In the early morning, they went to see the leader of the caravan.

A huge, sprawling campsite filled with flies, wagons, people, oxen and more flies had sprouted overnight by the shore of Lake Nin, outside the town of Kesh. The smell of unwashed bodies, smoke and dung almost bowled Oak over as he walked through the controlled chaos of a caravan in the midst of their morning chores. By the time they reached people who looked like they did this sort of thing for a living, Oak had learned five new curse words and witnessed a man get his foot stomped by a pissed off cow.

Everyone ate porridge for breakfast. Oak could already feel a tingling sense of despair creeping up his spine. Porridge. Three months of nothing but porridge to break my fast. He shuddered and made a vow to check their salt reserves. If he had to eat unsalted porridge, someone would die and it would not be him.

Tochukwu N'Dri, the caravan leader of the Kporaro caravan company, was a broad shouldered, short Koromite with black skin, a shaved head and a big round belly. Deep laugh-lines extended from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and gave his weathered and clean-shaven face a jovial air. Oak thought he looked like someone's favorite uncle.

A very round, ball-like uncle.

Oak had slept poorly last night because everything was going too well. He expected unexpected difficulties to strike any day now. Thankfully, he needn't have worried about the caravan. Tochukwu took one look at their extensive preparations and Oak's gigantic falchion before welcoming them all with open arms.

In hindsight, he should have expected a warm reception. A merchant would never say no to extra blades, especially when they would pay him for the pleasure, not the other way around.

When Tochukwu heard both Oak and Ur-Namma were theurgists, he smiled so wide Oak worried his poor flabby cheeks might strain themselves from the effort. When Sadia told him she was a spellsinger, Tochukwu looked like he might faint from sheer happiness.

"Can you purify food and water, spellsinger? Or repel vermin? If you can, there is money to be made on the trail."

"Of course! The spells can be a little tricky, but I have done such workings in the past."

"Wondrous news, Lady Sadia, truly wondrous." Tochukwu clapped his hands together in glee. "I knew I had a good feeling about this run for a reason. We might only lose one in ten this time!"

"One in ten?" Oak asked. The statement had a foreboding ring to it. Like someone had just slapped a gravestone with a tuning fork.

"Yes, one of every ten people in the caravan." Tochukwu wiped sweat from his glistening forehead with a handkerchief, leaning against his own wagon. "Last time we lost one in five. Seemed like half the caravan got the runs."

Just like that, acquiring a boon that would shield him against infectious diseases rose to the top of Oak's to-do-list. Shitting yourself to death was, well, a shit way to go.

Arrangements were made, coin changed hands, and the already sizable caravan grew a mite larger. Oak, Ur-Namma, Geezer and Sadia would share the road with Tochukwu's troupe of teamsters and merchants, a sect of Erelim worshipers, a mercenary company called the Golden Pact and a sizable group of independents.

Over 300 wagons and somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people. The caravan was a small town on wheels.

"Over three hundred wagons!" Sadia scrunched her face in deep thought, counting something with the help of her fingers. Her face fell. "Way too many to handle with basic rituals. I'm going to need to enchant a tool for this, or I'm going to lose my mind."

"What do you need?" Oak asked, hand already inside his coin-pouch. Anything to avoid the runs.

"Hmm. A large bronze medallion would be a good start, I think."

"If I were you, girl, I would get two. And a heap of little pieces of steel or iron to make simple talismans out of." Ur-Namma smiled like a shark. "They only have to last three months. We will sell all of them after we pass a swamp and someone voids their bowels in an explosive fashion."

"Just take the coin-pouch and go wild," Oak said and pressed the money into Sadia's hands.

Anything to avoid the runs.

***

Midday had barely passed when the caravan rolled away from Kesh under the cover of dreary gray clouds, following the shoreline of Lake Nin north-west. According to Tochukwu, time was money and they could not afford to linger a moment longer. Oak could understand the caravan leader's worry. Every day wasted meant more money spent on food and other essentials.

If things didn't go to plan, the poorest people in the caravan might run out of food and starve before they reached Chadash Merkavah. And when starvation was on the table, men turned into beasts and the knives came out.

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Nobody wanted that, least of all the merchants. Intra-caravan massacres were bad for business and Tochukwu boasted of an unbroken track-record of zero incidents of mass murder or cannibalism on caravans run by the Kporaro caravan company. The flip-side of this dubiously comforting statement was obvious. Other caravan companies didn't hold such a stellar record.

In other words, cannibalism was on the table and it would be a minor miracle if there weren't at least five murders. The more Tochukwu spoke, the more Oak doubted the sanity of the average teamster working in the caravan. Who in their right mind would haul people and cargo across the continent for a living, facing death by disease, exposure, bandits, monsters and a thousand other fun ways to end your life, only to turn back and do the entire sorry journey all over again?

The pay wasn't even that good, Oak had asked. Lunatics, the whole lot of em. Fucking lunatics.

