Wine of the Gods 05: Spy Wars

by Pam Uphoff

  "I swear, if they were just a little older." Idre echoed his thoughts.

  "If I wasn't trying to not garner any notice." Egto pulled his eyes away from the girls inside to eye the women outside. "Actually I think I'd give the babies a pass. Look at the glow on that blonde!" He practically drooled, and received a chilly look from the tall muscular man talking to her.

  "Tuck it all in, Egto. Passive." Ajha jerked his eyes away from a black haired slant eyed beauty. "Do you think they advance when they first feel the power of One? Well, the power of their own magical genes? They're about the right age."

  Egto eyed the teenagers, nodded. "I think you've got it. Those two new girls were just touched by the Power. The two giving the speeches were the first of the cohort to advance, and the rest are wishing and hoping. Damn our timing, they'd have been much easier to . . . re-educate a few years ago."

  "We have to get back to Usse as quickly as possible." Idre started grinning. "We've finally found his magical concentration. We can get out of here well before the comets hit, and the One will decide whether to keep or kill this native magic."

  Ajha gulped. "Surely the One wouldn't waste all this talent? In fact if you'll recall the Mysteries, this is nearly a confirmation of Those Left Behind."

  "Do not go there, Ajha. That is a matter for the Priests of the One."

  "Of course."

  Three women walked by, serious expressions on all their faces. "They're going to come to blows. We've never before had enough children for gangs, but the rivalry is getting pointed."

  "The dragon girls still have very poor impulse control. Maybe in another five years they'll settle down." That was the Mayor talking. "I don't recall being so insufferable as a child. Or being so randy. At any age."

  "Yes, they do seem to be maturing physically rather quickly. And then there's Tromp. She won't back down, and I'd call her a bully except she usually tackles the strongest opponents. She and Rustle worry me, sometimes." They strolled on.

  "Dragon girls?" Egto whispered.

  "Gang name, probably." Idre murmured. "Sounds like my prep school. Fights out behind the Gym after hours all the time."

  As the evening darkened there seemed to be more, not less women around. The smells from the roasting pit were driving him mad with hunger.

  Idre was squirming too. "All right. Let's just stroll around, make sure nothing else is going to slap us in the face."

  "You mean, like where are all the husbands, fathers and brothers?" Ajha looked around. "No sign of them yet, but with the party on, they may be showing up soon."

  "Good point. Stay closed up, but listen passively. Get your sticky pads out and collect some skin samples for genetic analysis." Idre looked relieved to be back into an information gathering mode.

  Ajha strolled past the fire pit, just to torture himself with the odors, then kept walking to clear his lungs of what he ought to think of as pollution. Two young women, in their early twenties, at a guess, a chubby brunette and a slinky blonde were chatting in the street. They both winked at him. A child of perhaps four ran up and clutched at the brunette.

  "I haven't seen many men here. Are all your husbands away?" Ajha asked, a bit nervously.

  They giggled, the little girl laughing out loud, a happy wholesome sound. The child was glowing.

  "Who needs a husband?" The brunette scooped up the five year old and brushed past Ajha. "The ones I've seen seem to think they can order their wives around like slaves. No thanks!"

  The blonde giggled. "You look shocked. We're not really that different, are we?"

  Ajha grinned. "You've got to be the largest collection of good looking women I've ever laid eyes on. And no husbands to dodge?"

  The blonde grinned. "Let me show you what we do with men."

  Ajha was quite late to dinner, but was able to confirm that there were no husbands coming home anytime soon, nor in fact, at all.

  Idre informed him that the so-called God of War had shown up at the feast, and they'd tracked him back to a winery a kilometer to the east. "We've got everything we needed. Now it's up to the Action Team."

  Ajha's stomach flipped over, and he was doubly glad he hadn't eaten. "Oh, surely not. Look at them, we should be allies. Not enemies."

  Idre glowered. "That is something that our superiors will decide. Not us."

