by Pam Uphoff
***
Bail got back to the fort just before dark and found a royal courier taking his ease in the commandant's quarters. More used to impatience than indolence in couriers, Bail eyed the man uncertainly. The man's outrider, a youngster getting a bit of experience on the road no doubt, was asleep in a chair. Only their curb was alert, but the eye he turned to his superiors was indulgent. Bail overheard him talking to Gruff as he passed. ". . . women kept them busy all night."
Lieutenant Byson's footsteps hesitated, then resumed walking, stomping angrily as he followed Bail into the office.
The courier handed over the dispatch bags, failing to stifle a yawn.
"Long ride?"
"Fast ride, made it up here in ten days." The man stretched, and grinned.
Figured a courier would brag about speed. Bail had taken thirty, a necessity with foot troops and wagons. He opened the dispatches in reverse order, figuring their importance would be reflected in the urgency with which they'd been sent. "Travelers? Haven't seen any up here. There were some in Wallenton, but with a garrison there, they've no doubt been checked. Hmph, what a mess."
Next dispatch. "General Baring is on his way?" He calculated quickly. "Five more days. I'll take some of the men out to meet him, an honor guard, three days from now."
***
"Mostly and Likely are up at the Hot Springs, soaking up a bit of power, hoping to help any pregnancies along." Justice sighed. "Never is, well, rethinking how to deal with men. I suppose that lieutenant will come back through here; maybe she can apologize and start something up again. None of the three New Moons showed any sign of being able to touch the power."
Happy spoke up hesitantly. "I was talking with Never, talking about the history of our pyramid." She glanced apologetically at Answer and Blissful. "I told her how pyramids used to communicate, and sometimes their surplus people would get together and form a new pyramid."
"If you think we can find spare witches out there to join us, you're wrong, dear." Answer swiped at a tear. "There are no other pyramids."
"That's why Never wondered why we weren't having more than a single child each. We should plan to have excess, so we can split off a new pyramid, sometime in the future."
The other ten women shifted uncertainly, and finally they all shifted their attention to Answer. The oldest sister nodded slowly. "That's actually a good idea. At first, with so few of us to share the child-rearing . . . But now there are plenty of us. Any of you who wish another child should start hunting. We'll be getting a goodly number of soldiers through here, what with the fort; and a new pass." Her eye fell on Justice. "Remember, that man was a bad cross. Don't do it again."
Justice blushed and nodded. "Yes, Sister."
***
"General Baring?" Mayor Accure's brow wrinkled a bit. "Isn't he the king's chief engineer?"
"Yes. The king wants this trade route open as soon as possible, so they are going to come up and start repairing the old Road from here down to the flatlands. About the time they've managed that, we'll have the pass surveyed and ready for him to start the new road." The messenger was a polite young man.
"And, I suppose he's bringing his staff, and quite a lot of workers?" Old Lady Gisele, who rarely ever noticed the world outside her herb garden, was unaccountably interested.
"The workers will be lagging a bit behind. There will probably be six or seven officers and their curbsiders, coming in today or tomorrow. Captain Wullo and his officers and escort will ride down to meet him"
"Hmm." The mayor looked around the village, and gave a nod. "We should hold a dance in their honor."
Lady Gisele cackled. "Oh yes, since your captain slipped through without enough notice for us to fete him properly. I'll tell the Auld Wulf to send down some of his best wine."
Chapter Four
Early Spring 1352
Village of Ash
The grape vines looked good, growing fast in the spring sun on the north side of the canyon. No sign of mold, a bit of pruning and training needed, here and there. The Auld Wulf, the God of War, eyed the creatures that walked up the path. He picked up a dirt clod and hefted it suggestively. "They don't need your kind of pruning." He studied the black goats thoughtfully; natural goats would have been eyeing his vines. These were studying the lay of the land, then looking back down the trail. He stepped out to looked beyond them, to where the Tyrant Wizard of Scoone was arguing with the Goddess of Health and Fertility.
