The Dawn of a Desperate War (The Godlanders War) (10 page)

S
he should not have been here. It could have been considered an act of war even without the score of soldiers riding at h
er heel.

Corin spat a curse. “How did she find me?”

Tesyn’s face went pale. He peeked again, and though he would have seen nothing there, he whipped back around to Corin and hissed frantically, “Who’s there? What does this mean?”

Corin shook his head. “There is no time.”

“What’s happening?” Tesyn demanded. “What do you see? Are we in danger?” He hesitated a moment, and then his eyes grew even wider. “Or is it someone after Auric and Sera?”

Despite himself, Corin threw a glance toward the little cart path that led west toward the farmboy’s home. Corin was nearly certain the justicar hadn’t come for them, but if he slipped her grasp here, she would find out where he’d been. She would track him back to the quiet little cabin, and Princess Sera’s anonymity would be destroyed. She could easily be dragged back to Aerome in chains.

Corin was lost in worry for the farmboy when Tesyn hauled back and kicked him hard in the shins. That so startled Corin that the scholar was able to wrench free. He kept hidden from the justicar, sprinting along the shadow of the tavern’s western wall toward a quiet little stable yard nestled near th
e back.

Corin cursed and darted after him. He’d been too distracted by the riders out front to notice it before, but now that Corin looked, he saw the carriage waiting there. The stable boys had finished changing out the horses, and now the coach and team stood waiting for their fares. The scholar flew to the carriage door, ripped it open, and shouted for the driver to leave.

“Fortune favor,” Corin breathed, still running hard. He threw a quick glance back over his shoulder, but there was no sign of pursuit. The riders hadn’t seen them, then. He felt a flash of hope and turned his attention to the coach.

There must not have been other passengers booked for this coach, because the driver complied with Tesyn’s orders. He didn’t move as swiftly as the scholar had hoped, though. He clucked to the horses, turning them in their traces and pointing the coach toward the tavern’s green. He’d just snapped the reins to start them walking forward when he caught sight of Corin, not ten paces off and running hard.

His eyes lit up with the hope of another fare, but Corin had no time to spend on haggling. He leaped toward the driver’s seat from two paces distant, landed on the step, caught the rail there with one hand, and brought his other fist smashing down with all the force of his momentum. It clipped the driver just below the ear and sent him sprawling.

“What are you doing?” Tesyn screamed from within
th
e coach.

“For Auric and the princess!” Corin grunted as he jumped down after the driver and heaved him up onto his shoulders. “Open the door!”

In defiance of Corin’s instructions, Tesyn grabbed the door and pulled hard against it, keeping it closed. “I’ll do no such thing! Not until you tell me what you have planned.”

“Are you prepared to miss your ship in Baillon? You need this coach to reach it in time, and I fear the driver won’t help you.”

For a moment Tesyn said nothing, considering. Then he cursed darkly and twitched aside the curtain. “Have you ruined me again?”

“Not if you open the door!”

The scholar met Corin’s eye, suspicious. “Why?” Tesyn demanded. “What are we doing? Do you have some plan?”

“I always have a plan,” Corin lied. “But I don’t have time. Can you drive a coach?”

Tesyn shook his head.

“Then open the blasted door,” Corin said, “and I’ll get you to Baillon.”

Tesyn did so reluctantly, and as soon as he’d made a large enough gap, Corin hurled the limp driver up into the cabin. Then he shoved the door shut, toppling Tesyn with the sudden motion, and scrambled up to the driver’s seat.

Tesyn leaned out the window while Corin was sorting out the reins. “Can
you
drive a coach?”

Corin shrugged. “I’ll figure it out as we go.”

He snapped the reins. The horses jerked in their traces and started forward, and Corin caught a curse uttered behind him as the scholar tumbled about inside again.

That was enough for Corin. He braced himself against the driver’s narrow box and snapped the reins, shouting, “Hah!” to encourage the horses forward.

