`[DISTANCE REMAINING: 11.1 KM]`
`[TIME REMAINING: 1:44:18]`
The road went east, pale and wide and empty, with the gullies running alongside it and the low ochre ridges standing further out. Heat came off the ground in sheets. Dust had got up past James's ankles and into the hinges of his knee plates and would be there for the rest of the day.
The wagon ground along in the middle of them. Wheels over stone, a steady grating rhythm with a knock in it every time the offside rear went over something. Leather creaking. Both horses blowing through their noses in the dry air.
And ten kilometres ahead, small and square in the gap between two cliffs, the Eastern Gatehouse sat there and did not get any closer at any speed James found reassuring.
Two hundred metres up the road, four people stood beside a pile of baggage.
---
Cillian was right about what they looked like.
