by Pam Uphoff
Two hours later they crested a hill and examined the pretty little village that was the focus of this abomination. The officers called back orders to shift the soldiers from their marching order to a broad front.
"We have arrived," the Inquisitor General declared. "Now it is time to cleanse the world of this blight on the . . . "
The troops had fallen quiet behind him—completely and absolutely quiet. Cuffe turned, tried to turn, his head and couldn't.
But he could see the Inquisitor General turn her head when she noticed. She reined her horse, but it was stiff as if dead and stuffed for the Temple Museum.
"Why, Inquisitor General! To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Male tones, accented.
A man strolled into Cuffe's view, very tall, bulky, wearing clothing that looked suspiciously as if it had been raided from holy stores—or perhaps from the luggage of a brother inquisitor. He swung a Holy Flail in his right hand.
The Inquisitor General jerked at the immobile horse as the man strutted in a circle about her, looking her over. His coal-black hair was short and neat, his eyes a warm honey brown.
"I'm so glad that you came yourself. I prefer women, you see. These appalling male virgins are useful." He detoured to pat Cuffe's cheek with his left . . . hoof. "But disgusting." He shrugged. "I suppose I could make do, but since you're here, and handy to where I need to be for a bit of revenge . . . Dismount."
Cuffe watched as she sprang down, drawing her sword in midair, ready to fight. The creature whipped the flail and wrapped her hand. The chains had small sharp edges on them, and he could see them tearing her hand as the creature jerked. The Inquisitor General clung to the sword. She was jerked away from her horse even as her left hand reached for her own flail in its holder behind her saddle.
"Maaahahaha! I think not!" The man shook his head and horns curled from his head.
"Foul beast! Begone, Black Goat of Scoone! You have no place in this world."
He jerked her to him, the flail still wrapped around her hand. The sword fell from her hand as the chains dug in. He stepped around behind her, reached around her waist to pull her to him and rubbed his crotch against her buttocks. "Oh, yes, I think you will like the shape I've lived in for the last six hundred years. Now that it is under my control, I find that I like it too." He ran his hand up and down her front. "A holy virgin of Baal! What a prize." He threw his head back and yelled. "Can you hear me, Ba'al? Is there enough left of you to know that I am going to have your holy virgin?" He nuzzled into her neck—and his face seemed longer, more like a muzzle. "Mmmm. But I like my virgins with a bit fewer garments about them." He flipped the flail and managed to release the Inquisitor General's hand. He threw the flail to the side. The Inquisitor General twisted out of his hooved grip, but the monster grabbed her tabard and jerked it as she leaped for her sword.
She twisted and ducked out of the garment, snatching the sword, pulling . . . she couldn't move it. It was as frozen as her army.
She leaped for her own flail, but the goat grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled her back into his embrace. He ducked his head and twisted his horned head. The Inquisitor General's shirt tore as if cut with a knife. She wrenched free and ran, but he was on her in two strides, spinning her, chasing her around the horse. "Oh, look at the stallion! My brother! Big balls and a dick on hooves. What am I to think of a virgin who rides a stallion!"
Cuffe could only see her legs. She seemed to be trying to kick the monster, but he must have caught her foot, for he laughed and a boot was thrown out from behind the horse. She ran again, but again the goat-man caught her. Her shirt was in shreds, and Cuffe cringed as he saw her pants stripped off, the second boot trapping one pant leg. The monster pulled the pants and dropped the Inquisitor General on her butt. She jerked her foot out of the boot and backed cautiously away, fists balled. She backed all the way to her troops, and spun to pull at the Holy Captain's sword. It was stuck and the goat-man laughed. His face was definitely a muzzle now, black-haired, but the mouth still had human lips.
He pulled his shirt off as he stalked the woman.
"I have a sword you can use," the monster jeered, thrusting with its hips.
She backed further, circling. The thing followed her. Its chest was hairy and black. It kicked off its shoes and stood on hooves. Its legs bent wrongly. They backed out of sight. Cuffe could hear footsteps, running and then a thud.
