I will not expend, in this chronicle, the many pages that would be necessary to properly describe the Core Provinces of the Sanid Empire during the reign of Enduring Peace. Others have done so with far greater capability and detail than anything my pen possesses. I would encourage the curious to read the work of Master Gurah on that subject instead, should they be unfamiliar.
Nevertheless, the Dragon Expedition proceeded for some fifty-one days through the Core Provinces, despite traveling at the considerable pace of thirty kilometers per day. After accounting for the inevitably circuitous nature of any such passage, this achieved a separation distance of greater than one thousand kilometers from Crisremon. The route proceeded broadly northeast, initially following the path of the great Olarah River. Then north along the pilgrim's road to reach the holy Triple City of Cotarah. Beyond that city we passed only a series of increasingly smaller towns and caravansaries until finally departing the Core Provinces and entering the foothills of the Shdrast Mountains.
Perhaps remarkably, the character of the Core Provinces changes little despite the vast distances between their geographic extent. The land remains broadly dry and warm throughout, with farms fueled by the irrigation of rivers and the careful utilization of cachement dams. Similar crops are grown across the whole of this expanse, and processed into equally well-known and common foodstuffs. Daily life, whether for farmers, artisans, or even the local scholarly officials follows broadly shared patterns. Whether it is the existence and power of the Empire that creates such widespread uniformity, or that such a homogenous vastness of lands and people should naturally lead to the formation of an imperial system is a question that wormed through my mind repeatedly during this period. The lengthy days walking upon muddy spring roads provided ample time for contemplation.
There was, it must be said, a great deal of walking during those days. Erun Nassah, blessed with an Imperial Dagger commanding free passage and the prompt assistance of all attendant to the empire's road network, took full advantage of the resources provided by well-settled and carefully managed traveler's inns, blacksmiths, and granaries. Using maps, which at this juncture were not those of my own manufacture but instead well-worn copies of official publications supplied by the Cartography Office, he plotted a destination for each day that was generally twice the distance traveled by a typical merchant caravan. Extensive efforts, and countless hours on the march, were necessary to meet this goal.
At each stop, it would be our animals that the staff fed and loaded first in the mornings, before all other travelers. Meals were prepared not only for the morning, but also the midday meal, and added to our packs in order to be eaten during brief roadside breaks. Upon arrival at our nightly destination, no matter the hour or weather for we marched straight through the season of the spring rains, the master of the caravansary would be roused and ordered to bring forth food and fodder at once. We therefore surged out onto the road each morning well before other parties and continued late into the night after others had given up.
Erun justified this pace as a means of training the expedition for the hardships yet to come. Though he, like all of us, had little idea of what awaited in Shdustu, he claimed some knowledge of the mountains, having hunted extensively there as a youth. Often he told the grumblers that in the crossing of the high passes every hour would tell, and to be trapped outside of shelter when the night closed over the peaks would bring certain death.
He forced every member of the expedition to learn to load those animals assigned to their baggage, whether part of the caravan team or not. Not even the Princess Romou was spared. Rest was allowed only on the service days, one in nine, as was proper. Those who fell to injury or illness and were unable to walk were strapped to commandeered animals and carried until their strength returned sufficiently to rejoin the march again.
Though many complained and called these rules unduly harsh, both Master Caravaneer Lam and Mercenary Captain Sakan supported Erun's policies. So long as he retained their support the common men, eight out of ten among us, divided their grievances and looked upon all others as weaklings coddled by a life lived in palaces or schools, rendering any challenge to authority impossible. Even among those of us with noble origins there was nothing resembling uniformity. The apothecaries groused loudly, the healers claimed such a brutal pace was counterproductive over time, and the administrative staff snarled at the loss of their prerogatives, but others did not join this impromptu chorus. The Redbone Explorers, far from being worn down by the process, considered the pace a trivial challenge, almost casual, the foreign servants seem to grow in strength with every stride they marched away from Crisremon as the endless hours on the road offered them a previously unknown form of freedom, and the sorcerers were, as they ever were, completely inscrutable in regard to their intentions.
For my part, I confess I was somewhat upset with the arrangement. Not the walking, for my training in the craft of cartography had long ago inured me to lengthy days spent upon one's feet. Rather the long days and hurried leavings robbed me of chances to fully record the observations I made each day in suitable detail. The need to care for my pack horse, heavily loaded with papers, books, mapping skins, and tools rankled most. I was forced to try and find the chance to chronicle the expedition in moments snatched during meals or the rare pauses while the way around some obstacle was debated. Nor could I spend the rare rest days after the services concluded engaged in boisterous games as the rest of the party did, being obligated instead to catch up in my archival work or chart progress on newly produced maps that I was provisionally editing to reflect changes since the last official survey a decade previous.
Despite such distractions it was not difficult to recognize the overall sentiment in the expedition at this early stage, or to recognize that aligning one's views with those of the Master Apothecary – a man who began the trek with no allies save his trio of subordinates and had a habit of making enemies easily – was unwise.
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I chose, instead, to mirror the inscrutability of the sorcerers as best I might and say nothing at all.
