FicWad

Around an hour after leaving Caniphor, Cassia decided that if they were going to be stopped, it would be because someone knew they were out of the city. At that point, hiding in a barrel of stink wouldn't help much, and it left her far more vulnerable if something went wrong. It would have been nice if Beronal could have stopped and let her know that she could get out, but that would slow them down and draw suspicion. She found the catch, and let herself out. The cart did not smell quite as bad as she had remembered. Either the scent was actually a bit less thick, or she was getting used to it. It seemed unlikely to her that anyone could get used to a scent like that one. It probably wasn't as strong; there was a saltwater breeze that cut the smell, at least a little.

Sitting up in the front would probably be pushing their luck. However, she did twitch the curtain behind the cab to the side, getting a view of the landscape around them. A well-farmed plain on their left, and Caniphor bay on their left. It smelled a good deal more pleasant up in the cab then in the back, but she was sensible enough to know that it was unwise to more than take a breath or two before letting the curtain drop.

There were farmers around, and from time to time, there would probably be people fishing from the shore. Up ahead were the rising cliffs of the coastal range. Once they got up to the top of those cliffs, she would be coming out to the front of the cart; the farms ended with the cliffs, and there wasn't much traffic on the coast road.

"It'll be about three hours, maybe a little bit less, before we're out of the farmlands," said Beronal. He talked quietly, but in far from a whisper.

"Safe to talk, do you think?" asked Cassia.

Beronal paused, thought it over. "Probably not a good idea to have a long conversation, if that's what you're asking."

It had been, so she stopped talking. After a bit, "You might want to change into the clothing in your pack," said Beronal. "What you're wearing is going to be on the corpse in the barrel." It was reasonable advice, and Cassia set to it. After she had changed, she considered the timing.

"Would it be a good idea to start dressing my stand-in?

"Sure. We should have time at the other end, but you never know."

The first of the other barrels with false bottoms had a big man in it. Whoever it had been had considerably less muscle and more fat than Beronal. Still, it could probably pass, if it was suitably brutalized. "If they track us to this point, they'll know you've shaved your head," she said, considering the corpse.

"Good idea; the razor is back there. Keep the hair - we'll need to burn that, later." That was sensible. If a wizard got hold of a man's hair or his clipped nails, he could learn a good deal about that man. Shaving a dead man proved to be an interesting experience. If there had been more free room in the cart, and if it hadn't jounced around with quite the vehemence she might have managed it without too much damage to the corpse. As it was, it proved a bit messy. He didn't bleed where she nicked him; more oozed a little, if she caught a vein; it was a fairly fresh corpse. Two days dead, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

The man was clean-shaven, but there was nothing she could do to give him a mustache. The mustache wasn't the most serious problem; the corpse's facial features were nothing like Beronal's. "These people can't be recovered in anything even approaching good condition, you know," she said.

"I know."

That was a comfort. Now, for dressing the woman in her clothing. She sealed the man back in his barrel, and got to work. This corpse was even fresher. Couldn't have been dead for more than five, maybe six hours - she was still limber enough that Cassia could get her dressed, though that took work. The corpse had been wearing a bloodstained shift, with a cut just under the ribs, at an upward angle. Probably got her in the lung; a professional kill, not one that made too much of a mess.

Unlike the corpse provided to match Beronal, this one was a really excellent match. Hair, build, even facial features were fairly close to Cassia's. If it weren't for the wizard, Cassia would have recommended leaving this corpse somewhere those tracking them would find her. Seeing the body, they'd probably assume that Beronal had disposed of the woman who had gotten him in the whole mess in the first place. It wouldn't hold up to magical investigation, but if these corpses were going to be used to buy time, it was worth considering.

When she finished dressing the corpse, and getting it back in its barrel, the light in the cart had not yet begun to fade, but the angle and the color told her that it was getting on towards evening. Nightfall came late in Riend, during the summer. And dawn was impossibly early.

The cart had been heading uphill for at least a half hour. The grade of the coast road wasn't a gentle one. Not too steep; it could be managed by horses, or even donkey cart. The dogs would handle it fine. They weren't quite as large as either horses or oxen, but they could pull like anything, even on slopes. They also ate like anything, which is why relatively few people were willing use them, when any other draft animal was available.

"We should be clear," called Beronal after a while, and Cassia went up to the front of the cart. They were well over halfway up the slope to the plateau that the coast road ran along. There were a string of villages further up the coast, some of which had been considerably larger during the Aurian days. Some had been enough larger that the Aurians had cut a road through the rocks. The road followed the coast fairly closely, cutting through or around some substantial peaks on its way.

