He landed awkwardly, losing his grip on Mari, falling, sliding down a slight embankment and rolling over several times before eventually skidding to a halt. The last car of the Mechanic train rolled past as he lay there, the lights and noise of the entire train vanishing into the night. Dizzy and aching, Alain sat up and looked for Mari, wincing as new bruises announced their presence.
Mari lay a short distance away. He felt a moment of fear, then relief as she got her arms under her and tried to stand up, hopping slightly as her right leg seemed unwilling to bear her weight. “Ouch,” she announced.
Alain got to his feet and moved to help, flinching as his own foot protested. Just a sprain, he hoped, and not something broken. “Are you all right, Mari?”
She lowered her right leg gingerly, her face showing pain. “I think so. Walking isn’t going to be any fun for a while.” Mari gazed in the direction the train had gone. “If anyone had noticed us jumping, the train would have already braked and started back this way. Looks like we got away. Now we just have to find another way to get to Landfall.”
“Will we have to ride one of the trains again?” Alain hoped that he did not sound too aggrieved.
She looked at him, then started laughing. “You poor man. Have you ever asked yourself what you did to deserve getting stuck with me?”
“I simply consider myself to be very fortunate.”
Mari grinned, her teeth white against the darkness of the night. “Just keep telling yourself that, my love. No, I won’t make you ride a train again. At least, not anytime soon. They really are too dangerous now that we know the Imperials are checking them all for suspicious pairs of young men and women, and by the time we could try to board another one my Guild would have sent warnings out that I was traveling as a common.” Her smile faded. “Can you see anything around here?”
Alain peered around, searching the darkness and seeing nothing manmade in the night-shadowed landscape but for the metal lines the train rode on. “Nothing.”
“Then that means we start walking to Landfall. We’re most of the way there from Palandur.” Mari took a step and gritted her teeth. “That’s going to hurt for a while, but I can manage it. How about you?”
“About the same. Do we walk all the way?”
“I hope not.” Mari pointed in the direction they had been traveling. “Sooner or later we’ll have a chance to bum a ride on a wagon. Or maybe we’ll find a coach station and be able to ride at least part of the way. That reminds me.” Sitting down, she rummaged in her pack, finally surfacing with a small sheaf of papers. “Our new identities.”
Alain studied the papers. “You had two sets of false Imperial identification papers for us?”
Mari grinned. “I’m a Mechanic. I like to have spares handy in case I need them. And I have a nasty suspicion that the names on those other identity papers are now on the Imperial police’s arrest list.” She stood up again, adjusting her pack. “We’re a step-brother and -sister from Emdin now. Any ideas why we’re going to Landfall, if anyone asks?”
“Seafood?” Alain suggested.
“That sounds good to me. We’re off to see the big city, Landfall the Ancient, and enjoy the sea while the crowds are small at the tail end of winter and before we have to get the crops in when spring comes.” Mari gave him a questioning look. “That is when crops are planted, right?”
“As best I recall. It has been a long time since I was a boy on my family’s ranch”
“You need to tell me more about that while we walk, if you don’t mind. I’d like to know more about your childhood.” She tested her right leg. “That’s not as bad. Ready?”
“Will not the Imperials be looking for us here if they suspect we left the train?” Alain asked.
“Yeah. That’s why we’re going to walk way over to the left until we find a road going in the same direction.”
“Across the fields. In the dark.”
Mari gave him one of those narrow-eyed looks. “Do you have a better idea?”
“I was hoping you had a better one.”
“Nope. We’ve only got one choice.” She paused, thinking, as Alain waited. “There’s a common theme running through our lives these days, isn’t there?”
“I thought so.”
She shrugged, and again he could see the gleam of her smile in the night. “We can either let it terrify us or we can start seeing the humor in it, I guess.”
“At least there are no trolls tonight.”
“Exactly. Mage, it’s sometimes frightening just how much you and I are truly made for each other.” Smiling and limping, they started across the fields, searching for a road heading for Landfall.
The first night was in some ways the hardest, walking overland with minor injuries from their leap off of the Mechanic train. Alain was able to make the night pass a little faster by telling Mari some of the things he remembered from his parent’s ranch in the days before the Mages came to take him when Alain was five years old. Many of the memories he had suppressed while training to be a Mage. Now it was bittersweet to recall his parents, who had died while Alain was still a Mage acolyte. It made him feel better to share with Mari, though.
Alain tried to draw out Mari a little about her own girlhood in the city of Caer Lyn before being taken by the Mechanics, but once again Mari refused to talk about that, insisting that it was past and completely forgotten, almost yelling at Alain when he mentioned her mother. “I don’t care about her!” Mari said with a sad scowl that contradicted her words.
It was well past midnight before they literally stumbled onto a minor road going west. Already worn out from the events in Palandur the previous evening and day, Mari was almost asleep on her feet and Alain in not much better shape. They found a place just off the road where a few trees offered shelter and fell asleep in each other’s arms despite the cold.
The next morning, Mari stood looking around morosely. “I’ve been thinking. This isn’t like a little while back when we traveled south to Severun and then Marandur. Back then your Guild, my Guild and the Order were looking for us, but the Imperials weren’t. Now they are. I have a nasty feeling that any form of public transportation is going to be too risky to use.”
Alain, still seated, nodded and looked up at the sky. “We will have to pursue other methods, including avoiding the main road west.”
“Right. Do you know anything about sneaking through a countryside? I’m sort of making this up as I go along.”
“Yes, I do.” Alain forced himself to his feet, wincing as sore muscles protested. He took an odd pleasure in the look of surprise on Mari’s face. “Because I can cast fire, the Mage Guild intended that many of my contracts would be to common military forces. As a result, I received some training in military matters, including how scouts operate. I have also seen the use of scouts on a few occasions.”
“What do scouts do, exactly?” Mari asked.
“They seek to travel and see all about them without themselves being seen.”
“Ah.” Mari grinned. “That sounds like just what we need. What do we do first?”
Alain thought about it, making sure he remembered important details. “We are on a less-traveled road already. If the enemy—that is, the Imperial security forces—are actively searching for us, they will have checkpoints at intersections of roads.”
“Oh, sure.” Mari nodded, then couldn’t stop a yawn born of too little sleep. “Excuse me. That makes sense. They can’t cover everywhere, but occupying intersections offers the best chance of intercepting anyone using the roads. We just have to keep our eyes out for intersections and avoid them without being obvious about it.”