by Pam Uphoff
News trickled in slowly. He received a brief note from Wacolm after two years, to say that he'd checked the taxes and the easterly farm was up to date. Staven had his captaincy and was serving in Havwee, Garit had so impressed his officers that he'd been offered a career in the Army and accepted. Rebo was in trouble, again, a girl this time, and he was being coerced into the two year rotation.
And then he was packing for home.
Chapter Fourteen
Late Summer1391
Grantown, Three Rivers Province
It was good to be home.
Good to see that his mother was obviously happy, and to spot his dad up on a ladder in a tree.
Bandit even recognized him. She had a humongous pasture buddy, a dark bay gelding who was inclined to act mean until Bandit nipped him.
"That's Beastly, the colt she had two years ago," his dad said. "He's not really a problem, but he's taken a dislike to the older boys. They stay away from him."
"Old gods." Easterly eyed the handsome animal. "He looks a bit more like Bandit's sire than even she does. Who's he by?"
"Beats me. Thought you must have bred her before you left. They've been racing the mare a bit. I've warned them about using her to stake their bets, and they've been real good about it."
Easterly sighed. It was all so normal after the strange new things he'd had to study to get his lieutenant's rank. Gates. Corridors. Strange parallel worlds. A revised history. Not that he'd been the least bit familiar with unrevised history.
The place was shabbier than usual, but with a month's leave, he replaced boards and painted. Put up hay, using Beastly instead of a cow to haul the cart around. The young horse did seem to have a good disposition, once he decided Easterly wasn't Tyrone. Easterly bought him a proper horse harness.
He helped in the orchard, and met all the younger cousins.
"The girls have herbs, but that year they just didn't work." His mother shrugged. "I do wish the girls wouldn't . . . but I suppose it's too late to hope for much. They've all been married, but always broke up, usually over money. Tyrone's living with this . . . woman in town, I think he's divorced Maci, and Susto is buying and selling junk in her front room. I do wish you could have come home to something better."
The four six-year old boys were regularly eating at the house, and were happy to climb trees and pick fruit. Maybe there was hope for the next generation. He never was quite clear on which kid was whose, as they seemed to migrate between all four houses and only answer to nicknames. Skunk, Crow, Mouse and Lizard.
"You ought to let them sleep up in my room, Mom. You did a fine job raising me, and I'll bet you could do it again." Then he rode Bandit back to Karista, to see if anyone still wanted him.
It was almost as if he hadn't left. Rebo and Garit were off with the army, but Brant and Wilco, respectively Princess Asteri's and Princess Beeti's oldest children were eleven and ten, and he spent the rest of the year following them around town and over the hills. At one time or another, all the princesses and their husbands found the time to mention that if he caught their children doing something objectionable, they would be delighted if he would haul them home by the scruffs of their neck, with or without having whipped their butts first. It was enough to make him wonder what Rebo had been up to, the last three years. But he didn't ask.
***
Captain Bricker brought him up to date on threats. For some values of threat. The girl Rebo had fallen for seemed a shy, uncertain creature. Definitely dominated by her father.
"Rufi says he's the God of Art, and power hungry. Believe the first part or not, don't dismiss the ambitions. He's one of those people who don't see other people as quite real. Gets the hair up on the back of my neck whenever I'm around him."
Easterly, once he'd caught up with the news, was uncertain as to which was worse, Rebo's old infatuation or the new one, who was at least female, even if highly controlled by an ambitious father.
He was delighted to be assigned to wagon duty.
Even if it did bring him face-to-face with magic.
Deena looked sympathetic. "Remember how we walked through a wall at Ba'al's temple and wound up in some foothills village? This is how it was done. They're calling them corridors. You walk in one end and walk out wherever they put the far end. They've got them from here to Havwee and Farofo, so far. They're talking about putting them everywhere."