It hadn't been maintained all that well since the Aurians had left, and bits of the coast road crumbled off when the cliffs moved back. It was still passable, and aside from the fishing or whaling ships, it was the only way those villages got any trade. During the wars with the green men, keeping the coast road open was one of the major priorities. If the green men had managed to close it, they'd have choked those villages to death, pushing man's presence in Riend down to nothing more than Caniphor, its farms, and a few homesteads in the surrounding forests.

However, for all that it was kept open, and navigable, it wasn't suited to the speeds that Beronal kept the dogs going at once the road leveled off.

"Are you sure we need to go quite this fast?" asked Cassia.

"Look at the cavalry fortress," replied Beronal. He was watching the road, twitching the reins or the whip from time to time.

The fortress he referred to, Breverin Castle, wasn't exclusively for cavalry troops. However, now that the green men had been pushed back for a time, most of the troops stationed there were cavalry, running patrols up the coast roads when there were reports of pirates or raiders near Riend.

Cassia looked. At first she didn't see anything worth noting; the walls were manned, and flying the green and white of the dukes of Riend. In the growing gloom, torches were being lit on the battlements . . . . Oh. Some of those torches were bobbing, headed in their direction.

"Can we actually outrun cavalry in this rattletrap?"

"Well, no," said Beronal. "But I'm hoping that we won't have to." There was a bit of a curve, and it took a little whip-work to keep the dogs from going over the edge out into blank space.

"And how are we going to avoid that?"

"First thing they do when they think they've got a fugitive loose is they block off all exits. It's only after they get some idea which way the fugitives were going that they actually set off after them."

"And that's what you think is happening?"

"I'd stake money on it."

"You're staking a bit more on it than that."

"I know; that's why I'd put my money down as well - what have I got to lose?"

"No bet. You're already getting enough of my money on a very similar logic."

"Fair enough."

To help improve its defensibility, Breverin wasn't built right on the road. Instead, it was on an isolated peak, rising higher than most of the rest of the coast range. There were bridges linking the castle and the coast road, and the bobbing torches were making their way down the winding paths from the fort to those bridges. Once they got to the coast road, they'd close it. And if they didn't get there ahead of the cavalry. . .

"There isn't any point to trying the disguise again, is there?" she asked.

"No," said Beronal. "The soldiers there will hold us for a day or two, no matter how innocent they look, and the Dexans have probably already told them all about our arrangement; if they delay us for more than an hour or so, we're dead."

"I'd have thought the Dexans would have held out for a couple of days, at least," said Cassia, trying hard to keep from watching the road. The shadows were getting longer, and the cart was bouncing alarmingly; watching the road was only going to upset her.

"No," said Beronal. "They were going to give us up at the first sign of official interest. We aren't more important to them than the clanholm, and if the Duke doesn't trust the Dexans to be good citizens, that clanholm could be a crater before morning."

"So this is it," she said.

"Yup," replied Beronal. "That is, this is it, if we don't make it. There's more coming if we get past them. And if you'll excuse me, it's going to need all my attention to keep us on the road and intact at this speed."

The ride that followed was as wild as any Cassia had ever taken. The crumbling coast road faded with the light, and Beronal seemed to be directing the dogs more by instinct then anything else. That he was using dogs rather than horses probably helped; dogs could see reasonably well at night. While he couldn't count on them to take the weight and direction into account, they weren't likely to trip, or put their feet down where there was no footing. Of course, at the speeds they were going, it wouldn't have surprised her if one of the dogs was tripped up even in broad daylight.

It took them a little under two more hours to get past Blackthorn Head, where the bridges from the fortress met the coast road. It took the cavalry maybe ten minutes longer than that. As they headed out into the night, they could see the men behind them, getting off their horses, setting up a barricade.

"They can't help but to smell the karas in the air, can they?" asked Cassia, once they were out of earshot. It was just barely possible that they hadn't seen the cart go by, didn't hear it, or the dogs. Not something she would count on. And then there was that smell.

"No, they'll notice it," replied Beronal. "They'd probably notice it if we'd have been by an hour ago. Once news come up as to how we got out of the city, they'll know that we came this way, and they'll know that we got past them."

"Still, for tonight at least, I wouldn't expect that much in the way of pursuit," he continued. Despite the fact that the immediate danger was past, Beronal was still driving far faster than was prudent, given the condition of the road.

"So why the hard riding?"

"We're far from out of this, yet. We've got to get to Wolfmouth canyon early in the evening, if we're going to be make enough progress before the hunt is on for good and true."