"Ba'al, look at my holy flail! Oh, stupid man who wanted to be a god. Now you can't even take your own virgins—so I will do so for you."
"Remember this, Baal? Remember breasts and this!" Thud, crash, a masculine curse. "I'm going to take your virgin, Baal, and then I'm going to take your church. It will be mine, it will serve me. Every holy virgin will be mine, and you can watch me take them."
Something bumped him, then the Inquisitor General backed past him, the creature still following. It was naked, its penis a spurting dripping horror.
"Maaaahahaha!" it grabbed her, threw her down on her back.
The breath was forced from her in a painful bark, then as it stood over her, spraying, she gasped. “Ba'al! God above all!" She threw herself toward the flail on the ground, short of reaching it by a handspan. "I am yours and yours alone!" The flail twitched, then flew to her grasp. She swung it in one smooth motion as the goat leaped at her. It wrapped his neck and head. She rolled and Cuffe could see the muscles cord along her arms and shoulders as she got both hands on the handle, a foot against the goat's shoulder, and jerked. He heard the snap as the monster's neck broke.
The hold on his body broke with that snap, and he fell backwards, staggering.
The Inquisitor General jerked the flail free. "Ba'al! I am yours!" She lowered the flail, placing the chained end on the ground, and placing the butt of the handle in her crotch, bore down. She flinched, but knelt there, blood dripping down her legs. "All praise the power of Baal."
"BA'AL! BA'AL! BA'AL! BA'AL!" Cuffe roared with the troops, then the Holy holy captain was helping the Inquisitor General rise and Cuffe dashed forward, to snatch her tabard from the ground and place it over her shoulders. Then ran for her pants, her boots.
He knelt at her feet helping her dress. "I have never seen such strength, such bravery," he whispered.
Suddenly people erupted from the village, running up the hill. The captain called them to battle formation, but the first person coming was a young woman.
"You've saved us, you've saved us! You've killed the beast!" She threw herself at the ground and kissed the Inquisitor General's boots. Other women were right behind her, cheering and crying.
Of all the village men, only the butcher and the gnarled old tavern owner survived. There wasn't a single child to be found.
"There's the farmers, I don't think the beast killed the farmers, it needed slaves to work the fields, and the sheep herder, he's simple. No one has dared go down to the mill to check on the millers." The old man wept. "Thank the Great God Ba'al you came! The beast spared all the pregnant women. It said when the babes were born it would eat them in front of their mothers, and then do to them what it did to all the rest. To their husbands and children as they watched and cried!" He burst into sobs and when he collected himself humbly asked for help getting kegs of ale up from the cellar. "For if ever an army deserved a feast, yours does."
Incredible amounts of ale were brought up and drunk, and lambs were slaughtered and roasted, and a steer for the officers, and the finest wine. "I've been saving it for years."
The army stayed for three days, then packed back up for their return to the city.
The Inquisitor General mounted her horse, the stallion prancing and arching its neck, showing off as it never had before. The work horses out in the field galloped over to the nearest fence and neighed. The stallion was dropping its shaft, neighing at the mares and Cuffe shuddered. He'd never ride anything but a mare from now on. He never wanted to see another penis. Ever.
The Inquisitor General wasn't very sympathetic eit
her, and put her spurs to the horse's sides, leading the triumphal return to Karista. The Black Goat of Scoone was packed in salt in the lead wagon. Stuffed and mounted, it was destined to be the prime display in the Grand Temple's Museum.
***
"Let me get this straight." Answer was trying to sort out everything that had happened. "The mayor has turned back into a dragon and flown away. Seven of your goats are turning back into wizards as fast as they can find virgins to rape. And you bred the Inquisitor General's warhorse to every single mare in the valley. So we will be short of plow and wagon teams next year. Anything else?"
The Sheep Man was looking quite pleased with himself. Damn man, magicking the flail into the woman's hand and making sure the goat's neck was broken, before mentally calling the witches to send them out to cheer Ba'al.
