Growing Up Magic (Wine of the Gods Book 9)

by Pam Uphoff

  As the bandits, three to a side, cut in toward the horses, he yelled at Greg to stop the horses, and hauled on the brake. The bandits overshot them, looked back at the two men coming, and even at three to one odds decided it was time to leave.

  The two soldiers pulled up as well. The one Mort had pegged as an officer was grinning. "First time I've seen bandits defeated by flour. You ever think about joining the army?"

  Greg laughed. "Yeah, teach him which end of a sword to hold and he might be dangerous."

  "I should have brought more men." The officer looked wistfully behind them. "I hope Mick catches those two in the carriage. And we've some injured bandits to question, as well."

  Mort nodded. Of course, the carriage. The bandits had probably been laying out in plain sight under dirt covered clothes or something. But the guards and drivers had all been looking at the carriage, and the pretty girl making a fuss.

  The mounted bandits had been concealed back from the road, only coming out when the wagons had been stopped. All in all a neat ambush. Hadn't worked though.

  Greg steered the tired team around and they walked them back to the wagon train.

  Mr. Holder, pale and bloody, was organizing the survivors. Four guards and two drivers dead, twice that number in the process of having crossbow bolts removed from various parts of their bodies.

  He limped over to the officer. "You are military, aren't you?"

  "Lieutenant Wacolm." the officer dismounted, and handed the reins of the borrowed horse to the guard standing by. "I'm afraid our presence failed to enlarge your group enough to make you bandit proof."

  "Hiding your payroll in my wagons isn't my idea of helping." Holder snapped.

  The Lieutenant wrinkled his nose. "Payroll? I've got factory made horseshoes, crossbows and some replacement parts for an arbalest. Payroll moves with a bloody company of guards."

  Mort looked back at the injured bandits. "A couple of them are swearing in a foreign language."

  "Arbish. They're Arbolians." The Lieutenant shrugged. "Not that they'll ever admit to being soldiers."

  Holder frowned. "They're awfully far north for Arbolians."

  "The south is better guarded."

  "We've all been speculating about what you were carrying." Mort bit his lip. "Bandits waiting for a good wagon train to hit—they'd have waited for a northbound one, wouldn't they? Why would they think we had a payroll wagon, unless they had someone passing them information."

  The Lieutenant nodded slowly. "Problem is, you are the only one who was away all night. And a day later we got hit."

  Mort boggled a bit, knowing he looked massively stupid. "Good thing I ran a bunch of them over, then." He walked away shaking his head. And despite all the heroics the others still looked at him suspiciously. On the third day, Holder decided, short handed or not, it was time for Mort to leave.

  He walked off, considerably disgruntled. For all he'd been paid as agreed, he hated leaving under suspicion. The last night he cut across country and walked late, arriving home to find Tyrone and Erald disassembling his haystacks. He worked off four days of frustration on them, and chased the cows off to the far pasture.

  The back door was unlatched, as nearly always. He tapped, then stuck his head in his parents' room, "Hi, Mom, Hi Dad. I'm back."

  Then he climbed up to his little room under the roof and slept till dawn. Milked the cows – barely worth the effort, they were either drying up or the two calves he'd bought were nursing. Fed the chickens and collected eggs.

  After breakfast he rebuilt his hay stacks, hoping they were good enough to shed rain and wouldn't rot.

  Aunt Susto showed up shortly thereafter, looking disappointed to have not risen early enough to catch them at breakfast. "Well, so you are here! Tyrone said you beat him up last night! And that you've been saying bad things about my Ericka."

  "I walked across the hills and came in the back. I beat up some hobos that were messing up my haystacks. Surely that wasn't Tyrone and Erald? Why would they do something to hurt their Uncle Jack and Aunt Elma? Why, they'd starve without them."

  She pulled herself up straight. "Starve? My boys? Don't be rude. You act like you're the only one who works around here, when all you do is order your cousins around like they were your slaves. And treat the girls like you got rights, too!"

  "I try to pull them up short if I see them getting carried away with their boy friends. I think you need to start talking to your girls about who they want to marry, and then go talk to their parents. Get them married off before they're in even more trouble."

