Erun Nassah desired to depart the expedition's winter quarters as early as possible in the year. This wish was broadly shared among the company, as the long cold months had seen the confines of Inukudish shift from welcoming to constrained. Such a move was not without risk, as departing before the harvest of the fall sown winter wheat and other early crops could commence meant leaving with dangerously low stores of provisions. Nevertheless, the considerable wealth acquired through adventures in the Tasgusun Hills filled this gap by allowing substantial purchases even at deeply inflated prices. Pack loads were filled with dried goods and preserves and arrangements were made with nearby Kharal clans to secure a supply of milk during the first leg of the journey.

Despite the widely shared desire to begin moving once more, the general resumption of hard work after the more relaxed requirements of the winter met with considerable resistance from many of the caravaneers, specialists, and even several of the Imperial Guard. The various animal handlers, whose duties had been decreased greatest by the lethargy of their charges in the chill, were the worst afflicted. Scholars, as always, find their days filled with work no matter the weather, and though the patrols worked by the soldiers had mostly been mindless at least it kept their bodies in shape for the efforts to come. Walking the walls of a Nikkad town with the frigid winds of a steppe winter lashing the face will keep anyone trim, though this only served to heighten the fondness developed by several of the guardsmen for date wine and gambling. Thankfully, Tomad's tight-fisted nature served to forbid the men from taking advances on their pay, and none faced the prospect of ruinous debt to the locals. This did require, over the course of the winter, a number of severe punishments in order to insure compliance. Such actions drove a wedge between the soldiers and the purser, and even threatened Tomad's relationship with Master Lam, previously his closest companion. Our master caravaneer, though too shrewd to gamble, spent the winter indulging heavily with women, to the point of taking on one of the residents of Inukudish as a full-time mistress. Her demands depleted the entirety of his available funds. After Tomad refused to advance him a loan, he stopped speaking to the purser.

This conflict, though accounted of little import at the time, history reveals that caravans necessarily bleed funds during winter and Erun considered the feuds developed in the cold to be repairable upon the road, would prove to have profound consequences in the future. Notably, when Tomad and Lam reconciled, they did so by shifting the blame for their collective difficulties onto Erun. I confess that, at the time, I broadly failed to notice these forming fractures. My measure of the pulse of the expedition's workers and soldiers, which had never been especially accurate, had grown worse during the winter following the lengthy absences from the general company due to participation in small parties.

Difficulties in sustaining unity of purpose were not aided by turnover. A significant portion of the caravaneer contingent that departed Inukudish under Master Lam's supervision were not those who had traveled with us throughout the previous year. For various reasons, ranging from injury to alternate opportunities to disciplinary action, a number of those who had made the journey from Crisremon or the Gudishgul Fortress no longer continued with us. Notably, all four of the laundresses who had served as clandestine prostitutes had accepted marriage offers from various Nikkad notables with a taste for the exotic in their bedrooms. These were replaced by two Nikkad women, a half-Nikkad half-Bahab woman, and a young Kharal woman whose clan had been destroyed by raiding. The net result of these changes was an expedition whose members were more diverse, more comfortable operating in the steppe environment of Shdustu, and better able to communicate with the local peoples, but also substantially more fragmented. Several of those hired resented working as servants for imperial officers or found the Princess Romou's use of traditional Sanid names for the divines during her daily prayers and weekly services alienating. Perhaps more concerning, though it went unremarked at the time, was that these new hires had little interest in and no capacity to imagine returning to Crisremon in triumph and reaping the rewards of success that would flow from the hand of the emperor. Their services and loyalty were secured through the pay that arrived from the purser's hands alone.

Compounding this was the need to hire new mercenaries. The Greencoats had long since departed south. Options in Inukudish were limited, especially at such an early point in spring. Most of the better companies had secured long-term contracts to protect the timber harvest. The dregs that remained were not favorable prospects, being little better than armed thugs. Erun Nassah, after much hesitation, chose to hire members of a company known as the Iron Bells, with the hope of changing out their assistance for a superior offering in Dumumshtu before the expedition entered the mountains proper. They were a poor mix of vagrants and outcasts, often soldiers drummed out from better companies for drunkenness or lack of discipline. A number of these men were half-Bahab, unfortunates born of rape and forced to pursue one of the few paths open to those with such regrettable beginnings. Such children are normally rare, given the skill of the Nikkad alchemists to terminate pregnancy while sparing harm to the mother, but it seems that the intense flooding of the Great Gorge is hostile to the growth of the necessary herbs and the potion used for this process is therefore in short supply locally and available only to the wealthy, forcing vulnerable women to carry such children to term. These men were gruff, crude, and given to drink to excess whenever they found the rare chance to indulge, but there were dogged and formidable fighters. Erun kept them separated from all the women in the expedition save the prostitutes, relying upon Rubuya and her comrades to serve as a cordon in case of mischief. Thankfully, the Iron Bells knew better than to invoke the vengeful wrath of Nikkad warrior-women. Erun also acted to forestall problems by marching everyone to near exhaustion throughout the month-long journey north to Dumumshtu.

