South, then.
Spring rains and wasting winds; the everlast road outlasting daylight. Gaunt ruins of a fallen temple. The mountain of Maf looming in the east. In the hamlet of Delve, sour-faced peasants with stories of marauding Collosnon deserters, bandits and inland-seeking pirate bands. Further south, the Rohm Mountains rearing abrupt battlements against the horizon. The sea, and a tricky hot-mud crossing of a gently respiring flame trench.
From the coast of Dybra, a view of the cliffbuilt islands of the Greater Teeth; Ohio talked of seeking passage to the pirate islands, but there was no boat to take them there. Besides, the closer he got to his brother Menator, the more he seemed to doubt the wisdom of trusting to his brother's mercy.
In Nerja, capital city of Dybra – in truth, a small town of a thousand souls – a dying king wasting away in a deserted castle spoke of a hero who had stolen away his men, inflaming their hearts with rhetoric which promised power, glory, women and wealth. In Chorst, the hero had recruited all the able men in Guntagona.
Nearing Runcorn, the travellers heard that the city had surrendered to a rag-tag army led by the reaver from the west, the Rovac warrior Elkor Alish. Closer to Runcorn, they came upon a battlefield littered with the stonemade bodies of men and horses: Elkor Alish had used the death-stone, doubtless sheltering his own men in the red bottle while he commanded that power against his enemies.
The travellers did not approach Runcorn directly, but camped in hills outside the city. Ohio, guising himself as a Galish merchant, travelled into Runcorn on his own, bearing as trade goods quantities of siege dust and arachnid silk recovered from the depths of the green bottle.
He returned to bring them a detailed account of the activities of the conqueror of Runcorn, Elkor Alish. After defeating that city's army with the death-stone, Alish had installed his motley army of peasants and fishermen in the city. He was now busy recruiting cavalry and infantry from the Lezconcarnau Plains, otherwise known as the Plains of the Wild Horses, rich grazing lands between the Rohm Mountains and the Spine Mountains, occupying the hinterland of Runcorn.
Once Alish had gathered together an army sufficient to garrison the cities of the Harvest Plains, he would doubtless march south: he had already sent envoys to demand the surrender of those southern lands.