Exile's Return by Raymond E. Feist

days’ walk beyond Heslagnam. We can sell the cattle to a broker there; he may have a horse to trade,” she said flatly.
    Kaspar was silent through the rest of the meal. He knew that Jojanna was fearful of being alone again. She had made no overtures toward Kaspar, and he was content to leave things as they were. He hadn’t been with a woman in months, and she was attractive enough in her rawboned fashion, but the confined quarters coupled with his concern for Jorgen had kept them apart.
    Jojanna alternately hoped against hope to see her husband again, then mourned him as if he were dead. Kaspar knew that in a few more months she would accept him in Bandamin’s place permanently. That was another reason why he felt it was time to leave.
    “Perhaps you can find a workman who might come here to help you?”
    “Perhaps,” she said in a noncommittal tone.
    Kaspar picked up his wooden plate and carried it to the wash bucket. From then until they went to their respective sleeping mats, there was silence.

FOUR
VILLAGE
    Kaspar, Jojanna, and Jorgen trudged along the old highway.
    They walked at a steady pace, as they had for the previous two days. Kaspar had never realized how tedious it was to walk everywhere. He had lived his entire life using the horses, carriages, and fast ships at his disposal; in fact, the only time he had ever traveled by foot was during a hunt or when taking a stroll through a palace garden. Going more than a few miles by shank’s mare was not only fatiguing, it was boring.
    He glanced back to see how Jorgen was doing. The boy walked behind the two plodding steers. He held a long stick and flicked the animals with it when they attempted to veer off to the side of the road to crop the plants—not that there was an abundance of fodder, but the contrary animals seemed intent on investigating every possible source unless they were constantly prodded.
    Kaspar felt anxious to move along, yet resigned to the reality of his situation. He was on foot and alone, save for the company of Jojanna and her son, and without protection, sustenance, or experience of this hostile land. What little Jojanna had told him revealed that the area was still reeling from the ravages of the Emerald Queen’s army, even though it had been almost a generation since those terrible events.
    The farms and villages had returned quickly, despite the absence of most of the men. Old men and women had eked out their livings until the young had matured enough to work, wed, and have more children.
    The lack of civil order had lingered; an entire generation of sons had grown up without fathers, and many were orphans. Where once a string of city-states had controlled the outlying lands, now chaos ruled. Traditional conventions had been supplanted by the law of warlords and robber barons. Whoever ran the biggest gang became the local sheriff.
    Jojanna’s family had survived because of their relative isolation. The local villagers knew the whereabouts of their farm, but few travelers had ever chanced upon it. It had only been through the lucky happenstance of Jorgen’s search for the lost birds that Kaspar’s life had been saved. He could easily have starved to death within a few hours’ walk of a bounty of food otherwise.
    As they walked, Kaspar could see a mountain range rising to the west, while the land to the east fell away and turned brown in the distance, where it bordered a desert. Had he stayed a captive with the Bentu he would have become a slave; or if he had planned his escape badly, he’d most likely have died in the arid lands between those distant mountains and the range of hills along whose spine this old road ran.
    He caught sight of a shimmering in the distance. “Is that a river?”
    “Yes, it’s the Serpent River,” Jojanna said. “Beyond it lies the Hotlands.”
    Kaspar asked, “Do you know where the City of the Serpent River lies?”
    “Far to the south, on the Blue Sea.”
    “So I need to go downriver,”