Wine of the Gods 05: Spy Wars

by Pam Uphoff

  Well, all things considered, not a bad start.

  He escaped from the school ground gratefully. He felt like such an ungainly giant in there. At six foot ten inches it was enough of a problem when the furniture was sized for adults.

  He crossed Main Street, whistling cheerfully.

  "And what has you so happy this morning?" Harry had his feet up on his own table, setting a bad example. The Tavern was nearly empty, a trio of witches giggled in one corner, in another, a merchant in a city suit was putting away a substantial lunch, and eyeing the witches.

  "Oh, I was just thinking that that really is Main Street now. We have two cross streets, Mill and School. If we aren't careful people will start calling us a town instead of a village." He grabbed his usual seat and leaned back against the wall.

  Opinion got up from the corner table and walked out. The merchant pushed his plate away and followed.

  The Auld Wulf frowned, and looked back at Harry.

  "Nasty greedy sort, looking for diamonds. I think he's trying to find the witches' source. Very much a home grown product, with no interest in politics or spying, apart from finding diamond mines."

  "Heh. As if a witch would tell."

  A witch hustled out with a basket of bread and butter, then returned with a pot of tea. Answer, the head of the witch Pyramid stuck her head out and he invited her with a wave. She brought another cup with her.

  "Humph. I'll hear about slacking off," she grumbled. "Agate wants us to all keep time sheets."

  He chuckled. "Dragons are orderly. And she's right, we can't run the valley like an extended family anymore. We've gotten too big. All you witches need to act like employees, even if you rotate so often you mostly eat your salaries." He lowered his chair legs to the floor as she poured tea. "I had two of my first day students pick my brain today."

  Answer's eyes gleamed. "Rustle and Tromp."

  He chuckled. "Didn't even have to think, did you?"

  "Humph. Those two! One too controlled and one uncontrolled. I've never seen a child who thinks things through like Rustle. And Tromp. The temper. The mouth."

  "Well they both have good physical coordination and concentration. They both, umm, defocused and moved instinctively. While absorbing technique. It quite startled me."

  Her turn to chuckle. "Bet that was good for you. Keep you alert. And with luck you can teach Tromp some self control. Rustle? What do you do with a child that never needs correction or scolding except for acting more responsibly and older than her years?"

  "Probably nothing." He quashed a smart ass comment about noticing when she was doing something no one had yet thought necessary to tell her to not do and spread butter on the fresh bread. "Isn't it nice to not have to worry about anything?"

  Chapter Thirty-six

  1 December 3479 / Late Fall 1362

  Karista, countryside, Kingdom of the West, Comet Fall

  Damien was alone when he drove the bay mares back out the city's west gate early in the morning. A couple of hours meandering got him far enough away from any possible trackers from the city. He stopped briefly, reached through the door to bring out the five centimeter dish, aim it and send their extensive report. He climbed down and made a show of checking the mares. Hmm, that knee was a bit puffy. He climbed back aboard and checked that a return burst had been received, stowed the dish and drove on. A side road took him in a wide loop and eventually back on the road to the city. He stopped to rest the mares at the intersection, missing his sturdy pintos, and checked that everything was put away in the back. The interior looked reasonably innocuous, so long as no one found the concealed cabinets.

  "Hey Mister! Give a girl a ride to town?" The pretty little thing batted her eyelashes at him. She had two big cloth bundles, one in each hand.

  He glanced toward town and spotted a group horsemen galloping towards them. Looked back at the sweet, innocent local girl. "Sure honey, no problem."

  He tossed her bundles in the back, snagged his knit cap and pulled it on. No way to tell if it helped in the least. He climbed up to the driver's bench. The girl followed, swarming up to the high perch without assistance, and smiled nervously.

  "I'm Mal. You go to the City often?" If the horsemen were looking for the source of that radio message, they ought to be looking for the road that cut off further down, where he'd sent and received the message. And hopefully not some fellow out with a pretty girl.

  "Never been there. I'm Vani."