This was made easier through the need to acknowledge a mistake and reassess my understanding of journeying. I had thought, from the confinement of my modest room in Crisremon's palace district, that the choice to take neither cart nor wagon with us was foolish. The spring rains proved this supposition wildly in error. Combined with the snowmelt from the high peaks, they swamped many of the Empire's fertile valleys and turned many road sections to black mud or flooded wash. Such barriers would have delayed carts by many days, as witnessed in the case of many we passed upon the route. With no wheels tied to our path, it was possible to simply tromp past such barriers at the small price of cold and wetness. Though the quantities of supplies our animals could carry were limited this presented no great difficulty in the Core Provinces, with abundant supplies ours for the asking.
The considerable time on the road, the totality of lighted hours most days and sometimes more, offered the chance to build bonds among the expedition members. In this, I confess, I was somewhat less active than numerous of my fellows. Long hours spent taking one step after another before my horse soon taught me that I had little to say either to the caravaneers – solid men who spoke endlessly of food, gambling, and women – or the soldiers who spoke endlessly of sport, weapons, and women. I admired them for their dedication to their duties, but found their focus limited and their lack of education a difficult conversational gap to bridge. Though they were masters of the specific skills necessary to their chosen professions, they displayed little curiosity beyond this.
Not that this was uniquely a trait of the unlearned. Francand Olon, the apothecary, genuinely seemed to believe that his refined art was the only practice of importance in the whole of the world. Similarly the purser, Master Tomad, was far too overcome by the fear of accounting errors to think on anything else. Strangely, and perhaps least expected by anyone in the expedition, the Princess Romou proved to be a remarkably devout personage and directed all her spare time toward the contemplation of the Enlightened Revelation of the Divines and all her spare energy towards what she considered her ministry. The healers, who quickly became known to all as Master and Mistress Adnol, were kept far too busy by the pressures of the steady march to spare much time beyond their medical duties.
The company of the Redbone Explorers was far more interesting. They had numerous stories drawn from a vast well of experience and were capable of interrogating my observations regarding our surroundings with intuitive understanding if not practiced knowledge. I took most available chances to march beside them and avail myself of this experience. Unfortunately for me personally, though it was of great benefit to the expedition as a whole, the four men ranged widely and spent as much time out of sight of the column as walking with it. To try and match their lengthy strides was never an option, for none among our number, not even the elite crossbowmen with their sterling reputation for incredible marches, could match their pace as it devoured distance across the land.
Instead, from this early point in the journey, I found myself often keeping my station in line beside the spirit sorceress retained by the expedition, the Lady Indili. She was not, in those days, a figure of any notability, even, I was later told, within the exclusive and cloistered fellowship of sorcerers. Despite her attainment of the rank of master at a young age, as Erun had brought only specialists of consummate skill under Imperial command, she had not acquired any grand achievements or reputation among her peers to make her name resound. Though, this may well have been deliberate. The motives of sorcerers being quite impenetrable to ordinary minds at the best of times. At the least, she walked alone in her service, for even from the first day out she barely spoke to her fellow master of the Chapter House, Lord Udrand.
Though she took pains to avoid all discussion of sorcery, Lady Indili possessed much lore of stone, flora, and fauna and a boundless curiosity regarding all facets of the world. She searched constantly for bits of bone and the transmuted stones of ancient creatures known as fossils, often to the point of dragging a fine net through the flooded washes in the hope of discovering what the spring floods had unlocked from the eroded banks. To what purpose she turned such finds, and I saw many such fragments disappear into her bags, I do not truly know, save that she would often sketch them out by candlelight using charcoal sticks. If it happened that they vanished into the unknown thereafter everyone, myself included, simply assuming it was some natural aspect of sorcery.
The sorceress was also found at the core of the only true consequential episode of violence that occurred during this fifty-one days. Though there were bandits on the roads in that era, especially in the more distant lands beyond the Triple City, they were sufficiently rare and disorganized to never dare threaten a large and well-armed party such as ours. Bar brawls and mustering yard scuffles, though they did occur, were likewise limited by the long days of marching, and the appearance of armored Imperial Guards and their golden badges swiftly brought such altercations to an end whenever they arose.
By contrast to this Lady Indili was a woman alone on the road, and though sorcerers are forbidden marriage, some foolishly view this as rendering them available to male attention. The Princess Romou, similarly, drew the eyes of the foolish and overly lusty, for she was a noted beauty of the age. It so happened that, at the caravansary where the expedition stopped on the fortieth day, at the intersection of the northeastern and southeastern imperial highways, the master possessed a bronze bathing tub that he graciously placed at the disposal of the ladies. Thinking that the Princess would avail herself of the hot water first, a drunken fool climbed up to the window and pried open the shutters to accost her in blatant defiance of the laws of men and empire, and fearsome heresy against the will of the Divines. He answered for such crimes at once, for he opened the slates only to discover that it was the Lady Indili, possessing a somewhat greater tolerance for heat than the willowy princess, who had taken the first bath.
The thing that fell out of the window afterward appeared perfectly healthy, in the flesh, but it could no longer speak and stared blankly at nothing with unseeing eyes no matter what stimulus might be offered. Later records from an Inspectorate review of the incident conclude that the man would no longer eat thereafter and wasted away until claimed by starvation after a mere few weeks. Afterward, few among the expedition other than myself would seek out the Lady Indili save at need.