  Chapter Sixty-five

  25 June 3482 / Early Summer 1365

  Ash, Kingdom of the West, Comet Fall

  Damien dawdled in Wallenton, bought food, then set off for Ash in the late afternoon. This time he left the road and wandered about in the woods until he got up on the ridge to the west of the village. He found a vantage point from which he could see the front and porch of the inn. After awhile he was rewarded by the sight of one of the spies sauntering down the street.

  The village was quiet, and Damien counted heads and came up short by a large number of women. Dydit rode into town, left without meeting any of the Oners, at least where Damien could see them. He watched for three days while the Oners wandered about, doing business with several people. Then Dydit returned. The native had a couple of animal carcasses on a pack horse, and a pit was dug and fire started. Damien's mouth watered at the thought of a pit barbequed piglet. Just like at Granddad's, when I was little kid. I haven't really gone native, I've just reverted to childhood.

  Mid-afternoon, he spotted a batch of children running down the hill opposite, then more women after them. No wonder the village had seemed quiet. Half the population had gone berry picking in the mountains or something. He zoomed in with his binocs and spotted the purple rabbit girl, Rustle, carrying a younger girl piggy back, and Never with the baby in a backpack. No sign of the brother, and Dydit had been here in the village. Damien grinned faintly. No doubt all the witches had gotten together to dance naked under the full Moon or something, except the Moon wasn't full. Oh well.

  The Oners sat on the porch and didn't talk to any of the women, as they ran about doing all the laundry involved with a camping trip. In the evening they dug up the pit and after full dark Damien gave in to temptation and moseyed down the hill for barbeque.

  Falling apart, tender . . . he kept his eyes on the Oners as they wandered a bit. Two of them looked a bit spooked. The third one finally turned up with a cute witch. Hey, maybe the Oners are human, after all. Damien reluctantly forced himself to avoid the stable behind the Inn. He was not going to blow a major surveillance by stealing a horse. Retrieving a horse. He moved himself down south of the village to where he had a good overlook of the road and would see them when they left. He napped off and on through what little was left of the night. The Oners and their wagon rolled by a bit before noon. Have trouble getting going this morning, boys? Solstice looks good. I'll start hunting for the place they keep him. This may be the break we need to locate them.

  Then he put his own head down and slept in the pine scented shade.

  The baahing of the sheep woke him. He was on a ridge at the edge of the woods, with a view west across a meadow to the road. The meadow crossed the ridge, and maneuvering quietly through the trees to the east side, he saw a flock of a couple hundred sheep spread out in a lush valley. Movement on the far side had him reaching for his binoculars. The purple bunny girl circled the herd, chasing a few stragglers back with the rest. Then she sat down cross legged on the far side of the valley. She looked awfully small and vulnerable. There might not be many pedophiles out here, but he was sure there were wolves. The wind was off the mountains, and the smell of the sheep warred with the scent of the pine trees. Damien settled down where he could see her, he wasn't in any hurry to get home, so there was no need to move and possibly be seen.

  Purple bunnies. He'd have to tell his sister about them, if he ever got back home. She'd be utterly appalled, especially about them escaping.

  ***

  Rustle held up the glittery strings of spells to her mind's eye and approved. She understood the essence of regular sheep, and knew now how these sheep veered away from th
at essence. Their genes were lumpy and rough; whoever had changed them hadn't connected everything properly. Which was probably why they had fertility problems. With these three spells, she could turn a regular sheep into something kind of like the Sheep Man's sheep, or turn his irregular, lumpy essence sheep into regular sheep or with the third spell, make them more smoothly essenced special sheep.

  Or at least she thought putting extra junk DNA in would help the two sides of the chromosomes match up better, without interfering with the expression of the genes. And switching some of the genes around to other chromosomes so they were in the same position as normal sheep's genes would enable them to cross breed, right?

  She was out in the meadow, minding the sheep while studying them. She was not avoiding changing her new little sister's diapers. Besides Topaz was sleeping through the night now, so Mom wasn't so tired anymore.

