The wheels of the cart groaned and creaked as they rolled along the bumpy surface of the dirt road.

The water buffalo pulling the contraption strained it as yoke.

He ignored the occasional flicks of the driver's goad with a toss of his head in a low grunt.

He wasn't in a hurry.

The walls of the village only slowly receded from view behind them as the cart came down

the bluff toward the river and the waiting barge.

The river's light-brown waters moved no faster than the water buffalo.

It was still the dry season and the river was low and slow, leaving behind baked, cracked

dry land at the edges of the channel.

Soon though, the rains would begin upriver and gushing torrents of water would spill over

the river banks.

After the waters receded, the field surrounding the channel would be left with a fresh coating

of rich soil, the lifeblood of an agricultural world.

Next year's grain would sprout through that thick layer of fertile dirt, enough not only

for the villagers, but for the tens of thousands of people waiting in the city just downriver.

That was where the flat bottom barge grounded on the side of the river would go after it

picked up its load of grain here.

The three boatmen stripped to the waste and sweating in the late spring sun, chatted idly

as that last cart and its placid water buffalo made their way down the river bank.

When the loading was done, the boatmen handed over a clay seal, pressed with an image of a

humped bull and a series of vertical lines to the village.

One of the boatmen pushed his feet slipping on the muddy river bank while the others steered

...