Late in the afternoon on Day 44, as the shadows of the Spine mountains began to stretch across the reopened highway, Master Joric Thane assembled the entire caravan at the tailboard of the medical cart.
Kezra Venn sat on the lowered tailgate, her boots resting on the timber bumper, her wool coat buttoned to her throat. Her left ear was still covered by the warm linen healing wrap tied with a clean head-cloth. But she kept her good right ear angled slightly toward the semicircle of wagon drivers, outriders, and refugee families who stood gathered in the dust.
Master Joric stood in the center of the road, his heavy leather coat unbuttoned in the fading heat. His battered broad-brimmed cap was held in his scarred hands.
There was no blare of silver trumpets. There were no grandiloquent speeches about ancient prophecies, chosen saviors, or limitless futures. In the hard, plain field skill of the northern trade routes, survival was not a myth. It was a ledger of measured debts and honest labor.
“Listen to me, all of you,” Joric’s voice carried clearly across the quiet stone, deep and ringing in the evening air. “Thirty years ago, when the earthquake broke this road, the royal commissioners at Splitflint told our guild that the mountain was impassable. They told us that if we wanted to trade with Alderfast, we had to crawl through their checkpoints, pay their grain tolls, and bow our heads to their tax-collectors.”
