Land of the Burning Sands by Rachel Neumeier

bed.
    From Tashen, it was only about fifteen miles south to Metichteran, all on a good road. There, the northernmost bridge across the Teschanken River led from East Metichteran to West Metichteran. Gereint looked down with interest at the bridge as they crossed the river.
    This bridge had been built so that that Casmantium, invading Meridanium, could send half its army down from the north upon the Meridanian forces. Casmantian builders had flung the bridge across the river in a single night and a day, according to Sichan Meiregen’s epic, and the Casmantian soldiers had come down upon the armies of Meridanium like reapers upon wheat. Meridanium had lost its king and its independence and had become merely one Casmantian province among many. Then, in the more peaceful era that followed, there had been time for towns to grow up and roads to be built… but nothing that had been built in the north had stood longer or more solidly than Metichteran’s bridge. Though Gereint sincerely doubted any account that claimed a night and a day sufficient for its building, no matter how great the general or how gifted his builders. It was a very solid-looking bridge.
    Then they headed south again through the low, rocky hills along the river road. Here the road was narrow and rough, and though there were obvious signs of large numbers of recent travelers, there were few now on the road. This was a stretch of farmless backcountry where brigands might well wait for vulnerable travelers, but theirs was too large a party to tempt any brigands who might have been watching the road. They passed other travelers, slow-moving refugees who had left Melentser only right at the deadline. Those travelers had also been warned about the brigands, clearly. Very few of them traveled in parties smaller than Sicheir’s, and those that did looked decidedly anxious.
    From Metichteran, they traveled thirty miles south along the Teschanken River to Pamnarichtan, where the swift little Nerintsan River came out of the hills to join the wider Teschanken. The inn at the confluence was not very impressive, but the confluence itself was a great sight. The upper Teschanken flowed clear and swift from the north, and the Nerintsan came down in a quick, cheerful dash from the steep hills, but the lower Teschanken that resulted from their joining was very different in character from either northern stretch of river. It was broad and deep, colored a rich brown with sediment, seemingly lazy but treacherous, its currents running in unexpected directions. No one would try to build a bridge across the South Teschanken, but there was a ferry to Raichboden, southernmost town in the once independent province of Meridanium. Riverboats appeared here where the Teschanken was navigable; inns were crowded with boat crews as well as accommodating travelers off the road.
    “Can’t we try a boat?” asked the youngest of the men-at-arms, Bechten, craning wistfully to look after one that floated past.
    “Oh, to be sure. The price will be high with all those folk crowding south from Melentser. But you can sell your horse for passage and walk on your own legs from Dachsichten back home,” one of his elders answered, not unkindly. “No, boy; the road’s a good one and the weather’s fine, so don’t tempt the sky with a grumble, eh? Besides, see, the river’s running low. You wouldn’t think it, looking at the water here, but once they get farther down, those boats will be snagging up and pressing even their paying passengers to get them over the bars.”
    So they rode at an easy pace, and the weather held fair; they came to Dachsichten six days after leaving Eben Amnachudran’s house.
    Dachsichten collected important roads that ran from the north and the south and the west. It was not a pretty town, but it was crowded and busy; the roads around Dachsichten thronged with respectable carters and farm wagons, with drovers and merchants’ convoys, with the slow-moving wagons of