They took his meaning, dashing forward hard enough to rock the coach behind them. Corin gripped his seat with one hand and snapped the reins once more with his other. “Hyah! Hyah!”

It seemed to do the job. The coach left the inn’s little carriage yard like an arrow from a bow. They blasted out onto the highway, and Corin twitched the reins to the right, aiming for the north road out of town.

That sent them right past the tavern green. Corin raised up on his heels and glanced back over his shoulder as they passed. The lovely justicar stood halfway through the tavern’s door, one hand on its frame as she turned to investigate the commotion. Her soldiers sat their horses some way off, still packed in tight formation and draped in the clinging mist of their glamour.

The justicar had dropped hers, though. She’d clearly meant to make inquiries here, and Corin dearly wished to keep her from learning where he’d come from.

So he dropped the reins and scrambled up to stand on his seat. The coach pitched and rolled like a boat in the brine, but Corin barely noticed. He threw his cloak out wide with one hand and waved the other overhead.

“Ho, Justicar!” he called above the thunder of the horses’ hooves. “I’m moving on! I’m moving on!”

He saw the flash of fury in her eyes. She leaped away from the doorway and toward her horse, and that was all he waited for. He clambered back down to his seat and caught up the reins again.

The coach was not a heavy one, and it had a four-horse team, but ordinarily he would have bet hard on the horsemen catching them inside a mile. His only hope came from the horses’ health. This team was fresh and rested. The justicar’s mounts all looked hard-pressed, and their riders traveled in heavy armor. They’d have to show some care to keep their animals healthy, and Corin had no fear of killing his team in their traces. He had to get away.

He pushed them hard and made a mile, maybe two, before he dared to look around. When he glanced back, the soldiers chasing him were distant silhouettes, but they were not falling back. He frowned, searching for a plan.

Tesyn interrupted him with a knock on the cabin’s wall. Likely irritated at the jostling! Corin pounded on the wall in answer and shouted, “We aren’t slowing down. There’s a justicar behind us!”

Tesyn’s complaint came back muffled by the cabin’s walls and drowned beneath noises of the chase. Corin pulled the reins to left and right, steering with the curve of the land, but he half-suspected that the animals knew the route better than he did. He glanced back to check on the justicar again, and the distant figures held in hot pursuit. He cursed and whipped the horses to a frenzy.

As they bolted forward, Tesyn hammered on the cabin’s wall again, pounding this time. Corin paid no mind, but a moment later the door flew open, and the scholar stuck his head out above the flashing countryside.

“Corin!” he gasped.

“I’m not slowing down for a pampered nobleman,” Corin called back.

Tesyn didn’t answer. A moment later the door slammed shut. Then the pounding came again, on the wooden panel right by Corin’s head. He spun around, fist raised to pound in answer, when a particularly strong blow from within splintered a gaping hole right through the wall.

In an instant, Corin understood. He leaned closer to the hole, trying to catch a glance inside, and called out, “The driver?”

Tesyn grunted hard, then wheezed for breath and groaned, “Yes, the driver!”

Corin got one clear look inside. There was barely room for Tesyn and the other man standing, and that fact had likely saved the scholar’s life. Tesyn had somehow positioned himself behind the bigger man and looped his lace cravat like a delicate garrote around the big man’s throat. Tesyn had his shoulder in the small of the driver’s back, pulling on the scarf with all his might, but it was not enough. The driver looked red in the face, but none the slower for Tesyn’s strangling cord. He flailed his balled fists and stomped hard at Tesyn’s instep whenever he saw the chance. It was an ugly fight, and it had an even chance of leaving either of the men dead. Both, if that door fell open again and tumbled them out.

Thinking of the door, Corin found a plan. He popped his head above the coach’s roof and found the justicar perhaps ten paces closer. Not close enough to see her clearly, but far too close to shake her.

He dropped back down and leaned close to the splintered gap again. “When I say the word, unleash him and jump out the door.”

