Jordan walked alongside a sorry-looking mule that pulled the ragged cart connected to it.  On all sides save for the right were more of the same disheveled caravans, carting the goods through the hell known as the Devilseed Reaches, in hopes that their wares would garner a high price on the seedy markets of Saxedeno;  much laden were these transports with feed for their beasts of burden, and for their equally-intelligent merchants.<br/><br/>Scratch that; the mule knew more than the master who drove it forward, refusing to let it turn back and flee.<br/><br/>He had been hired to protect these people from the very things that worried this mule, and he knew that he would most likely end up more than earning what they had promised to pay him when they were through.<br/><br/>He pulled a piece of cloth up to examine the goods the cart bore.<br/><br/>It was not grain or animal feed that the merchants were planning to sell, but a manner of spices, herbs, and plants made illegal in most other realms.  They would fetch a high price indeed, if they were not stolen first.