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At our first stop a few hours later, where passengers boarded, deboarded, and were allowed a few minutes for refreshments, I complimented the coach-driver on his driving; the ride was quite comfortable, and there was little in the way of jostling.

The coach-driver was pleased with that. He might also have been pleased with the small apple brandy that I bought him. Given the cherry-red colour of his nose, I suspect I was not the first to have treated him so. Even today.

"Ar, bless yer, lad. Yarr cahn't beat th' auld Grreat Easterrrn fer smooth ride, yerr cahn't."

Out of curiousity, I crouched down and had a look at it. The surface of the road was smooth and unrutted, and one could tell that it gently sloped from the centre to allow for proper drainage. There wasn't a speck of foliage growing in any cracks, and the portion that was above ground was a few inches; it's likely the stone went deep below ground level as well. Looking both ways, the road seemed to be as straight as an arrow-shot, as far as the eyes could see. I asked the coach-driver when it was built, and his vast belly shook.

"Bless yer, lad, 'is 'ere road's been 'ere since time out of mind. 'ey did knoo 'ow t'build in them days, aye?"

A fresh six of ants having been hitched up, and the last mail sacks having been lashed to the roof of the coach, we were off again.

The countryside to the east of Albric Tor, once we got down from the hills that is, was flat, and for the most part seemed to be a mixture of pasture and orchard. There was a particularly beautiful plantation that we passed, where one of my fellow passengers pointed out the mulberry trees that fed a good portion of the Empire's silk industry. Every few miles, we passed a small village at a cross-roads. Unlike my home region, Elfhame, these villages seemed to be active, judging from the tidy fences, smoke issuing from chimneys, and the occasional rustic leaning on a fence and watching us scuttle by.

By nightfall, we had made a few more stops, and had traveled about 50 miles from Albric Tor in the six hours or so we had been on the road. According to the schedule posted at the inn where we finally broke the journey, the Great Eastern "Silver Star" was right on time.

The inn was called "The Foam and Mustache," and the large wooden sign hanging above the front door bore a picture of a walrus greedily quaffing from a gigantic stein. The noise from inside the inn matched the sign; it was a mixture of music, loud jokes being shouted across rooms, and the sounds (and smells) of dinner being prepared, served and consumed.

Mein Host turned out to be another roebuck, so it was perhaps with a bit extra friendliness that my King's Orders were examined. It resulted in a room that, while it was tiny and a bit cramped, was spotless. Dinner was much the same: the bowl of vegetable soup was plain, but filling, and the bread was fresh. Speaking of fresh, I think one of the barmaids, the one who pulled my pint of cider, was rather hoping I'd make some sort of comment to her. She certainly was a pretty good specimen of country doe, and an advertisement for country living. I smiled at her, gave her a good tip, and did nothing else. At least I was rewarded with a smile back and a wink. Probably my imagination that it meant anything.

I'd left a request to the innkeeper to be woken before dawn, and I was. By the innkeeper's wife, which was probably just as well, as it avoided any temptations and scandals. I had a wash-up, a brush-down, and a pretty substantial breakfast (courtesy of King's Orders) of corn-cakes with honey by the time my fellow passengers came down, yawning away their sleep. The coach-driver, for one, seemed amused by my energy.

Both of us watched the Great Eastern as the sun came up. While there was village traffic crossing the highway, comprised of farmers delivering milk, cheese and bread, on the highway itself, there was little traffic, with the notable exception of three riders that went by on very fast ants. King's Messengers, I was told, capable of riding sixteen hours at a stretch in the saddle and up to 200 miles in a day.

More conventional (and more open) communications were to be seen on a tall pole erected next to the inn. I'd heard about these as a recruit, but this was the first time I'd actually seen one. They were referred to as "vixen's brushes," and consisted of a swinging red and white pointed sign with a black tip (hence the name). Depending on one of the five positions, other than "rest," it was set to, you could send a message to the next station, which was probably at a cross-roads a mile away. You could only use them during the day (and decent weather), but in theory a simple message could travel hundreds of miles, repeated on and on, in just a few hours. It required hundreds of very attentive, very careful furs manning the levers, but as far as I know, the Imperial and Royal Signal Service has worked for hundreds of years without a hitch. It did make me wonder how fast news of the attempted assassination of the Crown Prince and the Marshal had spread.

