At the sixth hour of the morning, Old Kaelen Brant raised his five-foot hickory wagon driver’s whip into the air. The braided leather cracked with a sharp, clean sound like a rifle shot echoing off the chalk cliffs. CRACK!
“Columns forward!” Kaelen’s roar rolled down the three-mile line of wagons.
Three hundred and twenty drivers shouted all at once, their whips cracking across the backs of six hundred and forty oxen. Trace chains snapped taut with an ear-splitting metal jingle. Wooden wagon bodies groaned. And one thousand two hundred and eighty iron-rimmed wheels bit into the gravel post road.
The great caravan moved.
They marched in four orderly, parallel columns, spaced fifty paces apart to prevent dust from blinding the following teams. In the lead rode Old Kaelen Brant in his royal cart driver’s wagon, with the royal marshals with the golden mace gleaming in the sun.
Tomas Reed and Nessa Vale walked beside the center columns, their ash pack frames resting lightly against their backs. Behind them marched Sile Rook and sixty veteran wagon drivers, their oak pavises and billhooks carried proudly as the vanguard escort.
Behind the wagons walked the families—four thousand men, women, and children. Barefoot boys drove flocks of sheep and milk goats. Mothers carried babies in sling-carriers. Old wagon drivers leaned on peeled willow canes, their eyes fixed on the distant western ridge.
