Kara had managed, somehow, to purchase and store sixty wagons and the hundreds of oxen required to drive them in the seven days she’d been given; an astounding feat of logistics that was made even more impressive by the fact that she’d also acquired hundreds of blankets and bedrolls. A great deal of the people who'd escaped from Loso overnight had been left with nothing but the clothing on their backs, and the bedding supplies Kara had acquired for them would quite literally save them from freezing to death during the coming nights. But even with Kara’s generous contribution, there would still be many people who would be forced to find some means to stay warm overnight. Surelin decided that the wagons would be reserved as sleeping locations for anyone who still needed blankets so that they would at least be shielded from the wind.
After a brief period of organization that involved finding enough drivers amongst the migration, Kara’s wagons joined the grain caravan and together they set off west along the road. Len convinced Surelin to send the remaining battle-ready troops to the rear of the migration just in case the hussars decided to give chase. But at the end of the day no hostilities had been reported—in fact no contact with hussars had been reported whatsoever—and the trailing end of the migration passed through Logger’s Crossing without incident. It seemed that the hussars were too busy with their own circumstances within the city to bother with the effort of rounding up thousands of escaping slaves.
It took a week to completely distribute the bedding, mostly because the migration was spread out across a dozen miles of road but also because of a lack of sufficient personnel to handle it. Between the troops posted at the rear of the migration and the requirements for drivers, the resistance was simply stretched too thin. Fortunately, their manpower problems had a viable near-term solution.
The headcount of the migration was completed on the fourth day, and the numbers came as a moderate surprise to Surelin's council. Virtually every single Forelian slave who’d been inside Loso had joined the migration, along with roughly four thousand Losoans and Levidians. All told, roughly fifteen thousand people were on the road, the vast majority traveling on foot. If the migration was ultimately successful, Forelia City would become a much more multicultural city than it had ever been before.
An accounting was taken of the various professions and skills present in the migration, and the results were promising. Laborers, craftsmen and women, farmers, miners, and smiths were all present in great numbers. If the migration could reach Forelia intact, they would have the knowledge and experience necessary to restart a functioning society. In the meantime, Surelin decided to increase the size of their organization by recruiting amongst the migration. Dozens of people volunteered for non-combat roles, and after the second week of travel the manpower problems with distributing resources had been reduced to a much more manageable level.
One problem Surelin’s council had not accounted for had been the toll of so much walking on the migration. Traveling a dozen or more miles a day inflicted significant damage to the feet, especially when so few people were accustomed to it, and within the first few days the migration had slowed to a crawl to allow the healing process to take effect. Blisters brought the migration to its knees for several days, and Gideon spent a great deal of time caring for complete strangers alongside Surelin and the rest of her council.
It felt good to help people, he eventually realized. But for some reason he couldn’t quite explain, the growing sense of community within the migration felt foreign and uncomfortable for him. His association with Surelin and the council caused others to see him as a leader, which was simply a role he wasn’t prepared for or willing to accept. It was as if a sort of unspoken tension existed between himself and the people at large, one only Gideon could perceive. It almost felt as if he were an imposter, someone who was not truly welcome with them. But Gideon and the rest of the council was kept busy enough that he never had much time to dwell upon it, especially when Surelin decided to increase the ranks of the army by recruiting amongst the migration.
The resistance had taken a tremendous amount of casualties on the night of the rebellion. Those who hadn’t been killed outright would take weeks or even months to recover from their wounds, and until that time the migration would have only a hundred or so trained troops ready to defend it. Surelin tasked Len and Gideon with recruiting enough healthy and willing people as soldiers, a task that was not as easy as it initially seemed. Many of the people who’d escaped from Loso had been tradesmen or women, people with specialized skills that rarely intersected with anything military. Few amongst them were interested in starting new lives as soldiers, especially under the circumstances, but after a week they’d somehow managed to collect a few hundred interested recruits.
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Even so, the quality of training Gideon and Len could give to them was fairly poor, primarily because every day required miles upon miles of exhausting foot travel from every person in the migration. Proper physical training was essentially impossible under such circumstances, so instead they focused on drilling the new recruits on sword fighting for a few hours every night, with mixed results.
