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The food, such as it was, consisted of compressed and dried cakes of mixed meats, vegetables, and fruits, pressed into slabs one inch thick, two feet long and six inches wide, scored on the inch lengthwise. The scores were to denote field rations for fully-laden fighting man, three rations per day. With these delicacies were stored earthen water jars, filled at all times, and several water skins for each active soldier, ready to be strapped on as soon as the signal came. It was by no means uncommon for an adult in the Kingdom’s service to wear out several water skins in the course of that service, simply from the repeated filling and draining, which was done every three days. Stagnant or settled water had cost the Kingdom some battle or other, long before anyone could remember, though every citizen had been reminded from their earliest school days. Preparedness was the watchword. No one knew nor asked what they were preparing for.
The New Lands were a place to start over or to finish up. Many booked passage there unwillingly, as bond servants who had sold some years of their lives in hopes of a better situation to come. Some came by choice, for the same reasons as their ancestors had founded the old cities. They all planned to return and use their hard-won gains to re-make themselves in the city.
These lands had once been connected by transportation systems that no one had ever seen and of which little remained. The road there was paved with concrete strips, as wide as a man is long, and a foot thick and a foot tall. These was laid every few feet from the edge of the city almost all the way to the towns, stopping where the road split up. There were some ruined buildings were the strips ended, including one long stone platform that came up to a man’s waist and ran about 50 feet long. No one knew what it was for.
Travelers would generally be hauled in a convoy of wagons to this place. Once all the wagons had been looked over and everyone was ready, the convoy dissolved and the wagons went on to their final destinations. The journey took several days and was not recommended for the weak, elderly or infirm. There were rumored to be many hazards on the way, from colossal insects to dangerous savages. No one had ever seen these, but it kept the carriage rates up and gave the wagon-driver an awful lot of power to set whatever pace he liked and to stop wherever he felt like it. Wagon-masters and their crews spent an awful lot of time re-assuring nervous passengers and conferring amongst themselves about the safest way to proceed, even though the route was well-known and the fears they were calming were their own handiwork.
The journey from the dissolution of the convoy to the final destination would be over pretty quickly, in a day or so. This again was at the discretion of the wagon-master. Once the social aspects of the trip were over and he had no one to talk to, he was ready to get a move on, but his stated purpose was to get everyone safely to their destination before they were detected by whatever hazard he felt most effective. Horse-sized lizards were a good choice for these sandy and barren stretches. The wagon would proceed at a bone-jarring pace until it was safe to slow down, generally when it was withing sight of the town. Then a more stately pace was adopted, and the wagon proceeded to the agreed-upon disembarking point. The wagon-master would unload the passengers’ belongings, and then retire to the nearest tavern. A groom would take the wagon in to see to the horses and prepare the wagon for the return journey. The return took much less than the way out, and the carriage firms were careful not to have drivers arrive too soon on consecutive trips.
The carriage trade was quite a moneymaker, since few passengers made a round-trip journey which limited the comparisons they could make. If the price changed or the route differed, there were a myriad of a reasons that could be used to answer for it. The carriage trade was also partly subsidized as part of the mail system. Letters were carried in the coaches but were rarely carried in the next one to depart. They often languished for a week or more before being bundled up and dropped in the wagon-master’s hands. From there, they might make one or more round-trips in the coach before being handed off to the postmaster at the other end.
The object of all this subterfuge was to make the journey seem arduous and full of peril. It took a week or more of painful jouncing and jolting to get to a place, with some detours or delays to avoid monsters or savages. The passengers’ perceptions of the trip were entirely at the mercy of the carriage operators. And they used every device they could to make the trip an adventure, sometimes beginning before the passengers were seated in their coach. Delays in departures, blamed on a slow-returning carriage (often parked outside the city for the purpose of being late) were common, and were very inconvenient and therefore effective. Many travelers were leaving with not much more than the clothes they stood up in, with everything else packed and sealed for the journey. Nothing short of an outright cancellation would induce them to open their luggage, so the prospect of a night sleeping in the what passed for a waiting room was dreaded but half-expected.
So many of those traveling were taking this trip as a last resort, few were inclined to share much about themselves, even those who knew they were bound for the same place. This preserved the carriage operators ability to charge fares in a somewhat whimsical way that invariably ended up draining the émigrés purse. Somehow the assessed fare matched the traveler’s ability to pay. The booking agents were regarded with awe by the staff and dread by passengers. How they managed to derive the number that would enrich the company without quite impoverishing their clients bordered on the magical and was rumored to have something to do with weighing customers as they came in, analyzing the thickness of their shoe leather, even monitoring their vital signs for indicators of stress and acceptance as figures were discussed.
The fact of the matter was that the journey could easily be completed as a long one-day trip or a more leisurely two-day, at a fraction of the cost. But efficiency was all about scale and growth. This was not a growing business operation. Travel was steady from month to month, year to year, so rather than streamline operations and try to cut costs, the operators decided to make the trip take up as much time as needed and cost as much as it could. The fact that there were two companies that handled the trade suggested that there were some market forces at work and prices were as competitive as one would expect with two players. But both firms were owned by the same family, and run by two brothers. They bad-mouthed each other mercilessly to prospective customers, and offered discounts to anyone who could lure a customer from the other firm.
This kind of subtle corruption was endemic in the more open city-states, more so in New Destiny than in Helle. For every good price one got on a basic staple good or a luxury item, you overpaid for something else. At the end of the day, you ended up with the same good and had spent the same amount, but some merchants were able to overcharge to offset the savings of others. Some never noticed. Of those who did, a surprising number of them left, either to another city — Helle, since no one could move to the Bone Kingdom — or became émigrés.
The process of leaving was long and often complex. First, one had to obtain a position, an opportunity out there, no matter how humble. There was no looking for work when you arrived for most people. You went and started work the first full day you were there. For most this meant backbreaking labor in a mine or on a ranch.
Few people owned their dwellings, so rental arrangements had to be respected, notices had to be given, and furnishings dealt with. If you owned furniture, you sold it, either to the landlord — who would cheat you as a matter of course — or someone else, perhaps a dealer, perhaps a friend or neighbor, and then have to cope without it.
Jobs had to be left, and that was often a major disruption. Many were asked to leave upon giving notice, making a hole in their budget when they lost the wages they were expecting to earn over their notice. Tools were either sold or prepared for shipment, at ruinous rates, in the hope they could be used. Unless you were a miner or farmer, both unlikely trades for city dwellers, those tools went unused and the cartage fees wasted.