The road to Oakhaven was not a turnpike. It was a ten-mile ditch of yellow clay rutted by timber wagons and flooded by the overflow of the upper mill leats. By late afternoon, Team Four had covered sixteen miles, their boots caked in five pounds of clinging mud, the iron tire of their right handcart wheel grinding with a shrill, rhythmic screech where grit had worked into the axle-grease.
Porter Kael leaned forward against the leather hauling harness, his knuckles white around the ash cross-bar. Behind him, Maya walked with one hand pressed against the waterproof canvas cover of the cart, steadying the two iron-bound register chests. Her face was pale from the biting north wind. But her eyes were fixed on the slate roofs of the Oakhaven market square rising above the bare willow trees.
The Oakhaven branch of the Grand Adventurers’ Guild was not a modest office. It was a two-story fortified stone manse built from dressed river limestone, fronted by a wide flagged terrace and a double-leaf oak portal studded with square iron bolts. Above the archway, carved in gold-trimmed relief, hung the guild’s heraldic crest. A winged sword crossing a golden balance. It was flanked by the Latin motto VIRTUS ET PRETIUM—Courage and Price.
