Root and Branch

by Tripp Greyson

  Esteemed Lord Tobias:

  I bid you greeting. My name is Isengrûn, and I am the estranged sister of Isengrid. When the barbarians of Wayko slaughtered her herd, their personal effects came to me.

  Until I found this ring and the treaty documents that came with it, I was unaware of you, your polity, or the fact that my sister's herd had joined your Commonwealth.

  I lead a herd of 42 females, located some 30 miles to the east of Isengrid's former territory, and am in contact with three other herds of similar size in the vicinity. We have learned of your plan to take up arms against the Scholastic Empire in retaliation for the slaughter.

  All of us wish to join you in this. We would also like to treat with you to become part of your Commonwealth. Expect emissaries to follow this message within the week. I have already paid the Coney Express rider for a reply; I look forward to hearing from you.

  Most sincerely,

  Isengrûn of Sweetgrass.

  I sat down at the head of table after I'd read the neatly printed letter, and passed it around to the other three men. "Well, this is interesting," said I.

  I then turned to my new Lord Protector of the Southern Marches of the Commonwealth. "Caleb, I was going to have to send you that way soon, to see if we could find more allies there before the war. And of course, you'll be the general of the troops who'll be taking and holding Wayko."

  A voice stated loudly in my head, NO. HE WILL NOT.

  It got pin-drop quiet in the room, almost as if all sound had been sucked away. This was just the second time we'd heard from the Wold, after its assertion about the Imps. All three of my Protectors froze for a long moment, staring at nothing, then slumped bonelessly in their chairs, like puppets with cut strings.

  Caleb was breathing harshly as he looked up me with suddenly bloodshot eyes. "Our Supremity has reminded us that we are Protectors, not conquerors," he rasped.

  Towana rubbed his temples. I noticed that blood was trickling out of his right ear. "What's wrong?" I asked, concerned.

  "We just got raped with a corn cob a foot thick," Edgar moaned. He was quick to add, thank goodness, "Figuratively. Mentally."

  That wasn't really explanatory, so I pressed, "What happened?"

  Caleb groaned, "The Wold shoved a lot of information into our heads all at once. Memories, history, what really happened on the Day of Ruin... and a lot of rules. A lot of rules."

  "Owwwwww.... Mi ne povas kompreni ĉion nun," Edgar said, as near as I can transliterate (have I mentioned my near-perfect memory?).

  Towana snapped, "Anglic! No one ever invented Esperanto here!"

  "Oh. Oh, right," Eddie muttered, clutching his head. "I mean, I can't make heads or tails of all of it right now. It was like trying to drink from a firehose."

  "What's a firehose?" I asked, then held up a hand quickly. "No, forget it, I think I understand."

  Caleb said tiredly, "This is going to take forever to process. I mean, the human brain only has so much bandwidth... yeah, I'll explain that later, too. But I think we got a whole lot of two worlds' worth of knowledge dumped into our heads at once. There are some very elegant battle plans in there..."

  A trickle of red oozed from one nostril, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. "By the way, Boyd says his eyes are bleeding, but otherwise he's all right."

  The rest of us froze again. I said carefully, "And how did Boyd say that all the way from Hamiltown?"

  Caleb shrugged. "In my head, duh." He looked around at his fellow Lords Protector, who were staring at him. "What, you didn't hear him?"

  "No," Towana said, as Eddie just shook his head.

  "Well, this is interesting," I repeated. "What else do I need to know about the corn cob?"

  "You're going to be... upset," Caleb said, defensively.

  "Really, REALLY upset," Edgar groaned.

  "Oh?" I said, carefully.

  "Yes. Because we've been locked down."

  "And what does that mean?"

  "That which remade us at your request," he looked around at the others, "has reminded us that as Protectors, we do not go to war. I can act as the governor of Wayko after we take it, I can go to battle to protect our people, and I can even strike preemptively when I absolutely must. But I can't go to war to conquer."

  ESPECIALLY NOT WHEN YOUR GIRLFRIEND HAS ORDERED YOU TO MURDER LITTLE KIDS, thundered the Wold.

  We sat there unmoving, and no one said anything for literally 10 minutes. Finally, Towana stirred. "Guess that settled it," he said softly. "We're not going to be able to help you fight the Bears, Toby."

  "Hell, I gotta get some of those willow bark pills from Serafina," Eddie said as he started to get up.

  "So that's it, then?!" I finally exploded. "You won't help us with the Waykans?"

  Caleb gave me the stink-eye. "Not won't, can't," he said flatly, wiping fresh blood from his nose. "We. Are. Locked. Down. We can't so much as think offensively about Wayko as long as the Goddess maintains her 'root and branch' policy, or our brains shut down. If we make a physical attempt to do anything to help, we will physically freeze up. Indefinitely. It's one of the rules the Wold just forced into us."

  "The Goddess — !"

  "Please, Toby, don't play that card," Towana said sharply. "The Goddess is also our Goddess, but we were remade by the Wold... and as such, we would have no choice but to trump your argument with 'My God Can Beat Up Your God.' We respect you and Lady Aurora too much for that, we want our Commonwealth to work — and we'd prefer it if the Deities of this crazy new world just... got along."

