As soon as everyone was on board, the steam carriages started moving again, trundling down the rough dirt road and out toward the grasslands and open fields that surrounded their destination.
Once they were out of the trees, they should be relatively safe from attack, as the town guard patrols would be able to see and intercept any threats that might be coming their way.
Or so Dominic had hoped.
Instead, what they found was an ongoing battle between the guards and a much larger band of goblins, along with nearly two dozen destroyed carriages.
The guards saw the wagon caravan emerge from the road behind the goblin force, picking up speed as the road's quality improved closer to town, and began to frantically wave them forward before the lead steam tractor could try to stop.
"Don't stop. Whatever you do, don't stop. Once you're behind the lines, you will be safe." The guard Captain yelled as the caravan approached.
The team leader shouted back down the line of vehicles as he got the command. "You heard the man, keep the speed up. Ranged fighters, give it your all. Everyone else, protect the wheels. Don't let them get us bogged down, or we will be stuck in the trees."
The first vehicle cleared the tree line a second later, and the gunner on the second carriage began to rain bullets on the Goblins. Dominic had never seen a skill like that before, and the gunner hadn't used it during the last battle, but it was magnificent.
They fired until their guns were empty, and then reloaded in the blink of an eye and did it again.
That had to be incredibly hard on the Gunner's ammunition supply, but it kept the Goblins away from the carriages, and the first few trucks were quickly past the melee without incident.
The archers and mage were next up to guard the lines, while Dominic unleashed [Arcane Blast] on anything that got close enough to the vehicles that he could see it from his position halfway down the line.
As his carriage got close to the tree line, where he would be able to see a wider angle, Dominic noticed that there were precious few casters and ranged fighters at the back, only Warrior Classes with bows as their secondary weapon, and drivers with shotguns.
They had been doing a decent job on the front half of the convoy, but they also had the support of stronger ranged classes, who had actual specialty skills to support their attacks.
"You don't mind if I move back, do you? The back half is short on casters." Dominic called to his driver from the roof of the smithy carriage.
"Why would you do that? I know you're a decent caster, but they can take care of themselves. Trust them." The driver called back.
As much as Dominic was tempted to be stubborn, the man had a point. The team leader had set things up this way on purpose, and they hadn't lost anyone since the start of the trip, so it should all be working as intended.
The guards had also gotten the goblin swarm a bit more under control during their battle, as the front of the convoy had done so much damage to the nearby enemies that the defenders who had already been in combat were able to regroup and force them away from the road again.
If he had been thinking clearly and not caught up in the excitement of actually getting to be part of an adventure story, Dominic should have recognized the strategy, it was one that the Knights in his childhood village were well versed in.
So, from his spot on the roof, Dominic continued his barrage until the Goblins were out of range, and the whole convoy was safely on the cobblestone road that led into Aramos village.
As they bounced down the road, Dominic made note of three important facts. The quality of the workmanship on the spring steel made a huge difference in how the various vehicles rode.
Secondly, the trucks that were custom-built for cargo were much more stable than the ones which were retrofitted from a horse-drawn carriage template.
And third, the guards and merchants were hiding all their good weapons in their storage, or in hidden compartments of the carriages if they didn't have a storage item.
"What are they doing?" He whispered to the healer who drove the mobile smithy.
"Oh yes, this is your first trip. You see, there is an entry tax based on the value of goods that we carry, and we are supposed to show them everything that we've got so they can assess it.
Take out your worst gear and pretend that the carriage's tools are all that you have. The boss has already accounted for their value in the trip's fees.
The lower we can value our gear, the cheaper it is to get a trade caravan into the village."
That seemed incredibly petty for a village that relied on trade goods for their survival, but perhaps that was just the way of the world in Cygnia, Dominic decided as he put his good weapons away and took out a nonmagical goblin dagger to slip into the plain leather sheathe on his hip.
Even the fine travelling cloaks went away, replaced with threadbare, unenchanted versions for the benefit of the guards. Dominic didn't have that luxury, all he had was the leather coat and the work clothes that he arrived in, and he hadn't been working anywhere near long enough for a new leather apron to wear out.
"You should at least try to fool them. Don't you have a piece of goblin armour in your inventory?" The healer laughed when he noticed that Dominic hadn't changed his outfit.
Dominic swapped his coat out for a Hobgoblin Shirt that he had in his inventory cube, intended to be washed and used as a shop rag. Then shuddered in revulsion as the filthy cloth touched his skin.
The healer chuckled and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Better change back, they'll believe that even less than they would a boy in a set of Palace initiates armour pretending to be a merchant.
Maybe put your smithy apron on instead of the coat, and they'll just see a penniless apprentice on his first trip."
That was precisely what Dominic was, though. He didn't get paid in advance, so he was still very much a penniless apprentice, but he had a good apron, courtesy of Pops, and he changed into that instead of his only leather coat, then swung down into the smithy carriage to wait for their turn in line.