Wine of the Gods 03: The Black Goats (36 page)

There was a distinct odor of  burning meat. "Are we too late?"

"No" she whispered, pointing. A line of men and women with platters was walking up, in a solemn progression. Placing testicles on the sizzling metal. Animal's? Their own? Their sons'? At least they weren't burning whole children. Yet.

"We need to be invisible for a minute." He tugged Never off to the side, where a feast was being set out on tables.

He uncorked his skin of wine, and anointed a few dishes. Ah, yes. Decanters of wine were appearing. This was looking frighteningly familiar. He added just a bit to the decanters, as the serving people scurried about, then retreated. Poured some into a fancy fountain. Let the squirrels have some fun . . .

"The Goat of Love strikes again." Never murmured in his ear. "And here is the baby." she grabbed him by the hand and dragged him into an awkward corner near a raised dais.

The Royal Troops shifted and pressed into the crowd of Ba'alists. They were trying to stay together, and were obviously uneasy with all the people crowding their horses.

Dydit pulled his attention away, and into closer concerns. The woman approaching was still plain, but now she had fancy embroidery around her tabard. Apparently being raped by the Goat of Scoone elevated one's status in the Church. The baby, the child she held was about a year old. Very still and quiet, the boy leaned a bit away from his mother. No snuggling, no clinging, despite the frightened glaze in his eyes.
She doesn't love him, and he knows it
.

A contingent of mounted troops had shoved past the glowing statue.

"Mother General, You are ordered by the King to cease."

She hefted the boy on her hip and stepped forward. "You would be well advised to stay out of matters of the Church."

The boy stared at Dydit, then Never. He could see them. His brows drew together in puzzlement. As the other upper levels of Ba'alists stepped forward in support of the Mother General, Dydit stepped out and reached out his hands to the child. The boy shifted his weight and with his mother  distracted, slipped completely from her grasp.

And from everyone's gaze. They ran, Never a step behind him as he made a beeline for the hole in the fence.

Confusion broke out behind them and spread.

"This way! Witches! Get them!"

"Damn it, one of them can see us!"

They slipped through the hole, Never stopping long enough to push the bar into place. Some of their pursuers started prying, others ran yelling for the mounted warriors. They elbowed their way through the crowd as fast as they could.

The boy was
silent
Dydit hugged him as they hurried through the streets.

The horses gave them a reproachful look as they climbed aboard. They'd already had a long day, and it was full night now. Never grabbed the reins and urged them forward.

The west gate was still open. The authorities might be hoping the trouble would take itself away. And as far as Dydit was concerned, that sounded like a great idea.

A faint whimper was the first sound the boy made. "Mmm, Mum. Burn." a tiny little voice.

Dydit looked down at the boy. "I am your daddy, and I'm taking you home."

Fear deepened in the boy's eyes. "Burn?"

"No." Dydit made that very firm. He was starting to feel sick. "I am going to take you to a very nice village, where there are a lot of other kids like you, who couldn't stay with their mothers, or sometimes their fathers. You will be safe there."

Bitch stumbled, nearly falling and limped to a halt, as Never pulled Blaze to a stop.

He didn't stop to examine the gelding, he wasn't liking the sounds coming out of the town gates behind them. He set the boy down, grabbed the wineskin, and vaulted down. Bitch sucked down a couple a cupfuls, and then he gave Blaze some too, just so he could keep up.

Never was tucking the baby into a little corner of the wagon under the bench, with a blanket wrapped around him.

Bitch squealed and pranced, and Dydit let off the brake as he grabbed the reins and clicked to them. The first of the crowd, two men on horse back, came up on either side of them. Never grabbed a pole and leaned over the driver's bench. She swung it with a will and knocked the rider on her side off his horse. Then the wagon lurched as the geldings surged forward. Dydit ducked an off-balance sword swing, and Never reached over him with her pole. It was much longer than a sword, and her thrust knocked the man loose in the saddle.  The wagon rattled onward, the team galloping on the good road.

