Chương 69: 28-3.Carriage, Cargo, and Council

The second route-planning meeting convened inside the carriage. According to the plan Matthews and I had sketched the previous night, we were supposed to spend a full night in Silver Pine Valley. The terrain blocked the worst wind, and even a half-ruined waystation counted as walls and a roof—meaningfully more dignified than conducting an endurance contest against the Northern blizzard in open country. After our encounter at the checkpoint, my enthusiasm for Silver Pine Valley hospitality had evaporated entirely.

I didn't want to waste another second of eye contact on those guards. We ended up stopping at the valley entrance for two or three hours—long enough to swap the heated carriage's mana crystals, refill the hot water reservoirs, and feed the horses. Any longer and I genuinely expected someone to propose charging us a Northern atmospheric consumption fee. The carriage was warm. The mood was not. I spread the map across my knees and stared until the parchment began to feel personally vindictive.

Between Silver Pine Valley and St. George, that massive stretch of road offered virtually nothing in the way of proper rest stops.

"... Nothing." I frowned, tracing the route with one finger.

"From here to St. George, there's genuinely no other viable stopping point?" Matthews sat across from me, thick arms folded, his brow drawn into the particular knot I rarely saw from him. When that expression appeared on the old soldier's face, the situation was usually either about to kill someone or already in the process. He studied the map in silence before speaking.

"Pushing through isn't impossible." I looked up. He added: "The people might not collapse first. The horses will." Silence settled in the carriage. Unpleasant to hear, but devastatingly accurate. Human beings, given sufficient stubbornness and one last breath of refusal to lose, can push past most reasonable limits. Horses cannot. If the horses gave out, our entire convoy would be reduced to dragging ourselves through Northern snowfields, learning firsthand what dignified death looked like from the inside.

I pressed my fingers against my temple.

"We're short on fodder?"

"It's not about being short," Matthews said.

"It's about not daring to gamble with the calculation. Even if we lashed the rear cart directly behind the heated carriage and packed it floor to ceiling with feed, we'd barely have adequate margin. Now that we know Silver Pine Valley won't release significant fodder quantities, the rest becomes even harder to calculate." Jessi, who had been leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, detonated.

"What do you mean they won't fucking sell?" The condensation on the carriage windows practically vibrated.

"Are they too wealthy to want money, or is their brain capacity genuinely limited to snow?" Alvira, seated at the far end, didn't bother lifting her eyelids.

"Northern territories operate this way. Fodder is strategic resource. Money doesn't automatically entitle you to purchase it."

"Then what's it doing sitting there? Demonstrating that their horses eat better than we do?"

"Essentially," I said, not looking up from the map. Jessi looked ready to bite something.

"This is absolutely maddening!"

"You're only realizing this now?" I kept my eyes on the parchment.

"Half the regulations in the Northern Reaches weren't designed to accommodate travelers. They were designed to make travelers give up and go home." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. She glared at me with the expression of someone desperately wanting to return that sentence but lacking the proper forwarding address.

While we collectively developed map-induced hypertension, Olivia quietly reached over and drew the parchment slightly toward herself. She didn't speak immediately. She simply looked. Route, vehicle count, horses, the few bags of fodder we'd managed to acquire, the improvised load distribution we'd been running.

The way she examined things was distinctive—unhurried, without any performance of intelligence, as though she was absorbing everything through her eyes first and rearranging it internally before drawing conclusions. After a moment, she spoke.

"This configuration won't work." I looked up. Everyone in the carriage turned toward her. Olivia seemed oblivious to the attention. She indicated our heated carriage, then the battered covered wagon outside.

"Detach two horses from this six-horse team," she said.

"Stop using the rear wagon as general storage. Convert it to a double-tier fodder transport." I blinked. Matthews's brow furrowed—not in opposition, but with the intensity of a man whose brain had immediately engaged and started running calculations. Olivia continued at the same measured pace.

"Silver Pine Valley's timber quality is adequate. Adding a temporary second platform is entirely feasible. Assign one driver exclusively to the supply wagon; the other continues with the heated carriage. People and luggage can be consolidated. What the horses eat cannot be compromised." She paused, her gaze settling on the fodder bags.

"Roughage, concentrated feed, mineral salt—purchase as much as available, regardless of premium pricing. Compared to horses losing condition on the road, the additional cost now represents the cheaper option." When she finished, she simply withdrew her hand and returned to her seat with complete composure—as though she hadn't just untied a logistical knot that had been slowly strangling our entire convoy, but had merely adjusted a teacup to the center of a table. Two beats of silence.

I looked at her, then at Matthews. The old soldier bent over the map, his rough fingers tracing routes against projected vehicle weights, lips moving soundlessly through calculations. Then he raised his head and delivered a two-word verdict.

"It works." When Matthews agreed that quickly, the matter was essentially decided. Alvira glanced at the covered wagon through the window and added calmly: "If we build the double tier properly, one rope check during the day and one axle inspection at night will hold it together." I leaned back against the seat and felt the compressed pressure in my chest finally release.

"Right. We go with that plan." Olivia nodded, with the manner of someone for whom this outcome had never been particularly in doubt. After a brief pause, she added quietly:"If there are complications during the negotiations, come find me." Said with such understatement it might have been if you need more salt, buy another bag. But somehow, everyone in the carriage found it completely natural.

Probably because from the moment she'd joined us, she had been taking things that should have been nightmarishly complex and making them look exactly as they were meant to be. Jessi was first on her feet, preparing to negotiate timber and fodder with the valley merchants. As she squeezed past me, she deliberately drove her elbow into my side.

"What?" I looked at her with irritation. Jessi glanced back wearing the expression of someone who had already decided that whatever she was about to say did not technically qualify as human speech.

"You've hit the jackpot."

"What are you talking about." She tilted her chin toward Olivia, dropping her voice to a register that was technically quieter but carried absolutely no discretion.

"Someone who can balance fodder, vehicles, horses, and accounts simultaneously," she said.

"That's not just useful—that's sought after everywhere." My mouth twitched.

"Stop looking at me like you're about to negotiate a betrothal contract." Jessi blinked, her grin sharpening to a dangerous degree.

"Who, me? I just realized that even someone like you occasionally stumbles into good fortune."

"I can demonstrate what a sudden reversal of fortune looks like."

"Oh my, so threatening." She was already out the door before I could follow through, disappearing to inflict herself on other people. I stayed where I was. The carriage was warm, windows fogged over. Olivia sat quietly opposite, hands resting properly in her lap, expression as composed as if the person who had just extracted our entire convoy from a logistical death spiral wasn't her. But it was. And that was precisely the complicated part. Some people were impressive in ways that announced themselves loudly.

Others were the kind who quietly steadied what was about to collapse—and you only realized afterward that the thing holding your entire situation together had been her. I looked at her. She seemed to sense it and looked back.

"Something wrong?"

"... Nothing." I rolled the map back up and cleared my throat.

"I was just thinking that you're more genuinely capable of managing real life than most people in this carriage." She paused, fractionally.

"That's not something worth taking pride in."

"Under circumstances like these, it absolutely is." She didn't respond. She simply lowered her eyes and straightened the cuff of her sleeve with one quiet motion. A small gesture. But—whether because the carriage was warm or for reasons I wasn't prepared to examine—the faint color at the edge of her ear was a shade deeper than it had been moments before. Right, then. At least this young lady who could manage an entire household wasn't composed entirely of rules and account books after all.