  The sheep were munching their way through succulent greenery, the snow long gone, and the drying heat of late summer still ahead. She'd take them up into the mountains later in the year, trading off with some of the other kids.

  She coiled up the spell to make ordinary sheep into special ones. She supposed she should show it to Answer, even though her great grandmother had accused her of carelessness with the rabbits. After all, it was her fault that Tromp had been able to get to the rabbits . . .

  The gliding gray shadow rushed down on the flock, and she'd thrown the first thing to hand—the spell—before she consciously realized that a wolf had actually had the audacity to attack this flock.

  Of course, it wasn't quite a wolf anymore. Genetically.

  The spell hadn't been designed to turn a wolf into a sheep, and it had done a pretty poor job of it. Rustle laughed incredulously as the poor creature twitched and thrashed on the ground. Then sucked in a breath as she realized it was dying. It still looked like a wolf, but she'd messed up the basic instructions that operated its cells.

  She touched it carefully, looked small. She didn't know the essence of wolf. She knew sheep, rabbits, and horses . . . she saw the differences between this and the special sheep. To transform the essence further, she needed to change the major mismatches, this and this. She assembled the spell and cast it. The animal's breathing regularized, the heartbeat steadied. She checked again, this time taking the time to look it over carefully. Get the chromosome number right and swap genes around so they were in the same positions as a sheep's. All right, that was easy enough, but there were so many differences . . . match them up with an actual sheep and compare. Change those things.

  She looked down at it proudly. It was a sheep. That looked like a wolf. She wondered how it would behave. It had wolf memories, experiences, trained reflexes.

  Teeth.

  Hmm, it would need a morphological transformation. Not too hard of a thing, it was already a quadruped with a muzzle. It was mostly the hair, hooves and the teeth. And it needed a digestive system that could deal with grass. Well, she'd seen her father change into a goat often enough to have caught the whole spell web. She brought it out now and picked through it carefully for the digestive system changes. And hooves and horns. Yes. That was what she needed. She'd best get it done before the poor thing recovered.

  ***

  By the time the girl started walking around the herd, getting them back together and aiming them up the ridge, Damien had convinced himself that he hadn't seen what he thought he'd seen. After all, it was across the valley, however small. The ram he'd mistaken for a wolf had stopped trying to rip the other sheep's throats out, and switched to trying to mate with them all. When the herd moved, the ram moved along with the rest of the sheep until it spotted Dydit. The man was walking in from the north, and the ram turned tail and fled.

  Dydit said something uncomplimentary, shed his clothes and turned into a large black goat.

  Damien choked faintly. That was definitely a big black goat chasing the fleeing wolf-sheep. He flattened and concentrated on his breathing for a little while. Hey, no big deal. Magic force fields, magic bridge building, magic shape changing, right? And the daughter is just a beginner, took her an hour or so to get the wolf changed over to a sheep. His heart beat slowed, but he stayed low and out of sight. He didn't want startle her. He really didn't want to find out what she'd do to a man who threatened her.

  After awhile a small number of running hooves thundered by, and he peeked long enough to see a very tired sheep being chased in the direction of the road by the black goat. He stayed still until well after dark, and circled very wide around the farm.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  1365 Fall Equinox

  Ash, Kingdom of the West

  "Major Lebonift. Ooo! I am so impressed!"

  Lefty made a rude gesture.

  Never kicked Dydit. "Congratulations! And what, pray tell do they have you doing now?"

  "Well, the spy wars have settled down, so I've been stealing reports, satellite maps and detailed photos from the Earther's. We've got a dedicated room in Intelligence Headquarters, putting together everything they've discovered about our World, and everything they've gotten from the Oners." Lefty sighed. "They're calling it 'Magic Central' and I'm in charge of it."

  "Oh, we're in trouble now."

  Never punched Dydit's arm, fairly lightly. "Do you really think we can hold this together until they all just throw up their hands and leave?"

