[The Journey Through the Catskills. October 31st, 1866]
"They're gone," Karsten noted, unsurprised.
"Ah, yes," Romy nodded. "They eat their dead. And their wounded, if they aren't fit to fight back."
"Do they lick up the blood, too? You'd never know that we lost a driver."
"They do," Romy answered. "The good news is that they're unlikely to be back again. They got their food, they got a good scare, and they'll be hunting elsewhere. Let's get on the road."
The two roused the others from bed amidst much protesting. "The sun isn't even up!" groaned Aaron.
"They might set a roadblock," Karsten noted. "Best travel sooner than they'd expect. Miss Havek is driving, you can sleep in the coach."
With much cajoling from Karsten, the men were dressed and found the women waiting by the coach. "Don't we have to pay the proprieters?" Aaron asked, wiping sleep from his eyes and looking with disdain at the conveyance.
"It's been taken care of," Romy answered, climbing into the driver's seat. "Get in."
Aaron looked at Karsten, who shrugged. The passengers piled in and Karsten checked his weapon before climbing into his seat from the night before.
The journey into the rising sun was much less eventful than the previous night. Karsten allowed himself to doze for a portion of the leg, though never fully allowed himself to sleep. When the sun made dozing a struggle, he shook himself into full alertness.
He looked at the pale woman in the driver's seat and noted her relative lack of apparent fatigue. "You must be used to long hours," he noted, watching the glowing blue veins pulse beneath her skin.
"The longest," she acknowleged.
"You going to tell me what those things were last night?"
"Ruffians dressed in wolf skins?" Romy ventured, eyeing him wihtout turning her head.
"Bull."
"Oh? What do you think they were?"
"Werewolves."
She did turn to look at him, surprise evident in her face. "What?"
"Werewolves. Men who can turn into beasts. That what they were?"
"If I told you no, would you believe me?"
"Not especially. Perhaps if you gave me an alternative."
She sighed. "No, there are no alternatives. Those were werewolves, true enough. Eastern Ohio down to New Orleans and up into Georgia make a triangle of territory that they control. Spots of it out west, too. We should be in the clear. Only places they hold sway in Europe these days are in Western France and the Carpathians. Other parties made moves during the war between the Germans and the French and they lost most of their holdings there."
"Other parties? Goblins and whatnot?"
"No, not goblins," Romy answered, taking the suggestion seriously. "Witches mostly. Some black magicians. Does this bother you?"
"Not really. Saw some folk magic in the Appalachians. Figure magic is just progress that people forgot."
"That's not an inaccurate way to look at it, really. You've impressed me again, Mister Yeager."
"Aim to please."
They rolled along with only the rattling of the coach and the clapping hooves to fill the silence.
"The witches going to give us trouble?"
"Yes. Probably. It's unlikely that they remain unaware of our mission and therefore will try to stop us."
"What is our mission?"
Romy grinned, smile not touching her cold eyes. "You were there when everyone was told. I will not embellish further. Our mission, yours and mine, is to keep those in the coach beneath us alive."
"I'd just like to know where we're going so I can know what we're looking at for security," he explained. "Whatever skullduggery your mistress has planned doesn't have anything to do with me. I know how to keep quiet."
"No doubt, but it might not be up to you," Romy explained, "Our enemies are varied and diverse. These witches, for instance, have the ability to drink your brain and discover things that you knew. The first thing a necromancer learns in scholomance is how to treat a fresh corpse with a poultice and it will answer any question put to it. Best if she's a little mysterious with us."
Karsten grinned. "I knew she hadn't told you anything."
Annoyance flashed through Romy and she shot Karsten an angry look. "What?"
"You have acted as if you were in the know from the moment we met you, but she hasn't explained any more to you than she did to us, has she? You've just been living in this world and can piece it all together better than us. I hit the mark?"
Romy laughed. "I know more than you do. I will share what I can. She has shared what she could with me. That's enough."
"Enough for you," Karsten grumbled. "I don't like the idea of getting killed by a thing I don't know about in support of a cause I've never even heard of."
Romy squinted up at the sky. "You may ask anything you like. I will answer, if I can."
"What else do these particular witches and necromancers do?"
"All manner of things. The specific witches we are likely to cross in Saxony is the Falkinzirkle. They are known for their birds, and their poisons. There is a necromancer operating in the area named Gnádís Ríkarðsdóttir. She is an accentric, likes to collect and mummify important men who die.The Falkinzirkle knows something of our mission, and will seek to stop us. Gnádís is likely to attempt to stop us on the principle of an old animosity between her and Madame Posat."
"And Miss Ríkarðsdóttir; she... learns things from the dead?"
"That's not all she can do. She has a wide variety of curses and black magic at her disposal. Her knowledge is the work of many lifetimes. Many of those 'important men' that she's collected would be entirely unknown to you, as you are not a scholar of the occult. She can wake them and pick their brains whenever desired."
"Curses," Karsten grumbled under his breath. He looked out over the passing Catskills and remarked, "The horses will need to rest soon."
"Not these horses," Romy answered.
Karsten looked forward and cocked an eyebrow. To his eye, the horses looked sickly, malnourished and weak. They should be collapsing now. He bobbed his head to make sure that what he was seeing wasn't an illusion and turned back to her. "They don't look special. In fact, they look like they're about ready for pasture."
"They died years ago," Romy answered. "You didn't find it strange that a pair of stagecoach horses weren't at all gunshy and barely reacted to monsters attacking us?"
Karsten opened his mouth, then closed it again. She was absolutely correct. He looked again. The horses hadn't eaten, were awake when they'd been put away and had been awake when they pulled them out of the stable again. He hadn't even seen them soil the road since the journey began. "I'll be... that's a neat trick. Takes beating a dead horse to a strange place, though."
"This is where I would usually lecture you about how there are things in the world that men once knew but time had all but forgotten, that you can learn things if you look hard enough, but I believe that you summed it up as well as I've ever heard: Magic is just progress that people forgot."