"Yeah, I don't know about bringing what appears to be a beheaded corpse into town. People might get suspicious," Stephanie replied to Vert, shrugging, "can you not, like, tie your head to your neck with a scarf or something? That's close enough to human that people probably won't get too suspicious. You can borrow one from the back. Or buy it if you want to keep it. Five silv-"

Stephanie winced as she heard a thud followed by a loud groan in the back. He was alive. Well, there went that plan.

Then again, the optimal solution would probably be to just kill [i]everyone[/i] and leave their corpses to rot in the wood for the guard to find. Maybe leave signs of a bandit attack. She was, herself, not nearly as important as anyone else here. She was only really wanted by association, so she wouldn't have to worry about any resources spent for her capture.

The optimal solution wasn't, however, always the right one.

She winced once again as the wizard began shouting, probably nearly deaf due to the powerful thunder, otherwise he wouldn't be so loud. She leaped angrily back into the wagon and covered his mouth with her hand.

"Hey, old man," she growled at the mercenary in front, "keep us on course a minute."

She then turned to look back at the wizard. He seemed weirdly calm, and it kind of freaked her out. Maybe he accepted his inevitable departure. She didn't pretend to care for more than a minute.

"Not so loud," she hissed into his ear, "we're in the forest outside the city. Some stuff happened. I won't name names, but there's probably a manhunt out for us. Again. We're heading to th'village to the north to rest, and then to a larger city from there. Luckily, they probably think we're too dumb to bring a whole wagon into the forest, so we should have some time before they catch up."

George, meanwhile, headed straight on, unperturbed by rain or sleet or lizard. Truly a paragon of what all horses some day aspire to be. He trotted quickly and precisely, with no wasted movements, much like a master swordsman.