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On the far side of the river you notice a milestone half-buried in a roadside ditch. Etched on its granite surface is a small arrow which points eastwards, and below reads the message ‘Abisko—25 miles’.
Later, as you approach the outskirts of this town, you notice a large flock of carrion crows circling above its timbered buildings. You sense that plague has recently visited this town, and so you leave the road and spend the night in woodland a few miles to the south.
The next day, the weather changes for the better. The temperature rises and the surface of the muddy road quickly becomes dry and hard. Ten miles east of Abisko you see a small regiment of Eldenoran soldiers camped out beside the road. They are busy with their luckless duty of having to burn the bodies of Abisko’s plague victims, which number in the hundreds. So preoccupied are they with their grim task that they fail to see you steal one of their horses and make off with it along the road which leads to Duadon—their capital city.
