"Don't praise stupidity too much," replied Ullsaard, walking up from behind the cluster of legion commanders. "Stupid men don't know when they're beaten and fight on regardless. If this amateur had any idea about strategy, he would have scuttled back to Mekha ten days ago when we nearly had him at Lastuun."
Harrakil looked unconvinced.
"There are still more than forty thousand of them left," he said. He looked at his king. "How far away did you say the Seventh and Twenty-First are?"
"Twenty miles, no more," said Ullsaard. "I sent the messengers back telling their commanders not to dawdle. They'll be here mid-Noonwatch at the latest."
"The Mekhani will get wind of it," said Aklaan, the commander of the Third. "They'll attack."
"Good," said Ullsaard. He turned and gestured to a nearby orderly to fetch his ailur. "If they commit, they won't be able to get away again. I want a fight, but that bastard over there is either too canny to fall for my lures, or too stupid to recognise a seemingly obvious opportunity for victory. I guess we'll find out in the next hour or two."
The Mekhani camp was a sprawling affair, disorganised and poorly defended in comparison to the march forts of the Askhans. For all that, the earth walls and ditches surrounding the disorganised spread of multicoloured tents were enough to give the king second thoughts about attacking. He counted fourteen behemodons at the centre of the camp, and rough revetments housed more than a dozen war engines of crude but lethal design. An assault would be costly, and if Ullsaard could tempt or taunt his foes out from under them, it would be for the better.
His officers' insults aside, the enemy commander had chosen to make his stand in a good spot. The plains stretched for several miles in every direction; the only two rises in sight being the hill on which the Mekhani had made camp and the shallower mound from which the king surveyed his enemy a few miles away. A river, though not wide, curved around the duskward side of the enemy-held hill and cut between the two encampments, and the slopes to coldwards, facing the Askhan army, were strewn with rocks and steep faces. The best approach would be to circle around to duskwards and attack from the other side, and wisely the Mekhani had sited their catapults and huge bows facing duskwards and hotwards to counter such a move.
"Should we send a parley, just in case they want to surrender?" suggested Naadlin.
"Not a fucking chance," said Ullsaard, his finger rubbing at the scar on his lip from his last attempt to speak terms with the redskinned tribesmen.
"We could send out the kolubrids, launch some fire arrows into those tents. That'll stir them up." Aklaan seemed excited by his proposal. "Let a few of the bastards burn."
Ullsaard considered the idea.
"Not yet," he replied. He glanced up at the sky, trying to work out the time. The sun was hidden behind a swathe of low cloud. "I reckon the reinforcements won't be here for another four hours. We'll make our move in two."
The orderly arrived with Storm in tow. The ailur flicked her head, tugging at the reins in the captain's hand. She was feisty, but Ullsaard had not yet decided if that was a good or bad trait. He had known when he bought her from a nobleman in Geria that she was untested in battle; a symbol of prestige that had never hunted or fought but the only ailur in the city.
With a nod of thanks, he took the reins and swung up into the saddle. Storm took his weight with a swish of her tail, but no further protest. Ullsaard turned her along the slope towards the camp of the Third but stopped and glanced back over his shoulder.
"Best have the companies turned out anyway," he told his staff. "If the Mekhani decide to start things early, I don't want to be rushing about. Everybody has their orders?"
A series of affirmatives came in reply and the king nodded his appreciation and rode on, confident that the First Captains would follow their orders to the letter. A track wound down the hotwards slope of the hill just before the wall of the Third's encampment. Ullsaard turned down this path and continued down to the bottom of the slope. He stopped for a while, surveying the ground from this level, assuring himself that the gently undulating grasslands would be the perfect field for the phalanxes to move across. It was a pity that only the slender river provided any barrier with which to anchor a flank, but it would have to do.
He pictured the coming battle as he hoped it would unfold, running through the positioning and movement of his line and the kolubrid squadrons in response to the possible Mekhani actions. So engrossed was he in this, that he almost did not hear a warning signal being sounded from the camps above.
Looking back up the hill, he saw that the four legions of his army were almost assembled, rank after rank of bronze spears and polished shields. There was a calm effortlessness to the blocks of soldiers arranging themselves, like the intricate interweaving of graceful court dancers. There was certainly nothing of concern that he could see, and he turned his attention back to the Mekhani, expecting to see them mobilising from their camp.
There was movement, but not on the scale he would expect to precede an attack. The enemy encampment was situated around an abandoned farm and a paved road switched back and forth down the near slope before turning duskwards towards Cavrina, a town fourteen miles away. Something appeared at the gate leading to the road, large enough that Ullsaard could see it, and at first he thought it was one of the Mekhani's reptilian beasts, though smaller than a behemodon.
As it approached down the road, Ullsaard recognised what he saw: the huge man who called himself Orlassai. The enemy commander walked down the road with easy strides. There was no sign of a bodyguard. Eyes narrowed, Ullsaard watched the giant's progress.
He turned at the sound of footfalls on the trail behind him, to see Harrakil hurrying down at the head of a company of legionnaires.
"You're more of a fussing hen than Cosuas was," Ullsaard told the First Captain as the self-appointed bodyguard formed up around their king.
"I do not like the look of this," Harrakil replied with embarrassment. "This creature is unnatural."
"He is big, I'll give him that," said Ullsaard, returning his gaze to the Mekhani king, who had reached the plain and was now striding confidently across the grasslands directly towards the legion camps. "And his balls are just as huge, by the looks of it."
The other commander stopped about a mile away. Ullsaard heard his name called out. He glanced at Harrakil, who shook his head. Ignoring him, Ullsaard urged Storm into a trot.
"Wait there!" the king snapped as the bodyguard broke into a run to keep up. "It looks like we might parley after all. Let's not do anything stupid."
"Besides," he added under his breath, "I'm not sure you'll be any help against that bastard of a brute."
The Askhan king crossed the divide quickly and reined Storm to a walk a quarter of a mile away, holding up his empty sword hand in a gesture of peace. As he rode closer and closer, Ullsaard realised just how large the other man was. Distance had masked his true size the previous times the king had seen his foe. The Mekhani was more than twice as tall as Ullsaard, and past the ornate helm and armour the king saw that his skin was of normal colour. Whoever he was, he wasn't born to a Mekhani mother.
Ullsaard's nerve held out long enough for him to get within a spear's cast of his opponent, and then he pulled Storm to a halt. With such long legs, the Mekhani commander would be able to cross the distance in a matter of heartbeats.
"Bow down before Orlassai, the reborn king, rightful ruler of the world!"
The voice was a roar that rang Ullsaard's ears. Storm cringed at the noise, snarling a mixture of defiance and fear. The king knew how she felt. For a moment he was overawed by this apparition of a man and he felt his fingers twitch at the reins and his legs tense, his body moving to comply with the order even as Ullsaard's brain rejected it. Amidst the confusion, Ullsaard thought he recognised the voice, but could not place from where or whom.