Oh, i'm sorry Seth, please, tell me how this could all be improved. Tell me how you have been deprived of all your freedom up until now :p
In case you haven't realized, this is what a game and a story is. You're being given plenty of freedom to influence events and handle situations, but yeah, there's an overarching plotline because you're players in a game, you aren't the ones making the game itself. The world, and everything inside of it has its own motivations.
You can definitely play anything you want any way you'd like. You could have gone by day through Mitru's ambush and you would have been asleep when his ghouls attacked and set your caravan on fire. All your servants would have been killed. That's the logical conclusion to events, it's not you being railroaded. You could have stayed asleep in the obviously hostile town that didn't want you there, and you would have all been destroyed and the game would have ended. That's the logical goddamn conclusion.
You could have refused Myca's help and gone on yourselves, stuffing each other into your wagons. You didn't, not because you had no other options, but because why the hell should you choose them? You would have gained nothing from it.
You're doing what makes sense here, Seth. If you want to stop doing what you're doing and just go along pulling nonsensical bullshit then go ahead, the world won't stop making sense along with you though.
Please, keep this in mind: You aren't being railroaded here. You haven't been for an instant yet. The story doesn't get rail-roady until the later books, and i'm re-writing it so that you guys don't have to deal with it. You can stop whining about the books and how much you hate the crappy story because the story is Farking great, I read it all and decided I wanted to run this game because of how great it was, and how much i'd love to play it myself.