It was hard to not believe in magic, when a single step cut off over a thousand miles of distance. "Well, I read all about these things, and gates to completely other worlds. And maybe it's actually reassuring. Because some other odd things that have happened to me weren't anything like this, so they probably are just odd coincidences. Right? Not magic."
Deena scowled at the circle of the corridor. A stone arch framing a peaceful scene of the desert town. A thousand miles or so away. "There's a fellow, La De Da Officer, that works for my dad. He thinks he's magical."
Easterly gulped. "Hey, you're an officer now, too."
"Oh, this one came in through the two year rotation. A real smooth talker. You'll meet him soon enough, he and Garit are buddies."
Easterly gulped. "Maybe I'll talk to him. But for now . . . I'm in charge of a wagon train." He mounted Bandit and signaled the wagons ahead. If they couldn't hit the wagons in between towns, what would the bandits do?
He headed out to find out.
Hauling Freight
Chapter One
Summer Solstice1386
Karista, Kingdom of the West
Periti was crying in the corner, being comforted by the other whores. Well, not others. Periti wasn't, well, not yet, but everyone figured she'd go the way of her mother soon enough.
Damien worked his way through the empty tables. Onray had his usual sandwich and ale ready by the time he got to the Bar. In six hours the place would be packed with people, mostly men. Few of the dock workers would spend coin for lunch, but Damien came often, dodging his Aunt Andrai, locally famous for her viperish tongue.
"They said they'd give me tons of money, if the Prince deflowered me. They didn't say he like hurting people! Or that they were going to do it too! They made a big ceremonial thing of it, me and him both being virgins, they said. And then they did disgusting things with each other, too. And there were these disgusting stuffed animals in there and ugly statues and . . . "
Hell. This world, like every other one he'd ever been on always seemed to have the profession of last resort for women. With a whore for a mother, there'd been little chance that she'd snag an actual husband, but everyone had hoped for the best and found odd jobs for her when they had money to spare. To no avail, apparently. For all her apparent distress now, though, she seemed to be recovering quickly and telling all about what must have been a wild time in a weirdo's museum.
Bert Howard shook his head in disappointment. He was Damien's across-the-street neighbor. The old man pretended to be a retired carpenter and spent most of his time fixing up the old house he'd bought twenty years ago or down here taking a long lunch. "Well, it was bound to start sometime soon."
Damien could only nod.
"Did you get the money?" Barto was too old to be reliably assigned a gender, but could be counted on to be practical about the important things.
Periti pulled out a wadded paper. "All they gave me was this."
Hanseo and Fala both gawped, and Barto snickered. "Girl, haven't you ever seen a bank note before? That's a hundred royals there in your hand. At least they didn't cheat you."
Periti looked at it in faint disbelief. "A hundred royals?" The tears started leaking again.
"That'll pay your room and board for the year, girl." Onray leered. "Anything else you earn is just gravy on life. Want me to take it now?"
She clutched it possessively, then softened. "Half. Fifty royals in advance, for a year's room and board."
They haggled over it, with Onray slipping the girl a couple of ales. Raised half on the streets and half in bars and brothels, it didn't ha
ve much effect until Barto slipped something extra in with it. Then all the whores had some, and Damien, finishing up his second ale felt the familiar buzz and glared at Barto. He hadn't seen anyone slip anything into his ale and he really ought to be getting back to work, not gravitating toward the back rooms, and certainly not with a now giggly Periti pulling him into her room. Sheesh, even Bert was chasing tail. First time he'd ever seen that . . .
He was still cursing the so-called Havwee Temple Water, which was actually something in wine, when he staggered out to the curb and woke up his well rested team of horses. Midnight Blue, the black roan stallion snorted at him as if amused. The bay gelding just yawned, and they drove the two blocks down to the docks. The daylight was lengthening in the late spring, and Damien worked until a bit after sundown, and was perfectly sober, if a bit hungover, by the time he got home.
Andrai eyed him suspiciously as he groomed the horses. "You're late. Dinner's ruined."