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Preparations for departure involved a great deal of work, both the physical efforts to repair gear, secure provisions, replace livestock, and also more political efforts to gain approval from the prince, the khagan, and others who would influence travel throughout the year to come. This entailed a great deal of expense, especially when it came to new animals, for the price during the timbering season was very dear. Thankfully earnings during the winter had been substantial and the expedition's finances were therefore comparatively flush, especially after the reagents from the Tasgusun Hills were traded to the alchemists for coinage and other trade goods. In political affairs the prince of Inukudish was accommodating, apparently willing to take a measure of prestige from having hosted the expedition and therefore investing himself in its success. The khagan's representative was considerably more opaque in his words. Erun speculated he hoped to use our movement north as a lure, drawing a war party of Mumsassim westward that he might ambush in the autumn. In the short term this made him our ally, as the survival of the expedition opened up possibilities. Success, regrettably, was not something he looked for. Each of Shdustu's khagans had sent out warriors and hunters to find, and, if possible, slay the dragon. None had come even close to succeeding. In addition to the pall this knowledge cast over our prospects, for even high in the mountains we could not possibly match the Kharal in their ability to cover vast ground, it suggested the khagans would be intensely jealous should we manage to find a means they lacked. Brute force methods would not work, and the mystic means employed by Kharal shamans had not succeeded either. Locating the dragon, should the Divines open a path, depended upon insights missed by all local powers.

For myself, I made hurried copies of records and map and made such arrangements as I could to return valuable artifacts recovered from the wizard-king tombs back to the Sanid Empire. Once again I relied upon the Silversheen Mercenaries for aid as messengers. They had posted a trustworthy older officer to Inukudish to act as a relay, observer, and spy. He agreed to have the chest I gave into his custody sent south on the first caravan after the timber harvest concluded.

In due time these goods were sent south and west. For once, Shdustu allowed its treasure free passage to lands beyond. Regrettably, other regions were not so kind and many of these goods were lost as a result of an attack by alpine bandits during the return over the Shdrast Mountains. Only those items at the very bottom of the saddlebags were preserved, a mere fraction of the artifacts and coins of the wizard-kings. Notes and drawings, though torn from their receptacles, were of no value to the illiterate predatory attackers and were gathered up thereafter, able to return with only some modest water damage. These records marked the second set of writings to successfully reach Crisremon, however as by this time Husun the Fifth's health had begun failing and civil unrest was rising at court in consequence, they were buried in the archives and received no immediate study. By this time the Sanid Empire had broadly lost all interest in the dragon and few at court recalled that the expedition even existed.

Such neglect, which included improper storage that saw many of these records seriously damaged by moths prior to any proper scholarly study, elevates the importance of the present chronicle.

Eventually recruitment restored the expedition's company to a proper ninety-nine and all preparations were completed. It was decided to set out on the third day of the fifth month. Though Erun wished to depart quietly, and the busy nature of that time of year precluded any large or grand ceremony, the prince made a small event of our egress regardless, setting out a modest departure feast and bringing forth various luminaries of Inukudish who had made the acquaintance of the expedition over the course of the winter. All were then obligated to share a lengthy series of drinks, though thankfully the wine was quite watered down. Actual departure did not take place until well after midday as a consequence. Thankfully the horses and camels were unhindered by this, and they found the mud-coated trails easily enough. With all obstacles and delays mastered, the northward journey resumed at last.

Many in the expedition were swift to express their grumbled regrets at leaving the Nikkad town, which had grown over the course of the long winter to resemble a home. As several caravaneers, in addition to the laundresses, had found permanent employment with the prospect of residence within the settlement, this carried with it a distinct tang of envy. I found this strange. Life at the northern end of the Great Gorge is both bitterly hard and dangerously erratic. Any failure of the spring floods would, and if the town's records were any guide repeatedly had, ruin the entirety of the town and leave all living there bare before the spears and arrows of desperate Kharal. It seems that some see any prospect of a permanent home, however tenuous, to be a welcome prosperity when compared with the traveling life.