Dydit, looked behind them, "We've got a long lead on most of them, it's just these two idiots who were fast on the uptake or something."

The rider Never had knocked off had unfortunately not been injured, and worse, had kept hold of his reins. He was back in the saddle, and the catching up fast. Even with the wine, Blaze and Bitch were simply average cart horses. The two mounts of the Ba'alist were superior. After a brief conference, they split and rode around the wagon. They couldn't grab the reins, as Dydit kept swerving the team, and Never poked their horses when they were within reach. Finally they spurred ahead, got in front of the team and slowed. There was a bit of confusion and mess, as Blaze clipped the heels of the horse in front of him, nearly bringing them both down. Never ducked into the back to grab her bow, then the horses were all slowing. The ridden horses more quickly than the team, and as they came to a crashing halt, the experienced team of Blaze and Bitch reared as one and mounted the mares so unwisely stopped in front of geldings who had just been given a generous dose of that wine.

The ungently evicted riders tumbled to the ground, yelling in fury, and wasted a precious bit of time trying to extricate their horses, before they turned and came limping around at them.

Never jumped down and, bare feet on the ground, started pulling in power. Her unstrung bow was in her hand, a quiver of arrows over her shoulder.

Dydit had a sudden revelation, and jumped down beside her. Grabbed her hand. "Can you feed me power?"

She did. It was nothing like the kiss. It fountained up from below and poured into him in a flood of liquid gold. He pointed a finger at the nearest man and threw a line of fire. The Ba'alist curled over and fell to the ground without a twitch.

The other man, on the other side, backed off, but turned to stab Bitch. He grabbed his mare's reins and pulled her out from under the collapsing gelding.

Dydit pulled Never forward, and as soon as he got a good angle, threw fire again.

Never tossed a look behind them. "Get the harness off Bitch, I'll bring up Slick."

The only other harness broke horse they had . . . He unhooked the traces from the wagon, pulled buckles and dragged the harness off over the horse's head. The dead weight took some work, but the wagon jolted back as Blaze finished up, which helped. Never threw the harness on Slick, who wasn't terribly pleased to be beside a dead horse and a randy sort-of-gelding.  They backed the wagon further and got Slick in position. Then Dydit grabbed the reins and drove around the dead horse as Never jumped in the back and finally strung her bow.

The followers sped up as they saw the wagon back in motion, but Never put an arrow through the closest one and cooled them off.

"We need to cross the ford," Dydit called back to her.

"Not with them following us." Her bow string snapped again. "Let's just go straight, and try to string them out so we aren't dealing with so many at once. If all else fails, I can put up a shield, but that will trap us."

"Yeah, I don't feel like being besieged by this lot."

Wine or no wine, and Slick was 'no', the horses were flagging. He let them drop to a walk and then jolted to the left as hooves pounded up beside the wagon. It was the two loose mares. He reached out mentally, with a compulsion spell. The mares dropped behind them and kept trotting, but almost in place. He could feel the power drain. The thin crescent wasn't enough light for much. He miraged a pair of riders onto the mares' backs, a wagon in front of them right over the real one, and spotting a flat field, slipped invisibility over them and hauled the team aside. Halted. He was shaking with weakness, the power draining . . . Never leaped out, and feet to the ground, grabbed his hand and poured power into him, and into his spells. The visible wagon rattled on, the mares followed it. The mounted troop thundered past, twenty-eight strong. The king's guard followed at a more reasonable pace. Then a mob of people wearing the tabard of Ba'al.

"We'd better get over the ford and up the road before they get so far away the spells pop."

"Good idea." He kept up all the spells as long as he could,
as they turned back toward the town. He kept up the invisibility even after they'd carefully picked their way across the ford, both of them walking, holding hands. The little boy peeked out a time of two, but retreated to his nest, and when checked was found to be sound asleep.

