There were 17 of us, armed with 10 Dawn Blades, a variety of conventional weapons up to and including a ballista, the pheromones of two succubi, and the assistance of an unborn demigod.
But we were ready, and eager to get started. All we were waiting for was the Goddess's next boon. Presently, while I was holding the slightly diminished Dawn Sword in my hand, a pinpoint of light grew in the center of the cross-guard, expanded, and dimmed to become a large diamond-cut ruby embedded in the hilt. Unlike the Dixie swords, that was new.
"Now what?" I asked aloud.
Little Magic replied in our minds, This is where it all starts to sound hokey, but it's a lot safer than killing the witches before you can break their hold over their slaves. The hokey part is, just like a talisman in some pre-Ruin doorstopper fantasy novel, you have to have faith that this will work—or it won't. This gem is going to become... well, call it a mana sink. Its whole purpose is to deplete the mental and chemical factors powering the Alfas' influence over their human slaves.
"Chemical factors?" I asked aloud. "Do you mean ferro-moans, like with the succubi?"
I felt a sharp sense of surprise as he replied, How did you...? You know what, forget it. I just got that image of your sword in heat, and I never want to see that again. Let's just call it mana. It's not, but it works the same way as in all those old games. Alfa witchcraft—
"Ferro-moans," I interrupted helpfully. Little Magic steadfastly ignored his father.
—enthralls the free will of its victims, removing all desire for a life outside of service to the coven. It also makes its victims unable to carry out complex tasks. Anyone ever heard of executive function? No? Okay, dumbing it down some more. Basically, the enslaved can only do the things their overseers tell them exactly how to do, step-by-step, and that includes eating breakfast and taking off their pants before relieving themselves. On top of this, it makes them apathetic about everything except what the witches want. They'll kill their own children before they'll disobey an Alfa's order.
Break this spell, and at the worst the humans will become confused and won't raise a hand against you. If you're lucky, some of them will be so consumed by rage when they realize what's happened to them that they'll join you in battle, and the succubi will solidify that alliance with their own magic.
"Definitely ferro-moans," I noted sagely. "S'linkitha told me all about those."
FINE, Father Dear, Little Magic said, and in my head it felt like he was gritting his teeth. Pheromones, for Mother's sake.
Okay. I know this sounds counterintuitive—that means weird—but Mother says the way to beat them is to concentrate your positive thoughts and a desire to be free into the mana sink. Upon exposure to the jewel, their spell—will you let me call it that, Father?—will automatically divert the majority of its power to filling the mana sink, until, ideally, it drains their spell dry—and that should release the humans. So wish really hard. When it pops out of the sword, it's ready to go.
The 17 of us assumed prayerful poses and thought at the mana sink. I pushed especially hard, and I'm assuming my wives and sons did as well, because it was barely five minutes before I heard a glassy clink and Icarus cried, "It popped, Daddyman!"
I took it in my right hand. It was warm, and somehow felt safe—like home, if that makes sense. "Now what?" I asked the air.
Little Magic replied, Once you have the Alfas concentrated in one place, someone has to deliver the gem.
Frieda raised her hand without hesitation. "I'll do it," she said. "You boys already said you saw olbytlas in the compound, yes?"
"Yep yep!" they chorused.
"Then I won't stand out. I'll infiltrate and deliver the gem."
Gration said dreamily, "You're so brave, Freddie."
We all turned to look at her, and Montana said gruffly, "Freddie? Since when are you a Freddie?"
The olbytla lass blushed.
Gray began helpfully, "She likes me to call her that when we—"
"Too much information!" I yelled, then looked around sternly. I knew the boys were practically adult despite being just a week old, but geez. "Let's get back to planning. Little Magic?"
Thank you, Father. And for the record, he was only going to say "talk." Gration is as much a virgin as I am. Gray puckered his lips and blew a kiss at his olbytla crush. To continue: once Freddie has delivered the gem to wherever the Alfas hole up—I suggest you place it somewhere on the building itself—we wait for the gem to break the spell and you all rush the Alfas at once. Then the boys can easily get inside and open the place up for the rest of you.
"Guess I should get going, and mingle with the other olbyts before you boys start herding the Alfs and the other cockroaches," Freddie said, and took a deep breath. "Time to walk into Mordor!"
"One does not simply walk into Mordor!" Montana replied, as if by ritual.
"Hide and watch!"
I had no idea what all that meant, and no time to wonder as Gration darted to her side and declared, "I'm going with you!"
She looked at him and said firmly, "No, Grayling. You have to help herd the bugs. And if anyone sees a pixie boy with me, they're going to ask some dangerous questions."
"But! But!"
"But?"
"It's not safe!" I could hardly believe it, but my tough Dixie son was openly weeping.
"It's the only way we can be safe, Gray. And you have your own job to do." She turned and walked through the high grass toward the Faire.
When she was ten yards out, Gration called desperately, "But you can't go! I love you!"
She stopped briefly, just long enough to toss back harshly, "Puppy love." She didn't even look back as she resumed her march.
