Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods

by Pam Uphoff

  1 September 2117

  Wolf eyed the three boys, suppressing a smile. They aren't boys any more than I was at that age.

  "We need to learn to hunt, and we noticed you were lacking some crucial equipment."

  Christopher Dunmeyer had emerged as the leader of the kid pack. He, Lance Vesely and Mathew Lindon looked stubborn.

  Wolf swapped glances with Romeau. "I've got to admit that actual hunting rifles and shotguns do seem like sensible sorts of things to bring on a hunting trip."

  Romeau snorted. "Longer range than magic. Less scary than your military weapons. Guess we'd better bring them along."

  Wolf enjoyed the hike out into the wilds. He followed a thin game trail, pointing out the most obvious signs, hoof and paw prints, scat, to the boys and assigned them each a direction to concentrate on watching. They paralleled the stream that ran through town, staying above it, and occasionally climbing a tall hill for a longer view. The rifles and the shotgun were examined, demonstrated. They weren't carrying much ammunition, but targeted bushes at fifty feet received a pair of bullets from each boy. Out on the plains they could see several small herds of several types of antelope, and a distant herd that was probably zebra. Heavier trails led down to the stream, and they settled down, downwind of one and waited to see if dinner would come to them. The two young horses stayed close, dropped their heads to graze. Can’t beat that for looking innocent.

  “You three are all eighteen?” Wolf looked the boys over. They all glowed to his inner vision.

  “I just turned seventeen.” Chris frowned. “That doesn’t matter any more.”

  “Well, it does, but not necessarily for the same reasons. You are all three able to gather power, and use it for a few things. Your strength will grow with age. Let's see if you can do a few things that will be useful for hunting.”

  He and Romeau took all three boys through relaxation and focusing exercises. Recalling the old chants brought up flashes of personal memory. Of learning the chants . . . no. Inventing the chants. We were the first, but we won’t be the last.

  The boys knew several of the physical effects spells. Chris was impressive, with both physical and mental shields. So Wolf turned to the mental effects spells.

  Unnoticeable. Sleep. Fear. Those three were enough for now.

  Magic lessons were pushed to the back as the afternoon sun drove animals down to the stream to drink. Sable antelope, wildebeast, impala. The zebras were only partly striped, and he couldn’t remember the right name for them . . . The boys picked targets, took aim, and on whispered command fired. Wolf and Romeau took out one apiece from the fleeing animals. Chris glowed at his clean kill, and Lance paled as the Wolf quickly finished off his wounded impala. Matt’s target had gotten away clean, and apparently uninjured.

  With four good sized carcasses, even field dressed, the young horses received quick lessons in dragging crude frames. They expressed trepidation with head, neck and ear motions, but hauled the meat back toward town without a single bucking fit.

  Romeau eyed them. “I think they understood your explanations.”

  “Don’t all horses?”

  The boys all grinned. Romeau shook his head. “Even I remember that much!”

  Old Wolf shrugged. “Well, these two did. C’mon. If Harry can tan these hides, we ought to make some proper . . . things to drag.”

  “Travois. If we don’t find oil, we’re going to be trying to figure out how to make wagon wheels pretty quick.”

  After a mile, Old Wolf dropped back and discouraged a pack of hyenas from following them home. They dragged in the south gate as the sun touched the horizon, and turned the meat over to a small army of butchers and cooks. Several families were talking about cooperatively building a proper hygienic butcher's shop. The Bus Girls had built a big outdoor grill from rock, with clay to plug the gaps, topped with metal grids as large as they could coax from the small fabber.

  With over a thousand people here, the antelopes wouldn’t last long.

  “We’d better count on hunting every day, and training the kids.”

  Wolf met Romeau’s eyes and nodded. “Let’s split them up, magic and not. So they all get the lessons they need. And co-ordinate with any other hunters, so we don’t interfere – or worse – with each other.”

  Between hunting, tending his new vineyard and karate lessons, Wolf almost didn’t notice how much time Muriel spent in his vicinity. And how attractive she was.