  Damien picked up his reins and clucked to the mares, then pulled up as the horsemen crested the nearest hill. "Wonder what their hurry is?" Could Oners really read minds? How can you blank your mind? Normally only happened with sex . . . Think of sex? With this little cutie beside him? No problem.

  He held the horses steady as the group swept across in front of him. Tried to fill his mind with blank startlement, and then glancing at the girl, noticed her blouse was a bit low cut and he had a great angle to view her rather modest assets. One rider stared long and hard at him then turned his attention back to his horse and the road.

  "Huh. Do you suppose they're bandits?" Vani leaned out and looked a bit wistfully after the men.

  "If they are, the troops will be along shortly." Damien clicked to the mares again and steered them out onto the main road. He looked a bit askance at the girl. "Er, how old are you? Do you have relatives in the City."

  She straightened and sat up. "I'm eighteen. My family has kicked me out, so I'm looking for a job." Her bottom lip quivered a bit. "They said I was a witch, and they threw things at me."

  "There are the fabric mills and all."

  She shook her head. "I know what I'll wind up doing, and I figure I better get started before I'm desperate or look dirty and tired. It's not like I'm a virgin or anything." The lip quivered again. "Even Freddie threw some rocks."

  Damien bit his lip. I don't believe in magic. I don't. "Are you really a witch? I mean, if you are couldn't you, oh, tell fortunes or something?"

  "I dunno. Sometimes when I want something really badly, I get it somehow." Her foot scuffed along the footboard. "Like Freddie. But ever since then it's been working more often, and everyone got scared."

  Damien hesitated. Their original mission had included learning a lot about the native culture, and it was full of references to witches and magic. Was this stupid, or an opportunity? "My stable boy is spending the winter down south with most of my horses. If you need a place to stay, the stable loft is available."

  She eyed him sidelong. "Don't you like women?"

  "Yeah, but I prefer them grown up a bit. How old are you really?"

  She sighed. "Fourteen."

  Damien winced. "Definitely the stable loft."

  "I know how to milk cows, and I always kept the chickens for Mother. I could help with your horses."

  "All right. Room and board, for a couple of weeks, and we'll see how you suit. But. I live with a passel of relatives, and if they say go, then in two weeks, you go." Damien turned his attention to the road as the traffic increased, the houses closer together and getting bigger. "The new parts of the city, outside the walls, are where all the newly rich people live. The old rich still live inside the walls in mansions to put these to shame. Odd, how the poor people live inside as well." Damien was familiar, and was waved through, the guards winking at the girl sitting beside him. He pointed out the various parts of the City and steered the mares down their alley and into the stable yard. "Would you mind opening the big doors at the end there?" The girl scrambled down and swung them wide as he turned the team and backed the wagon under cover. Mike and Carl trotted out, stopped dead to eye the girl, and then climbed into the wagon. Mike fixed a grim look on him as he passed.

  Damien pointed to the stairs to the hay loft. "There's a room at the end. I don't actually know what's up there. Code never complained and I didn't even think to look."

  She popped up the steps, and was back down in seconds. "There's a bed, and I brought a blanket, so everything's fine." She tried t
o help with the unharnessing, and brushed the mares, forked hay down for them, and measured out oats.

  "Umm, I need to go talk to everyone. Why don't you stay out here for a bit. I'll be back."

  He walked across the tiny yard to the house, and tapped at the basement door. He waited until they'd powered down and opened the door for him.

  "Damien? The girl?"

  "A bunch of horsemen in a hurry were headed my way, about right to have started from town soon after I radioed. She needed a ride and looked sweet and innocent. I promised her a place to stay for at least a couple of weeks, since she sort of covered for me. We might want to keep her, though. Fourteen year old tossed out of her home because she's a witch. Could be worth studying. Let's talk later. What's happening at Gate Camp?"

  "They spotted either natives or Oners watching the camp. Possibly both. They weren't able to capture any of them. Not that catching a Oner ever does any good. Suicide, every single one we've ever caught. Anyway they realized that old wagon was gone, and decided it was the natives."

