Anselm caught up to them, in the end, not through cleverness but through the far more reliable method of simply being patient, and they had perhaps four minutes' warning before his men closed on the river crossing outside Plauen.
"Riders," Isfrid said, already turning the coach horses hard toward the water. "That's Inquisition cavalry, Faust, not bandits."
"Give me some time," Faust said, shuffling through his silver box of Tarot. "Get us to the ford."
"What do you mean?!" Isfrid screamed.
"Just do it!"
The river at this crossing ran high and black under a moonless sky, its current fast enough that the local ferryman had refused to cross after dark for any price Faust had offered him that afternoon — which was, in retrospect, information Faust perhaps should have weighted more heavily before choosing this exact road to travel after dark.
He had, at least, the sense to know which card he needed before the horses' hooves even touched the water.
'Chariot, please, Chariot!' he thought, closing his hand around the deck three more times. "Damn it!"
Faust closed his hand around the deck once again.
They were getting nearer and nearer to black waters.
"Uncle, are you sure..."
"SHUT UP AND LOOK AT THE ROAD!"
[VII — THE CHARIOT]
The card came warm and immediate to his fingers, and the moment it did, the entire character of the crossing changed. The current, which should by every law of nature have swept the coach's wheels sideways and dragged them under, simply — didn't.
The Chariot burned against his fingers.
The horses found solid footing where the riverbed should have been treacherous silt. Isfrid, hauling on the reins with white-knuckled effort, felt the coach answer his direction with an ease that had nothing to do with his own strength and everything to do with the singular, unshakeable will pressing forward from the driver's bench beside him.
"What—" Isfrid started.
"Don't stop," Faust said through gritted teeth, the effort of holding the effect showing now in the sheen of sweat across his brow despite the cold. "Don't turn!"
'The moment we doubt the road, the current takes us,' Faust decided to leave this words to himself.
They crossed in what felt like both an instant and an eternity, the black water roaring past on either side without ever once closing over the wheels, and hit the far bank with a jolt that nearly threw them both from the bench.
Behind them, Anselm's riders reached the crossing moments later and, more sensibly than Faust had, refused to attempt it in the dark.
Faust released the card the moment solid ground was beneath them, and felt the full weight of the crossing crash back down on him all at once — his hands shaking now, his knees suddenly, thoroughly unwilling to hold his weight.
He sat down hard on the coach's step and let himself, for exactly one breath, look considerably older than thirty.
"That," Isfrid said, staring back across the water at the frustrated shapes of Anselm's cavalry, "was extraordinary."
"That," Faust corrected, once he'd found his breath again, "...was fucked up."