"I'd gathered. And yes, I saw your signal, thank you very much. It's supposed to be a subtle hand-gesture. The way you were carrying on, you could've put someone's eye out."
Just stress and irritation talking; besides, there wasn't time.
"I've got a letter," Cannanus said. "For the abominator, Vaatzes. Make sure he's alone when he gets it, all right?"
"I'm not completely stupid. Well, where is it, then?"
"In my shoe."
"Oh for crying out loud."
"Well," Cannanus muttered, fumbling with his shoe-buckle, "I knew I'd be searched at the frontier. You want to upgrade your security procedures. If it'd been a Mezentine checkpoint, inside the shoe's the first place we'd have looked."
"What minds you people must have." Rust-head took the small, square packet from him and tucked it firmly into his sleeve. "Now let's get you out of here before anything goes wrong," he said. "And next time…"
"I know. We're sorry."
Rust-head sighed and stood up. "It's going to be much harder for me from now on," he said. "Chances are I'm going to be promoted, now that there's so many jobs that need filling, so I'll have to be that much more careful. Whose idea was that, by the way? The sneak attack, I mean."
Cannanus shrugged. "They don't tell me stuff like that."
"No, I suppose not. Anyway, you tell them from me. Next time I want plenty of advance warning, or the deal's off. Can you do that? They know I'm far too valuable to piss off."
"I'll be sure to mention it," Cannanus said.
"Do that." Rust-head glanced up and down the cloister. "And while you're at it, you can tell them that the evacuation's been brought forward again, in spite of the attack. And your abominator's been keeping very busy indeed, bashing out great big iron sheets. Nobody knows what it's all in aid of; rumor has it they're mass-producing 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.