Eight heavy iron-hide oxen grunted in unison as their wooden yokes creaked under the strain.
Behind them rolled a massive, box-shaped siege wagon the size of a two-story merchant villa. Its reinforced ironwood walls were six inches thick, layered inside and out with boiled sheepskin felt to choke out vibration. Thick leaf-springs of tempered star-steel absorbed every rut in the dirt road, keeping the cabin as still as a mountain shrine.
Inside the soundproofed wagon, Kaelen Vance lay flat on his back in a silk-lined goose-feather hammock.
A woven straw hat covered his eyes. His hands were clasped loosely over his stomach. Beside his hammock, a small charcoal brazier glowed with soft embers, keeping a polished brass kettle at a low simmer.
Old Barnaby called this wagon an engineering triumph, Kaelen thought, shifting his shoulders against the down pillows. I call it the bare minimum requirement for traveling with two hundred and fifty thousand noisy cultivators.
The Free Cauldron Alliance had marched across the central plains since shortly after midnight, covering the distance in less than fifteen hours.
Ahead of them, rising from the mist of the reed-choked lowlands, loomed the jagged black walls of Black-Marsh Citadel. The ancient fortress sat directly astride the imperial river route. Behind those obsidian ramparts, eighty-four massive relay pedestals pulsed with dark, rhythmic light. Each was linked to a distant Blood-Tax Altar; the altars themselves remained scattered across the provinces.
