There were wizard and witches who could hurl fire from their fingertips, or call lighting down from clear sky to smite their enemies. Jocasta had never had much a knack for battle magic, it took alot of time, training and focus that always seemed better spent on running away. Sigilry, enchantments, and alchemy were where her modest talents lay, but her greatest talent was that she always thought outside the box. As she reappeared behind the line of mercenaries she was already reaching into her pouch.

“Don’t think that your tricks will save you, you think we are without wizards?” Verholt shouted, glancing towards one of the mercenaries who was already muttering and gesturing. Adjusting her aim to the handily pointed out mage she pulled a glass orb from her pouch and hurled it at the mans head. Werholdt swatted it aside with his shield instinctively. The glass exploded and greenish gas bloomed out of it like a lump of chalk hit by a hammer.

“Sorr…ry!” Jocasta concluded, reappearing by the treeline before the last syllable left her lips. The mage was shouting and retching, trying desperately to rub at his eyes. Werholdt was not much better, staggering away from the essence of skunk she had just doused them with. A pair of crossbow bolts whisked past her, close enough to pluck at her cloak. She let out an eep and vanished again, more by accident then design, appearing back behind the treeline. More crossbow bolts crashed through the trees, aimed more or less blindly, but no less lethal for that. Of Beren there was no sign, but she suspected she had sown enough confusion with her trick that he had been able to make it to the treeline on the opposite side of the road.

 

“Kill them! Kill them!” one of the mercenaries was shouting, which instruction did not predispose her to wait around while they pulled themselves together. More bolts whistled passed and she belatedly realized that useful as it was, a bright red sarong wasn’t exactly the best choice for blending into a snow dusted forest. She turned and ran deeper into the woods, each time she reached a tree or ticket that blocked her path she flickered through it, covering ground far faster than her pursuers could manage. The sounds of pursuit died away and she turned in what she thought was the direction of the road, instead she came across a small gulley with a partially frozen stream at the bottom. She clambered down the side and skipped across the icy rocks to the other side without incident. No road to be found and no Beren either. She must have gotten turned around at some point during her flight. She considered her options. She pulled a small brass sphere from a pouch and hung the charm around her neck. An intricate map was etched into its surface, made by a serf who had never left his masters estate in Vrettonia. Scrying attempts would invariably report the wearer as ‘by the windmill’ or ‘in the old trout pond’ somewhere far to the south. That would prevent the now skunk smelling mage from finding her, in the event he was able to work a spell and he had something of hers he could use to work it. Beren didn’t have any such protection however and it seemed reasonable that if he couldn’t find her he might try and find her companion.

 

“Hrmm,” she pondered, then knelt down by the side of the stream and scraped up a double handful of half frozen mud. She pulled one of the coins the Master had given them from her pouch and kneaded the mud around it into a roughly humanoid shape, then used a couple of dried berries from her pouch to fashion crude eyes before picking up a twig and making a number of small markings in the compacted mud. A clay poppet with ridiculously chiseled abs stood up and brandished a miniature axe made of a twig and a small shard of river stone. It took a couple of steps and planted itself between here and the way she had come as though ready to defend her from an army of giant sized mercenaries.

“Oh knock it off,” she scolded the miniature, then made a gesture along the river bank.

“Thata way,” she encouraged. The poppet gave her a disapproving look.

 

“I have a plan here Berry-en, so beat it,” she told the thing. It shrugged helplessly and then began to run along the riverbank in what she hoped was a more or less random direction. Tracking spells now thoroughly confused she looked around for landmarks and discovered she was, indeed, in a forest. This less than helpful datum established, she set off down the gully in the opposite direction to her decoy.