Wine of the Gods 05: Spy Wars (19 page)

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 to 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—r
eport 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.

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. W
e'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."

20
Emre 1365yp / Late Winter 1363 Local

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

There'd been no sign of the E
arthers 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 muzzle, 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. ::

:: We need to track them, get to them when they're isolated. :: Edmo with echo, again.

Ajha hiked until he was well past the Market, then cut north two streets. He glanced east and spotted the miss-matched team of horses cresting the hill. Traffic was heavy enough to slow them. He turned and strode away. Checking behind periodically.

It vanished in between glances,
unless that was it, disappearing down a road to the south.

He turned south. Listened, mentally, but couldn't hear . . . no, he could feel a group excitement, hunting, closing in. He shivered, closed his shields most of the way and hurried south. Felt a sharp leap in the excitement and turned back east. Ajha rounded the corner in time to see the wagon turning, backing into a
carriageway. Nice neighborhood . . . it clicked suddenly. They were delivering something to the other Earthers, the Native Affairs people. Figures closed in from all directions. More than eight. He spotted Idre and Egto hanging back, Wink slid up to look in closer.

:: Let them unload. We can attack while they have their hands on the cargo. ::

:: No. Continue to follow them. We want their base of operations. :: Usse's mental voice was deep and powerful.

The sense of hunger disappeared, abruptly.

:: Don't shut me out, and don't let the native see your lasers. One damn you, Edmo.
Listen to me
. ::

Ajha winced at the mental shout.
They are frustrated by their losses to Pax. They just want to kill something.
He shivered, and wondered how the One had come to this.

Except . . . a few of us have always been like this, I just didn't let myself see it.

The walls of the close built houses contained and magnified the first shots. Why weren't they using laser guns? Or were they, and the Earthers' were armed?

Wink threw himself back as the horses exploded out of the
driveway, panicked by the noise. The driver was rolling from his seat into the back, and came up, pistol in hand, aimed back at the Oners. The Action Team threw themselves to the side, firing recklessly. However flimsy the wagon, the wood was thick enough to protect the driver as he fired back at the Oners. His gun snapped.

Ajha flinched as a spike of pain rammed through his head.
His stomach. No, Wink's stomach, and through the team link, Ajha's head. He reeled down the street as the wagon tore out of sight. The others pursued, but Wink was rolling on the ground, gasping. Ajha could hear whistles, the City police would be coming.

"Wink, we need to get
out of here. Where . . .crap." There was blood all over his side. Ajha hoisted him to his feet and half carried him down the street, into an alley. He propped him up against a wall, and stripped off his own shirt. Rolled it up and tied it around Wink's abdomen, hoping pressure would slow the bleeding.

He stepp
ed out to the next street. A small cart with a single horse pulling it. Perfect. He reached out with his mind, and felt the driver. A young man, on his way home. Ajha's mind filled with pictures of his wife, probably cooking dinner, but he turned down the alley. And he was so tired. Tired, very tired, he'd just stop here and sleep a bit . . . Ajha rolled Wink into the boot of the cart, hoisted himself up beside the driver and took the reins. The horse moved out, trotted, snorting and alarmed, probably by the scent of blood. Ajha let him go as fast as the traffic would allow, without calling too much attention to them, holding a spell around himself, a spell of normalcy. The driver flopped as the cart bounced over a pothole and leaned on Ajha. Snoring with his head on Ajha's shoulder. Ajha resisted the temptation to dump him.
Don't leave a trail. No matter what.

He hauled the horse up to make the turn onto Rock Fish, and pulled up in front of the ware
house. He put the reins in the driver's hands, and jumped down. Threw open the warehouse door. He grabbed Wick under the arms and dragged him out of the boot, through the door. The skittish horse moved off, and Ajha mentally poked the man to wake him. And thought hard at him :: I must have fallen asleep. Where am I? Oh, the docks. ::

Wink's boots bumped over the threshold, and he whimpered as Ajha backed up and dragged him under the stairs. The dockbox was in a small room. Not concealed, but not obvious. Ajha hit the startup sequence, and while it was warming up, started stripping Wink. Br
oke off to tap the emergency, trauma, and abdominal buttons. The lid popped open and Ajha summoned the strength for one last heave and managed to get Wink over the lip and into place.

He sank down and watched the blinking lights, red and yellow, mostly, until he heard the other door slam.

". . . left him!" Idre was following Usse, no, being dragged in by Usse. The Action Team was propping up two of their own. One was Edmo. The other was cussing under his breath and Idre raised his voice. "We could have at least . . . "

Egto trailed in last, pale and distressed. He closed the door, and scowled at Ajha. "And where the hell were you?"

"Hauling Wink home and getting him into the dockbox."

Instant silence.

Usse stalked over to the little room, Idre and Egto right behind. He scanned the readouts and whistled. "That going to be hours, just stabilizing him." The old man looked back at Edmo. "You and Ohge will have to wait. Enjoy the pain. You deserve it."

Ajha nervously started picking up all the bloody clothing.

"Now, youngster, how did you get him back here." Usse backed Ajha up against the wall.

Ajha could feel his mind synchronizing, and relaxed. Remembered mentally kidnapping the driver, and how he'd sent the man off, confused, lost, and completely unaware.

Usse snapped the link. "You're not too bad for a Clostuone."

Outside the room, Edmo growled something under his breath.

Usse snorted. "You aren't going anywhere for days. Your Team can scout around town a bit. Perhaps they can spot one of the Earthers. And this time. Follow. Him. Home."

Edmo grunted in pain.

His second glared at the old man. "We're going to kill them. Those are our orders from both the Priest and the Princess."

Usse scowled. "I'd forgotten how single minded
Action Teams could be. It's as if your joined minds cancel each other out, leaving only stubbornness and blood lust. Necessary at times, but you have to control the gestalt, let a little intelligence leak through. You've been singly unimpressive, to date."

Ajha slid away to the laundry, unfortunately one of the native variety. He scrubbed, boiled and bleached clothing, then hung it in the alley. The yard across the alley was busy, two horses being backed up to a wagon. One was a bright black and white pinto, the other bay and white.
Maybe he should talk to them, they might know of a hauler with a white and dark grey team.

He shrugged and went back inside.
No rush to ask questions, might as well wait until both Action and Info teams were at full strength. If. It was going to be a long night. There had been an awful lot of red lights on the doc . . .