Chapter 29: Camping By the Highway

"Couldn't you have pulled this?" Shudon asked. She poked the side of the cart with her staff.

"I suppose," said Durri.

They walked along the brick-laid highway which Durri had heard about as a wee child but had never gotten to see. His own hometown was too far from the central avenues of the kingdom for the highway proper to reach them.

Durri's late father had spoken many times of the beauty of the four grand highways, the roads which allowed every corner of the kingdom to trade with one another and to make their civilization the greatest the world had ever known.

"Free enterprise, my son! That's the cornerstone of greatness. That was back when men were men and fish were fish, before all this modern nonsense about workplace safety and social welfare."

"Oh," young Durri had said, not understanding most of those words. "Who built the grand highways, Papa?"