The archway beneath Sunrise Gate was as dark as a tomb, the air chill and damp. Waytown’s shanty sprawl was visible just beyond, through a haze of smoke lit gold by the morning sun.

Grainy-eyed and itching with flea bites, Gruntle nudged his horse into an easy trot as soon as he rode into the sunlight. He’d remained in Saltoan, lingering around the Gate for two bells, whilst Harllo and Stonny had driven the carriage and its occupant out of the city a bell before dawn. They would be at least two leagues along the river road, he judged.

Most of the banditry on the first half of this stretch to Capustan was headquartered in Saltoan – the stretch’s second half, in Capan territory, was infinitely safer. Spotters hung around Sunrise Gate to mark the caravans heading east, much as he’d seen their counterparts on the west wall at Sunset Gate keeping an eye out for caravans bound for Darujhistan. Gruntle had waited to see if any local packs had made plans for Keruli’s party, but no-one had set out in pursuit, confirming the master’s assertion that safe passage had been guaranteed. It wasn’t in Gruntle’s nature to take thieves at their word, however.

He worked his horse into a canter to escape Waytown’s clouds of flies and, flanked by half-wild, barking dogs, rode clear of the shanty-town and onto the open, rocky river road. Vision Plain’s gently rolling prairie reached out to the distant Barghast Range on his left. To his right was a rough bank of piled stones – mostly overgrown with grasses – and beyond it the reedy flats of the river’s floodplain.

The dogs abandoned him a few hundred paces beyond Waytown and the captain found himself alone on the road. The trader track would fade before long, he recalled, the dyke on his right dwindling, the road itself becoming a sandy swath humped with ant nests, bone-white driftwood and yellow knots of grass, with floods wiping the ruts away every spring. There was no chance of getting lost, of course, so long as one kept Catlin River within sight to the south.

He came upon the corpses less than a league further on. The highwaymen had perfectly positioned their ambush, emerging from a deeply cut, seasonal stream bed and no doubt surrounding their victim’s carriage in moments. The precise planning hadn’t helped, it seemed. Two or three days old at the most, bloated and almost black under the sun, their bodies were scattered to both sides of the track. Swords, lance-heads, buckles and anything else that was metal had all melted under some ferocious heat, yet clothing and leather bindings were unmarked. A number of the bandits wore spurs, and indeed there would have been no way of getting out this far without horses, but of the beasts there was no sign.