"Well, lose a horse, win a child. Good deal, the way I count things." Never cleared her throat. "He could use a good solid dose of that wine. They must have dedicated him to Ba'al when he was born."

Dydit nodded, and then hesitated. "He'd be a wizard. Well, no, because the X chromosome would be from her . . . except I think there's something in the goat spell, that just takes over, and uses mostly the father's chromosomes . . .  Umm, no wine until I talk to Nil. I need to find out what's going on with the kid.

They traveled on, not dawdling, but not pushing the pace, and around noon he started getting a bit of a niggling feeling. He was back on the wagon, sitting in the full sun. His kind of power. "I think we're being followed."

They turned off on to a narrow track and waited invisibly.

Never had her bow at the ready, and Dydit stood in the sunlight. Five men, armed, armored, with Ba'al's tabard. Following a mare, who, nose in the air, turned up their track. Nickering to Blaze.

"Damn it, does that wine make a man irresistible? Unforgettable?"

Never's first arrow took the last man through his open faceplate. Dydit sl
ashed a line of heat at the leader. The three in the middle halted their rush forward and tried to turn, a small milling confusion that took three more arrows, some heat and light flashes and then Never using her knife to make sure of them all.

They caught the horses, peeled the armor off Ba'al's knights
—a rather gruesome task in two cases.

"Six more mares. And damn fine ones. Why are all the Ba'alists riding mares?" Never patted a soft nose.

"I heard the Inquisitor General took a dislike to male parts. It seems to have spread through the whole church."

Never nodded. "Oh yes, seeing goat parts up close could do that." She excavated a hole, and Dydit rolled the bodies into it.
She let the dirt, rocks, and thin growth of dry grass roll back over them.

"Let's hope they don't track us any closer to home." Dydit frowned. "I think we should be invisible for
a few days."

It was a strain, walking hand in hand. All night. For
three nights. Little Havi perked up by the third day, and spent quite a bit of time walking with his father, or riding beside him once they switched back to driving during the day. This long stretch was lightly populated. A few mines and even fewer farms back up deep canyons where they'd found year-round water. They pulled off the road and warped light around themselves to avoid the few merchants and ore carriers they met.

They slept away from the usual stops,
with an illusion to keep the few merchants and fewer bandits away and Never spoke to her mother.

The Sheep Man beat them to their last camp, and had dinner ready.

"No one is following." He reassured them. "The King has had to explain to the church about burning babies, and troop numbers, all over again. This time he explained with a thousand troops in Havwee, and by placing the Inquisitor General, Wife of Ba'al, in his dungeon. Word from Karista is that that wasn't well accepted." He cleared his throat. "I understand that the situation in Havwee is also considerably disturbed. After the Ba'alist troops left, some of the, umm, local poor raided the Temple and ate quite a bit of the food the Ba'alists had laid out for their celebration. Ahem. Then the city guards and the royal troops watered some horses. Shortly thereafter people started filling bottles from the fountain, and selling it  . . . "

Never was coughing and turning red. Dydit tried to look innocent.

Havi peered cautiously at the stranger, and clung to his father. The Sheep Man grinned, and explained that well, yes, he'd messed up goat reproduction, so every baby one of the goats sired in goat form would be a wizard. It had been part of the Plan. He didn't have any idea who's plan it was. "Mine? The Auld Wulf's? Harry didn't care. Gisele? Umm, she does like experimenting with reproduction."

So Havi got no wine, and the Sheep Man drooled over their six new mares. He was a bit dismissive of the three Dydit had claimed from the mercenaries. Dydit snickered. "Wait until you see the foals they're going to have next year." 

***

Never poured more ale, and Lefty slumped deeper into his chair. "And then, as the Emperor was explaining to Fair, about just how slowly he was going to die for desp
oiling his daughter, the Scoone Ambassador barges in and tells the whole Imperial Court and the Emperor that this horrible news means that there is no option but war." He took a long pull at the tankard.