  Then they broke out the individual messages. The one from his sister thanked him for the pictures of that pretty native colt. "Too bad you can't keep him." A pointed reminder of the required fate of all experiments. Sorry, Sis!

  An official—automatic, computer generated—report on the status of his military retirement account, complete with extrapolation if he re-upped in two years. "Only two years?" He muttered under his breath. "Until my enlistment is up," he answered Mike's questioning look.

  "They'll get us all out of here before that, unless they decide they want a deep mole. I expect to be recalled any time now. We aren't finding out much beyond the fact that the Oners are very thin on the ground, and have no contact with the government up here." Mike chewed a knuckle, looking them over. "However, that hunting pack disturbs me. Eight of them, tracking your transmission. I think it's time for a weapons issue. New rules of engagement. Any sign that you're dealing with Oners, not ordinary street thieves, shoot to kill." He pulled out a key and turned to the weapons locker.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Early Winter 1363

  Ash, Kingdom of the West

  Dydit met Never after sword fighting lessons, bringing Rustle with him for lunch. The Tavern was unusually full.

  "Merchants everywhere." Never muttered. "Like it or not, we're going to have to improve the road down to Wallenton and then through to Fort Stag. We're getting wagons full of strangers coming through all the time."

  "A lot of them just come here. They're getting vicious about that wool. Nil's sold a bunch of sheep, but whatever he did to them, they don't reproduce well, without, err, Lady Gisele's herbal assistance. Makes me wonder some times if they didn't just dope that wine with their standard sheep medicine." Dydit scratched his jaw and looked over the dining room. His eyes wandered back to one particular merchant and a faint frown creased his forehead. "That man is . . . "

  "Hungry," Rustle said. "Bad hungry. I don't like him."

  "And someone is picking up her witching abilities very quickly, I'm thinking." Never sighed. "She's so young."

  Dydit nodded ruefully. He looked fondly down at his oldest daughter's head, her hair at bit too dark to call blonde anymore. Obsidian was still pale blonde.

  "That's Havener Discol, a gem merchant out of Karista. We're playing dumb and not saying a thing. But he's trying to track down the diamonds we sell, which bothers me. He's persistent, even the threat of being snowed in for the winter hasn't deterred him. We don't need a horde of prospectors tramping all over what we consider our territory."

  "Much though I hate to say it, perhaps we should look into the legal ownership of some of the land around here." Dydit didn't bother to try and remember anything. Goats didn't pay attention to legalities.

  "Royal Land Grant, four hundred years old. It's one of the ones in the founding papers." Never answered promptly. "Technically speaking the Auld Wulf owns everything from the Old Road south for two hundred miles. I think his vineyard is on the midpoint east-west. Answer and Beck have, well, what it comes down to is magic users have permission to do and use anything they want."

  "Hmm, so about a hundred and eighty miles to the south?"

  "Roughly the North Fork of the Cold River."

  "So it covers all the Grey Valley outlets." Dydit nodded.

  Never tsked. "You aren't supposed to know that. I suppose watching us for fifty years, a goat picks things up, doesn't he?"

  "I explored occasionally before the first witches came. And I used to follow you up there, check for wolves, watch you wading in the streams with your skirts up to . . . ah, ah, no violence in public, Witch!"

  "Honestly, Dydit. How long have you had this death wish?"

  "You mean, when did I notice you, specifically?" He thought back, carefully. "Since you were quite young. I remember noticing that that cute little girl having the birthday picnic up on the hill wasn't a little girl anymore. Quite apart from your absolutely spectacular looks, and blinding magical glow . . . I think it hit me because you usually threw dirt clods instead of rocks at me, and generally missed. On purpose, apparently, since the other goats got rocks zinged at them."

  She blushed devastatingly, or at any rate it devastated him. "Well, you were the littlest one, and you didn't seem quite so malevolent. Just goes to show how observant and sensitive I was."

  "I have a nasty suspicion that you didn't think of me romantically, though."

  "Absolutely not."

  "Oh well, you got it right in the end." He polished off his spaghetti, and eyed Rustle's. "Don't you need to get back to school?"

