Continuing south you take care to avoid areas where you could easily be ambushed, while also making as good time as you can with the bulky scale. You frequently need to stop and adjust the tackle.
Around midday you crest a small hill and can see the edge of the Dead Zone.
While you think this would normally be a cause for great relief, the relatively abundant vegetation of the chapparal has suffered much under this long winter.
Still, your mounts should be able to find areas in which to graze and froze pools of water they can lick.As you cross the threshold you immediately feel a restored connection to the magic of Glorantha.
You've left behind the Dead Zone and brought out the treasure, but not without sacrifice. 
Proceeding in the direction of the Block without event, as you are setting up camp Tuari spots forms to the southwest that are approaching cautiously and seem to wish to remain unseen.
Vorrik quietly says "Look, riders to the north" and points to a few dismounted figures approaching from the north; it's hard to tell how many as they are mostly walking single file.
They also seem to be attempting to be stealthy with a little more success than the southwest group, moving slowly between obstacles in a serpentine pattern.

"Now we're out of the Dead Place, Hon'..." Norajia says, picking an imaginary spec of dust from Vorrik's linothorax,

" ...could you use a little bit of magic to get a good look at what sort of mounts these stalkers were riding?"

Vorrik blushes a bit at the attention. "Ahem. Well, uh, let's see here..."
Vorrik touches one of the runes on his helmet, and chants a few words in firespeech. When he opens his eyes, they glow with faint golden light. 
"Well, those skulkers to the north... a bit of a hodge podge, like us!
I see a couple zebras (I think), and something big, maybe a bison."
He tries to climb on the bolo lizard to get more height but doesn't have much success, as the creature is ready to be done for the day.
"Well, OK... to the south looks like a couple horse (sigh), a llama and... a rather large Uz."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:26, Sat 19 Dec 2020.