As the rider passed, he looked up, saw her, slid his gaze down to Tomas, frowned, began to straighten in the saddle, pulling back on the reins…
Tomas snarled.
Without breaking stride, the horse moved to the far side of the road. Mirian had no idea horses could move sideways like that. The rider swore, grabbed a double handful of mane, and hung in midair for a moment, one foot in the stirrup the other hooked on the far edge of the saddle, trying desperately to keep from falling. Bit in its teeth, the horse ignored both words and reins, equally desperate to put as much distance as possible between itself and the predator. By the time the courier got himself seated again, he’d gone far enough past that he kept going.
Mirian released a breath she couldn’t remember holding. “I wonder what he thought he saw.”
“Pack,” Tomas grunted as he moved back to her right.
The horse certainly had, but the rider? Unlike some Pack, unlike Jaspyr, Tomas on two legs wasn’t obvious. He was young enough to have no facial scarring and his fur not only covered the points of his ears but was a solid black that passed for hair. Even in Aydori, it might take a second look from non Pack. Armin hadn’t realized and Tomas had been naked; usually a dead giveaway. “But the courier was Imperial.”
“There’s Pack in the empire.”
Surprised, she had to take three quick steps to catch up. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Almost time to run again. “I didn’t know that.”
“We don’t talk about it much. Sometimes people can’t find their place in the Pack they’re born into and they wander. Sometimes they go higher up into the mountains, to Orin or to Ural where it’s nearly all Pack.” He snorted. “Rough wood, raw meat, and hearty beer.”
“You’ve been?”
“Not likely, but sometimes people wander out. And sometimes the wanderers end up in the empire. Or somewhere that then becomes the empire,” he growled.
And neither said, like Aydori although Mirian knew they were both thinking it. “Will they help us?”
“They might, if we can find them. But interactions between small isolated Packs without direct family ties can be…” His hand cut the air in a gesture that suggested violent or bloody. “…difficult.”
Between Packs? Mirian wondered as they started to run. Are we a Pack? But she didn’t know how to ask without seeming stupid or arrogant or both.
By late afternoon, they began passing more farms and, without discussion, stopped running even the short distances Mirian could manage. She didn’t know Tomas’ reasons, but she found herself hobbled by the knowledge that young ladies did not run regardless of how little the rules for young ladies applied to the present situation. It was one thing to run unseen out in the country and another entirely to do it approaching civilization. It helped a little when she reminded herself it would be a very bad idea to attract too much attention.
The road made a long sloping curve to the left, past fields with herds of black-and-white cows, and disappeared under a sprawl of red roofs that rapidly became larger buildings packed close, haze obscuring details in the distance.
“Is it smoke from the war?”
Tomas lifted his head, nostrils flared. “The war was over in Pyrahn the minute the duke rabbited for the border, and Imperials don’t burn down the emperor’s property.”
“A rebellion?” They couldn’t be the only people in Pyrahn fighting back.
“I think it’s factories.”
“Factories?” Mirian squinted, trying to get a better look. “Then this has to be Abyek.” The road they’d been following, the road the coaches had taken the Mage-pack down must have turned almost due north and brought them out to the Aydori Road. Schoolhouse geography taught that Abyek was the largest city in Pyrahn, larger than the Duke’s Seat. The current duke’s great grandmother had built it to take advantage of new trade with Aydori. The Pack Leader at the time had insisted it be built a full day’s travel from the border so that the Pack would never have to deal with the stink of manufacturing should there ever be a shift in the prevailing winds. Most of Bercarit had been built of Abyek bricks fired with Aydori coal and other industry had soon joined the brickworks. “I’m fairly certain Mother bought my sister a set of dishes from Abyek.”
“They must’ve changed horses here.”
It took Mirian a moment to separate the horses from the dishes. “Are we going in?”
Tomas nodded toward their shadows, stretching out to the right. “It’s too late to figure out how to go around. It’ll be nearly dark by the time we get there, and I bet this road will take us right…”
“Looky, looky, looky.”
Attention on Abyek, Mirian hadn’t noticed the five farm workers coming down a lane toward the road until the largest spoke, and by then they were nearly on top of them. She didn’t know if Tomas hadn’t seen them or merely believed they were beneath his attention as Pack. Or believed they wouldn’t be stupid enough to approach Pack.
In Aydori, they wouldn’t have been. Before she could remind Tomas that not only were they not in Aydori but no one knew him as Pack, they were blocked by a belligerent half circle of men in dirty smocks with dirtier scarves tied round their necks.
“Ignore them,” the memory of her mother said. “We do not acknowledge the existence of ruffians.”
Clearly her mother’s advice worked better when applied to bricklayers in the city.
“I’m guessin’ you two don’t know there’s a toll on this road. Bin a war, you know. We all gotta pay.” Not much of the largest man’s breadth was fat and he was easily a head taller than Tomas. Mirian had never understood the phrase fists like hams before. She did now.
Tomas let the bedroll with his jacket slung over it slide off his shoulder as he stepped forward. Mirian caught it before it hit the ground. “Move aside.”
“Move aside?” His beefy face flushed red when he laughed and the other four laughed as well, a beat behind the leader. “You look like the gutter all barefoot and rags, but you talk like you think your shit don’t stink. Get thrown out of your fancy house on your fancy ass when the Imperials come through, did you? Well, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you were, there’s a toll on this road for the likes of what you are now. And since I doubt you got coin to pay it, I’ll take a little time with your girl.” There were two teeth missing on the right side of his mouth when he smiled, and he looked at her the way Best had, like she was a thing not a person; only without Best’s minimal excuse of being the enemy.
Experience had definitively proven she didn’t need mage marks to set his trousers on fire.
The memory of cooking meat and blisters rising up under where a ginger eyebrow had been stopped her.
“One more chance…” Tomas bit each word off in a way that should have been a warning. “…to move aside.”
“You filthy…”
Tomas stripped with the efficiency of long practice. Aydori fashions would have made it easier, but he was still impressively fast. As his trousers hit the road, Mirian found herself surprised by the difference between seeing him take off his clothes and seeing him without them. The latter meant he was Pack, just changed, the former that he was…well, undressing. It was a subtle distinction she really wished she could talk over with her sister.
And one she shouldn’t be thinking of now.
Astonishment held the farm workers in place as Tomas folded forward, enormous front paws slamming down on the road. Then his hackles rose, and he snarled. In the firelight, he’d passed as a very large dog. These men weren’t given the choice of mistaking what he was.