Question F-

“Five minutes, everyone!” Yaroslav finally and blessedly interrupts my Sisyphean toil. “Break is over in five minutes! If we aren’t out of the gate in twenty we’re doing the first hour at double-time!”

People immediately begin polishing off drinks and snacks, finishing hands of cards, and getting out of their chairs.

I hold the tablet out for Heather to take back, if she wants it. She does, and it soon disappears back into whatever storage system she’s using.

Let’s see. Trip checklist. Got all my stuff? Got my backpack, nothing on the floor, nothing on the table, nothing on the chair, looks good. To-do items? Nothing worth mentioning. Expected travel time… probably all day.

I should hit the bathroom sooner rather than later, in case anyone else has the same idea. And so I don’t get too badly delayed by the incipient chaos of fifty-plus people piling out of a bar.

Seriously, it’s not going to be a tiny amount of chaos. Fifty people, five minutes, ten people per minute, on average a person every six seconds. That’s not even enough to let the door close! Alternatively, it takes like a whole half hour to load or unload 100 or 150 people from a 737, even with a vaguely optimized loading order.

I am so happy that the Republic of Eld’s economy supports enough specialist craftspeople that magical equivalents of indoor plumbing are approximately universal.

I rejoin the rest of the team at the exit. I assume that Heather already paid for our food and everything, so I just form up and follow everyone else out the door.

The yard is buzzing with activity. The wagons have been reorganized, presumably as they finished being loaded, and are now in a long line that snakes around the border of the yard’s open space. Yaroslav and Aelfraed stand near one of the wagons, comparing paperwork with a couple of the yard’s clerks. The workers that were carrying containers around are nowhere to be found. The guards are checking their equipment, making sure swords come out of sheathes properly, stringing bows, checking the fletching on arrows and making sure they come out of the quiver, checking the fit of their armor, that kind of thing. One person is punching blasts of fire into the air; a cultivator literally warming up, I suppose. Yaroslav’s haulers are spreading out, two to a wagon, and checking over the axles and wheels of each, a pre-flight check of some kind. The rest of the yard’s clerks are going up and down the line, talking to the haulers and giving each container a final check.

Liv leads us toward a particularly well-armed guard who’s going up and down the line of wagons.

“Hey,” she says. “Where do we sit?”

“We’d better no’ be hangin’ off t’ sides,” Bob threatens.

“Ah,” the man says. “You are the government team that we will be ferrying to Stonehill?”

“We are,” Heather answers. “Supervisory Special Agent Heather Townsend, commanding Bureau of Isekai Affairs Team 24.”

The degree of consistency with which she’s able to roll that line out is amusing. I suppose if you’re saying it ten times a day you’d get used to saying it a particular way, though.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve probably typed in my username dozens of times more than I’ve said my name out loud. And I bet Heather’s signature is even better, like, celebrities-signing-swag levels of perfection. My signature is so inconsistent that I’ve had my bank reject my checks. That day sucked. Sucked more than the day I died, even, apparently!

Which is kind of weird now that I think about it, and that’s the most I’m going to let myself think about it for now. Potential breakdowns are for later.

The man continues while I’m thinking, introducing himself and replying to Heather. “Stephanos Iuvenalis. It is a pleasure to meet you, Agent Townsend.” He gives her a quick nod. “You will be riding up front. I understand that you will be contributing to the protection of the caravan while riding with us?” He nods when Heather confirms the terms of our agreement with Yaroslav. “We can introduce ourselves and discuss further when we are on the road. Follow me.”

We follow Stephanos as he jogs up toward the head of the line. “Chase,” he calls, drawing the attention of one of the haulers on the front wagon. “We have passengers on this leg, from the Bureau of Isekai Affairs. They will be helping guard us. Do you have time to tell them the rules and seat them?”

“Aye, we should. Mas,” Chase says, turning to the wagon’s other hauler. “You got the rest of the inspection.” He gets a short grunt of acknowledgment from Mas and returns his attention to us. “Everyone familiar with cargo wagons?”

The BIA agents all nod. “Not really,” I say. “Probably safest to assume no. Visitor.” I shrug, and Chase gives me a slightly suspicious look.

“Right,” he says. “Well. Listen up. These wagons are heavy and they go fast. If you fall off it will hurt. If you get hit you will die. So. Rule one: Follow the carter’s orders. Rule two: Wear the harness and don’t move around. Rule three: Don’t distract the carter. Call if there’s a problem, keep quiet otherwise. Got that?”

“Got it,” I say, along with the rest of the team. I think I understand why the roads are so smooth now. I give the wagon a slightly unhappy look. I already dislike cars, and these are worse in every way: no crumple zones, no airbags, open air, probably a lap belt at best, narrow road with no barriers, road shared with pedestrians, it’s all pretty scary. The passenger compartment looks to be a drop-in module that replaces half a container, with rows of benches packed in like medieval airplane seats. Which isn’t a bad comparison in general, really. Given the pre-flight briefing, the way the carters are inspecting their vehicle, and the part where most people likely wouldn’t be familiar with riding on these, it’s probably as close to an airplane as you can get around here.