There was a definite autumnal nip in the air, so after buying a few for the coach-driver, we passengers all boarded the coach, and were off.

I was curled up in a corner of the coach, next to a window and underneath a coach-blanket. Unlike the previous day, today we had a pair of chatterboxes sitting opposite each other. The topic was political gossip, and the shake-up of the King's Ministers. Apparently, a number of ministers had been moved around, and when the music was ended, one of them was left standing. I was not surprised that it was Lord Twelveoaks, Captain Chitterleigh's father and the father-in-law of his new mate, Lady Eudora. Apparently, the phrase being used was that he was going on "gardening leave, awaiting the pleasure of His Majesty." Judging from his abrasive personality, I had every guess that he'd have the chance to raise whole plantations of trees before he got another high-ranking job.

From there, the gossip moved to circles of Society that I was nowhere near. And judging from the tone of the conversation, it might have been best that I wasn't. I'll be the first to admit that I was raised in a very traditional, cloistered part of the Empire, but it has always amazed me (as I write this, some years later, and after more experience with the Court) just how openly some elves talk about performing certain natural imperatives. I had thought Mrs. Truemane might have been an eccentric, but these two ladies, who were much younger and were dressed extremely well, could have matched her phrase-for-phrase without a hint of embarrassment. Apparently, both of them had a taste for cavalry officers, and it was their concerted opinion that they walked bow-legged for reasons more than constant hours in the saddle, reasons which were described at, if you will excuse my choice of words, great length. It made me glad I was both an enlisted fur, and in a dark corner of the coach.

I dozed off, and was awoken only when we stopped for lunch, at a small city named Baldric Tor. This was more of a brisk, business-like place, where my King's Orders were filled with a rather anonymous and forgettable sandwich of no fixed abode, and pint of bitter, ditto. Most of the news chalked on the board at the coach-stop had to do with crops and crop-prices. I do not know if the advertisement for certain syringe-induced irrigation was connected, given the vast quantities of bran Baldric Tor seemed to deal in.

There were a fair number of soldiers at the local Army depot, and judging from their uniforms, equipment and salutes, these were squaddies that were kept on a short leash. Since we were about two days by fast express to the frontier with the United Cities, it was little wonder that you'd see their like here. The vixen's brushes, I mean the signal ones, were also very busy. The depot had no less than eight of them on the roof, pointed in different directions.

An aurochs, whose boarding of the coach caused it to creak ominously, replaced the chatterboxes of the morning. The coach-driver nervously monitored the sounds the axles of the conveyance were making. At least he was outside. For the rest of the afternoon, the thunderous snores that filled in the inside of the coach prevented any of the rest of us from either sleeping, talking or reading.

My highest priority, then, at our second night's stop was to get a bed. I had specified a bed for one, as did my King's Orders, though it was more accurately a bed for about five hundred-and-one. I hoped that the Q.M. wasn't going to be billed for all of the nearly-invisible companions I had that night. At least it gave me some Gramerye practice in dealing with them.

The aurochs, unfortunately, was continuing on with us. More fortunate was the fact that we had, most unusually, a very young kitten-elf, with a look of both keen intelligence and mischief in his eye. I managed to secure a hollow reed and a pocketful of dried peas, and had a conversation with the little chap out of earshot of his nanny. I was nicked for three coppers before we had a deal.

For sheer cunning, mixed with sweet (and spurious) innocence, you can't beat kittens. I'd had had an inkling about his talents, and I was not disappointed. Every time the aurochs bent his head back to let out a thunderous snore, he received an on-target dried pea smack in his cake-hole. By the time he would come to, all would be sweetness and innocence, much to the aurochs' puzzled fury.

