Emmaline’s head pounded like a drum as consciousness sluggishly returned. The rattle of coach wheels across uneven roads added an additional layer of unpleasantness to her awakening. Her mouth tasted bitter with the aftereffects of the ether Lucien had used to knock her out, and she wanted to spit. Something blocked her mouth, and she began to struggle and curse. A moment later, the black shroud over her vision was pulled free, and painful lances of sunlight stabbed into her eyes.

“Mrrrmmph,” she groaned into the gag between her teeth. All in all, it felt like all the hangovers she had ever had rolled into one. With the deliberate care of a clockmaker, she opened one eyelid, slitting it immediately against the daylight. It took her a moment to make her protesting eyes comply, but she gradually comprehended that she was in a plush coach moving through thick forest. This was true forest, like the Drakwald, rather than the pleasure parks of the rich, its undergrowth thick and wild-looking. She shivered, uncomfortably aware that beastmen and worse things lurked in such dark places.

“We can take the gag out if you promise to behave,” a gruff voice suggested. Emmaline opened her other eye and focused on a muscular man in a leather jerkin and flared halberdier trousers tucked into scuffed riding boots. His head was shaved, though not recently judging by the fuzz of stubble on his scalp, and though he had no obvious weapons, he had the look of a veteran. Emmaline nodded, immediately regretting it as a wave of nausea swept over her. The thug reached over and untied the twisted linen gag from between her teeth.
“Water…” she croaked, momentarily forgetting to maintain her Brettonian accent. Fortunately, the sound that came from her parched throat was too unintelligible to decipher.

“One of the benefits of traveling in style, mademoiselle, is we don’t have to bother with water,” the thug said, his hatchet-hard features splitting into a grin that showed a glittering gold tooth on the right side. He opened a sideboard and pulled out a bottle of wine, removing the cork with a twist of his wrist and a hollow thunk sound. Emmaline tried to reach for it but found her hands bound behind her back. The thug lifted the bottle to her lips and poured a mouthful in. She drank greedily, rinsing the bitter taste from her mouth and wetting her parched throat.

“Will you be civil if I untie you?” the thug asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Oui,” Emmaline replied, twisting her torso to expose her hands. The man dutifully untied her, and she felt the prickling sensation of blood rushing back. Outside, the carriage rattled over a small bridge and began to climb a series of shallow switchbacks along a ridge. Ahead of the coach rode a quartet of pistoliers, trotting along as outriders. Turning around seemed an impossible effort, but she thought she could detect the hoofbeats of more horsemen to the rear.

“What is your name?” Emmaline asked her companion as she took the wine bottle from his hands and drank deeply.

“Jan Colditz,” the man introduced himself, pulling another bottle of wine from the sideboard and uncorking it with his teeth.
“And before you ask, we are taking you to one of Lord Schroder’s estates until he can arrange for your marriage,” Colditz explained. Emmaline was about to ask what kind of estate could exist in the middle of a forest when the coach crested a rise, and the view opened up over a narrow valley. The green valley had been extensively terraced with orchards and gardens trained along the sides of the hills. A large manor house occupied a flat area that ran for several hundred feet before the valley dropped to a broad stream at the bottom. Emmaline thought she could detect a smudge of smoke on the southern horizon, possibly Uterngard if anything Shroder had said could be believed. Scores of miles of trackless wilderness in all directions, she thought, the perfect place to keep a prisoner.

“It’s probably to one of his vassals so deep in debt that he will sign over your lands the second the ink is dry on the marriage contract,” Colditz said, a trifle apologetically. Emmaline concealed a hysterical giggle, wondering how long she would survive after that. That assumed Schroder didn’t learn she was about as Bretonian as a dwarf. The coach slowed at the top of the ridge, passing through a fortified gatehouse of stone and half-timber that covered the road through the forest. Armed men waved the coach through, sunlight glinting off handgun barrels.

“Welcome to Niederung,” Colditz intoned, lifting his wine bottle in salute before draining the contents in a single long pull.