  ***

  "It’s a genetic mutation, deliberately bred for. Domestic cattle don't need horns."

  Ira Penner was a farmer and a rancher. In addition to the six cows that had survived the first predators, he now had seven calves. Polled Herefords, red and white.

  Iris Penner was beautiful. And also a witch. Her older brother had had a few problems fixed, but no power gene, no special suites of strong teeth and intelligence. Their parents had gotten a bit more daring with their second child. Then, when the prejudice had set in, they'd moved, kept quiet about the kids' engineering. The government had still found them.

  "I thought I'd just show Iris the signs, so as she matures, she'll know when she's ready for lessons." Chris tried to look casual and friendly as he turned away from the cows.

  Her parents frowned at Chris. They hadn't invited him into the little log cabin behind them. Once the chatter turned from cows to magic and daughter, the welcome mat for the young man who'd stopped to admire the big cows had instantly disappeared.

  Ben, the brother, scowled. "There no such thing as magic, and it doesn't get the chores done. Iris goofs off enough as it is. She don't need a swelled head."

  The mother sighed. "All the boys chase after her, no wonder it's turned her head."

  Ira snorted. "And anyone with any sense will breed those bad genes out. Iris won't be dating any of you so-called magicians."

  Iris rolled her eyes. "Daddy! He's just showing me some ways I can do more work."

  "And stay away from those 'witch' girls. You're a good Christian, not some devil worshipper. Everything that boy just told you? You couldn't do it. So remember. You can't do it, so stop thinking about it." Ira split a scowl between Chris and his daughter.

  "I thought you like that nice Harding boy? He's got horses and cattle, both." Her mother chimed in. On the wrong side, unfortunately.

  Iris's eyes lit. "Oh yes. I want a horse."

  Chis wished her eyes would light up like that for him. A horse? If she wanted a horse, then he'd just have to catch a wild one and tame it for her.

  Chapter Nine

  15 September 2117

  The gardens were still producing like mad. The "Compass" of the Wolf, Romeau, Derry, and Mark with various teenage boys had figured out how to make it rain, and even better, how to make it stop.

  "Chris and Lance are strong enough to lead their own Compass, pretty soon. Matt and Tyrone are good too. Young Dane is the surprise. He's good at figuring things out, he was a science nerd in school, knows all about weather. He's not the strongest mage, but he sure makes a group effective." Wolf paced, stared out at the dark clouds overhead.

  "It's all air pressure, heating volumes of air so it starts rising, pulls damp air in off the lake and voila! Then we do the same further off, so it's pulled away from us. It's quite a trick, none of us can do it alone. We'll show you, and maybe you can pass it around to other villages, if you can find at least four men with power genes." Romeau smirked a bit. "Gisele is a bit miffed that her Triad can't do it."

  Harry bit his lip. "Anyone can do the pest spell, but the fertilizer one works best for women. Do you suppose . . . no, it's probably just a matter of the small sample size. Probably we'll all have strengths and weaknesses."

  Romeau grinned. "Or witches and magicians may be different things altogether. I feel like I'm living in a storybook, except when I forget and think this is all I've ever known. I don't have a problem remembering things since we got here. But everything before is a bit slippery." Romeau was in high demand. He'd per
formed five marriage ceremonies, three of them in other villages. Two babies had been born while Harry was away. Their village was looking like a success.

  Harry frowned down at his feet. "What happens if we lose our memories altogether?"

  "We ask people whose brain are in better shape than ours."

  "And who do we ask in a hundred years? You know we all have genes that are supposed to lengthen our lives." Harry grimaced at the thought.

  "Well, how long is long? The genes were experimental. Double the usual life span? Triple? Unless they got it wrong and we die early. And if everyone else has forgotten where their grandparents came from, we might as well, too."

  And if we live very long, forgetting might be the kindest thing. Harry couldn’t make himself say it aloud.

  ***

  "Hi Iris. You here for the tai chi? Or the magic?" Chris tried to keep his voice casual. She glowed almost as brightly as Gisele. She made those girls in Cairo seem ordinary. Unfortunately, she wasn't anywhere near as forward as they had been. Wow.

