I waved goodbye at the Seaborne southern cutoff into Sire's Hollow. I clearly saw the clock tower. 11:25 AM. I galloped north.
Once again my memories of a trip more than a year ago, combined with my proven wonky map-reading skills, betrayed me. I wasn't minutes out of town before the road climbed through rolling hills. Clouds had cleared without pegasus help and bright sun poked out. The further I got, the warmer it became. That accounted for the maples leafing out. A breeze that faintly smelled of the sea rustled the canopies of light green leaves that obscured each bend in the road. Feeling isolated, I quickly passed other travelers, none thankfully residents of Sire's Hollow.
My khaki blouse darkened at my neck and the pits of my legs. Overheated, I wished I could shed my clothes. Worse, I was passing ponies only because they pulled wagons. I was no earth pony to be running a race. I was fooling myself. A forty-five minute lead might well prove insurmountable.
I might walk to Havenport, never riding a covered wagon. Leering Fire Feather or eager-to-please Milds might spot me flying over. Waiting the night was bad. Fierce bear and clever deer that hated pony intrusions infested this wilderness. Worse, searchers might get ahead of me and spot me approaching Havenport. Proper Step, who thought highly of how he trained me, might think I'd been ponynapped!
I gasped and frowned. I needed to avoid constables, too.
I pushed harder.
Maybe I should have taken the train. Discounting that it was the most obvious way to run away, they did publish schedules and the depot stood on the south cutoff outside of town. Eight trains stopped most days.
Plenty of merchants and village ponies traveled via rail. I was well known, even to the ticket seller.
Good reasons to have chosen the wagon train. My throat burned as I huffed onward. Bad planning to be late! Pony merchants shipped goods this antiquated way on routes not serviced by rail, like up and down the rocky coast to the tiny towns of Crescent Moon and Embrayment, and to bustling but isolated Harbor City. Ponies traveling en masse was safer. The wagon master provided services like feed bags, repairs, and water while rolling between destinations. Individual ponies only had to concentrate on hauling goods. I'd read in a couple of novels that said wagon masters accepted a limited number of passengers, and in Sunset at the End of the Road, one wagon master became the protagonist's romantic interest, and later her soul mate.
Not that I needed another soul mate beyond Sunburst.
I'd slowed to a walk, wishing I'd packed water, when I heard the faint clop of many hooves. My heart sped and I trotted ahead around the bend.
I saw three-dozen carts, wagons, and trailer trains, pulled by more than a hundred ponies. The wagon train wound right to disappear around the next curve, cresting the hills I'd been traversing almost a half-hour. I slowed slightly to match their pace and catch my breath.
Every vehicle was covered, but not as romanticized in books with bowed willow arches that stretched waxed linen or burlap. Such hoof-built wagons hadn't carried families migrating west of Canterlot Mountain for generations.
All sported weathered canvas dyed sky blue, mauve, or tan. Ponies tied the fabric over high-ceilinged vans, high-sided ore haulers, and slat-sided flatbeds. I saw hewn wood, boxed fruit, and stacked barrels. Some wagons had rubber-rimmed wagon wheels instead of steel rimmed ones. Many of these were four pony heights in diameter, while others barely reached my withers—all in service of requiring the least effort from the pony teams pulling substantially more than their own weight.
Sparkling nebulous auras painted the wheels of the wagons that had no hitch or traces at all. I caught up and sampled one spell with my horn, trying to imagine and disambiguate the spell mathematics. Unicorn drovers cast Motivate, a bizarre and hard to follow transform of Levitate. It provided rotational force. Sure, one could just push with Levitate, but that became swiftly tiring. Motivate reciprocated, recasting itself until it wore thin. You could cast it repeatedly all day long, once you overcame inertia.
And figured how to make the confounded spell work!
Keeping this army watered, moving, and fed while ensuring swift repairs kept wagon trains profitable, where they survived the expansion of the Equestrian rail system.
I cantered along, searching for the wagon master. Ten Clydesdales pulled one long flatbed stacked high with giant barrels of liquid. None of them broke a sweat.
Wow.