From the corner of his eye, Oak spied a flash of perfect teeth and white robes decorated with golden trim. Halit had come to see them off. The clean-shaven Ensi of Kesh looked striking in his spotless clothing compared to the dirty mass of people doing their best to get their families and oxen on the move.

Halit waved at Oak, Ur-Namma and Sadia as their wagon rolled past him and they waved back, shouting their goodbyes over the cacophony of bellowing animals and roaring teamsters.

The Ensi smiled at the three of them, looking sweet enough to rot the teeth straight out of their mouths. And why wouldn't he be pleased? In no small part thanks to their efforts, Halit had brought Endrit Carcani and his co-conspirators to justice for the murder of two infants, ended the Carcani clan, resolved the ongoing dispute between the Ferhati and Kashari clans, and reminded Baskim Kashari about who the true power in Kesh really was.

In the span of two days, Halit had secured his position for the next decade, maybe even longer. Hells, the Ensi had gone so far as to poach some of the few surviving members of the Carcani clan to work for him, knowing full well that every single one of those poor fuckers would depend utterly on his goodwilll in the decades to come.

Acts of cruelty and acts of mercy, to show you are capable of both. Halit ain't no greenhorn when it comes to the art of power politics, that's for sure.

Ur-Namma sat on the driver's seat, while Oak and Sadia directed the oxen with sticks, tapping gently on their flanks to let the animals know if they should speed up or slow down. Geezer jogged along the wagon, enjoying the cool breeze blowing from the lake. Tochukwu had placed them close to the front of the wagon train, right behind his own troupe of teamsters and merchants. Oak got the feeling the man wanted to keep a spellsinger and two theurgists close by in case they ran into trouble.

Looking at the already formidable dust cloud hanging over the caravan, Oak was mighty glad they weren't bringing up the rear with the mercenaries of the Golden Pact. Eating the dust of hundreds of wagons didn't seem like an enticing prospect.

Oak slowed his walk until he was side by side with Ur-Namma. "Is the coin still intact?" he asked, looking straight ahead at the line of wagons leading the way north.

"Yes, it is. My spell has not broken," Ur-Namma said, fiddling with the coin hanging from a necklace he kept around his neck. "Is the ritual safe?"

"Yes. It is safe and sound in my pack," Oak replied, tapping the rucksack on his back. "I checked before we took off."

This game of questions and answers had grown into a custom between the two of them on the road, and they engaged in it every time they left a town behind. Oak would ask whether the coin Ur-Namma had spelled to break if anyone examined the black stone pillar Yam-Nahar had used as the elf's prison was still intact. On the day the coin broke, they would know for sure that Ur-Namma's escape had been noticed and his jailor's would be hot on their trail.

Ur-Namma would ask if the metal cylinder which held the Sacrament of Ingurgitation, their only hope of empowering themselves enough to face a dragon of old, was still safe. If they ever lost it, all hope of their success could well be lost with it.

Thus far, neither was yet to disappoint the other, but it was the early days of their journey. Plenty of time and miles ahead to await disaster.

***

On their first day of travel with the caravan, Tochukwu led them across two creeks and a shallow river crossing. The creeks did not pose the caravan any trouble, since the creek-beds were flat and even at its highest point, the water did not rise above knee height.

Crossing the river was another story entirely. The muddy banks of the river were steeper than Oak would have liked, and the wagons had to be lowered down with extreme care. Noting what Tochukwu had done, they attached their third ox to the back of their wagon with a long length of thick rope so the animal could pull away from the river and slow down their descent.

Ur-Namma used the friction brake the entire way down and it was a good thing he did so. Slippery stones smoothed out by the fast moving water covered the riverbed. Walking across felt like skipping on ice and the swift current tried its best to pull the oxen and the wagon off course.

Not everyone had an extra ox or a man as strong as Oak to help things along.

One of the independent wagons slid down the riverbank and smashed into the shallow crossing with great speed, breaking a wheel in half. Their ropes had snapped. Since no people or oxen died, the prevailing opinion was that they got off lightly. After a miserable struggle in the river, the family got their wagon on the other side and got started with repairs.

The next bunch to have an accident faced a different sort of misfortune.

A man from the sect of Erelim worshipers slipped on the smooth rocks lining the riverbed and his family's wagon rolled over his feet, breaking both of his legs. His wailing wife and children dragged the screaming man to shore under the fearful eyes of the people still waiting to try their own luck at crossing the river.

One of Tochukwu teamsters experienced with field-medicine helped them set the bones in record time. Two horrified shrieks later, the teamster strapped two splints made of wood to the man's shins and his family lifted him inside their wagon. Oak doubted being jostled around inside the wagon with two broken legs could be comfortable, but it wasn't like the poor bastard had any options.

It was that, or getting left behind.

By the time they stopped to set up camp next to another creek, they had crossed only ten miles and Tochukwu cursed like a sailor in an especially foul mood, slapping his big round belly to emphasize the expletives flying from his mouth.

"I want those water barrels filled yesterday, you pockmarked whoresons! You, what the fuck are you staring at? Brush those oxen, or I'm going to put my foot up your sorry ass!"

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