  She ducked her head shyly. "You know my parents don't approve of the magic talk. I think I was a snap decision, since regretted. They're very religious."

  Chris chuckled, like he thought she was kidding. There were girls moving into position around her, and he faded back. He was one of the advanced students, anyway, and ought to be over on the other side of the Dojo, otherwise known as the winery's front lawn.

  He watched her out of the corner of his eye, and admired her form. And figure, and face, and glowing golden hair.

  He noticed half the other guys were as well. Drat. He needed to get out and do things, lift himself out of the common crowd and into visibility. Maybe he'd get a heifer out of the round up. If not the first cattle drive, the second.

  ***

  Harry looked down the hill, where they were starting to muster for the cattle drive.

  Wild cattle drive.

  Some people were trying to call them aurochs, after the wild ancestors of their own domesticated cattle. Only time and attempts to cross breed them would tell if they were the same species, for some loose definition of species.

  Romeau strode down the hill. He'd be going with the mounted party, to start the drive. The rest of them would split, and on foot, attempt to steer the herd into the trap. The cattle were migratory, they were moving south, coming out of the mountains to the north, and swimming the river. The bulls had come first, now the cows were moving.

  They were after young heifers, the calves born in the spring, and old enough now to be weaned. They hoped to trap enough to parcel them out, one heifer for everyone who participated in the drive. If they didn't have enough, they'd hold a lottery. Ditto if they had extra.

  The ranchers had all lost cattle. Several cattlemen had lost all their stock to the predators in the first days after they'd arrived, and were hoping to start over. This would only be the first drive, not the last. Enthusiasm was high, and close to a quarter of the population marched out, confident of their herding prowess.

  Harry kept an eye on the eleven kids from the bus who were helping. I need to stop calling them kids. They're all seventeen or eighteen. And six of them are armed, although I doubt Milly and Lillian's handguns would stop one of these critters.

  They'd hunted enough of the aurochs to appreciate the size of them. And the size of their horns. Romeau called them longhorns on steroids, but their horns didn't spread to the sides, they curved forward, more like a bull-fighting bull. On steroids.

  They'd built a big corral, with wings to funnel the cattle into it. The pedestrians spread out in a thin line. They were carrying spears, and had things to flap, hopefully to turn the cows without having to get dangerously close. In theory, if they kept it slow, didn't initiate any sort of stampede, they could just walk the cattle into the trap.

  Harry eyes two small herds that had crossed and gotten ahead of them. About twenty cows and calves total. If they could trap four or five little groups at a time . . . gradually build up their herd . . .

  The horsemen headed north, and the wait began. Knowing nothing about cattle, Harry and the bus kids were all out toward the end of the line. The people who knew what they were doing were closer to the corral, where the cattle might start realizing they were being trapped.

  "Don't look so worried, Harry." Milly grinned at him. "We've all got Romeau's cow calming spell. It's the people with no magic or no training that ought to be nervous."

  Harry snorted. "I'd feel better if I believed a word you lot tell me about this 'Texas' Romeau is supposed to be from." He straightened. "Here comes the first batch, and they don't look happy."

  Two horsemen were on the little herd's flank, but the beasts seemed more inclined to drop their heads and charge than be herded. As they watched, Vito spun his horse away from a charge and loped in a distant circle around the herd. The eight cows formed up around their calves, horns pointed outward. The horsemen withdrew, stopping and waiting. The circle broke up, the cows heading away from the riders, toward the trap. The riders kept their horses to a walk, and at a distance that just barely threatened the cows. The cows kept trying to turn south, the riders kept trying to force them to move westward as well. The circus moved off to their left, gradually working closer to the thin line of people. A few shirts were waved. Despite the distance, the cattle stopped, milled about nervously. Then turned and trotted off to the west. Harry relaxed. This is going to work.

  The next herd he spotted was well off to the west, shuffling along quietly with Romeau trailing behind.