  "It's a bit hard to say. The Earthers know it's the One that attacked their camp, but they also realize it was just a stunt, to create ill-will between Earth and us, not a serious attempt to accomplish anything. And the Earth spies pruned back an Action Team in Karista, then I clipped a couple more and they went away for awhile. But according to our Fascia spies, an expanded team is heading for Karista again, hot for blood."

  "Ugg. Well, if you need magical help, you've got this Corridor here, now." Question grinned suddenly. "And just to give you something else to think about, come and see what we're building, for exploring Asia."

  After a ride in their tethered hot air balloon, he admitted that it might be handy—so long as the wind was blowing the direction they wanted to go.

  Dydit nodded. "I'm trying to figure out how to make the wind blow the direction I want it to go. The mages here aren't hardly speaking to us anymore. I may have to ask Oscar and Bran for lessons."

  "Good luck. Their encounters with the Black Goats have left a very bad impression."

  "As well it should. If you see them, you might float the idea of them teaching Question—although the way your lady attracts lightning whenever she does anything magical that might not be a good plan."

  Lefty snickered and walked back down to the Corridor at the Wizard's Tower.

  Finding nothing new at the Intelligence Headquarters, he walked down to the docks district, working on his new morph. Now his hair was reddish, and his chin receding. He just hoped he never forgot what he really looked like. It was a bit late for lunch, but the Earther's ate when they were near, not according to the clock, and he found two of them lunching in the Sooty Duck. He took a mug of ale to a table just near enough to hear them with a touch of magic, and thought hard about the One.

  "The Action Team might leave people behind, so we need to be more careful, maybe bring Code and Vani along with us, always travel in a group." Max restated something they'd both already settled. Lefty could barely hear them, but his mental reading filled in any gaps, and let him feel their anxiety.

  Damien nodded. "As a precaution, but I think the whole team will go together. I feel like a monster for not warning those people in Ash."

  "You think they'll kill all the magic users they find?"

  "It's a small village. Couple of hundred people, maybe. They may not bother to check for magic, easier and probably quicker to just plan on killing everyone."

  "Damn."

  "Yeah. Who the hell do I send an anonymous letter to? And would anyone believe it? King's Own Intel? The Mayor of Ash?"

  "Can't hurt, can it?"

  Damien dra
ined his small ale and shoved to his feet. "All right, let's give it a try."

  Ash? The Oners are going to attack Ash? Lefty peered down into the dregs of his ale and shivered. Max had been quite sickly positive the Oners were capable of killing everyone in the Village. Even Damien had leaked a bit of the same, a flash of distress. Lefty rather doubted that what Ba'al had failed to do could be accomplished by any group small enough to qualify as a 'team'. But he pushed himself to his feet and walked back to Head Quarters to report, and then through the Corridor to Ash, to warn everyone.

  Nil and Dydit were just finishing their evening rounds. The little kids and women were asleep, the teenagers off camping in the woods. He hauled the two wizards into the village, and asked some young witches to politely ask Answer, the Auld Wulf and Beck Butcher to come to the Tavern. Nil stepped down the street to speak to Gisele, while Dydit knocked on the Mayor's door.

  Answer arrived last, trailed by Never, both with damp hair. The witches must have been holding a meeting at the hotsprings.

  "The One World has located what they call a concentration of dangerous native magic, and decided to kill everyone in the vicinity of the village of Ash. Now, I expect we can deal with them—I got the impression there were only a dozen or so. But if we want the One to think we're harmless, not a threat, no reason to attack this World and take it by force, how should we proceed?"

  Nil curled a lip. "I don't know that this appearance of weakness is a good idea. We could just make them disappear, leave them guessing. I could use some more goats."

  Everyone glared at him.

  Harry sighed. "I thought they might be reasonable. They aren't all monsters."

  The glares switched directions.

  The Auld Wulf crossed his arms. "Let me guess. They were either on the road, or staying here under your protection, so the God of the Roads and the Crossroads couldn't possibly just sort of mention to us that we were being scouted?"