"Where! Where!?" I shouted, and in my mind, I heard Little Magic's solemn voice. Father, Queen Isengrid's herd is under attack. Please meet me at the South Gate. I have informed the giants and faunlets. Two of the Elves, Gandifyn and Brandyn, will attend me for... educational reasons. Please help me protect them.
"I... Yes. Yes, of course I will." I turned to my wife. "It's the Isengrid tauras. They're under attack. I need my armor, and you're faster than me. Can you meet me at the South Gate with that and my weapons? Please, love."
She got up and ran toward the armory without a word.
When I met the others at South Gate, Coulter was there already, wearing her own armor and weapons, and carrying our camping kit on her back. I said nothing; she was a warrior, so of course she would want to come, even seven months pregnant. As we approached the gate and I began to shrug on my armor, I realized that the others were already there, staring at a small glowing figure.
"Eos? Is that you? You look... different."
He looked like an Elf, only five feet tall and somewhere around sixteen or seventeen—thirteen Old Years, I guess. His ears were pointed and his wavy hair was up in a high ponytail, which cascaded like a golden waterfall past his shoulders. At least he wasn't wearing a loincloth; no, he wore full leather trousers, though his chest was bare and he was muscled heroically. A bow and a quiver of arrows were slung over his shoulder.
It's me, Dadday. Just trying on a new look. It seems to work for the Elves, though I thought the near-nudity was a bit much.
"Ha! Good thing." Mentally I told him, Keep that look for when you hit 21 or so, I sent back. The girls will adore you, and like Mama Montana says, in no time you'll be hip deep in pu—
"Ahem," my demigod son said, and if he blushed, he didn't give his audience enough time to notice before plunging on. "Thank you all for your prompt arrival. I regret to inform you that your allies of the Isengrid minotaur herd are under attack. If you will follow me precisely, in single file, we can all be there in half an hour. Gandifyn and Brandyn, attend me, and remember well what you see."
As we had the day we rescued Papa Toméz, we lined up and followed Little Magic's trail, and again he bent space and time to get us there to help defend Isengrid's tauras faster than humanly possible. Nonetheless, I felt that foreboding tightness in my chest and throat again, and I was convinced we were going to be too late to do anything more than bury their remains.
The trek, which should have taken us days, was over in a little more than 30 minutes, and we found ourselves in a cleanly-mown prairie where the Isengrid herd had taken the grass down to stubble as far as the eye could see in one direction; minotaurs required a great deal of forage to survive. In the opposite direction, I could see that the grass started up again about half a mile ahead, a waist-high rippling sea dotted with occasional stands of mesquite and scrub-oak. A few flames still guttered fitfully in that direction, remnants of taura campfires. I had no doubt that the attackers had used that sea of grass against the tauras, slithering through it like serpents to strike. Little Magic told me mentally that we were about 35 miles south of Icarus Township, nearly into the territory claimed by the so-called Scholastic Empire of Wayko.
It's worse than you fear, Father. Much worse. Brace yourself. Aloud, Little Magic stated, "My brave colleagues. Warriors, young and old. Sons of Toméz. I have halted our company one-half mile short of the battlefield. I must warn you of certain things before we proceed. It is my sad duty to inform you that those who attacked the Isengrid tauras did so with lightning speed, performed horrendous acts, and left before we even got started on our way. When we advance, you will see atrocities worse than any of you, even the eldest, have ever faced in either world.
"Know that this is the first action in a war that Icarus Township and its allies do not want, but that we must wage with the utmost solemnity and ruthlessness. You may have to do things and order things that will haunt you for the rest of your lives. You will have no choice. You will understand why in a few moments, Goddess help you. I beg of you, try to restrain your anger. Now: follow me."
Little Magic set off at a trot, not using his powers this time, and we followed. In moments, we found ourselves amidst a blood-soaked scene that would rival any slaughterhouse. To my great sadness, all the members of the tribe had been murdered; and to my great horror, there was very little left to bury.
Because, you see, when I compared the scene to a slaughterhouse, I was not exaggerating. The enemy had literally butchered the poor taura like they were animals, from the youngest to the eldest, and had taken the bulk of their flesh and organs with them—no doubt to serve as food. Whoever had done this was subhuman, for they had treated these proud women as less than human. As livestock.
Worse, they had even split open the pregnant tauras' bellies and taken the unborn bulls in whole. My children. The Elves' children. Taken to serve as VEAL!
When I realized that, I stabbed the Dawn Sword into the ground, fell to my knees, and screamed at the sky. Then I wept, accompanied by Gandifyn, Brandyn, and to my sadness but not my surprise, by my wives Montana and Coulter. The rest of the company began gathering the woefully meager remains of Isengrid and her tauras, and prepared to dig graves with their plastic quartermaster shovels as they tried not to be sick. Little Magic waved them away, and with a gesture, turned the remains of the Isengrid herd into fine silver dust that wafted away in the wind. "They have gone to our ever-merciful Goddess," he said hollowly.