". . . I don't see any reason to, and frankly, Grandmother, I'm not sure I can change them back." The Sheep Man, they called him, here in the Valley. He'd broken the spell that had locked up his intellect fifteen years ago, but the chain spell still held his powers bound. Mostly. How much tyrant and how much wizard was left under there was impossible to say.
"They are people, not goats. How can you treat them like this?" Lady Gisele sounded exasperated. The goddess could probably pick apart the spell-webs on the goats herself. If she wanted to. The Auld Wulf suspected that she was more concerned with the Sheep Man's conscience than the wellbeing of the goat wizards.
The Auld Wulf interrupted. "They were as corrupt as powerful men can get. They can't be safely released." He wasn't altogether sure the Sheep Man should be released either. Yet . . . while there were a few scattered “natural” wizards, these eight goats and their master were the only trained wizards left in the entire world. The biggest one, Maleth, looked over his shoulder at the god, coldly malevolent.
The Auld Wulf wouldn't have wanted to test strength with the beast, nor magical strength with the wizard he had once been. In theory, being the God of War, the Auld Wulf could pull power from earth, wind and water. And Maleth, being a wizard, could source just from fire. But the wizards had grown up in a poisonous society full of magical assassins and back-stabbers. They probably knew more tricks of magical combat than he imagined existed.
"Come the rest of the way up and have a glass of wine, Gisele. Nil?"
The Sheep Man shook his head. "No, I need to shift the flock north. Got that?" He switched his attention to the goats. None of them would meet his eyes, and the smallest one ducked around him and trotted off to the sheep. The big one stalked after him and the rest tried to look as imposing as they walked around the man and out of sight.
Gisele sighed. "I wonder if they've learned anything from their experience as goats."
Nil had turned to follow, but cast a smirk over his shoulder. "How to eat grass."
The Auld Wulf laughed, and Gisele glared and threatened him with her cane. "It's not funny. Those wizards are a problem we're going to have to deal with eventually." She stalked up the path, letting her crone persona slip and taking up the matron's appearance. The Goddess of Health and Fertility was too angry to show her maiden aspect to him. Just as well. The God of War was as susceptible as any other man. Gisele walked out of the chill, into the front room. The tasting room he called it. Someone else had called it that . . . He sighed as the faint memory skittered away. The main problem with being a god was that he was entangled with the collective subconscious, the jointly held beliefs of everyone. He had trouble remembering things from before. Including not knowing before what. Before the collective subconscious decided I was the Archetype of the Warrior. And fit me to their mold, whether I liked it or not.
He handed the goddess one of his good wine glasses.
"How long have you had these? Since before the comet fell, if I remember . . . Surely you didn't bring them with you through the Exile?"
He nodded sharply. That was it. Before The Exile. He pulled the cork of a bottle of his favorite merlot and poured.
Giselle inhaled blissfully, and drank. "I'm concerned about the magic users. The witches are outcrossing and loosing strength, the mages are the opposite."
The God of War let the wine roll over his tongue, then swallowed. "I don't know that there is anything we can do about how inbred the mages are getting. I'm not going to start breeding people, like Nil breeds his sheep. I suppo
se we could encourage . . ."
She shook her head. "No, we really can't interfere. It always goes wrong, when we do."
"Thought you were doing just that, the way the witch children have all grasped power." He poured more wine.
"Well, that's just making sure the X chromosome with the witch gene on it is selected. It's not hardly interfering. But I'm running out of options with the mages; all of the young ones are either Beck's children and Coo's grandchildren, or the other way around."
"It's easy enough to bring new genes in. I'm more worried about the witches." The God opened another bottle and poured. "There are only seventeen of them. Only the three Crescents are even thinking about getting pregnant. Three babies in two decades is a disaster."
"Ha! Look at the wizards. Only nine of them left, and eight of them have been turned into goats. Of course they deserved it." She drank and held out her glass for more.
