The captain might have his own estimate how many that was, a massive caravan unto itself, able to carry neither food nor tents.

“In the deep desert,” Marak said, “we lost a besha on a slide and it started a mobbing. The mob left not a bone, not a scrap of leather. The besha was taller than either of us. The largest of the vermin in it didn’t top a man’s knee. We didn’t wait to watch, but I’ll imagine a man could watch it vanish.”

“A remarkable sight,” Memnanan said. “The god’s wonder you lived. What do you mean?”

“That you don’t need beasts to carry the books. You need the strongest, the likeliest men to live, of every village, every tribe.”

Memnanan said nothing for a moment, frowning, but with thoughts sparking within his eyes. “Allow the books into the hands of the tribes?”

“Do you want these books to come through?” Marak asked, and saw that Memnanan listened to him intently. “Will these books pitch tents and manage a half a hundred beshti? Men do that far better. The books will have thousands of feet, and if one is lost, they won’t all be lost.” He drew a breath, space to think. “This caravan can’t camp in a ring. They’ll be strung out like beads on a necklace. We can’t help that. If fools drink all their water, we can’t help that. Water the beasts to the full. Feed them. Fill every waterskin in camp. Even the bitter wells are uncertain.”

“That saves the villages. Oburan itself has few tents at all… few beasts, except the breeding herd. They’re city folk. They don’t know the desert.”

“Apportion the important ones like the books, a few to every band. If there are too many walkers, they go last, enough strong hands to drive stakes, a besha to carry the canvas and keep them headed right if they drop behind.” The beasts would smell the way to those in front, given any breath of an east wind or a lingering scent above the trail. A caravan this large would assuredly leave scent. It would leave a trail of waste, breakage, vermin, and all too many lives.

Memnanan, like him, was a man in authority, one who saw bitter necessities when they were laid in front of him, who knew how to make a rule for the good of the many. Individual compassion, for the two of them, was a vice secretly practiced.