"Earned a bunch though." He led Blue into the first stall, and put the bay beside him. The other teams were all mares, which made for some noisy conversations. As his old mares had died, he'd sworn to replace them only with geldings, but the mares tended to be cheaper, and when bred seemed determined to have mostly fillies. Max's oldest daughter and her husband lived out at the farm with the retired oldsters, whichever mares were in foal, and the youngsters in training. They traded off which stallion was working and which was out on the farm. Blue's foals sold well, and he even pulled in a few stud fees every spring. Solstice, well, people here just didn't take to pintos. The family had four teams for their four wagons here in town. A very successful family business. Well run, financially sound, able to kick ass. They'd never actually had a load stolen in their twenty-seven years of operation. They'd had an empty wagon stolen, once. Dropped a huge crate of china during an attempted robbery, once. They'd gotten the stolen wagon, and eventually one of the horses back. The china they'd had to pay for.
Not bad for a bunch of foreign spies.
Since going silent, the worst thing that had happened had been during the rioting and street violence on the night of the Comets. The sudden mindless panic and violence had caught Andrai by surprise. Her daughter by some anonymous rapist was nine years old now.
The girl's birth had actually mellowed Andrai, very much to Damien's surprise. "I'd never allowed myself to want a child, until it was too late. Or at any rate, until I thought it was too late. I think I should have listened to you lot, when you talked about that Temple water miracle drink. It did a lot more than heal my injuries." That had been the first and last she'd ever spoken about it. She raised her daughter and nagged at her "nephews" and grand nephews and nieces, and looked healthy enough to do it for another decade at least.
Far from ruined, the meatloaf was delicious as usual. Damien wolfed down all the leftovers, waving to Cordelia as she skipped out to meet up with the neighbors' kids.
Max sauntered over for a family meeting, and they all dropped down to the basement. "This isn't going to last much longer, with Cordelia old enough to notice things now."
Andrai sniffed. "Then I'll start doing the check while she's away at school. She's a brilliant girl and ought to be able to attend University." She clipped the hatch shut behind them. "Unfortunately, even if we were in contact with Earth, she's a half breed. They won't allow her citizenship. The best I can do is probably find her a Native husband." Her lips pinched disapprovingly.
Damien nodded agreement. He himself fit in well here, and was happy as a clam working with horses and banging whores. A career soldier, he'd never planned on much beyond that. Best if the girl knew nothing of her half Earther heritage.
Max, who wasn't the least bit related to him looked indignant. He'd fallen badly, and apparently permanently in love with a Native. He'd raised her oldest son as his, along with the daughter and two sons of his she'd borne since their marriage. But he too, hadn't taught them anything about Earth. Hadn't told them that the three elders of "the family" were spies from a foreign world.
Andrai tapped the radio receiver, fast forwarding through twenty-four hours of recordings to check the occasional static bursts for hidden signals. As usual, nothing. The troops stuck in Fascia didn't use their radios regularly, and they were too far away to catch the low powered transmissions from Asia. Occasionally they'd catch half of the two talking back and forth. They themselves were under orders to be silent, and never, ever joined in. Damien wondered how long it would be before they got lazy, slacked off and stopped checking every single day.
Andrai was a healthy seventy-one years old. She should have retired a decade ago. Both Max and Damien were well past their enlistments. Earth was apparently not able or not willing to find their agents. They were running on pure faith.
Damien rarely thought about it anymore. All that was left was an hour a day of checking the recordings. If Andrai started doing the checks during the day, he suspected he'd lose the last bit of Earther left in him, and go completely native. It was too easy to forget. To not actively seek out information, to forget there had even been orders to that effect. He suspected that was why Andrai had kept the evening check so long.