It had worked like a charm. The man was going to be insufferable for years.
"Nooo, I think that about covers it." He waved a casual hand. “Don't forget those horses we got from the first Holy Army. We'll sell most of them and keep enough for the plowing."
"Ah. Good. Now. Who is going to take over the tax books? Harry?"
"He's asleep again. Maybe the Auld Wulf or Gisele?"
***
Lefty camped on the north shore of the lake. The captain had been pleased with his map of the Old Road sections through the mountains, and reacted appropriately to a hint that knowing where in the World the road went might be a good idea.
The ancient maps he'd seen had shown a city in the desert. The old maps he'd seen had called this area part of the Scoone Empire. The maps from before the Auralian war had this as inhospitable desert inhabited by savage nomads, possibly related to the Veronians.
The newest maps he'd seen had this all labeled as unknown territory.
So he was going to know it.
The very edges of the lake bore the only traces of animal life to be seen. A thin bands of reeds and sedges and grass failed to encroach on the hard black lava that surrounded the lake. But there were little frogs on the reeds, big frogs in the reeds, and insects of every kind.
Fish too. He'd stuffed himself on fresh flame broiled fish, and wondered how he was going to cook any more.
He'd brought wood, but there was a limit to what he could carry, and he was going to run out fast.
Of course, the road might not touch a lake again, so that didn't actually matter. The lava lands had a few tough bushes growing in cracks, a scattering of fast growing grass where the surface had weathered a bit or collected windblown sand and dust.
He finished off fish he'd cooked the night before, for breakfast, and headed east.
The smooth lava lands ended in a long low ridge of weathered ashstone a dozen miles across. He found segments of the Old Road crossing it, sometimes exposed, more often buried under the volcanic deposit. "Nearly a thousand years old." His voice sounded deep and masculine, so he kept talking. "And no sign of wear and tear. Maybe the Dark Ages came on so fast there wasn't time for it? Sounds a bit unlikely though."
He descended to another stretch of black lava. Seventy miles across to another ashstone ridge. He found the Old Road again, and spent three days walking the boundary between ash and lava to the south. There were no cross ridges or breaks. As far as he could tell, the ridge went south for hundreds of miles. He crossed it, forty miles wide, and cut diagonally north east across another long strip of lava. "They must follow big fault lines." He muttered. "First the ash covered everything, then the land along the faults sank and lava flowed in and covered everything. How strange."
Chapter Ten
Fall 1352
On the road
They brought the horses they'd captured from Father Favio's Century down from the high valleys before the cold weather set in. They picked and chose and argued amiably about them, and the Auld Wulf, Harry and the Sheep Man finally decided to take eight teams and wagons south on the last trading trip of the year. They'd only bring a single wagon and team back. The Sisters of the Half Moon and some of the Crescents went with them, with Harry's boys and Question.
Harry, who was still spending an awful lot of time sleeping, suggested that this was an excellent learning opportunity. The youngsters were gleefully taking the reins as they pulled out.
With Question not grasping power, Particular and Opinion needed a third to lead them in the basic exercises. Never had been brought along to fill out the triad of Crescent Moons. The Half Moons, Justice, Idea and Kindly, were watching the younger pair closely; they were way too young, and way too eager to advance further. Or at any rate, they were boy-crazy.
Question held the reins of the last team, her father showing her how to position her hands.
"Of course, with only two horses there's nothing to it. Four horses are a bit trickier, and six takes some good reining to not scrape corners or get your wagon stuck as you turn."
"Show me!" she could feel the horses' mouths through the reins, feel their eagerness to be on the road. These were good horses. A mare and a gelding. Question hoped that they were the team they'd keep.
"You'd have three reins in each hand, left reins in your left, right in your right, but between separate fingers. So you are steering each pair of horses. To turn a corner, you'd hold the lead pair straight until they were a length into the intersection. Then, if you were turning right, you'd twitch your right pinky and turn the right-hand horse, and the cross rein would turn the left horse. The middle pair, they can't turn yet. You hold them straight until they're a length out in the intersection, then turn them, holding your wheel pair straight until your wagon is far enough out to swing around the corner. Then you turn the wheel pair."
