On the afternoon of Day 152—the seventh day of the physical escape from Alderfast—the column completed the final four miles of the foothills highway and rolled into the great outer caravan shelter of Joric Thane.
The shelter was not a temporary tent camp. It was a permanent, fortified stone-and-timber caravanserai built forty years ago by the Freight Master’s guild to anchor the northern trade routes. Its massive limestone outer edge walls were six feet thick and twelve feet high, enclosing a five-acre paved quadrangle fitted with covered wagon sheds, blacksmith forges, grain silos. A two-story timber bunkhouse capable of housing three hundred travelers.
At the main weigh-beam gate, standing on the timber check platform with his grease-stained leather ledger tucked beneath his arm, was Caravan Master Joric Thane himself.
The forty-eight-year-old caravan master was dressed in his familiar faded wool coat with the brass triangle debt tokens pinned to his lapel. Beside him stood his head wagon driver. It watched the long line of carts and litters approach with sharp, skilled eyes.
Kezra Venn’s handcart reached the timber bridge across the station moat. Then, Joric stepped down from the platform. He wasn’t a man given to dramatic displays of emotion. He didn’t offer a grand speech or wave his hat in the air. He walked up to the side of the cart, looked Kezra up and down with his shrewd, assessing grey eyes. Then he tapped the ash wheel hub with the iron toe of his boot.