  Chris snickered. "Guess that spell works."

  A cloud of dust heralded the next herd. The dimly seem cows charged straight at them. No amount of flag waving or spells changed their trajectory. The kids started heading for the shelter of thick tree trunks.

  Vince stood waving his flag a moment too long before scrambling for cover. Four shots snapped from a grove of trees. The cow closest to Vince buckled, chin hitting the dirt then rolling to a stop. That turned the herd. Harry dodged for safety, and checked that everyone was safe. The breeze cleared the dust away. One dead cow, a bunch of impressed children. Hell, he was impressed too.

  The boys were experienced, and set to butchering the cow.

  The day wore on, with occasional sightings of cattle, some being chivvied into the trap, three more groups stampeding over everything in their path. As the sun set, they all pulled in, to check the total in the trap.

  Romeau sauntered over, leading a bay mare. "Eighty cows, sixty-two calves. So roughly thirty heifers, this time. I suspect the lottery will be fierce, just remember we can do this as often as we want to."

  Romeau was put in charge of separating out the heifers, by universal acclamation. He put the bus kids to works, extending the area under the calming influence, and the cows and male calves were sent on their way. The heifers all got vaccinated, dewormed and inspected.

  Lillian won a heifer in the drawing. Vince looked relieved, the rest disappointed. Harry had to admit that he hadn't actually wanted one, but Romeau looked a bit disappointed. Wolf had just shrugged. He'd also killed a stampeding cow. Two people had been injured, but no one badly.

  "Not a bad day's haul." Leo wiped his forehead. "Now all we have to do is get them back home."

  Romeau grinned. "There are those things we call bubbles. I think this would be an excellent time to put them to use." He reached and plucked absolutely nothing from thin air.

  Harry squinted. It was a bubble, like the ones in Wolf's attic. And now that he was looking for them . . . "Huh. They're all over the place."

  Romeau chivvied heifers while Wolf and Harry caught bubbles. Everyone, even the kids with magic boggled, and apparently couldn't see the bubbles at all. It was a spooked crowd that followed them home and watched them retrieve the heifers and turn them loose with the domesticated cattle.

  ***

  Then Harry got back to the important things.

  His first boat was actually a raft.

  Adequ
ate for fishing, but not the sort of thing he wanted for a long trip. As he got better at tanning hides—his first experiments were burned as public nuisances—he started thinking about ways to magically waterproof both rawhide and leather, and he managed to impress Wolf with his first canoe.

  He went west first, taking along a load of window glass. It was a long paddle up the lake to the next village. Over a hundred miles, at a guess. The glass was very welcome, and they told him the head of the lake was just twenty miles on.

  "There's a short river in the northwest, linking to another lake. I think there are a dozen villages along there." The recently elected mayor pointed north. "And the Alps have grown. Some of the people that arrived at this end moved north, across the river. They thought maybe there'd be fewer lions where it was cold."

  Harry stayed long enough to teach everyone the various "magic" techniques they'd developed. The one to get the bugs off the gardens was especially appreciated. They'd given up on the first fields outside their walls.

  The river was sluggish enough for him to paddle up it with little trouble. He traveled from village to village, rarely staying longer than a week, teaching anyone who was interested all the "spells" they had worked out, and learned a few new ones. He kept a journal, and drew maps, kept a rough census. And he noted how many of the settlers were genetically engineered, and how many powered. They'd stopped automatically inserting the power genes over a decade ago, so the number of . . . Lord he hated using the terms Witch and Mage. The number of kids who would be strong telies tapered off at twelve years of age, but then the second generation, and even a few third generation children started filling the gaps. Rather a lot of the powered children had been abandoned by their parents and were living in groups in the big cylindrical buses.

  "You look worried." The local doctor eased down to a seat on a rock near his.

  "Well, perhaps a bit apprehensive. But maybe I should be hopeful, instead. As a group to strand away from modern society, we're pretty good. Lots of us with strengthened immune systems and so forth. I'm wondering what the next few generations will be like, though."