armor, since they can't buy ready-made off your lot anymore, but it's not true. I'll try and find out from Valens what's going on, ready for when you come back.'
'It probably won't be me on the return trip…' Cannanus tried to tell him, but he'd started walking again. Meeting over.
The horse they'd given him was beautiful, a Vadani mountain thoroughbred, intended to make him feel guilty and in their debt. He felt the guilt in spite of himself, but not the gratitude; it'd be impounded by the messengers' office as soon as he got back and given to some colonel in the mercenary cavalry. Just as well; it wouldn't be right to keep something the enemy had given him.
The fine, handsome, morally questionable thoroughbred cast a shoe almost as soon as he crossed the Eremian border, a few miles after his Vadani escort had turned back and left him on his own. That, he couldn't help thinking, was probably a judgment on him for his ingratitude, or else for being tempted to keep the horse. It gave him a certain amount to think about as he walked, leading the gift-horse by its reins, along the dusty, stony track that passed for the main road to Civitas Eremiae.
Other concerns, too; less high-minded and abstruse, rather more immediate. One of them was the fact that he'd forgotten to fill his water bottle back at Valens' palace; rather, he'd assumed that one of the Duke's countless servants would have done it for him while he was busy with the meeting. Another was the emptiness of his ration sack: the scrag end of a Mezentine munitions loaf, turned stale by the dry mountain air, a bit of cheese-rind and a single small onion.
He could, of course, ride the horse; but that would lame it, maybe cripple it for good on these horrible stony roads, and it was such a very fine horse, with its small, graceful head, arched neck and slim, brittle legs… Walking it lame would be as bad as damaging government property, for which he was personally responsible. That, he reckoned, was the Vadani for you: they bred exquisite horses, but their farriers couldn't nail a shoe on properly.
As if on purpose, the track started to climb steeply. Being a highly trained courier, Cannanus wasn't used to walking, and it wasn't long before he felt an ominous tightness in the back of his calves. He tried to picture in his mind the maps of the Eremian border country that he'd glanced at before he started out. The big stony thing he was struggling up was tall enough to count as a mountain, worth marking on a map and giving a name to; but there were so many mountains in Eremia that that was no great help. He gave up and started looking about him, but all he could see on the plain below was empty, patchy green blemished here and there with outcrops and bogs. Not a comfortable environment for a city boy at the best of times.
The thought that he could die out there, stupidly, through carelessness, took a while to form in his mind, but once he'd acknowledged it, he found it hard to silence. People died, lost in the mountains (but he wasn't lost, he was on the main road), particularly if they had no water and only a few crumbs of food (but Eremia was Mezentine territory now; there'd be patrols, hunting down the resistance or keeping out insurgents). He remembered passing an inn at some point. He'd only caught a glimpse of it as he galloped past (he'd been making up time after being held up crossing some river-a whole river full of water, unimaginable excess). He could remember the name from the map-the Unswerving Loyalty at Sharra Top-but he couldn't place it in this disorganized mess of landscape; could be an hour away, or a day's march on foot. Nothing for it; he was going to have to ride the stupid horse. After all, deliberately allowing a courier of the Republic to die of thirst in the desert was surely a worse crime against the state than crippling some overbred animal. Reluctantly, almost trembling with guilt, he ran down the stirrup, put his foot in it and lifted himself into the saddle.
The horse reared.
High-strung, temperamental thoroughbred, he thought, as his nose hit the horse's neck and his balance shifted just too far. He hung in the air for a moment, realizing objectively that he wasn't going to be able to sit this one out, and watched the sky as he fell.
Not as bad, actually, as some of the falls he'd had in the past; he'd been expecting worse, he told himself, as the pain subsided enough to allow his mind to clear. He opened his eyes, tried to move, found out that everything still worked. Stupid bloody horse, he thought, and dragged himself up, feeling the inevitable embarrassment of the seasoned rider decked by a mere animal; won't let it get away with that, or it'll think it's the boss. He looked round for it. Not there.