“Anything I need to know about your friend there?” Chase jerks his head at Agnes, probably indicating Axelos. He doesn’t sound too happy about it.

Which reminds me that I still can’t get over the part where we’re just… carrying an unconscious dude around. This is the first time anyone’s expressed even the slightest doubt about the situation. Nobody’s done anything at all to make sure that we’re not just random kidnappers; back home we’d have been getting the police or an ambulance called on us every fifteen minutes. Maybe this is just a thing that adventurer types are known to do, the way I probably wouldn’t risk asking questions if someone in a police uniform was carrying an unconscious person around? But we still should be getting all sorts of weird looks which I haven’t seen. Which probably means I should be paying more attention. That’s not a great level of situational awareness for a setting where guards on routine caravans are getting injured by wild beasts!

Speaking of situational awareness, I tune back into the conversation.

“…no need t’ stop, we’ll do ‘t on th’ road,” Bob finishes saying. Probably telling him how we’re keeping the guy unconscious?

Chase still doesn’t sound incredibly happy about what he’s hearing. “What do I do if he wakes up?”

“Hm,” Bob says. “Stop th’ wagon so we can fight’im?”

“Takes ten seconds and a hundred yards,” Chase says. “Fight’s over by then.”

“We’d be in melee already,” Liv suggests, “and he doesn’t have any zombies summoned. We could just punch him back out, no need to get the carters involved at all.”

Heather hums thoughtfully. “He might jump off. We’d send Ji and Liv after him while we slow down?”

“Y’know,” Bob suggests, “He’d prob’ly be less dang’rous ‘f we kept movin’. We’d outrun ‘is zombies, an’ he’d get hurt doin’ th’ jump.”

“Huh,” Liv says. “We might do better than just outrunning them. Chase, you said these carts are dangerous, but is running into things risky for you?”

“Not at all,” he answers, smiling grimly. “Mas and I maintain speed using a combo skill from a siege-engineer build. With this behind us,” he jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the wagon, “anything that gets in our way is mush.”

Ah. I see where this is going. Not only do we not need to slow down…

“That’s your answer, then,” Heather concludes. “Keep going, run over or outrun any zombies he summons while we deal with him. We’ll handle it if he jumps off.”

…Any zombies he does summon will just get obliterated. I bet that this wagon will plow right through even the biggest horde without any problems at all.

Do I have any ideas to add? What if he attacks the carters? That’s probably a reason for me to be holding a shield ready, depending on if it blocks attacks in both directions or only incoming. I didn’t hear Axelos demonstrating any abilities other than summoning zombies. Hmm.

Ah, that’s a possible problem. “Can he summon zombies on the cart with us?” I ask.

“Unlikely but possible,” Liv says. “If he does, our primary goal is to keep them away from the front of the wagon.”

“That sounds good to me,” Chase says. “Now, time for me to hook up. Everyone get in. Mas! All good?”

“All good,” Mas calls back.

There’s a ladder hanging off the side of the passenger module, as it turns out, just behind the front-right wheel. I climb up after Bob, then get out of the way so Ji can take Axelos from Agnes and pull him up and onto a bench. I head to the opposite side of the wagon; I don’t want to be in the way if that situation goes bad. I dump my bag in the footwell and take a seat. Then I go looking for a seat belt. I sort of find one, a wide leather belt attached to a rope. I buckle up and figure I’m good.

Chase, meanwhile, has checked over Mas’s heavy leather vest and gotten his own equipment squared away. He finishes just in time for Stephanos to shout something I don’t catch. Chase and Mas simultaneously turn to the bit of the wagon that’s sticking out from the front axle and lift it up onto their shoulders, hooking a crossbar over in front of themselves. I can feel the wagon shifting underneath me as they do that, lifting slightly. That must mean they’re taking a decent chunk of the weight onto themselves. Improved traction, I bet; same way you can hold heavier stuff if you grip harder, holding heavy things means you can pull more. Same reason people spent so long breeding insanely huge horses like Clydesdales: the bigger a horse is the more weight it has available to turn into pulling power.

Then Stephanos hops up into the passenger compartment with us, followed by Yaroslav, the clerk from before—Alfred or something?—and another clerk I don’t recognize. I’d look back to see what the other guards are doing, but the back of the wagon is filled by a seven-foot-tall half-length container it so I can’t see anything. I look ahead instead, and see that we’re pretty close to the edge of town; the gate is only a couple blocks out. Stephanos blows a whistle of some kind, producing a blast that bounces back and forth between two tones like a bosun’s whistle, and with a bump the wagon starts rolling.