  I shut up and let them go get the medical care they needed. After a long, thoughtful hour alone, I stood and put my fist through the wall, bolstered with my own Goddess's strength. Then I went to find Gration so I could send a reply to Queen Isengrûn as she had requested.

  Chapter 5

  "Little Magic!" I hollered early the next morning. "Manifest! Now!"

  There was a pop of out-rushing air, and suddenly Eos, my little godling himself, sat in the chair on the opposite side of the conference table from me. Instead of the Elf guise he preferred, he had chosen to manifest as the child in the bright unitard and ugly canvas and rubber shoes, with short, neatly combed hair, and looked younger and paler than normal. If he thought that would mitigate my anger at him and his Mother, he had another think coming. "Yes, Father?" he replied cautiously, in a very small voice.

  Dammit.

  All right, so he was correct about his cuteness mitigating my anger. Slowly, I said, "Our brand-new Lords Protector, whom I thought were sanctified by and dedicated to our Goddess Aurora, informed me yesterday evening that they not only will not but actually cannot participate in the attack on Wayko. The Wold has them on physical and mental lockdown. They couldn't participate even if they wanted to — and I quote, 'Especially not when your girlfriend has ordered you to murder little kids'."

  He started at me, wide-eyed. "They actually said that?"

  "No! That was what the Deity who actually empowered them told me, in no uncertain terms, after It jammed so many rules and regulations into their heads that It practically killed them! Not to mention a whole bunch of history and other manure that we don't have time for right now and don't really need!"

  "Oh my Mother," Little Magic whispered.

  "I am assuming," I said, as I began pacing back and forth, "that you and My Lady were aware that there might be some… disagreement regarding strategy between herself and the new Supremity. But neither of you bothered to tell me. Now I have sworn personal armsmen who can't do everything that they have sworn to do, men who cannot follow all my orders — including many of those I had counted on them for.

  "My war plans, needless to say, have been crippled.

  "They tell me they can act as protectors only, not as conquerors. Hence the name. They further tell me they'll be happy to act as governors of the territories in the reaches of the Commonwealth to which they are assigned, which they were going to do anyway, and that they can go to war
preemptively only if doing so will save our Commonwealth."

  I stopped and glared at the boy, starting to get really mad again. "Now that my authority as your Mother's spokesman has been completely undermined, not to mention Her authority, what the hell am I going to do with these men?"

  I could hear a faint tok-tok-tok as Little Magic started kicking his heels against the legs of his chair. "Well," he said slowly, "Mother was rather hoping that the Wold would be more amenable. But as the Wold is much more powerful than She, I don't know that there's much that we can do to override Its proclamations."

  "Yes, the Protectors have already told me that their Deity can beat up my Deity in a kind of passive-aggressive little-bitch way," I snarled, channeling the worst of my Dad's personality. "Now what?"

  "The outlook is hazy."

  I whirled and pinned him with my glare, jabbing my index finger at him. "What? What did you just say? Did you really just try a Magic Cue Ball answer on me? Those are MY memories you're plundering, you know!"

  "Uhhhhhh.... ha ha? Yeah… just… trying to relieve the tension a little around here, Dadday." He tried to laugh for real, but the chuckle died in his Divine throat as he tugged at the collar of his unitard.

  "Don't 'Dadday' me! Good Goddess, you really have been around the Dixies too much! I need answers, not jokes!"

  "I really don't know what we can do, Father."

  "Yes you do! You can beg your Mother to cancel her damned 'root and branch' order!" I roared. "Maybe She'll listen to you, because She sure won't listen to me! She doesn’t even answer when I pray about it! If She'd just give a little, I could use my Lords Protector as they were meant to be used! After we deal with the Waykans, we have to do something about the Tejarkanye, and after THAT the Wold has as much as told us that there's ANOTHER threat out there that we're going to need the Imps to deal with!

  Little Magic obstinately thrust out his jaw (mostly for show, since I knew he agreed with me), and yelled back in a Glory-echoing voice, "My Mother's order will and must stand! She will and must be obeyed! She is your Goddess! She will not give in, and if the Wold will not, then we will have to try to work together in other ways! No cannibal society can be allowed to exist upon this or any other continent — nay, not even a tiny remnant of it that might grow back someday!"

  I knew those were Her words, not his, especially the last sentence. I took a deep breath, prepared to say some unfortunate things about his Lady Mother, but fortunately Little Magic very wisely blurted, "Regarding this new threat: Mother has spent the past year distracting something called the Bejar Coven."

  He fell silent for a moment, and looked off into the distance. "Apparently the leadership of the Bejar Coven is controlled by a powerful group of angels, mostly the daughters of the founder, one Mistress Sienna. These are the new human race who call themselves angels, mind you, the ones that have functional feathered wings but are otherwise baseline in appearance."

  Little Magic sighed deeply. Unfortunately, Sienna and her daughters are... well, they're the psychic, pheromonic, and ethical equivalent of Alfas."