Gration returned to me, his sword propped on his shoulder, his eyes dry but wide. "Heading out to take up my station, General Papa," he said in a strangled voice.
"Go, boys," I barked, and all nine took off in different directions. The Faire was more or less oblong, oriented slightly northeast to southwest. It had no walls, but we'd found that it was surrounded by the poles and tumbledown planks of what had once been a stout wooden fence, before the bitty swarms ate all the nails—an island of quaint civilization in a pecan and hickory forest. We couldn't gather round it in a perfect circle, given its shape, so some of the boys would have to move faster and go farther than the others to meet more or less in the middle, which was demarked by an odd tower studded with pegs, and what looked for all the world like a boat on stilts. We had decided that Bill, Gray, Fil, and Hermes, the largest and hardiest of the nine, would sweep in from the narrower ends. Fortunately, Little Magic was not only a tactical genius, he would be able to guide us all to the middle at the same time, so the Alfas wouldn't be able to slip through. I was manning the middle of the southern border, near where the entrance was.
Meanwhile, my wives would follow to catch any Alfas who tried to escape, and try to convince the non-humans to fight for us instead of the witches.
I settled in to wait, feeling a little sad for my cheeky Gration and his infatuation with Freddie. I knew he would do his job when the time came. He was a Hero Dixie, after all. And when this was done, there'd be plenty of pixie girls to fall in love with.
❖
Alfas, as it turned out, weren't very smart. They didn't have to be, since their slaves would do whatever they told them to without question. But they'd made no provision for controlling the olbytlas, who were impervious to their pheromones, nor the pookas, who could be brought out of it with a good, hard slap and couldn't be made to do anything against their natures, anyway. That left the sylvies a safe quantity—though the wolfin and moggies might have been a problem, had Freddie not done her job with the cunning and persistence I soon came to expect of her people. Turned out that the predator pookas responded well to authority, and didn't take well to learning they'd been hypnotized against their will.
That left the baseline humans, and she learned something about them that chilled me to the bone when Little Magic relayed it to me
. Not all the humans were helpless slaves. Some were collaborators. For reasons unknown, the oldest of the women were immune to their pheromones, and about half a dozen had decided it was in their best interests to make a deal with the Alfas to keep the others in line.
But they weren't just overseers; they were also Judas goats.
It seemed that human women in general were less affected by the Alfa "magic" than their men, and would sometimes attempt to fight when their men and children were taken for the Alfas to feed on. It was the job of the collaborators to calm them, to assure them their loved ones would be safe when they went to "serve the great ladies"—and to kill the few who broke out of the spell. In return they got decent food, clean clothing, and could sleep inside when it rained.
The very thought of such treachery filled me with fury, and I decided that if the quislings didn't slip away during the battle, they'd soon wish they had.
By the time we Dawn wielders were on the move, Frieda had already calculated that the Alf witches would make their stand in or around the stilt-boat, where she had already planted the mana sink. She had also begun arming the DTs who didn't already have weapons—sylvies, mostly—with her extra blades, hardwood gardening implements, and in some cases crude clubs studded with inset stone blades and flakes they scavenged from a pile of broken rock located behind one of the buildings. Apparently, the historical Faire had included flintknappers.
Montana stalked into the Faire to my left, between Dion and I, her ballista cocked and ready. Three of my wives would do the heavy fighting until the olbytlas and pookas could join us, and make sure that none of the Alfas and, hopefully, none of the quislings would slip away. I hated to leave that work to the women, but the boys and I had to herd the vermin with our blades. In any case, all the DTs were already warriors when they Stepped Through, and seriously, what baseline human was going to be able to stand against an armed giantess or centaur?
My Seventh Paramour proved my point when a filthy, screaming, naked man dashed toward us, wielding a luminium-enhanced hardwood sword. She loosed a bolt and pinned him to a massive live oak ten feet behind him. I'd never seen anything like it. Six hundred yards down the front line, Undine was also advancing, armed with a larger copy of my hand-sized crossbow, while Coulter was advancing from the opposite side, between Icky and Kay, wielding another. Slinky and Jenny were following behind us, Jenna with my short-bow, just in case she needed to slow down an escapee; when the mana sink had done its work, they would advance to pacify the human men with their own pheromones, if necessary. To her great irritation, I'd ordered Ava to stay behind with Isaiah's egg in a hidden place, and Slinky had reinforced my order.
I'd told all my warriors to let any unarmed people escape, save for the collaborators, if they tried. But it was already clear none would, at least not yet. Aside from Montana's shot, I'd already heard several screams as men were pierced with arrows or bolts. I doubted they would stop attacking even if they were badly wounded.
Our new armswomen joined us as we slipped forward into what was still known as the Crown Meadow, where most of the witches lived. The pookas and olbyts had already started hewing down the enchanted men as they attacked, trying to incapacitate rather than kill; but that was harder than you might think, especially when the men were under no such restrictions, and most of their weapons were enhanced with hardened luminium. Several pookas fell, most taking their foes with them, and several others were grievously injured.
