They met, the three of them, in the wastelands, where grass was as scarce as thorns were plentiful.  Two of them were journeying east on the Golden Road, intent on surveying unknown territories;  they walked alone, disguised as peddlers, with two mules to carry their merchandise but no horses to ride on.  Horses attracted bandits.

The third, riding west back to the plains, rode with his jahar at his back, a warband once made up of a thousand men and now dwindled to six hundred and forty eight.  He carried as his report three treaties that were probably worth no more than the parchment they were written on, and a map.

"It's a dangerous land," said Aleksi Soerensen.  "I lost more of my men to heat and disease than I did to fighting."

Nadine had gotten addicted to terig leaf, and she smoked it now, dried leaves rolled up in paper to make a little stick, while she listened to Aleksi.  Marco watched her with some displeasure.  He had told her a thousand times at least to throw it away, to give it up, that it would make her sick over the long haul, weaken and scar her lungs and eventually kill her, but she hadn't listened to him.  She didn't listen much, except to what she wanted to hear.

So be it.  She could kill herself if she wanted to.  Goddess knew he'd been trying to find a way to kill himself for the last fifteen years.  He just didn't have the courage to do it slowly.
 

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