After a month of travel, the migration left the steep hills and valleys of Loso behind and descended into the frozen steppe. The winter wind whipped harshly and ceaselessly over the empty plains, causing the average temperature to drop dangerously low. Within days of entering the steppe, incidents of frostbite became much more common. Deaths had occurred on occasion within the previous month of travel, though it had usually been the very old or the very sick. But after reaching the steppe, people who were otherwise fit and healthy began to die from a combination of exposure and the harshness of the march. Funerals were held every day, and as the days passed the amount of people being buried steadily increased.
Surelin made sure to be present at each funeral, even helping out with the backbreaking work of digging in the frozen ground, and after a week or so it became clear to her council that the experience of constantly attending funerals was causing her to become seriously depressed. Eventually Gideon and the rest of the council cornered her and demanded that she stop attending them. An argument ensued that raged for nearly an hour, but eventually she was forced to give in. The funerals continued unabated without her presence.
With only two more weeks to go before they’d finally leave the windswept steppe and enter the lowlands of Levidia, a massive, intense storm swept the plains. Ice rained like water from the sky, forcing the entire migration to halt and take emergency measures to get warm and try to stay dry. When the next morning arrived, over one hundred people were found dead, frozen stiff wherever they’d been trying to take shelter.
It became known as the Night of Ice. For the rest of the following day, underneath a calm, cloudless blue sky, the migration remained halted to bury the dead and tend to the many people who’d been frostbitten. Surelin took the news very badly, barely uttering a word for the entire day as she dug graves alongside those still fit to do so.
The people took notice of her reaction, and her constant, tireless work on their behalf began to endear her to them. When the migration was ready to move on once again, Surelin was greeted with smiles and sometimes even cheers wherever she went. Her presence seemed to have a unifying effect on the people, bringing them closer together and giving life to the idea that the Forelian people were not a defeated people after all. Morale was steadily improving as the migration finally reached the lowlands.
Levidia was much warmer than the steppe, though it could still get below freezing at night. Most of the trees carpeting the low hills had lost their leaves, allowing glimpses at the surrounding terrain that would have been impossible during the warmer seasons. To the entire council’s relief, the amount of deaths from exposure immediately began to drop off after entering Levidia. After another week of travel, the deaths related to temperature came to a complete halt.
But the deeper the migration traveled into Levidia, the more it came into contact with the Lake Men. The sentries reported small bands of them at first—cold, hungry looking men lurking within the trees or huddled at campfires. At first, they fled into the forest the moment they laid eyes upon the migration, but before long they began to harass it, growing bolder and more aggressive with each passing day.
The migration’s small army was hard pressed to defend against the Lake Men while the people were strung out across the road. After several days of skirmishes, Surelin ordered the migration to contract its length, tightening their defense perimeter but also drastically slowing their progress. The new tactic succeeded in discouraging the Lake Men, reducing them to trailing the migration like a swarm of hungry carrion birds. They occasionally tried a small nighttime raid, aimed at the wagons carrying grain, but were quickly fended off each time.
The migration’s reduced rate of travel took a dangerous toll on the grain the resistance had pilfered from Loso’s stockpile, and the migration arrived at the great Obeeskogee river with barely a week of it remaining. Len had been almost prescient with his judgement on how long the grain would last.
Reaching the Obeeskogee had the bonus effect of finally warding off the Lake Men for good. The river combined with the surrounding forests made for an excellent defensive position for the migration, and both sides understood implicitly that once they were across the river the Lake Men would no longer be able to maintain a pursuit. They melted into the surrounding countryside, probably hungry and, Gideon liked to imagine, disappointed.
The migration momentarily halted at the banks of the river as Surelin and her council brainstormed a plan to collect enough food for the rest of the journey. It was during the halt that a Levidian courier appeared on the opposite bank, inviting Surelin to cross and meet with the Levidian tribal council who’d assembled nearby. After some deliberation with the council she decided to attend the meeting. Together they crossed the river with a handful of bodyguards to meet Levidia’s leaders, wary of whatever news they held in store but also hopeful that they would be able to provide what they needed to stave off starvation.