By then, a veritable carpet of unpleasant brown beetles, ranging in size from smaller than my pinky nail to as long as that same digit, flowed ahead of us. It wasn't long before Gray and Bill scared up some larger vermin: two brightly-clad witches, who wore some sort of blue and yellow uniforms, and their drab, rag-clad servants. I could hear more screeching in the middle distance as we closed the circle. The boys and I had already tied wet rags around our faces bandito-style, though I doubted the witches could strike at us with their chemical wiles at a distance of more than a hundred yards.
I had hoped that any of the men who got far enough away from the Alfs would slip their noose, but Little Magic reminded me there was a mental component that wouldn't fall away unless the witches who had applied it either willed it away or died. I wasn't of a mind to give them a choice in the matter.
As I stepped into the open field east of a castle-like structure that had been called Yorkshire Tower, according to a milepost I passed, I saw Montana rush forward and raise her enormous crossbow to her shoulder. I heard the snap of the trigger, and the deep base note of the bowstring as it launched a bolt half as thick as my wrist. In a flash it had penetrated the center mass of the slower of the two Alfas, then passed through her to skewer the one running right in front of her. Both were dead before they hit the ground, their pretty uniforms stained red.
Have I mentioned that Alfas are stupid?
The Judas goats kept running, but something I'd been hoping for happened to three of the ragged men dashing toward us. Like all three had hit the same tripwire, they stumbled simultaneously and hit the ground, hard. "Don't kill those three!" I shouted to Montana and the boys.
They didn't have to. Before one of the men could rise—a boy, really, barely old enough to have a scraggly beard—one of the quislings stopped and plunged a luminium dagger into his back. He didn't rise again. The other two rose slowly as we advanced, looking around; then both remembered what the Alfas had done to them, what they had made them do, and rushed as one man toward a small building bearing the faded sign "Roasted Nuts." Two uniformed figures burst out of the building just as they reached it, and the older of the two men, who had scraggly red hair tinged with gray, immediately hacked at the neck of one Alfa, his sword catching halfway through; they both went down in a spray of arterial blood. The other man raised his sword to the other Alfa—
—and stood stock-still as she caught his eye and huffed a deep breath toward him. He began to lower his sword, clearly fighting her influence the whole way. He wasn't able to fight much, but it was enough. As the blade came even with his neck, he yanked it back and to the side with all his remaining strength.
The serrated gopherwood edge ripped his throat open, and he died free.
The witch survived him by less than ten minutes. A swarm of sylvie and wolfin women descended upon her with their makeshift weapons, and started hacking away. The only reason the Alfa lasted as long as she did was that they politely took turns with their blows, and deliberately made her suffer. I finally reached them, scattered them with a shouted "Enough!" and took the witch's battered head off with the Dawn Blade. I told myself it was no different than decapitating a chicken with a hatchet, despite the hag's human form, and given what they'd done to the people here, I've honestly never felt guilty about it.
She was my first sentient kill, though not the last.
We continued tightening our vermin-filled circle, and before long, it was no wider than two hundred yards, with the Alfas and their Judas goats standing defiantly around the stilt-boat, just as Freddie had predicted. We halted our approach as they screamed imprecations at us, waiting, and over the next third of an hour, Dionysus, Bellerophon, and Coulter were obliged to kill several men trying to protect their "ladies." The Faire's converted armswomen held off the rest.
Even if the human men on the battlefield hadn't suddenly fallen to their knees and cried out in horror and pain, we would have known when the mana sink finally overcame the Alfas' spell. The undertone of unease vanished suddenly, lightening our hearts. The fighting ceased, and the astonished witches, now revealed to all of us as the monsters they were, just stared at us as we stared back.
A giant of a man stood himself up, shaking his head, and approached our circle of warriors. His hair, a shaggy black mass, fell past his shoulders. His face was contorted in fury, but he held himself in check enough to demand, "Who commands this force?"
The boys and my wives all looked to me; and S'linkitha, who had quietly joined me along with Jenny, called out, "This man. Fell
Tobias is your rescuer."
I wanted to correct her, tell her my name was Tobias Fell, that Fell Tobias was just some creation of the Goddess's, but the man approached me; and to my surprise, his cheeks were wet. He put his right hand on my shoulder and said, "Bless you, Fell Tobias. I owe you my life." He gestured around at the other surviving men, women, and children, and shouted, "We all do!"
Then he lowered his head and wept unashamedly.
A clear female voice screamed, filled with hatred, "There are only five Alfa bitches in the circle! Where is she? WHERE IS THE SUN?" and an angry murmur buzzed through the crowd of former slaves, who were deployed in a loose ring around ours.
"In the safe room! Under the tower!" a cracked voice shouted, and an old human woman, one of the quislings caught in the circle, lifted her hand to point at the Climbing Tower, the edifice with all the odd pegs scattered over its surface. "Now I beg of you, spare me! I had no choice!"
Harem Scare 'Em Page 11