  "So! It's true! You have been bad mouthing Ericka!"

  "She's getting pretty round, don't you think?" Mort winced at the clatter from the kitchen.

  "Mortimer! How can you say such a thing about your own cousin!" His mother bustled in, just as the flood of relatives reached the front door.

  Uncle Willi had a bruised Erald in hand, and Uncle Frank had a solicitous arm around Melodi's shoulders.

  The rest had come to watch.

  Mort gritted his teeth, and nodded to his mother. "Well, look at Ericka. What do you think?"

  He hadn't seen her for a month and a half. She was well past the stage where she could pretend it was fat.

  "Oh, Ericka!" His mother bustled forward. "Who did this? We'll make him marry you!"

  Derailed, the Uncles turned and looked at Ericka.

  She looked around in a panic, then pointed at Mort. "Him, Mort's the father."

  Mort shook his head. "Nope. I'm probably the only fellow in the grant who hasn't screwed you. Try again, or were there already so many you haven't a clue?"

  "He can't marry her!" Uncle Frank boomed. "He has to marry my poor little girl that he's taken advantage of."

  Mort shook his head again. "Nope. Not me there, either. I don't do it with my cousins, and I'm not going to marry either of them."

  They carried on for three hours, until Ericka admitted to not having a clue, maybe it was Lord Heso, Lord Date's son, but there had been a couple of other boys, too . . . then Melodi burst into tears and said Tyrone had forced her, and she didn't want to marry him, he was mean and lazy. Tyrone had bellowed that he hadn't forced her, he'd just been kidding about killing her dog.

  Mort retired to the back step, about then. If this didn't straighten out his pathetic family nothing would. He was betting on the 'nothing.'

  After awhile his dad joined him. "You really let the fox into the henhouse this time. What were you thinking of?"

  "Dad. It is not my fault. In three months I'll be sixteen, and I think I'll join the army." He winced. Would the army take him, now?

  "That would be good, son. Get your head straightened out."

  He sighed. "Sound like they've finally calmed down in there."

  "Your mother's feeding them. That'll keep their mouths busy for long enough for them to start thinking about practical stuff."

  "Like sending Tyrone off?" Mort knew it was just wistful thinking, though.

  "Now, Aunt Susto needs to have a man around the house, to take care of her, do the heavy work. Especially since Ericka won't be much help, what with the baby coming and all."

  Mort rolled his eyes.

  And slept in the barn. And whipped Tyrone's ass. Again.

  A week later the Duke Rondo Bois called up a militia to aid in a sweep for bandits. Mort shamed Lew, Erald and Tyrone into joining him. His Dad loaned him his old Army spear, taking it down from the wall where it had gathered dust for seventeen years. They spent an uncomfortable two weeks climbing up half frozen creek beds. Mort used the spear once, to deal with a boar that decided to make an issue of their passing.

  The mounted militia had jeered at the foot troops, but were happy to share in the roasted pig, however tough.

  Mort returned to undisturbed haystacks—two left now—and four cows ready to calve. Sassy had twins, male and female, which made the choice of which one to butcher for cheese making, easy. Melodi called him mean, no matter how many times he to
ld her that a heifer born with a twin brother was sterile and worthless for anything but eating.

  His mother's cheese was excellent, though, and any he could keep out of the hands of the locusts would bring in a lot of money.

  He helped his dad prune trees, and they talked.

  "I'm going to sell some of the cows, Dad. How much hay can you put up by yourself?"

  "Oh, I'll get the other boys to do that. After all, they eat here often enough."

  Mort sighed. "Maybe if I gave them a cow apiece, they'd each at least put up enough for the one?"

  "But Susto's the only one with a barn. Best you just leave them here."

  "Right. Now, shall I leave the best yearling bull here? Or sell them both? Or butcher one or both?"

  It was painful, realizing that his parents just weren't going to be able to stand up to the rest of the family.

  Mid winter he slaughtered one of the yearling bulls, and he and his mother spent the next several days salting, smoking, roasting and making sausage.