"I still think they look more like a cross between a gazelle and a demon." The god frowned at his empty glass. He poured out the last of the bottle and walked over to the rack for another.
"And they are getting old. The witches." Giselle held her empty glass out. "I suppose I could put a rejuvenation spell in your wine."
"Better add an aphrodisiac or it will all be for naught." He poured and set the new bottle beside the empties. "We could make a von Neumann's, self-replicating, multipurpose. Choose all the magical genes, eh?"
"And avoid duplications from inbreeding."
"If we screened for damage, repaired it, that wouldn't be such a problem."
"We still need a wider gene pool; just more babies won't do the trick." She frowned at her empty glass.
"How about making twins more likely?" He twisted the corkscrew into another bottle of his favorite year.
"A really good fertility spell would take care of that."
"How about ease of birth while we're at it? I hate long-term spells though: hard to store them."
"I think we should include a really good healing spell. Actually I've got several. We could use them all." Her wise nod was a bit wobbly.
"I'm almost drunk enough to see if it could actually be done." He filled his empty glass, and hers.
"Which is fortunately shy of being too drunk to manage it."
"Are you implying that I can't do it?" The challenge brought a gleam to his eyes. He turned and eyed the nearest oaken barrel.
"Well, making a molecular assembler to create the ribozyms of a healing spell is a large step past a simple spell to directly create them. One that can make multiple types is bound to be difficult. Especially if it has to duplicate itself at the same time." She set her wine glass down carefully. "I'll help."
"What other spells might be useful? We should make a list."
The Goddess of Fertility swept her hand grandly through the air. "Why bother? Just throw them in there."
***
Oscar hitched at the unaccustomed weight of the sword belt slung around his hips. A real edged sword, not the practice ones Harry drilled them with. Unfortunately Oscar knew carrying it was a sop to a boy missing a party, and he wasn't expected to use it on anything more dangerous than a poison snake. "I think they were just trying to get us out of the way." Oscar was the oldest of the male cohort, a week older than Bran, one of the mage children, a year older than Question, the witch girl.
Tivo, one of his foster brothers, agreed. “It's more fun out here anyway."
"If we didn't have to have the guuuuurls along." Theo sniffed dismissively.
Oscar didn't bother arguing; appreciation of girls was something you had to grow into. "Let's get to Two Oak Hill, we can see all the way down the west valley from there."
"If they're three days back of the officers, they won't be there yet." Bran pointed out.
"I wanted to see the knights." Fossi whined.
"They aren't that sort of soldier, and even if some of them were, they wouldn't have 'sirs' in front of their names, like in the stories," Oscar told the ten-year old. "That's an old myth."
"I wanted to stay and see if I could get laid," Bran muttered under his breath. "Juli and Fava got to stay."
Oscar gulped a bit at this information. "They're both sixteen now, aren't they?"
"Yeah," Bran leaned close and whispered. “Fava has the hots for you, she told me. And Juli, she's got, you know," His hands formed two hemispheres on his chest. "Dad says it's best if I wait till I'm eighteen and already have power. That's two and a half years."
Oscar kicked the ground, trying to ignore the stirring down there. Bran was going to be a mage, so maybe it was better for him to wait. But Oscar was an orphan, with no future except what he made for himself. "It's not fair. They just want us out of the way, so the adults can get into trouble and we can't." Funny definition of trouble, but they hadn't fled from their parents' murderer, from their favorite uncle, when they were nine years old . . .
"It's not trouble if you're married. Or a witch. I think Answer is getting worried about Never, Likely and Mostly. So they want the party to get a little wild." Bran tossed a hasty glance back at Question, Opinion and Particular.
"Let's find this engineering battalion quick and then we can get back."
"What's the rush?" Question trotted up, in brown as always, and pants instead of a dress. Her bow and arrows were on one shoulder, a pack over the other.
She didn't have much in the way of hemispheres, so Oscar just sniffed. "Some of us are grown up enough to want to hear news of the happenings out in the kingdom."
