of the eulanui, not your messenger boy.'
'And you will be returning to Mekha,' Erlaan told Asirkhyr, ignoring the other's protest. 'This is, after all, just the vanguard of my army. At least another fifty thousand warriors will have gathered at Akkamaro. You will lead them against Ullsaard's forces, if they remain in Mekha. If not, a second attack towards Geria will meet little resistance. It would be foolish to think that a single army will win us Askh. I will subjugate Nalanor and Anrair, while you will secure Okhar and Maasra. Ullsaard knew what he was doing, isolating Askhor from the other provinces.'
'I do not think he will repeat the mistakes of Lutaar and Nemtun and concede such territories without battle,' said Asirkhyr. 'I am no military commander, and we cannot trust the shamans to fare any better against the legions. You would throw away thousands of warriors for little gain.'
'I do not need you to win battles, simply to fight them,' said Erlaan. 'Ullsaard cannot fight both us and the Salphors at the same time. If he withdraws his troops from Salphoria, his enemies there will sweep to the border and retake Magilnada, and I cannot see how the usurper will allow that to happen. His entire goal has been the conquest of Salphoria, and his arrogance is such that he will believe he can defeat me whilst maintaining his strength to duskward. He will bring together what legions he can to defeat me, leaving the hotwards and dawnwards provinces ripe for the picking. It is my intent to give him no opportunity but to surrender.'
'You think that is likely?' said Eriekh. 'He will not relinquish the Crown while he lives, that is the extent of his stubbornness.'
'And should he refuse, he will make an enemy of the governors,' Erlaan said with a toothy grin. 'With certain assurances to their continued power, they will be happy to endorse me as the rightful heir of the Crown and withdraw their support from Ullsaard. He forgets how easy it was for him to turn the provinces against Lutaar, and I shall use the same weapon.'
The two said nothing, searching for further arguments but finding none. Eriekh sneered as he spoke.
'Do not fall victim to overconfidence,' said the priest. 'It is one thing for the governors to accept a renegade like Ullsaard; it is another for them to bow to the rule of the Mekhani.'
'That is why I will offer to send the Mekhani back to the desert if the governors recognise my claim,' replied Erlaan. 'I am monstrous and unnatural, and it will be hard for them to accept me, but I will offer no alternative. As my followers they will see the empire expanded with Mekha, and against such strength Salphoria cannot hold. As Ullsaard did, I will show them that the protection of the king is worthless. If they refuse, I will destroy them, one by one.'
Obviously still rankled by his appointment to herald, Eriekh stalked away, sour-faced and grumbling to himself. Asirkhyr remained, distaste at Erlaan's edicts written in his glare.
'What of the Brotherhood?' said the priest. 'You cannot reveal to them the secrets you have learned, and they cannot be cowed by your threats.'
'Lakhyri controls the Brotherhood, as he has always done. They are the least of our problems.'
Erlaan was tired of the priest's protests and turned his back on Asirkhyr. The king called for his council to attend him and as the shamans gathered, he watched Asirkhyr hurrying off to catch up with Eriekh. The king- messiah was sure the priests thought he overstepped his mark with his plans and commands, but he did not care. Their schemes were convoluted and timeconsuming. If Erlaan had learnt anything from his grandfather's faltering and Ullsaard's usurpation, it was that direct action brought the swiftest and surest results.
The army marched on up the pass, the rain unrelenting. Erlaan moved through the column, offering words of counsel and encouragement. Wherever the king-messiah passed, the hearts of the Mekhani were lifted, his presence enough to bolster their resolve.
A windy and wet night followed, during which Erlaan's followers found what shelter they could at the height of the pass. Though food was low, the meltwater and rain provided plenty to drink, and grumbling stomachs were easier to ignore with thoughts of Aarisk's large grain stores and fertile pastures just two days away.
Dawn brought some relief as the mountain storm dropped in severity, reducing to a constant drizzle. As the morning light spread up the pass, Erlaan could feel the hopes of the army rising as well. The path down was steep but widened quickly and the sun continued to strengthen, occasionally breaking through the clouds. By noon, the head of the column had reached the floor of the valley, and word came back that foraging parties had some success, killing deer, goats and birds by the score. They had also found two swift rivers, alive with fish, and with nets and ropes, more was added to the stockpile of food. It would be far from a feast, but little fare was better than none at all.
Erlaan renewed his promises of what was to come, and described the riches that awaited the Mekhani once Askh was theirs, though he knew that they would share little of such plunder. He felt no guilt at using them in this way. The red-skinned tribesmen were still lesser people. Despite everything, Erlaan considered himself still an Askhan; purebred of Askh and the legitimate heir to the Crown of the Blood no less.
As he walked along the files of warriors wending their way down the pass, he conceded that the Mekhani were not as savage as he had once thought, and the knowledge that they were but the remnants of an advanced civilisation gave him some pause for thought. For all that, an upbringing built upon prejudice and disdain could not be easily overcome and Erlaan considered his new allies clever animals at best. Their superstitions alone were reason enough to dismiss them as anything more than useful minions. Come the war with Salphoria, Erlaan would put his trust in good, honest Askhan legionnaires. If the Mekhani proved capable he would consider admitting them to the legions in due course.
With such thoughts occupying him, Erlaan passed the long day of marching. He felt not the slightest fatigue from his walking, his body sustained by the same aura of energy that the denizens of the Temple existed upon. Part of him hoped the people of Aarisk would put up a fight; he had already felt the small thrill of feeding upon his near- dead father and the thought of drawing on the essence of several thousand deaths filled him with excitement.
The day and night passed without incident; apparently Ullsaard's shadowing force had thought better of coming into the mountains after the Mekhani. They were most likely dashing back to hotwards to inform their master of Erlaan's cunning change of route. Though he tried hard not to listen to the false praise of the shamans and his warriors, Erlaan realised that he was truly marked out as special. Each day, testing himself against Ullsaard and the elements, Erlaan felt stronger and wiser. There was not a challenge he could not overcome.
Early in the following day's march the rain came again, hard and steady. At first the Mekhani had delighted in the water that fell from the sky, so rare in their lands. Now they endured the wet and cold in silent misery, quietly pining for their sun-drenched homes and the cool evenings of the desert. Erlaan barely felt the pattering on his thick skin, though the rattle of rain on his armour became a thunderous din if he concentrated on it.
Mile after mile the army trudged, down towards the plains of Nalanor. Though he had hoped to come upon Aarisk that day, the constant rain made even the surest path a quagmire to wade along, and the king-messiah was forced to call a halt at dusk; the terrain was too treacherous to press on through the night.
'The town will wait for us,' he assured his followers with a smile. 'Before the sun sets again, you shall see for yourselves our next prize.'
Erlaan no longer had the need to sleep, though sometimes he would lie down and close his eyes, picturing the palace of Askh or the fields of Nalanor. There were coughs and sneezes from across the camp, each sounding near at hand to Erlaan's supernatural hearing. The thought of disease reared in his mind; something he had not previously considered. The chill and the damp might prove more of an enemy than he had thought. He would do well to head dawnwards from the mountains, towards the border of the Greenwater between Nalanor and Maasra, where the climate was hotter. He considered towns along the route that would make suitable stopping points and drew up a mental map to follow. When he had marched with Ullsaard, he had not paid a second thought to the problems of feeding and equipping an army; all of that had been carried out by lesser officers. The Mekhani had no