Andrai closed the communications and computer installations, leaving them looking like large storage lockers. Damien lifted a ceramic crock of oats up on one while Max lifted a crate of a jam jars to the other. The basement was full of food stacked on shelves against the walls, and the false wall that concealed some advanced equipment. The ground floor held the small kitchen in one corner, a table took up most of another quarter, and the front half was their small living room. A pipe led from the hot water tank on the side of the stove out to the little bath house built onto the side of the kitchen. The privy was outside, as the Comet Fall Natives considered them much too nasty to have inside one's own home, even though they had flushing toilets here in town. The second floor of the house held Andrai's bedroom and a small library, and Cordelia was the sole occupant of the attic spaces. Pure luxury, after stuffing the original eight spies inside. Code, a Native teenager, had slept in the barn loft and helped with the horses. Now he was practically a member of the family, along with his wife Vani and their four daughters. They lived in their own home, beside the new barn, in the middle of the three city lots they owned. Max, Jeinah and the two younger boys lived two doors down. Damien had taken over one of the small apartments they'd built onto the new barn, back before Code and Vani married.
Damien met Code on their mutual last check of the horses. Andrai stepped to the front porch and whistled in a very authoritative manner. Running footsteps from every direction merged on their three homes. Three teenagers, and three getting close. He had Tony, Michaela, and Dori working occasional half days driving and the once a week stall strip down. Sanda, Cordelia and Carl earned their pocket money scooping the manure out of the stalls in between the strip downs. A few more years, and they'd either have to expand the business or the kids would be off to other jobs. They'd been here a generation. "I'm fifty-seven. Good grief."
"About time you settled down and married, isn't it?"
He turned to find Vani grinning at him.
"Did you know that you revert to your old Veronian accent when you talk to yourself?"
He snorted. "You'd think it would have faded by now, wouldn't you?"
She nodded. "I think I need to set you up with some nice young lady, so you can have kids to inherit the business."
"Umm, I think there are plenty of kids around to inherit already."
"But none of them are yours, and everyone knows you built this business up from scratch."
"Ah, don't be silly. Max has been here from the start, and Andrai and Mig had money."
"None of which you've ever seen. Code thinks they're taking advantage of you."
Damien snorted. "Not again! If I have to suffer through one more cycle of him being overly grateful for my working the hell out of him when I was starting this business up in a strange town, I really will sell Solstice and s
top breeding mares or something."
She snickered. "You did the same for me. Running into you is the best thing that ever happened to either of us."
"I don't recall having to clean a single stall that winter, or spring or summer, for that matter. Fed you, paid you a pittance."
"Encouraged me to be a witch, even helped me experiment and keep track of what worked and what didn't."
"Oh, now you're doing it! Go on. I'm a respected business man. Got savings in the bank. Own property. Healthy. Surrounded by family and friends. Somehow I just can't feel like I've been taken advantage of."
"Ha! I'll bet you're thinking about how to employ all the teenagers."
"Well, it did occur to me that I'd soon have three more responsible drivers, so I could look into the longer hauls, freight and gold to and from Farofo, for instance."
"I knew it. Code says that actually the most amazing thing you've done is given pinto horses a good name."
Damien laughed at that. "I still get spit on occasionally, and I'm down to only half the horses being pintos. Goodnight, Vani."
He was still chuckling about the pintos when he climbed the stairs to his apartment in the loft. Pintos horses becoming respectable? Pretty damn funny. All but one of his first pintos were long dead, but he still had their oldest foals. Blue was twenty-three, still strong and healthy. He'd gotten his mother's roan color, but not the white splashes she'd had. The rest of that first crop of foals had been fillies, all retired now, still down on the farm. Solstice's daughters, all pintos. He'd occasionally bred the mares to other stallions . . . umm, those old horses were all gone, sold or died of age and accident. When he'd started breeding Blue to Solstice's daughters the foals had improved, and the ones he hadn't sold were still pulling his wagons. He'd rather nostalgically kept the pintos and sold the solid colored foals. And somehow the solid colored mares he bought seemed to get sold a few years later. Solstice himself was twenty-six and looked a quarter of that.