"What is that? In the sky?"

Isaac broke from his heat-and-boredom induced stupor to look where the northman was pointing. A dark shape hung above the horizon far off in the distance yet clearly visible against the cloudless blue sky.

"I thought it was a bird at first, but it's too still."

Commander Frederick retrieved a spyglass from the wagon. After trying to steady it for a moment he hopped down and tried again on solid ground.

"Looks to be an airship," he said at last, climbing back aboard the wagon.

"Air... ship?" the first northman asked in a puzzled tone.

"What's it doing above the capital?" Isaac asked, furrowing his brow.

"I have no idea," Frederick replied, "maybe a demonstration or a test."

"What is an airship?" the northman asked again, annoyance clear in his tone.

"It's a ship that sails in the air." Frederick said.

The northman laughed in reply. "Are you having a joke at me? A ship in the air?"

"No, I'm quite serious. I had a chance to see one up close a few months before I secured the contract to escort them-" Frederick said, gesturing at the ever-chanting druids, "to the west. It was on the ground back then, mind you, still being built but it was a marvel to behold. Saw one in the air once too, being tested, but not as close."

The mercenaries from the north looked at each other and at the rest of the group. "No," one of the other men said, "you are playing a joke. Trying to make us look gullible, thinking everyone in the north are stupid barbarians."

"He's telling the truth," Isaac began, "I saw several during the siege of Green Hill."

"As did we." added one of the men from Osterval. "We had no idea what it was then, thought it was simply another reconnaissance balloon until it started dropping fire on our heads."

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"It surprised us too, most of us in the trenches had no idea they even existed until they arrived on the front." Isaac replied.

The northern mercenaries talked among themselves for a moment in their own language. Svarja matched her pace to Isaac's and walked beside him.

"Tell me plain, Isaac, are these things true? Ships that sail in the air and drop fire?"

"They are, I swear it, "Isaac replied, fighting to keep his face straight.

"Why do you smile if it isn't a joke?" Svarja asked with a frown.

"I am serious, I just, well, I can see how ridiculous it sounds. If I hadn't seen these things with my own eyes I would think they were just stories older men tell newly enlisted boys to trick them."

"But you are not tricking me?" Svarja asked, then continued when Isaac shook his head, "then how is it we have never seen such things in our travels through your lands?"

"They're quite new, many Wollemans have likely never heard of them let alone seen them. I doubt even the bravest of traders from the north spent much time at the eastern front during the siege of Green Hill."

Svarja laughed. "No, my people wish to have brave deeds written in the book, not stupid ones."

"You swear this is true, you are not tricking me?" She asked after a moment of silence. Isaac assured her he was serious and Svarja nodded before jogging off to catch up to the other two women from the north. The three women were almost always together and one of them was always on watch at night. A smart move, being three women among nearly two dozen men in a strange land. Isaac had never seen anyone give them a hard time, the northmen acted the same with them as they did with each other while the other guards in the caravan largely avoided interacting with them. Like many people from Wollema and Osterval, Isaac had grown up hearing stories about the fierce shield-maidens from the north and their savagery in battle. Stories that, as it turns out, had exaggerated the viciousness of both male and female warriors from the colder lands but still, these three were skilled enough in battle that it was wise to play it safe around them.

Isaac didn't blame the northerners for being skeptical. He remembered how hard it was to believe it himself when he first saw the dark shape in the sky above a Tarid field fort, the spyglass revealing two men and a great fire in a basket underneath a sack shaped like an upside-down pear. The Callers guessed that it was something like an oversized sky-lantern, the sort of floating decorations lifted up by the heat of a small candle that Isaac had seen as a child, lighting up the night sky at festivals. From their vantage point thousands of feet in the air the Tarid forces were able to observe enemy troop movements and coordinate their own so effectively that they had almost completely nullified the advantage the Wollemans had from greater numbers and knowledge of the land, even before the Tarid soldiers deployed their new air guns and steam-powered machines.

"Let's pick up the pace, I want to hit the outskirts before nightfall!" Frederick called out from the wagon, "I'm not breaking camp just to walk an hour or two tomorrow morning so unless you want to march in the dark you better move!"