Following the line of Outrider Marn’s outstretched goad, Kezra Venn shaded her eyes with her canvas survey hat, squinting against the fierce, blinding glare reflecting off the Saltglass basin two miles below.
The white bitter salt flats looked like an endless expanse of cracked fine china, shimmering with deceptive heat waves even in the mid-morning sun. Clustered on a broad stone terrace at the foot of an ancient, stepped stone quarry—where the black fiery talus met the white desert floor—sat a fortified encampment.
Kezra took her brass survey telescope from its leather metal tube, adjusted the sliding draw-tube. Then she brought the distant encampment into sharp focus.
Through the glass, the details resolved with cold and exact clarity.
She counted nine heavy six-horse freight wagons, their white canvas tilts battened down against the bitter-salt dust. Around the wagons, a corral formed of cargo tethers and wagon poles held thirty draft horses and mules, their heads drooping toward dry feed bags. Canvas family shelters and cooking flys were pitched in the lee of the freight beds, where small children and women sat in the narrow bands of shade.
The entire caravan was fully, hopelessly halted.
Directly in front of the lead freight wagon, the stone road that crossed the quarry bench had ceased to exist.