She looked at the four reins in her hands. "I think I'll practice with a single pair for a while."
Her father chuckled. She'd been a little afraid that without his chain he'd turn out to be an evil wizard, like the ones in the stories and histories. The most famous wizards were from Scoone, a country in the far east. They'd even had Wizard Kings, and huge Wizard Wars. And everyone was quite sure that they had been evil. The people of Scoone had killed them or thrown them out, and she'd heard that the last of their descendants had been killed in the Auralian War.
But her father was even more relaxed, and probably hadn't ever been near Scoone. And her mother had stopped finding something else for her to do when she wanted to spend time around him.
She practiced turns as they wound through the hills, the horses putting up with her good-naturedly, as all they were doing was following the other wagons.
They would avoid Wallenton, where the horses or gear might be recognized, heading twenty days further south to the desert town of Havwee. The town served a wide-spread regions of mines, and Answer had sent a list of minerals she'd like to stock up on.
They stopped in their usual camping spot, barely off the road where it crossed a stream.
Question had turned the reins over to her father some time ago, but leaped out to unhitch and lift the harness off "her" horses. They drank deeply before she pegged them out to graze, and she brushed them while they munched the oats she brought them. They rubbed their big heads on her to get to the itchy spots and otherwise got a great deal of attention.
When she got back to the fire her father handed her a sizzling stick of lamb chunks and a roasted ear of corn. "Named them yet?"
"Nope. I don't know them well enough," she informed him. "Besides, we'll probably just sell them in a few days. So it's silly to name them." Even though the bay mare had a kite-shaped star and the gelding was a soft brown all over like the chocolate they occasionally bought in Wallenton.
There weren't many dishes to wash, so she crawled into bed early and slept until dawn.
The next day got really boring as they hit the plains. Her father took the reins, and her mother leaned on him and half-dozed, the horses following the next wagon without fuss. She napped herself, in case she needed to stand watch that night. The crossroads were busy, this time of year, and as she'd though
t, they had company, two merchant trains and several travelers on horseback. One of the horsemen eyed them, especially Particular.
Particular was the prettiest of the three of them, and had started dressing to show off, even though her mother told her repeatedly that she wasn't to lose her virginity until she'd completed the Crescent Moon training. Question thought she was dumb.
Question considered the horseman dispassionately. "He does have pretty good conformation," she admitted. "Much more sensible than flirting with the farm boys or Tivo."
Particular glared. "He's not a horse! Why don't you grow up?"
Thinking back to how that wine had made her feel about the scout, and worse, what she'd tried to do, Question shuddered. "Yeach. I'm not going to ever grow up. Forget it."
Opinion snickered. "You'll change your mind. Wait till spring. I bet it'll hit you then." She craned to look at the horseman. "He's nice and tall, Parti."
"Look at his hair!" Particular sighed. In the firelight it looked either black or dark brown, with red highlights that might be the fire, or might be the hair. The man had taken off his broad-brimmed hat and untied the thong that held his hair bunched at the nape of his neck. It curled as he shook it out, and combed it. Particular sighed again, and throwing a quick look at her mother, moved to the fire to help the cooking. She managed to be on the horseman's side of the fire rather often.
Worried, Question sat up most of the night and made sure Particular didn't try sneaking off.
The horseman was up before them, and off down the road.
She wished he hadn't been headed south, but then he'd be traveling faster than they would, so most likely they wouldn't see him again.
The next twenty days were uneventful, A few dust clouds showed the movement of men or animals, but always at a distance. They kept a watch at night, and had no alarms. Away from camp, Never led Opinion and Particular through the Crescent Moon exercises every evening, and Question watched, trying the meditations, but failing entirely at collecting power. Dry lightning flashed along the mountain front, but no rain fell.