Wolfmouth canyon wasn't somewhere that smugglers had much reason to go to, and Cassia had no idea how far it was from Blackthorn Head. Of course, with the sun long set, and the sort of careening pace Beronal was setting, she didn't have that good an idea as to where they were relative to Blackthorn Head or anywhere else. She just held on to the cart's railing, and hoped they weren't going to be suddenly and permanently wrecked by a fallen rock, or a bit of road that had gone down the slope with the spring rains.

When Beronal finally found a flat stretch of road, he stopped to water the dogs, and feed them a portion of the meat that had been stashed for them in the cart.

"Why bother?" asked Cassia. "They're going to be dead when we get to the canyon, aren't they? And if speed is important enough to risk our lives-" Beronal cut her off.

"They're not dead now. And they've been pushing as hard as they possibly could. We're risking our lives, but we're going to be taking theirs." And he continued feeding them the meat, chucking them on the tops of their heads, scratching them behind their ears.

There was nothing that Cassia could say to that. Later, though, when they were moving again, "It's a little cruel, isn't it?" she asked.

"What is?"

"You were acting like you were their friend, there. They were all but purring, when you were feeding them."

"Yes...."

"Well, you're going to be killing them soon."

"That's true. I wish there were some way to avoid it, but they will have to die, so that I can live."

"But, well, I mean," Cassia was at a loss for words.

"You've never lived on a farm."

"What?"

"You've never lived on a farm; if you had, you'd know. When there's a duck, or a pig, or a goat that you need to kill - for the meat, you understand - when you have to kill this animal, that you've raised all its life." He shook his head, concentrated on the road for a short time. "It's afraid. It knows that something bad is going to happen, though it may not be exactly clear on what. So you soothe it. You pat its head, and give it some grain, or an end of bread. And then you bring the axe down."

There was another pause, as they navigated a particularly tricky curve.

"It's not cruel to the animal you're killing; it's happier than it otherwise would have been for those last few seconds. It's cruel to the man with the axe. But then, that's the price that you pay for eating duck."

Cassia was silent. The break still seemed a pointless waste of time, but it seemed important to Beronal. And it wasn't as though she could argue him into retroactively not having taken the break.

After a while, Beronal stopped the cart near a small rise. "It's about three miles from here to Wolfmouth; we'll not be stopping again until we get there. Once there, we've got two choices. The first is to go over the edge with the cart, and swim a bit upstream. The other is to get off before it goes over the edge, and pick our way down the side of the canyon."

She considered. "And which are we going to take?" she asked.

"That depends. Can you swim?"

"Yes." It was a fair question; there were plenty of people in Caniphor, sailors even, who couldn't swim at all.

"Can you swim well?"

"Well enough."

"The it's up to you; the chances that we get killed in the fall are not trivial, even for strong swimmers. On the other hand, the chances that they pick up our trail if we don't go over the cliff with the cart are equally non-trivial."

Cassia considered. "I don't have sufficient information to make a decision," she said. "You've gotten us this far, and you clearly have an idea of what happens next. What should we do?"

Beronal nodded. "If you think you can manage it, we should go over with the cart," he said, without any hesitation. "Your double is dressed already?"

"It is," said Cassia.

"Good; we'll get mine ready, then get going again." Beronal stripped down quickly, putting on the clothing that the Dexans had prepared for him. For all her concerns about modesty, Cassia was not particularly slow about helping Beronal dress the corpse supposed to represent him.

It was a struggle to get the man into Beronal's clothing. Neither Cassia, nor, apparently, Beronal had much experience dressing other people. In addition, Beronal's double was a good deal heavier and stiffer than Cassia's had been, and the cart had grown no roomier in the interim.

Once it was dressed, they moved back into the front of the cart, and Beronal started the dogs again. "We're not going to be able to even slow down, when we get to the bridge, you know," he said. "They'll be looking at that area extremely closely."

"I understand."

"Soon as the cart starts to go over, you'll want to kick clear. It's about a thirty foot drop, if I remember correctly. Once in, it'll be about ten minutes worth of swimming before the water's shallow enough to stand in. Assuming that you aren't hurt, and don't panic."

Cassia looked across at Beronal. "You're nervous," she said.

"Yup," he said. "This is it. I mean, this is actually it. Once we go over the side of that cliff, we're going to be either dead or clear."

Cassia nodded. Truth was, even if they didn't survive the fall, they had gotten a good deal further than she had ever expected they could.

After that conversation, they rattled along in silence. There was going to be a swim, if they survived, so Cassia took her boots off, and tied them to her pack, and tied her rapier into its sheath. If the water was deep enough that they wouldn't break their necks on the rocks, it was deep enough that anything they lost would be lost for good.

It wasn't much longer before they reached the top of the rise overlooking the canyon. There was a narrow bridge going over the mouth of the canyon, where it emptied into the White Sea.

