- Grain Down, Salt Up
- Escorts at Every Wagon
- Five Days on the Coast Road
The Saltgrain Caravan
Every few weeks a long line of wagons leaves the carters' yards of Sheafcross loaded with sacks of grain, and takes the coast road south to the harbor at Ashmoor. It is five slow days down and five back, loaded the second time with barrels of salt, dried fish and whatever the harbor had for sale. This is the Saltgrain Caravan: a dozen or more ox wagons, a cook cart, a farrier and a band of hired escorts who walk beside the wheels with spears and short bows.
The road skirts the edge of the Scar, where the ground smokes and the wind smells of ash, and then runs down through dark pine to Ashmoor's palisade. A traveller can buy a seat on a wagon from whichever carter has room, and every carter has a different price and a reason it is fair. Anyone may walk with the caravan for nothing, as long as they help push when a wheel sticks. The escorts do not fight for strangers, but bandits rarely bother a caravan that big.
The road skirts the edge of the Scar, where the ground smokes and the wind smells of ash, and then runs down through dark pine to Ashmoor's palisade. A traveller can buy a seat on a wagon from whichever carter has room, and every carter has a different price and a reason it is fair. Anyone may walk with the caravan for nothing, as long as they help push when a wheel sticks. The escorts do not fight for strangers, but bandits rarely bother a caravan that big.