Five minutes later, the faunlet Puck, mother of my first satyr son, Lysander, laid a swatch of cloth before me. It was a patch bearing the snarling face of a bear. "I recognize it," she told me. "In our world, there was a center of learning called Baylor University. This was their totem; they called themselves the Bears. Their home town was called Waco. Does this sound familiar?"
"The next political entity to the south is called the Scholastic Empire of Wayko," I said blankly.
"Yes," said my son Eos. "Once a proud center of learning, now a nest of cannibals. The Isengrid herd is not the first they have preyed on, our Goddess has learned." He looked at me and pronounced, "They must be exterminated, root and branch, by order of our Goddess. But they number more than thrice as many as you and your allies can muster. You are not yet ready, but it must be done. Our Deity commands it. This shall be your primary goal until the Waykans no longer exist.
"My brothers the Dixies have already located your cache of air-guns. The cobbers Ganglee and Axionyu have already drawn up the plans for an air compressor. Serafina McGriff thinks she can weaponize nitric acid and cyanide with some help. And though I shudder to say it, you must have more Dixies. Many more. You know how to make them.
"For the final key, you must seek out your Old-Father Trent. Conquer Hamiltown and bring it into the fold. Our Goddess wants these monsters wiped from the face of the planet by year's end... lest you incur Her wrath."
I stared at my unborn son for a long, long time, shaken to my very core, before I managed to say, "The Deity's wish is our command, Eos son of Aurora. It will be as you say."
I weep even now, as I consider the things we had to do in order to destroy the Waykans. What I had to do to the entire family of the Provost, and the havoc we wrought upon their adult population of 2,013 guilty souls. I will never, ever forget. And though I would prefer it never be written in the history of the Commonwealth of Icarus, or Tejas, or the Reconfederated States, to leave it out would be an act of cowardice of the highest order. I may be a monster who lived up to his name, but I refuse to be a coward, no matter how I shudder and rail at the fates, and yes, even my beloved Goddess, because of what I had to do. Because of what I did.
But although my stomach clenches still at the very thought of it now, that lay in the future as my warriors and I stood, forlorn, in the remains of the Isengrid herd's camp. And if it scarred me, know that it scarred my son Little Magic, the demigod Eos, far more, even before we took up arms against the Waykans; because he could see the future, all the many fu
tures, and there was no other option. Except one, and it was only partial, and nearly as unthinkable.
When human eats of human, the cannibal cannot be suffered to live, whatever their justification. Eos knew this, and what it meant hurt him more than anything any person, divine or mortal, could have done. With an angry wave of his hand, the sky split open, and suddenly we stood outside the south gate of Icarus Township, lessened by what we had experienced and learned on that saddest of evenings.
The Elves Gandifyn and Brandyn, who were really just infants, were still weeping as they sought the solace of their brothers and their father.
When I looked to Little Magic, he had sloughed off his Elven appearance for the toddler-in-overalls manifestation I had first seen when he warned me we needed the Red Cap Serafina; and though his Glory still shone bright, his cheeks were wet with tears. I stepped forward, knelt, and embraced him as he sobbed, crying, "Dadday, oh Dadday, how can I? How can we?" until, with a flash, he was gone, back to his Divine Mother.
"How can we indeed?" I asked, because root and branch meant everyone. All of them. Not just the adults. Root and branch meant the teenagers. It meant the children. It meant the toddlers. It meant the babies, right down to the newborns.
"How can I?" I asked myself again, and I stayed there, on my knees, late into the night, thinking of my murdered, unborn sons and nephews, and wondering how I could possibly murder children myself. It was hours before I could bring myself to go home to my own wives and child.
Chapter Eight
So now I knew the significance of the air-gun dream and why it mattered, though I had no idea Who had sent it to me. I just wished I had paid more attention to it earlier. By the time I got with Gray the next morning, they'd basically figured everything out. Turned out the tough, sticky clay of the local waterways was probably the best thing we could have chosen to seal our glass spheres, short of the rubber no one knew how to make anymore. The engineers pointed out that we didn't have the right trees for that, anyway.
They found the former paint-gun terminal under the remains of a large oak that had fallen at least a decade ago, which was why the Alfas and anyone else who had tried to occupy the former Scarborough Faire had never found it before. It contained 64 plastic and Fiberglas guns that had been made specifically to fire paint pellets using compressed air; the remains of 20 wooden and steel guns that had been made to fire tiny metal pellets at a rapid pace; and another 12 intact wood-and-luminium guns that did the same. The good news was that Petra and her artillery experts thought they could reverse-engineer the wood-and-luminium slug-throwers with enough metal and a hot enough fire. They figured the glass furnaces might be hot enough, if nothing else was.
They also found hundreds of cylindrical fiberglass containers that were built to hold compressed air. Some were still charged. There were tens of thousands of paint pellets. Some had hardened into little rocks, so we kept them as possible lethal missiles. Some were still squishy with liquid paint.