I looked forward to days learning how the wagon trains worked, and to comparing it to the events in Sunset at the End of the Road. Maybe, I'd write the author about what I'd learned.
Which was something a rich foal with free time on her hooves might do. I sighed. I was leaving that behind.
Focus!
I found a trio of stereotypic white-canvas covered westward-ho wagons positioned mid-train. The appearance was a façade. Modern enchanted stone rods and magical welds held together a light frame of thin slats of wood laminate. Inside worked kitchen staff and somepony sewing a ripped tarp. I saw boxes of supplies. One pony poured liquid into small barrels she wore as saddle bags. Another scooped oats and caramel hay sticks into a clothespin line of Elk's Run branded black feed bags. The pale blue mare with peppermint-striped hair had to be the water mare.
A second blue mare with a flowing pink mane gave orders. I spotted her wagon wheel cutie mark, complete with a stick to roll it along. That cinched it—Miss Trotter, according to the name tag pinned to her long-tailed white linen vest. She'd stuffed her pregnant pockets with notebooks, screwdrivers, and pliers as well as red, yellow, and green reflective signal cards.
"Hi, I'm Starlight Starbright."
"Oh, hi."
I was a nose taller than she was. Grey hairs speckled her coat and hair. Magenta eyes regarded me, alighting on my work blues, the dark smudges, and sweated-up khakis, before returning to a half-completed check list held in a red nebulous aura as she trotted along, no lie, backwards with her wagon.
"I—I meant to meet the train in Sire's Hollow, but... work... detained me."
"I see. Is your pony cart or wagon catching up to us—?"
"No, that's not it."
"Don't usually take on passengers, don't ya know."
"I can help."
"Fully staffed. Mayfly! The right rear hub on Finest's cider wagon is looking a bit wobbly."
"On it!" cried a pony before a purple pegasus dove out of the wagon and soared back six wagons, to hover, tilting her head as she tried to get a bead on what her boss had spotted.
"You were saying?" Trotter asked.
"I can help. I can levitate two pony weight. I've mastered being able to plant Illuminate on multiple objects and it will last a full hour without me refreshing it."
"Huh? That'd have proven useful last winter, but we're overnighting in towns for the next week. Not much call for that."
The sweat on my fur cooled. I needed to join this train. I didn't know how to cook or repair wagons. Wagon trains were a business; businesses existed to earn money.
I pursed my lips and rummaged in my saddle bag. Keeping the flap down to hide the contents, I unlaced my thrown-away purse. No time to be haggling.
I levitated a gold bit in front of her checklist.
"Why didn't you say so?" Trotter asked. She inspected both sides, then bit it. Seeing my widened eyes, she explained, "There's a reason it's called a bit. Gold's a soft metal, just malleable enough to dent with your teeth. This is real, and this is business, don't ya know. If you wanna ride, be prepared to wash dishes, paint repairs, or stir soup. Walking along aside is free. Your meals are paid through Market's Vineyard if you help, Nana's Bucket if you don't."
"It's a deal!" I said, beaming.
I heard hoof beats cantering up behind me, then heard a familiar voice ask, "Milady?"
I shouldn't have reacted. I shouldn't have looked. I was a common worker drifting northward seeking better employment. No way I'd respond to somepony addressing a pony above my station.
Reflex betrayed me.
I looked back and saw a stallion wearing a dirty black bowler hat.
The tall elegantly-boned pony towered over everypony, but looked scrawny for a work stallion, especially in this wagon train. The unicorn's finely pointed muzzle and thin sapling-like legs were appropriate considering his name was Woodcutter. He supplied the manor with wood for its dozen fireplaces; he leased Oak Bluffs woods from the estate. As Grin Having's silvaculturalist, he managed the tracts, planting fast-growing trees with the aid of his earth pony staff and magic to replace what he cut.
He was Proper Step's buddy and a peer; they both served the estate. The two stallions played chess, according to Rock Scissors, my personal hoof-maid. I glanced at his axe cutie mark. He wore a blue denim work shirt with matching saddle bags. Rope and tools stuck out. He had tied his dapper black string tie just so.
