The next day the men of Ladhra arrived. Croft left them to garrison Niera until a later body from the interior parts of Aphur should arrive, then follow on. In fact he left orders that as each new contingent appeared they should take over Niera, releasing the garrison they found to advance through the state in support of his main force. Himself he broke camp and moved inland along the splendid roads which Tamarizia had built generations unnumbered before, when Mazhur was one of her states.
For Palos, the sight was odd as the well-drilled ranks moved ahead in steady cadence, with here and there a huge ungainly battle motor rumbling along, its monster body filled with men. Here and there in some minor town some slight resistance was met. The motors took care of that. Rolling irresistibly forward into a slithering flight of arrows and spears, they spat fire at the defenders until they fell or fled.
On and on crept the column with scarcely a pause save for rest or food. That word of it went before it Croft did not doubt. He even smiled grimly as he suggested to Jadgor what that word would be—a garbled version of monsters which breathed fire and slew with their breath, of troops which shot not arrows but more of the monsters' fire.
And Jadgor smiled in return as he gazed down the sturdily swinging ranks that crept along the road the lumbering motors had cleared.
Luckily there were few streams, for the Zollarians seemed to understand dimly by what they were attacked. They destroyed what bridges lay in the line of their retreat. Some of them had to be repaired, thereby losing time. Thus, as he advanced, Croft found the countryside cleared and sensed that the retreating forces were trusting to the main body, when they reached it, to check his victorious course.
He had some swift motors in which he himself and Jadgor and Lakkon rode. Taking one of these, he sent it far ahead to feel out the road. In it he placed a picked squad of his very best marksmen and ordered them to return at all costs should they contact the enemy in force.
But the enemy in force was attacking the frontier of Cathur. That was as Croft had planned it. That was Zollaria's second mistake, even as her first was in not knowing the full weight of the power she faced.
Thus days passed and the Tamarizian army had actually reached the northern bounds of Mazhur itself, as Jadgor declared, before any news of the main enemy body was received.
Then the scout motor came back and reported heavy forces hurrying to intercept their present line of march.