"And some of us are smart enough to find a bunch of drunken adults totally uninteresting."
She had a point there. He tossed his pack over his shoulder and started hiking.
***
The Sheep Man watched the dancers from a distance, not joining them. No, be honest. You're only watching one of them. He was being a fool. Justice's long black hair swung through the torchlight. He forced himself to walk toward the crowd. Old friends, women he'd seen grow from babes to matrons. Handsome young soldiers everywhere. Lady Gisele caught his eye, nodded encouragement. He didn't need encouragement; he needed courage. When he looked back at the dance, she was gone. He closed his eyes in pain. Gone off with a handsome young soldier.
He opened his eyes and looked around. There—no, that flash of blue was Never, smart as a whip and toying with a stuck-up noble of an officer.
"Maaah!"
He glanced down in surprise. "Dydit, what are you doing here?"
The black goat was looking after Never and her officer, shifting its weight and dropping its head to bring its horns into a more threatening position.
"Don't even think about it," he told the goat. "She's a witch, and a virgin. Probably kill you without noticing."
"Maaah!"
"Yeah, I know, she's pretty and smart."
"Maaah!"
"All right, but don't come crying to me tomorrow when everything's back to normal." He held out the bottle he was carrying. "Drink." He muttered under his breath, fighting the chain, he just wanted a block and a little illusion for the night . . . "Hey, leave me some. Damn!" He tossed the bottle aside. "All right, in about an hour you'll revert to human and start looking just like him, and it'll last till dawn."
"Maaah!" The goat ran off, improving the local atmosphere, and the Sheep Man hastily hunted down the smell spell in his mind and wrestled it down and out, for the night.
A breath of fresh air beside him. “I was beginning to think you weren't going to come." Her eyes were dark in the torchlight, their honey warmth gone dark and mysterious. She held out a glass of wine. "Something special of the Auld Wulf's. Harry said tonight was a good time to try it. It's delicious."
It was indeed. He savored the spells steeped into the aged wine. Lady Gisele and the Auld Wulf in combination. Deadly stuff this wine. What had they been thinking? Healing, rejuvenation, fertility and an aphrodisiac that only the God of War could have conceived of.
Damn good thing I trust them. He swallowed, to
ok another sip.
He reached out and stroked Justice's hair, and she leaned into him. It's just a spell. It's wrong to influence people! She tilted her face up and his virtuous resolutions crumpled as he bent and kissed her, slipped his arms around her. Whatever it took to get her past her reservations . . . again. He steered her toward his home, stopping occasionally for a kiss, for another sip of wine. Should have grabbed another bottle. He lived modestly, just him, all alone. He mostly lived in the meadows and hills with the sheep. He hadn't actually been inside for weeks. Just as well, it meant it was clean and fresh-smelling. Small, but all one room, so it actually looked slightly spacious. He'd imagined her here so often . . . Seven bottles of wine on the plank that served him as a kitchen. Thank you, Lady Gisele. Grandmother. But I don't think I need seven.
Justice had never been here. Their one night had been up at the witches' hot springs. She looked around, surprised perhaps by the colors. He'd been experimenting with magical dyes, recreating his Scoone past, or as much as he cared to remember. Infuriating that little magics like this were all he could do, now. Or maybe it was a blessing. He hardly knew.
He finished his glass. The first bottle was already open. He poured more, and filled Justice's glass.
"Where did you get all this?"
"Wallenton, mostly. Reminds me of home." He refrained from grabbing her, must not give her a reason to lash out or worse, flee. "I experimented a bit with some dyes, though."
"You've been here a very long time, haven't you?" She leaned on him, nearly fell. "I really haven't had that much to drink."
"Strong stuff." He leaned over and kissed her again, and they sort of migrated to the bed.
***
Never batted her eyelashes at Lieutenant Lord Byson Trehem. He showed his teeth in something she didn't mistake for a smile. "May I have to honor of the first dance, Miss Never?"
