Free The Proof House by K. J. Parker

everybody knew, stopped for nothing; they were explicitly allowed to ride down anybody who couldn’t get out of the road quickly enough, and the post-riders seemed to delight in taking every opportunity they could to exercise this privilege.
    ‘Three stops a day to change horses,’ the master courier told him cheerfully, ‘and two more at night; we take our food and water with us, and if you want a pee, you do it over the side of the coach. This all the stuff you’re taking?’
    Bardas nodded. ‘Just the kitbag,’ he said.
    ‘No armour?’
    ‘Sapper,’ Bardas explained. ‘We never bothered with it in the mines.’
    The courier shrugged and signalled to the outriders to mount up. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Just for once there’s a bit of space on the coach; nothing much going up the line today. You can sit on the box with me, or lie down in the back if you can find room; your choice.’
    Bardas climbed up, stepping on the horizontal spoke of the front wheel as he’d seen the courier do. ‘I’ll ride up front to start with,’ he said, ‘it’ll give me a chance to admire the scenery.’
    The courier laughed. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘Hope you like rocks, ’cos that’s all you’ll see till we’re past Tollambec.’
    The coach was a wonderful piece of work; wide and low at the front, enormous back wheels with thick iron tyres fitted front and back with sheaves of steel springs the size and thickness of crossbow limbs to float the chassis off the axles. ‘Corners a treat,’ the courier told him. ‘Next best thing to impossible to turn it over, unless you’re really trying hard. Built to last, too,’ he added, giving the side of the box a meaty slap with the side of his hand. ‘Well, they need to be, the amount of work they do. Bloodstream of the Empire, they call us.’
    Bardas nodded. In the back he could see jars of wine with fancy designs on the seals, bales of various expensive-looking fabrics, some pieces of furniture vaguely recognisable under the cloth they were wrapped in, one barrel of civilian-made arrows and three or four sealed wooden chests. ‘Essential supplies, that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘I can see the need for a system like this.’
    Once they’d cleared the camp, the courier whipped the horses up into a swift canter, which soon made the coach too noisy and uncomfortable for anything except sitting still and quiet. The scenery was, as promised, an endless array of rock faces. Just occasionally the coach would hurtle past groups of men and donkeys ostentatiously pulled in to passing places; they looked away and tried to flatten themelves against the rock as the coach went by, like sappers laid up in the mines.
    ‘You’re the hero, right?’ the courier shouted.
    ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
    ‘What? I can’t hear you.’
    ‘Yes,’ Bardas yelled. ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘Ah, well. Each to his own, I suppose,’ the courier roared, and the rocks bounced his voice backwards and forwards like children playing catch. ‘Wouldn’t suit me, all that crawling about in the dark.’
    ‘Nor me.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I said it didn’t suit me either,’ Bardas shouted. ‘Not my idea of fun.’
    The courier pulled a face. ‘You’re not supposed to say that,’ he roared. ‘You’re a bloody hero.’
    Bardas didn’t have the energy to rise to that. ‘I think I’ll lie down in the back,’ he shouted.
    ‘Suit yourself.’
    It was delicate work, edging down from the box and crawling across the cargo until he found a man-sized niche he could crawl into. Amazingly, in spite of the noise and the jarring movement of the coach, it wasn’t long before he was fast asleep.
    When he woke up, the courier was standing over him, grinning. ‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘First change. I’d stretch your legs if I were you; long haul, the next stage.’
    Bardas grunted and tried to stand up, something that proved to be harder than he’d expected. By the time he’d got back enough feeling