At the luncheon stop, there was an acrimonious discussion between the bovine and the coach-driver as to how the latter stored his cargoes of dried peas, which was responded to hotly, in the time-honoured vocabulary of coach-drivers, as to the lack of any such cargo being carried.

In the meantime, I noticed, the kitten was being treated to small bags of hard candies by some of the other passengers.

The rest of the day's journey involved the aurochs sitting up, with a baleful glare at the kitten, who was enjoying the fruits of his labours. I had retrieved the reed and leftover dried peas, and was on the verge of using them, when I saw a frail old mephitess, quite openly, raise a reed of her own and clip the bull square between the eyes. The two of them mumbled at each other until we reached the overnight stop. It never pays to stir up a skunk-elf, especially the older ones. They have so little to lose.

Since this was the last overnight stop before we reached Mossford, I wanted to have a look around the village to see how things were arranged. There was, indeed, an Army outpost, but it was a very small one, staffed by another corporal and a few privates, who mainly dealt with the shipments in the area. They were pretty friendly, and even stood me a few pints of bitter in the dingy little pub.

The corporal shook his head at me in commiseration. "Dead boring, mate, up in Mossford," he informed me in a glottal, nasal tone.

"Odd for a frontier town, isn't it?"

One of the privates wiped his muzzle on the sleeve of his tunic. "You'll see, mate. You'll be staring mad before long. Get an 'obby, that's what I say."

Of course, I had been given a hobby, of sorts, by the Marshal. It involved, more or less, getting familiar with this area of the frontier, and keeping my eyes and ears open as to events in the United Cities' realm, a little further to the east. This was, as I mentioned earlier, an entity with whom the Empire had a very recent and very low-key treaty, the contents of which I was not familiar with, but they must have been very much on the mind of my superior, the Marshal. He expected trouble, and given his long experience in the Army, I had to respect his intutitions.

As it turned out, the next day's journey (aurochs-less, thank Fuma) took only into the early afternoon, before we ran into the terminus of the Great Eastern, which a milestone noted was 277 miles from Albric Tor. Flourford got its name, no doubt, from the long row of water-powered mills that lined one bank of a briskly flowing river.

There were a few other milestones, one pointing to the east, which noted that the frontier was 15 miles. Another pointed toward Mossford, 13 miles. I wasn't sure precisely where Mossford was, because the milestone was somewhat skewed and was pointing down at the ground.

I hauled my kit bags from the coach to the wooden building that flew the Army's standard. Seated on a wooden barrel, and writing on a desk comprised of a plank set upon two more wooden barrels, was to my surprise a Major. The Major was dressed rather casually in corduroy trousers and a sweater, but for all that, the post seemed to be run efficiently, judging from the tidy condition of the sawdust floor, and the neat stacks of scrolls and supplies.

I saluted him, and in return got a rather cheerful salute. He listened as I reported in, and scratched his chin.

"Well, you know I'm only the O.I.C. here in Flourford. So your orders really aren't addressed to me. The Captain up in Mossford is your C.O." He frowned, and tugged at the ascot around his neck a little awkwardly. He got up, and closed the door to his office. "I do know why you're here, old man, and all that. Got a dispatch by K.M. to look out for you, so I'm dashed glad you've got the sense to check in here, first. Look here, it's not very spit-and-polish around here, but you're going to find things, well, a bit odd up in Mossford. Still, and all, if you run into problems, try to get a message through to me here. Might take a day or so, even by the Signals, weather being beastly up here, y'know."

He looked outside the window of his office, and pointed with his swagger stick. "Well, at least they sent you transport. Better hurry along, Corporal, so you can get to your post before dark."

I looked outside, and was greeted by the sight of a very rough, unpainted wooden buckboard, which had an extraordinarily shaggy ant hitched up to it. The driver, of indeterminate species, was curled up on the seat, rolled up in a blanket.

The Major sighed. "Welcome to Mossford, Corporal."