The rush of panic blotted out thought for a moment. He recovered, hobbled a little way to a tall rock, scrambled up and looked round. There was the horse; off the track, heading down the steep, rocky slope at a determined canter, obviously unaware of the desperate risk to its fragile, expensive legs. Served it right if it broke them all.
It took at least two heartbeats before he realized that it had gone too far-just too far, but enough-for him to have any hope of catching it, unless it stopped of its own accord, to rest or graze (graze? Graze on what?). No horse, no transport; and, needless to say, his few crumbs of food were in the ration sack, just behind the saddle roll.
Fear came next. He felt its onset, recognized it from a distance, as it were; but when it overtook him, there was nothing he could do about it. He was going to die; he was going to die very slowly, his throat and mouth completely dried out, like beans hung in the sun; it was all his own fault that he was going to die so unpleasantly, and there was no hope at all. He felt his knees weaken, his stomach tighten, his bladder twitch, he was shaking and sobbing. For crying out loud, he tried to tell himself, this is ridiculous; you haven't broken a leg, you're fit and healthy and it can't be far to that inn, but the forced hopes turned like arrows on proof armor. He dropped to the ground in a huddle, and shook all over like a fever case.
Fear came and went, taking most of him with it. He stood up; he was talking to himself, either out loud or in his head, he couldn't tell. You're not thinking straight, he said, you're going to pieces, that's not going to help; and you're missing something really important.
That stopped him. He looked round, like a man who's just realized he's dropped his keys somewhere. Something important that he'd seen just a few moments ago, before the fear set in and wiped his mind. Something…
It came back to him, and he thought, idiot. It had been there all the time, he'd probably been looking straight at it while he was crouching there quivering and blubbing. It had been a silvery flash; sunlight on the surface of a bog-pool, down below in the valley.
Some of his intelligence was starting to creep back. He looked for patches of darker, lusher green, and soon enough he caught sight of that flash again. He tried to gauge the distance-hard in such open country, but no more than two miles away, probably less, and all downhill. Now he thought about it, the horse had gone that way; there was a chance he'd find it again, drinking peacefully. Two miles downhill; he could do that, and then he'd have water. Not water to spare-the water bottle was with the ration sack, on the saddle of the stupid fucking horse-but enough to keep him alive, give him a chance to calm down and get a grip. He heard someone laugh, high, braying, almost hysterical; it took him a moment to realize he was listening to himself, but now he thought about it, he could see the joke.
To begin with he tried to hurry, but a couple of trips and sprawls made it clear that haste could kill him, if he fell awkwardly and twisted something. He'd been careless twice already that day. He slackened his pace to an amble, as though he was strolling home from work. All the way, he kept his eye fixed on the spot where he'd seen the silver flash, just in case it turned sneaky on him and crept away.
When he got there… It wasn't beautiful, even to a man who'd killed himself with anticipated thirst only an hour earlier. It was a brown hole surrounded by black peaty mud, sprinkled with white stones and fringed with clumps of coarse green reeds, a very few' clumps of dry heather, here and there a tuft of bog-cotton. He slowed down as he approached it; wading into the mud and getting stuck would be careless too, and he was through with carelessness for good. From now on, every action he committed himself to would be exquisitely designed, planned and executed with all proper Mezentine precision, a work of art and craft that anybody would be proud to acknowledge.
In accordance with this resolution, he crept forward, taking care to test the ground with his heel before committing his weight. It soon struck him that he was wasting his time; the mud was slimy and stank, but the most his boot sank in it was an inch or so. He quickened his pace; he could see the water now, and smell it too. Nothing to be afraid of…
He stopped. In front of him, unmistakable as a Guild hallmark, was the print of a horse's hoof. He frowned. So the horse had been this way-the print was fresh, he could tell by the sharpness of the indentation's edge, the