“What? What?”

“You have to trust me! There’s no time to explain, and there’s a justicar behind us. In a moment—you’ll know when—unhand the driver and jump.
Fast!
”

The young scholar threw a desperate glance toward the front of the carriage, though he couldn’t have seen Corin through the gap. Sweat slicked his long hair to his face and neck and stained his pretty shirt. A bruise was growing on his forehead, and he’d have a black eye before dawn. His arms were shaking too, from his grip on the cravat. He wouldn’t last much longer, and he knew it.

“Really?” he whimpered, desperate.

“Trust me,” Corin said. “Just . . . just trust me.”

Then he closed his eyes and wove a glamour. He started with himself, imagining . . . nothing. He’d never tried such a thing before, but the justicar had given him the idea. He replaced his mental image of himself with nothing at all, with an invisible man sitting on the driver’s perch. Faint gray mist clouded his vision as the glamour took its hold, and Corin nodded to himself in satisfaction.

Then he did the same for Tesyn, and finally he turned his attention to the driver. He changed the driver into a handsome man of twenty years, dark hair and eyes and dressed all in black.

Inside the carriage, Tesyn gasped. “Corin? What . . . is that your signal?”

“Yes!” Corin shouted. “Jump! Jump
now
!”

The door opened and Corin caught a glimpse of Tesyn as he leaped. The scholar landed hard on the highway’s grassy verge and tumbled end over end down the slope and away from the road. Corin took a deep breath, shook his head, and flung himself away as well.

The coach continued down the highway, post horses following the same path they’d followed every week for years. Corin heard them fast receding in the distance, and then he struck the ground. Pain shot through his back and shoulders, and light flashed behind his eyes as he hit the ground rolling. He tucked his elbows to his belly and raised his fists to shield his face while he went tumbling down the slope toward the distant trees.

Somewhere along the way, he heard the drum of hooves passing by above him. They never slowed. He felt a burst of hope in that, even as pain and dizziness crashed like mighty waves inside him. He felt his focus slip, felt the glamours on him and Tesyn unravel, but he poured everything he had into the one he’d laid on the driver. That one had become the most important.

As Corin finally rolled to a stop, he let out a painful sigh and lay a moment, thinking. Victory buoyed him up on the waters of fatigue and pain. He’d fooled her. He’d fooled them all. The justicar and her soldiers were charging down the highway after a carriage that contained a beat-up driver who
looked
an awful lot like Corin Hugh.

They’d catch the coach eventually. Those horses wouldn’t keep a killing pace without a driver urging them to it. Then the justicar and her men would fall upon the coach. They’d drag the driver out and put him to the question. Perhaps her patron’s blessings would give her some way to see through the glamour. Perhaps she’d figure out what he had done. But that would all take time. The confusion alone would buy him an hour. In the end, she might never uncover a full explanation of what happened on this highway.

Smiling at the thought, Corin levered himself up into a sitting position just in time to receive a full-armed slap from Tesyn. The scholar’s right arm hung limply at his side, but he was raising his left again to follow through with a backhand when Corin rolled away and to his feet. He groaned at the protest of new bruises in his left ribs and hip, and then he nearly lost his balance coming up when the soft earth shifted beneath his feet. He caught his footing and ducked away from Tesyn’s wild punch. The scholar overbalanced and landed on his knees.

He didn’t try to get up. He dropped his chin against his chest and sobbed. “What have you done to me? Gods on Attos, why do you hate me?”

“I’ve saved our lives,” Corin answered. “Perhaps you couldn’t see it, but there were a score of Ithalian soldiers on our trail, with a justicar at their head. Do you think they’d have treated us kindly? Do you think they’d have let us catch your boat in Baillon? No. We’d have spent the next three decades in some gruesome prison if they’d let us live that long. And Auric too.”

“Why?” Tesyn screamed. “Why would a justicar
care
about me or Auric?”