Seventeen The Great Chase

SEVENTEEN

The Great Chase

SAMUEL

T his is going rather well," Grant panted, pinned next to me along the alley wall. The shouts of guards echoed up the street behind us, interspersed with cries of locals, who hung out windows and doors at the commotion.

I labored for breath as guards thundered past in a stream of heavy coats and glistening muskets. "Too well."

It had been simple, baiting the trap. A rope thrown over the prison's curtain wall, which had been discovered almost instantly. Grant and I had initiated an obvious flight from the foot of said rope, down the road and into the town as the guard bell began to ring. We had sprinted past staring villagers, both Grant and I slathered with dirt and wearing our worst clothes, shivering in the night. We looked like escaped criminals. To the good people of Maase and the guards who poured out of the prison at our backs, we were escaped criminals. And to the guards who heard my description, I was none other than Benedict Rosser, escaped Aead Magni.

"Right," Grant said when the guards had passed. He peeled off the wall and nodded back to the street. "Shall we?"

"There!" a woman's voice cried from above. I just had time to glimpse a pointing finger and a vindictive, pale face leaning out of a second-story window before the coordinating cries of the guards rounded back on our position.

I bolted, jerking Grant after me with a fistful of stinking coat.

"Wrong way! Sam, wrong way!" he protested, then the street behind us was full of guards, and he revisited his priorities. He took the lead in a wholehearted sprint as I skirted a slick patch of ice and jumped a pile of frozen horse droppings.

We burst out onto a new street to find it blessedly clear, lined with stone buildings shuttered and barred against the night. The exposed beams between their carefully stacked stones were richly painted with Mereish psalms and their roofs layered with snow. Only a cat watched us from under a nearby cart, tail twitching, whiskers caked with white as if she had just been rooting about in the snow.

"Right, now south? Shit!" Grant's sprint abruptly turned into a slide. Ice coated a steep descent to the harbor, unbothered by the layers of sand and sawdust the locals had half-heartedly thrown down.

I lunged, trying to grab hold of the highwayman again, but he was gone—skidding down the road with all the grace of a drunken colt. And I went sliding right on behind him.

When the road spewed us out onto the docks, neither of us were on our feet. I slid into a pile of ice and lay there for a stunned moment, breathing raggedly and praying I had broken no bones. Then I pried my eyes open and squinted into the shadows.

Ridges of jumbled ice coated the quay, but they were not the only thing. Debris was thick among them—including a dishevelled Grant, staggering to his feet. Mud, pieces of wood, tattered ropes and broken crates were interspersed by other, more unrecognizable refuse. Even in the cold I could smell a mix of brine and rotting things, human and animal shit, and just a hint of mold.

The docks had been flooded, all this left behind when the waters receded—though the lap of encroaching dark waves warned the tide was already waxing and would soon bring another host of ice and refuse.

I looked around more carefully. Judging by the mess and the fact that the nearby buildings looked wholly abandoned, the locals had simply withdrawn from this part of the town, yielding it to the rise and fall of the sea. Sa Vis had mentioned unexpectedly high tides, but this high? High enough for coast-dwelling Mereish in a well-established town to simply withdraw from the docks that supported them?

My curiosity swelled and passed, chased away by distant shouts. I stumbled upright and pointed Grant south along the quay.

A few tense minutes later we slunk out of town, wrapped in a pale, snowy gloom. Grant was scraped and bloodied, as was I, and there were no more quips or jesting. We trudged on, leaving a trail of staggering footprints and blood-speckled snow.

At a small shrine in the hills, just past a sprawl of farms, Grant and I met two shadows. They stepped out from behind a shelter with a high roof and a statue within, surrounded by drifts and sad, dried flowers. The monument sat next to a swift-flowing river, half-iced, and two horses stamped impatiently in its lee.

"Captain," said Hart 's Ms. Fitz, doffing her hat. Her eyes rounded at the state of us. "Are you all right?"

"As well as can be expected. Where is our gear?"

She pointed to a bundle just inside the shrine. "There. The other trails are already laid. We'll be off now and back aboard Hart ?"

"Yes, thanks the both of you." I gave a grateful nod. I could see the evidence of her and her companion's hard work all around us— myriad trails coming and going into the forest, to the river, and farther up the road. The snow that could so easily have betrayed us now concealed us in a maze of footprints. "Give Mr. Keo and the Uknaras my regards. We will see you in two days."

"Aye, sir. Good luck, sir."

Grant and I ducked into the shrine and opened our bundles of clothing. Working quickly, we scrubbed dirt and blood from our faces with snow, hissing at the cold, and put on black robes along with cloaks and knitted caps under heavy hoods. I combed my beard back into line and proceeded to stuff our former, stinking rags high in a pine tree.

Then we rode. We headed up into the hills along a track I had carefully mapped, past the sleeping quiet of the monastery, where a few high windows glistened warm in the chill, crisp night. Distantly, over the rolling hills and down the valleys, I thought I heard more horses, perhaps a shout or two. But by the time our pursuers sorted through the tracks we were far, far away.