The morning departure from Master Joric Thane’s Saltglass encampment didn’t begin with horn calls, shouting drovers, or the clatter of loose harness. It began in the grey, cold hour before false dawn. Just then, the sand on the lower limestone terrace was still damp with night-mist and the heavy draft horses in the picket lines stood with their heads lowered, chewing their morning barley in rhythmic, muffled crunches that sounded like wooden beetles boring through dry pine.
Kezra Venn checked the harness of the two-wheeled handcart Joric had gifted them two days before. The ash-wood shafts were smooth and cool under her palms, rubbed with boiled linseed oil until the straight yellow grain gleamed like polished horn. She had spent the last afternoon adjusting the cross-stay straps and the leather breast-collar so that the balance point sat exactly three inches ahead of the bronze axle sleeves. That slight forward bias passed twenty pounds of steady downward pressure onto her leather chest-harness. That kept the shafts from bucking upward on rough scree, while sixty pounds of bronze survey rods, drafting slates, iron stakes, and sealed food tins rode virtually weightless over the iron-tired wheels.
Behind the cart, Fellis Dain was checking the lashings of the canvas-wrapped tent roll. His knobby, calloused wrists moved with quick, efficient tugs. He tested every square knot and half-hitch twice with the stubborn thoroughness of a rigger who had seen too many loads spill down a gully. Beside the left wheel, Paxa Sel was carefully settling…