The flatbed of logs I'd passed: His. I groaned.
"Countess Aurora Midnight, it is you!" He bowed while trotting. His stiff brown mane dropped over his right eye. He doffed his round brimmed hat with green magic matching his iris color. "What are you doing here?"
Trotter looked from him to me. She halted. I, Woodcutter, and the wagon train moved on—until she sidestepped to the other side, deftly avoiding the on-coming team and disappearing.
With my gold bit.
Not good.
"Milady, what are you doing?"
"I—"
"Proper Step warned me that you had some flighty ideas and were reading adventure novels he really regretted not taking from you. If you're supposed to be inspecting my holdings three days hence, that means you ought to be inspecting the Clover loop farms today, but you aren't, are you?"
The lump in my throat conspired to choke me. I couldn't speak.
"Young lady, Proper Step would insist that I escort you home this very minute."
"Your wagon!"
"My team knows what to do. I'll catch up this evening."
I shook my head. Vigorously. Like a foal. I couldn't. I wouldn't.
"Come now. Day's a-wasting."
"No. No!" I turned and ran.
He had considerably longer legs than I. He was relatively well rested, having not just galloped uphill. That, and, oh yes...
He had a rope.
When I ran into a hemp loop that deftly slipped around my head and tightened around my neck, I learned he knew how to throw a lasso. It tightened further. My blood throbbed around my neck; horse sense insisted I stop lest I be choked or be pulled unceremoniously to the ground like a bull by an arrogant rodeo star.
We stopped in front of each other as the wagon train, to my lasting humiliation, rumbled on by, each successive team of ponies looking either amused or perplexed.
Look at the runaway.
Did he really have to lasso her to keep her from running?
She must be much younger than she looks!
"You have me," I said, growling. "You will regret this day."
"Will I, Countess?" He shrugged. "Proper Step assures me you'll grow up and make a fine Earl. You'll make the Princess proud. You may laugh at your foalhood antics one day with one of my sons."
"In your dreams!"
"Celestia knows I laugh at my own peccadilloes." He turned his head and pointed downhill with his nose. "Best get it over with. My sire tanned my flank plenty of times. I'll tell you my favorite hijinks as we go."
"Spare me."
"As you please, Milady."
He led with the lasso. I closed my eyes as an ache increased behind them. Of course he did. I would in his position. He was undoubtedly right about Proper Step and what I would think ten years hence, left to Princess Celestia's diabolical brainwashing.
Oppressive culture fomented oppression in the next generation—don't ya know, as Trotter would put it. I felt oppressed. I felt frustrated. I had to save this, but didn't know how.
Trotting with my eyes closed, I felt occasional tugs. I worried about strangulation every time I slowed even a bit, but he kept me to the road without me having to look. After a few minutes, I couldn't hear the wagon train at all.
Like a foal, I'd closed my eyes and the wagon train teams had ceased to exist in my humiliation. As if.
Eyes open, I decided to keep up, if for no other reason but comfort. That made me conscious of the steel tang of male perspiration dried on his shirt. The breeze blew past him into my face.
On myself, I smelled the scent of bitumen—tar.
The loop of rope sagged until it was at knee height between us. He held the end tightly in his teeth, like an earth pony. Really, though, he was smart. One could Levitate only so long. Maintain-time for alternating frequency activation spells was directly proportional to magical strength. Able to lift two pony weight already at my age, I figured Woodcutter at his age well knew his weight-time limitations. I would have worried about tiring on the trip back to the manor.
I switched to the high-stepping walking gait Proper Step had insisted I learn since I might one day need to demonstrate it when attending festivals at court in Canterlot. One, two, three, four—
I stepped on the sagging loop, gripping the slip knot around my neck. I meant it as a prank. I had no hope of running, but was angry at being detained.
The unexpected jerk and forward momentum tripped him up. He fell forward, his jaw locked on the rope. Chin foremost, he struck the pavers with an audible crack!
I cringed, then gasped.
His bowler rolled in a circle on its brim, spiraling until it dropped beside the stallion who had collapsed unmoving to the grassy roadside.