  I threw my hands in the air, causing the little glowing boy to flinch. He'd never done that before. "Except, let me guess! These irresistible women are far smarter and much more dangerous than those fluff-headed quartermaster bastards!"

  Little Magic gulped audibly. "Well, yes. Unfortunately, the angels are much more intelligent that the Alfas, and Mistress Sienna has been described as a 'twisted genius.' Sienna maintains a large standing army of mostly Terran men and women, many of whom who have been psychologically pithed but remain fierce warriors."

  He looked off into the distance, listening to his Mother. "Oh. The Angels have also allied with a community of Giants in southwest Tejas. The Bejar occupy the old Spanyol religious community known as Mission San Antonio de Valero, and a great deal of territory in its vicinity. They have access to many other resources besides."

  The little boy looked down at the tabletop, and I could hear him kicking the chair legs again as he muttered: "Also, I've calculated that it's a virtual certainty that the deserters of the Tejarkanye and any of their leadership whom we fail to capture during our war with that empire will end up allying with the angels on the battlefield against us."

  I leaned down until we were face-to-face, my nose inches from the demigod's. I said quietly, "And when were you going to tell me all this?"

  "Well, Mother has been busy preparing for this war, planning details of the next, and holding off the Bejar Coven for the last few months," Little Magic pointed out. "We were hoping we wouldn't have to worry about them after all, at least not for a while, but it looks like it's too late for that.

  "When you defeat the Waykans and then denounce cannibalism of the new races in your dispatches to the other neighboring polities, they'll begin to take great interest in the Commonwealth, and," here his voice became very, very small, "they will eventually declare war us. And try to capture you and the other Fathers for breeding stock."

  I couldn't help it. I meant my son no ill, because none of this was his fault, but I literally screamed in frustration right in his face. He squeaked like a frightened mouse and vanished in a blaze of Glory.

  A moment later, his Mother said sternly in my head, How dare you, Tobias! I'll be lucky if I can get the boy to return from the Nether at all for the rest of this week! And we really, really need his help!

  "You can fuck right the hell off!" I shouted, too angry to care that I'd just said that to my Goddess, the only time I'd ever said that to anyone, and certainly never to anyone Divine! Her shocked silence was answer enough.

  Honestly, I'm surprised She let me live after that. I probably wouldn't have, had I been Her. She is a benevolent Goddess.

  ❖

  After cursing at my Goddess like a spoiled child, I canceled my fathering duties and brooded for most of the day. Not that my fathering schedule was exactly over-full at the time. The Elves were a lot better-looking than me, all the feathered ladies were in love with Papa Toméz, and we were getting a lot of small-race immigrants these days who arrived asking specifically for the Dixies. Along with a few Olbyt and Pooka pervs. That wasn't even a big deal, now that there were so many Newdies.

  The Imps were especially popular. I think a lot of the small ladies, especially the Cobbers, were more than a little disappointed when the Imps' more spectacular features failed to breed true. A few of their new little boys were tailed, but most just looked like male versions of their mothers' races, and they could not (thank all the Deities) shoot fire out of anything. That would be disastrous in a Cobber.

  (Yes, thank you for all the nice restraining orders and defamation lawsuits. Still immune.)

  Well, they got the boy children they were after, at least. That's what we Fathers were here for, though I was beginning to wonder if that wasn't all there was to it, after all.

  ❖

  I was brought out of my funk late that afternoon when I was called to a commotion at the East Gate. It turned out that an entire herd of Centaurs had arrived, numbering over two dozen, carrying everything they owned. There was much rejoicing and hugging, because the herd was my wife Coulter's, and they couldn't stop talking about how pregnant she was, and how they were so excited that there was going to be a little stallion running around in a few weeks!

  After things settled down, the leader, Silence Derringer (a name I found curiously compelling) explained that they, along with any other non-Terrans that the Tejarkanye could round up, had been forced off their lands and out of the empire on pain of death. The Tejarkanye were also giving so-called Terran "dissidents" and "species traitors" the opportunity to get out before they were executed.

  The golden palomino, whose human skin was as warm and delightful as coffee-with-cream, warned that we could expect an influx of a lot of new citizens over the next few months — so I immediately got our Pooka and Terran carpenters to work. There was more than enough hackberry and hickory for the new residences we'd need, since the stu
ff grows like weeds in the Serendip Valley — and I welcomed more hands to grow the Commonwealth. If those idiots to the east were determined to make their empire pure Terran, and in doing so, weaken it, I could live with that.

  Oh course, I spent a good deal of time with Silence that weekend. At her insistence. I had long since shed my reservations about Centaur ladies.

  Now, when I say there were two dozen members of Silence's tribe, I'm talking about the adults only. They were also about a dozen juvenile Centaurines, ranging in age from what would have been babes in arm among Terrans but trotted along just fine (since, like a horse, they were ambulatory within hours of birth), to teenagers complete with acne. The younger ones were just as cute as the dickens, looking like someone had grafted the top halves of chubby babies onto the bodies of roly-poly ponies, and they were always tripping over themselves due their odd centers of gravity. All my wives immediately fell in love with them, and so did the Hero Dixies. No, not that way: they treated the little Centis like long-lost sisters.