By mid-afternoon on Day 40, Master Joric Thane had transformed the disorganized quarry encampment into an efficient, military-grade staging ground.
The veteran wagon master stood on the tailboard of his lead freight cart. His heavy oak was heavy club tucked beneath his arm, barking orders to the assembled wagon drivers, outriders, and refugees. His weathered face was set in grim, purposeful lines. But his voice carried the calm, reassuring weight of a commander who had crossed forty mountain passes without losing a single wagon to panic.
“We have forty-eight hours before Captain Vale’s cavalry screen clears the Splitflint gorge,” Joric announced, his voice cutting through the dry desert wind. “Forty-two people, twenty-eight mules, and fourteen heavy freight wagons. If we try to move all at once when the map maker calls the swap, someone will drop an axle in an outer edge trench, spook a mule, and get crushed beneath thirty tons of shifting rock.”
He pointed his heavy club toward the long, white scar of the dry deep gap that cut across the road four hundred paces to the east.
“From this hour until the exchange is completed, the camp operates on three rotating four-hour watches,” Joric commanded. “Watch One, under my second wagon driver Barst, unloads the heavy flour barrels and iron tool chests from the two lead wagons and rolls them fifty paces back from the edge. Watch Two, under Master Fellis, clears the loose scree and drives the marker stakes along the sixty-four-pace outer edge lines…
