“Open the gates!” A solider at the gates of Skellen Pass called out.

“Will the men march west for me, men and women of Landor?” Harin shouted over the gathered Legions. The Fourth and the Pretorians.

“Men and women Landor! Your king calls for your allegiance!” Brago called out from atop his horse beside Harin.

The arrayed Legions were just inside the western gates of the Skellen Pass, gathered, waiting for the doors to be opened to release them into war. For generations, the Sunborns had asked for their armies’ oaths. Harin wanted this war to be no different. He had no choice but to fight the Council’s war, but he needed his people. His warriors.

The legions knelt, their hands on their hearts.

“By Our Blood

We Honor You

Till Death Hold Us

Our King”

The men and women around Harin recited the pledge that had been spoken to the Landorian rulers for generations.

Harin felt a wave of relief. Each time he asked for the oath, he worried that they would refuse him, mutiny. He knew it an insane belief, but he worried over it. Kings had lost their people in such ways. But he knew that given the choice, a man or women who chose to fight for him, they would fight to the Pit and back for him. One who was forced would fold like a straw man.

The Legions began to march. Harin saluted those who passed him, his arm across his chest, fist closed. Many nodded to him as they passed.

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“Tell me we have enough,” Harin said, his throat parched.

“Aye, if the men take it easy,” The Quartermaster said, gesturing with his hands.

Harin put his hand up. “Easy, quiet, lets the army hears,”

The Quartermaster was a stout man, balding and overweight. His cheeks jiggled as he gestured.

Harin’s grandfather had always told him, never trust a thein Quartermaster. If they couldn’t find themselves a couple of extra rations to eat, they were not very good at their jobs. You always wanted a scrappy one, a man who could find a deal in a desert.

“How long can we last at our current supply?” Harin asked carefully.

The Quartermaster, Len sighed. “We have enough livestock to last at least a month, water is the real concern, just before grain,”

Harin waited, looking ahead, thinking through the campaign and what was to come.

“We are going into a desert, we cannot afford to run out of water,”

“The merchants tell me that there are enough watering holes to the west that we should be fine. They did however warn me that they seep, all of them,”

“Pit,”

“Indeed, the legions will drain them dry and ruin the wells, you have to pull from them slowly,”

Harin said nothing, angry at the circumstances. “I told you to buy more wagons, we need to have a wagon every other day, I need more barrels of water,” Harin wiped at his brow. They were still within sight of the Pass, not even a leg into their journey and he was sweating. Soon, the arid desert would swallow them up.

And then the Horde would come. They would wait to have them strung out, hot, weak from dehydration. They’d swoop in like vultures to finish the kills.

“The Pass was not kind to us. I tell you that I would have had to steal from them to have gotten anything more than I had. We did not bring these sorts of supplies, we only brought what we needed to make it through a season or two at the Pass, not out here,” Len waved about at the sun and the plains before them to the west.

“I know, I understand,” Harin rubbed at his face.

“The Church, they gave us enough to survive, but we do not have the gold to buy more. The prices were robbery,”

Harin sighed, looking at the Quartermaster. “Spread the word, we are on rations from here on out. One canteen each a day, one a night until we resupply,”

“Already?” Len asked, surprise in his voice.

“I need my army to feel the bite of thirst now, so that I do not have a mutiny when we are in the open desert. They need to adapt on the march,”

Len looked at Harin, his face betraying him.

“Spread the work, I’ll hang anyone who steals a canteen,”

Len’s mouth hung open.

Harin nodded. “They will hang if they take what is not theirs, this army will survive,”

Len muttered, looking away.

“I may be the Ink King, but I do not lie. Make it know, Quartermaster,” Harin said, squeezing his horse with his thighs, moving on from the conversation and up the line of his Legions.

Whispers followed him up the Legions lines. By the time he’d made it up to the head of the column to rejoin Brago, his Praetorian Legate knew of the threat he’d made.

Harin felt the weight of the crown, while it rested in Landor, he held that weight on his shoulders.