I was informed by Little Magic later that day that his Mother was prepared to provide enough of what she called "aluminum" for the manufacture of almost a thousand air guns, enough to arm all our people, and enough Dawn steel to make Dawn blades for over 500 Dixies. Little Magic ended his message with, As distasteful as it is, Father, you know how to make more Dixies quickly. Unfortunately, there will always be a need for them here on in as you take more territory. And you will. You'll have to. Mother says don't argue, you need a larger population to occupy Wayko as it is.
What was it with women just slapping me down and ordering me around? If I didn't get all the comforting I could handle, I would have gone on strike by now. I did spend a lot of time mentally pleading with the Goddess not to force me to become a child murderer, but she never answered.
As for becoming a genocide in order to expunge a cannibal group... well, that I was willing to do if I had to, especially after seeing what they had done to Sif and Isengrid's people and to our unborn sons. I was hopeful to the point of near-certainty that I could find a way to save the Waykan children, who were surely innocent despite what their elders had done, but that was cold comfort.
Speaking of comfort, most of my wives would be giving birth soon, and my two new harpy sons Davin and Trent would hatch, so this was a terrible time for me to be waging war on a group of educated cannibals. But my Goddess, my "Zeroeth Wife," needed me; and I would never say no to She who forever ruled my heart. Even if She hadn't been willing to rain Her wrath down upon me if I did.
I just didn't know if I could live with myself after I extirpated the Waykans root and branch. That idea did not sit well with me, and I didn't know how I was going to ever make myself do it. I knew the pixies of Clearwater Hive were probably bloody-minded enough to handle it, and any Dixies we had off them might be as well, but... children. How could I kill someone else's children, even to save my own?
I spent a lot of time alone during the following days — as my herders separated out their fattest livestock, the engineer cobbers and sylvies began building the prototype air compressor, and the small-race glassblowers started to perfect their sphere-blowing process — just sitting alone in my Fathering Chamber and hidden recesses in the Township, thinking about that. It was during one such period a few days after Eos had handed down his Mother's edict that I felt his presence creep into my mind.
I waited five minutes before he spoke in my head: Dadday.
"Little Magic."
We can't, Dadday.
"I know. I feel it would make us as bad as them."
Mother says it would be like killing cockroaches.
"Children are not cockroaches, son."
Mother says nits make lice.
"Human beings are not insects, no matter how depraved."
I am aware of that, Dadday. Too aware.
"Then what can we do? I don't want to go down in history as a child-murderer."
There's nothing you can do without disobeying Mother, Dadday. Even you cannot fight a Goddess.
"I suppose not."
But I may have a way, Dadday.
I sat up straight, eyes wide. "But you just said..." I trailed off as I realized what he had in mind.
There was a bloom of light in front of me, and Little Magic was suddenly sitting there cross-legged in his handsome Elf guise, looking a little older this time; perhaps twenty or twenty-two new-years, old enough to be a man in this brave new world that had such wondrous people in't. He looked haggard as he whispered, "Only a god can fight a goddess, Father."
"You're a demigod, Eos. Or you will be. Not a god."
"That can change. It would delay my birth, of course."
"How long?" I asked, my mouth dry.
"By years. Assuming Mother ever forgives me."
"And if She doesn't?"
"Then it has been a fine thing to have known you and my brothers, Dadday."
My eyes filled with tears. "What are you saying, Little Magic?"
"That a Goddess has full control over her reproductive system, which means she can end pregnancies at will."
I stared at him. "But She's a good woman, a wise and benevolent Goddess. She wouldn't—"
"Father." His voice was gentle as he interrupted me. "Mother is Divine. She is not fully understandable in human terms. She has existed simultaneously for an epoch, and yet for only a few decades. And," it was here his voice broke, "I would not be the first time. Before she became your Goddess, before she entered this realm of existence, she made a mistake with another Deity she thought she loved... and she rectified it."
I couldn't speak.
"Don't worry, Dadday. You will remember this, and you and I can speak of it, but I will not let her see this knowledge or anything related to it in your mind. We will find a way to save the children of Wayko. I promise. Your soul is worth it."
And then he winked out; and as I'd been doing so often of late, I wept.
I couldn't kill those children. And my Divine son wouldn't allow it.
&nb
sp; For that, he would probably die.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, I summoned Apollo to my office. Aside from Gration, he was the most level-headed of my Dixie sons, and the eldest. I had a special task for him that he was well-suited for.
I had already discussed the matter with my wives, and though they found it distasteful, they knew it was necessary; and besides, it was the will of the Goddess. It was also something I saw the wisdom of, and had no intention of fighting Her on, though I too disliked the idea. The first time it had occurred, I had been raped. Papa Toméz had also experienced rape, at the hands of the Alfas. I would not allow that to happen to the Elves.
When he came in and settled on the perch at the head of the conference table, Apollo showed no surprise at seeing Papa Toméz there, along with his six Elven sons, Gandifyn, Brandyn, Andruíl, Telemond, Sínaloí and Genewín: All eight big-race Fathers of the Township. "Hello, everyone," he said brightly, as he folded his hands primly in his lap.
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