  "No Dad, you cannot have my last meatball. They do writing after lunch and I can catch up with them easy."

  "Easily. Humph. And I wasn't eyeing your meatball." He sighed as she ate it, and the rest of her pasta too. "Bottomless pit." He looked across the room to where the merchant was settling his bill. "I hope he's leaving soon. I just don't like his manner."

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  20 Emre 1365yp / Late Winter 1363 Local

  Karista, Kingdom of the West, Target World Forty-two

  There'd been no sign of the Earthers since the one radio detection months ago. The Action Team was getting restless, and the Info Team was running out of excuses to trudge out into the miserable winter.

  Gifted with a warm spell, the entire team hiked to the market. The break, probably brief, in the winter cold had brought out all the usual merchants. Egto broke off to check out the wine merchants, Wink stalled out by a bakery, although whether that was due to the aromas or the pretty girl hawking the loaves was hard to say. Ajha started with a bunch of sausage for the next day, and eyed the fresh chickens.

  Idre snorted. "If you're trying to put the Action Team off their feed, I'll remind you that they're stone cold killers, each and every one."

  Ajha felt his face heat and turned away. He caught sight of a wagon backed into an alley, unloading crates of oranges directly into a fruit stall. The horses were facing away, but . . . "Idre, did you say the Earther's had a dark grey horse and a white one?"

  Idre followed his gaze, stiffened. "That's him. That black haired fellow up in the wagon, handing the boxes down. That's one of the Earthers." He bit his lip. "You keep an eye on him; he won't recognize you. I'll get Egto and Wink . . . I'll send Egto to the warehouse. We might as well let the Action Team enjoy themselves."

  Ajha followed the crowd movement, gradually working his way around to the fruit stall.

  He opened his mental shield a crack. The fruit vender was ordinary . . . Ajha stepped to the side. The man in the wagon buzzed oddly, a surface impression of immediate sensory input and nothing more. It was typical of a slightly off organization of the brain, a misfit with the usual pattern. Local or Earther, the man simply couldn't be read. He handed down the next to the last box.

  Ajha let the crowd move him down another block. He turned and strode down that street. Then he eased forward enough to catch sight of a dark grey mu
zzle, then stepped back and waited.

  :: Ajha? :: Idre sounded close.

  :: I'm watching the south end of the alley. :: Ajha tried to look uninteresting as creaking leather, the clink of shod hooves and grit of steel rimmed wheels on stone alerted him. :: They're moving now. :: Ajha leaned over and stuck a hand in his canvas bag of sausages, as if totally uninterested in the rig passing him. :: He turned east, toward the docks. :: A brief glance after the wagon was past. :: There are two men in the wagon. :: He sauntered after them.

  :: Wink is on the east side of the market, I've sent him further. ::

  The wagon crested a short steep hill and dropped out of sight. Adja sprinted up the hill, slowing at the top. The wagon was still heading east. :: Two blocks away from the river docks. Can Egto get the Action Team down there? ::

  :: They are on the way. Wink is at the docks, he'll take over the watching. ::

  Ahead, the wagon turned left. Ajha hesitated, then reversed his course. The Earthers would either move along the docks or if they took on a load, turn to head west. He might be able to flank them, spot them, track them.

  :: Wink sees them. They've been hailed by a barge master, they'll be sitting there, loading up. Perfect. ::

  Ajha winced as a loud mental touch scraped across his brain.

  :: Apart from being in plain sight of couple dozen people. :: Usse was coming to join the stalk as well.

  A mental growl felt like Edmo . . . in multiples. The whole Action Team?

  Ajha ran nervous hands through his hair. :: Do we need to follow them home, find out if there are more than these two? ::

  A deeper growl.

  :: Don't let the merge get the better of you, Edmo. You are not as invincible as you think you are. :: Usse again.

  Then Wink's mental voice. :: They're manhandling something large and heavy off the barge, and the Earthers have backed the wagon real close . . . There, all loaded. Off they go. ::