  And feeding the rest of the family. He was hard put to keep them from walking off with the crocks of corned beef. He hauled them hastily down to the root cellar where they'd stay cool and the salt and spices would preserve them for months. The temperatures dropped low enough to freeze quite a bit of meat, and he loaded the ice house with blocks of ice from the pools in the stream beyond the hay meadow. Walked to Grantown and bought three locks. Ice house, root cellar, pantry.

  Looking over the grain reserves, he butchered the rest of the young roosters and froze them too.

  As the winter dragged on, he had to walk to Grantown and buy—at an appalling price—more flour.

  He stopped at the Four Oaks Tavern for a beer, not to mention human company not related to himself. A man and woman eating at a corner table caught his eye. The pair from the bandit attack.

  He smiled at Mistress Higgs. "Gosh who's that pretty girl in the corner, with her Dad?"

  She tsked. "You mind your own business, Mortimer. That's Lord Fallon and his wife."

  "Huh. Never heard of him. One of those City Lords?"

  "The Lady says they live in Havwee, so I expect they're related to one of those grant holders."

  "Ah. Oh well." He turned away and looked disinterested. But he walked out to the stable and chatted up Mikko and got a good look at their horses and the heavy carriage they were driving.

  Then he wrote a letter to Lieutenant Wacolm, First Army, Karista, with the full description.

  Chapter Three

  Spring Equinox 1381

  Grantown, Three Rivers Province

  Ericka went into labor, and spent the whole day screaming and upsetting the whole family and fetching the midwife out in bad weather before producing a remarkably small and noisy son.

  Mort added delivering a gallon of milk to their house to his morning chores. The snow melted and the ground softened. Grass and weeds sprouted, and his mother started seeds under frames. The chickens started laying again, and the cows spent the days out to pasture, even though Mort still brought them in at night.

  "I can't go." He told his father. "Nobody else will do this for you. I wish I had a passel of little brothers and sisters."

  "Oh, go on now! The boys will step up, once you're gone. We all know you're a hard worker, but there's seven other boys in the family and they'll hardly notice if we split your chores among them."

  Mort sighed, and yoked two cows to the plow and took care of his mother's garden, and gritting his teeth, the other three as well.

  He was cutting grass for hay when Tyrone slouched out to get him.

  "You are so fucked, Moron."

  "Didn't you just turn twenty, Tyrone? Have you got a job yet?"

  "Don't talk to me about jobs, Stupid. There's a bunch of Army people who want to talk to you. I expect they'll hang you."

  "Huh. And then you'll take over the haying, the milking, the plowing and the butchering, so you can keep eating, right? Congratulations!"

  Tyrone slowed behind him as he strode up to the barn, racked the tools and walked in the back door.

  Unfortunately, no sign of Wacolm. A captain, if Mort understood the insignia. "Pleased to meet you, err, Mort." The man was compact and light on his feet. Eagle-sharp eyes studied Mortimer and came back puzzled. "You're the driver that wrote to Lieutenant Wacolm about Lord Fallon and his wife?" He sounded disbelieving. "The people in town said the easterly farm . . . "

  Mort sighed. It wasn't his fault he looked stupid. "Yes, sir."

  "Umm." The eagle eyes studied him. "I'm Captain Janic, and I'm tasked with locating and stopping these bandits. Since you can identify these two that are associated with them, I'd like to hire you."

  Mortimer frowned. "Doing what?"

  "Driving, and keeping your eyes open."

  "Sounds good."

  So that fast he was gone. He doubted Tyrone would ever get in the hay he'd cut. He could only hope that by the end of summer the necessity of having hay for the winter would occur to someone.

  He rode, discovering a new way to balance, and muscles seldom used, into Grantown. He got down stiffly, trying to not say out loud that if that was what ten miles was like . . .

  "We've got a small wagon train going south, and then we'll turn and head back north with some of the gold wagons." The Captain waved down Wacolm. "My mounted patrol will be paralleling you, and hopefully able to run down escaping bandits."

  "This time we won't be relying on you to literally run them down." Wacolm said, showing him the concealed arrow slits in what looked to be an old, weathered, high sided freight wagon. "The thick oak should stop any arrows. No cargo but people. At the first sight of ambush, you just roll back off the seat, see?"