"Don't jump too soon," Beronal said, not slacking off the speed at all. "Good luck."

Cassia tensed.

They were halfway across the bridge before anything untoward happened. If Cassia hadn't known what Beronal had been planning, she probably would have believed that it had been a genuine accident. One of the dogs was urged to a slightly higher speed than the other; the cart unbalanced, one of the front wheels went over the edge.

Then the dogs were yelling, and the cart was tilting obscenely. It went over, and Cassia leapt. There was a was a tremendous sensation of speed, and then she hit the water, feet first. The cart hit almost at the same time, with a splintering crash, and then she was under water, suspended in the dark. The water was extremely, shockingly cold.

There was a moment where she hung perfectly suspended. She tried to swim to the surface. Then her reaching fingers hit dirt, and rocks. A brief moment of confusion and panic. No time to think - she had somehow gone down instead of up. She flipped over, pushed off the bottom.

It was hard to avoid panic. She had wasted so much time, and air. But there was nothing to do but to try. When she finally breached with a heaving gasp, she knew that if it had been just a few seconds longer, there would have been two very similar bodies washed out to sea.

Once she managed to start breathing normally, she paused to take her bearings. The canyon wasn't quiet. The dogs . . . they were alive, and were being pulled down by the weight of the cart, and they knew it. If Beronal had survived, that was probably breaking his heart.

Rather than strike blindly out, she made sure she knew which way the current was headed, and swam against it. This wasn't the sort of situation which tolerated making the same mistake twice.

Once she decided on which way to go, it didn't take that long before she found Beronal. He was slightly ahead of her, slogging his way upstream, in waist deep water. She found the bottom, and carefully put her boots back on, struggling to maintain her balance, and then caught up to him.

"Look for shallow water, but don't head up onto the riverbanks," said Beronal, when he noticed her. "Running water will wipe away the traces, even the magical traces. Get your mark on a rock over the waterline, and they'll pick it up."

"I thought that we would either survive or break the trail here, no other choices. If they can pick-"

Beronal broke in. "We survived. Therefore we have to break the trail." There wasn't much light in the canyon, but there was enough for her to see the grin that split his face.

Beronal tilted his head back and gave voice to an earshattering war-whoop. "It worked, by God," he said, when the echoes faded. "Didn't really expect that to happen."

"Huh," said Cassia, as they slogged through the excessively cold waters of Wolf River. "Ever since things went wrong in Caniphor, you acted like you expected everything to work out fine."

Beronal continued for a while without saying anything. "I suppose I did. That is to say, that while the odds of things falling apart at any given point - the wrestling match, getting past the gate, and so on, were reasonably low, there were enough chancy elements that the plan as a whole seemed likely to fall apart sooner or later. But I never expected any particular element of the plan to fail, which might have given the impression that I expected overall success."

Cassia laughed. "I think that adds up to more words than you've spoken to me at any one time since we met."

"Didn't really have the chance to say much until now. And there was always the threat of imminent death hanging overhead."

"Which there isn't any more."

"Well, no. It's just twelve or so miles where we stick to the river. Then we'll get on the old road, the one that used to run through the interior to Ventrium. A few miles on that, and-"

Cassia cut him off. "A how many mile walk through freezing water? And then how long through forests full of panthers, green men, and rattlesnakes?"

"No more than a day or two. There's a place that I know where we can--"

Cassia cut him off again. "At least a full day, probably more, walking through forests that kills people on a regular basis. And this is not a threat of imminent death."

"No. No, it isn't. It's a possibility of death, mind you. But it's not a threat. Your father, that was a threat. But this isn't. If we stay reasonably alert, and reasonably fortunate, we should get away perfectly clean."

Cassia wasn't quite sure how to respond. Skifter had run, still ran, operations outside of Caniphor's city walls. She had never had much to do with them, beyond checking the receipts, and promoting or demoting people who worked those operations. A few day trips out to work with the smugglers, maybe get some supplies to a pirate ship that wasn't going to put in at Caniphor Bay.

The forest wasn't going to kill them outright in the space of a few seconds; any number of foresters made their living working alone in the woods of Riend. But the forests weren't a friendly place. As far as she was concerned, they were a far more unfriendly place than the dockside. Drunks, pressgangs, kids with knives and a hunger, those were familiar, and all seemed considerably easier to deal with then, say, a bear.

That they had gotten away from Caniphor might have been worthy of some celebration. But the night was cold, and her clothing was wet and cold, and in the distance there were wolves howling from the mountaintops. She stumbled on a rock, near lost her balance. And they were going to be walking for - twelve miles, was it? Up through a canyon, out into the forests of Riend. The realities of the situation put a damper on any celebratory feelings that she might have had. Beronal started whistling.