Midwinter

The roaring of the engine dropped suddenly in pitch, and a low staccato rumble seemed to envelop them. Mauritane jumped in his seat.

"Sorry!" said Satterly. "The fuel I bought is very different from what this car is used to running on. I had to make a couple of adjustments to the… power-thing-that-makes-it-go… and I didn't have the tools or the time or the experience to do a very good job."

The car made another series of rumbles and then dropped into a smooth rhythm again.

They met the Seelie Army reinforcements coming the other way on the road. At first the soldiers were wary of the loud machine, but the news of the Seelie victory had already gotten back to them on the wings of multiple message sprites, and when Mauritane was recognized in the passenger seat, the soldiers mobbed the car and cheered. He waved and nodded at them, but he could not bring himself to smile.

* * * *

After leaving Sylvan in the dark of night, they'd driven through most of the day, stopping only for latrine breaks and refueling. It was nearly impossible to speak while driving, and so for the most part all four of them-Satterly, Mauritane, Raieve, and Silverdun-were left to their own thoughts. Raieve mostly sat watching the scenery fly by, while Silverdun stared blankly ahead, clutching his stomach as though he felt ill.

When they stopped for the night, Mauritane asked him, "Silverdun, are you unwell?"

"Riding in that thing makes me damned queasy," he said.

Satterly laughed. "You're carsick," he said. "It's very common where I come from. Nothing to be ashamed of."

"Who said I was ashamed?" Silverdun grumbled.

They'd stopped near a grove of trees, still preferring to remain away from towns and cities, though they were harder to avoid the farther south they drove. They sat around a campfire and continued not to speak. The silence of the drive seemed to have overwhelmed them.

As he sat looking at his friends, Mauritane snapped out of his own concerns long enough to realize that none of them had any idea what the future held. The City Emerald was near; at this speed there would be time to catch up with Purane-Es and still make it by First Lamb. All of Mauritane's concentration was focused on his upcoming confrontation with Purane-Es, and he hadn't stopped to consider what might lie beyond, after the successful completion of their mission.

Prison had a way of dulling one's sense of the future. The days slouched by, one by one, each more or less the same. During his two years at Crete Sulace, Mauritane had almost learned to stop thinking about the road ahead entirely. A man with a life sentence had no business thinking about what lay beyond today.

This mission had been in most ways the direct opposite of imprisonment, and yet he'd still managed to avoid thinking beyond its single tangible goal. Go to Sylvan, get the girl, be in the City Emerald by First Lamb. While it had been going on, First Lamb had seemed very distant indeed. But now, First Lamb was not so far off. It was the day after tomorrow. And it was only upon thinking it, as he peered into the yellow twists of campfire in front of him, that Mauritane himself began to wonder what might happen after that.

The next morning, the car would not start. It had snowed a bit during the night, and though they'd covered it with a heavy tarpaulin, there was still a gleaming of ice on the machine's front window. Satterly sat in the driver's seat, performing a complex and noisy starting ritual that produced slow, choking sounds, but not the growl of its active state.

"What's the matter?" Silverdun said, standing by the car's door and clapping his hands together against the morning chill.

"Thing-that-makes-it-go is too cold," he said. "It doesn't want to start."

"Would it help if it were warmer?" Silverdun asked.

"Well, yes," said Satterly. "But…"

"All you had to do was ask," said Silverdun. He walked around and placed his hands above the sloping metal front of the car, careful not to touch it. He drew the rune for spellwarmth in the air over the hood and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

Within seconds, the ice crystals spread across the front glass were replaced with rivulets and vapor.

"Is this enough?" asked Silverdun.

Satterly performed the starting ritual again. The car made a few sneezing sounds, then a quicker sound like call of a heron, and then the machine sprang into life.

"That'll do it!" said Satterly. "Let's go!"

The hills of the far western reaches were replaced by the wide plains of the Low Country that lay northwest of the City Emerald. Farm after farm blurred past them, all smothered under a layer of snow, the fields barren. The going became easier once they passed into these arable lands; there were fewer towns, and the army detachments were all behind them now.

Each time they approached a trader or a coach headed in their direction, Mauritane steadied himself in case it was Purane-Es. And with each traveler that proved not to be his prey, Mauritane felt more and more uneasy.