  Mort nodded. "That'll do, although it'll make steering hard."

  "Huh, at that point we figure we won't be going anywhere." Wacolm shrugged. "It'll all depend on what happens." He pulled out a roll of papers. "Sign here. Government runs on paperwork."

  "Did you find Lord Fallon?" Mort bit his lip and carefully wrote 'Mortimer Easterly' on the line at the bottom of the mostly indecipherable page. Writing the letter to Wacolm had pushed the limits of his written vocabulary; he didn't know a quarter of the words on the first page of this thing.

  "He got away. We got the woman, but she was just an exchangeable bit of fluff. We'll stop in small towns frequently, and you'll need to look around and try to spot him again."

  Mort nodded.

  He drove, with four men in the wagon, crossbows at hand. Somewhat to his bemusement, they mostly slept.

  "No point in trying to stay alert all day, crouched and ready to fire. We'd be cramped up and cross-eyed from strain right about the time they hit us." Sergeant Gainer grinned. "This way we can stand guard all night, too. Once we're on the way back we'll be even more discreet and no one will know we're here."

  The three privates, Thos, Errow and Tod all nodded agreement. Tod winked, and settled back to snore loudly, until kicked.

  The first night they camped, Wacolm invited him to join some of the other men. "School. Lots of sharp fellows from the country haven't had much schooling. We help them along. Never hurts. Better jobs after they leave, and faster promotion if they stay."

  So Mort shuffled nervously and admitted to knowing his letters and some words, and numbers and adding and subtracting, although he didn't really need to write those down.

  It was odd, seeing the difference in the towns as they moved south. Grantown had been founded after the last war, after the army had pruned the big bandit gangs back. It had never had a wall. The older towns had walls, and as they moved south the walls got higher as the roofs got flatter, and wood construction gave way to white plastered stone buildings.

  He didn't recognize anyone in the towns. But the nightly schools were a pleasure. By the time the wagons made Havwee, he knew a lot more words, and challenging him to demonstrate his memory was turning into a group joke.

  Wacolm laughed. "That's why you could recognize Fa
llon and the girl. One glimpse was all you needed."

  Horses stabled, Mort set out to explore Havwee. The stables were on the grounds of a confiscated Temple of Ba'al, an ornate building at odds with the rest of the flat topped and shaded houses. He strolled without plan, admiring the flower gardens, found the central market, and bought fruit, and after asking around, three paper envelopes of flower seeds from a cheerful old lady. He wondered if he'd get home in time to plant them, and sat and peeled and ate oranges until he spotted a familiar face. One of the soldiers, trying to stay out of sight. He stared across the little plaza, his stomach sinking. They suspected him? After all he'd done they were watching him?

  But what could they hope to accomplish? If he was with the bandits, he'd warn them off.

  Were they transporting something that they didn't want the bandits to hit?

  If so, that would be a bad miscalculation on their part. Troubled, he finished his last orange, strolled more, spotted another shadow, and stopped in a quiet little tavern for a beer. The weasely looking fellow at the bar was one of the bandits he'd floured.

  Mort drank his beer, then strolled outside. He spotted his tail and doubled around and grabbed him. "One of the bandits from the raid is in there. Follow him." He described the man and his clothing. The other tail was closing up fast, looking mean. "You can escort me to the Captain. I have a nasty suspicion he's expecting me to bandit-proof you lot, and I can't do it."

  "Listen, Mortimer."

  "Shut up and walk."

  Fifteen minutes later he was repeating that to the Captain. The Captain's mouth twitched and he pulled out bills and peeled off a substantial amount. Passed them to Wacolm. "Congratulations. You have taught me to never again believe a bovine countenance." He sighed. "Your innocence, however, is going to make the next few weeks more difficult."

  It was ten days, from Havwee to Farofo. The days grew hotter, the ground drier and rougher.

  The dry canyon lands seven days out of Havwee were very picturesque. Not too rough for wagons, as the kingdom had invested a great deal of money in building bridges across the worst canyons, and maintained the road.