Comet Fall (Wine of the Gods) (28 page)

He swallowed. "Well, I've heard all the stories, so I shouldn't be surprised.
" A bell rang. "Umm, dinner?"

He escorted them, all three kids looking around wide eyed.

"Do you have pirates?" Xen was looking up at the wall. "Can I fight them too?"

Lefty laughed from inside. "Takes after someone I know. Hey Xen, look at the size of you!"

The mess hall was unexpectedly full; everyone had come in from the field.

Rustle recognized the other Mages. Bran looked like a younger version of his father Beck Butcher
, and Oscar was one of Harry's orphans.

Lefty waved them over. "Come and hear about what they've found."

"A road, or what's left of it. Well made, wide. Obviously a major trade route, we've traced it two hundred miles down the coast. Then we hit a river too wide to cross and probably too wide too far upstream to make going around an option." Oscar leaned out of the way as a soldier brought plates around. Apparently the remaining troops weren't just guards.
Quartermaster, cook, servers and probably cleanup, poor sods.

"So we're back for a boat." Bran took over. "We figured we'd head upstream, see what we could find, then get back to tracing the road."

"Pictures?" Lord Andre looked over his shoulder.

A rather skinny trooper nodded. "I'll mix up the chemicals and get everything developed and printed tonight. Wait till you see the bridge abutment! I can't believe they actually had a bridge across that river."

Oscar looked back at the witches. "So, you're taking up archeology?"

"Or,
um, need a name for it. Dimensionology? Those shields are using dimensional bubbles, somehow."

Whoop rolled her eyes. "We had to drag her, kicking and screaming, away from the Earther's gate, when we passed through there on the way."

Rustle elevated her nose. "I didn't scream."

"So, what are you going to try on the temples? We'
ve run out of options . . . " Bran broke off and eyed Ask's bulge. "Giving birth on the threshold?"

The witch grinned. "I hope it doesn't come to that. But . . . "

Rustle snickered. "We'll try a few other things first, try to find the key to the spell part of the shields."

***

Verse and Whoop pleasuring each other
didn't open any doors.

"Maybe we're the wrong kind of Vice." Whoop looked perfectly cheerful. "Or maybe this is where Virtue hangs out."

So the witches camped out there, with every single man in the encampment coming by to proposition them, and getting turned down. It was horribly embarrassing, until it got tedious and dumb.

The men's advances ran from witty and clever to rude, demanding, crude and then back to horrified, embarrassed, shy and stammering.

The last was Gre's contribution, of course.

Not that it mattered. A
t dawn the door was just as solidly sealed as ever.

"Hmph."
Rustle frowned. "There are other kind of virtues, although none sound like anything that could have been triggered by the Veronians."

"No ma'am." Gre wandered around the room, tapped the unresponsive door.

Ask joined him. "Do you suppose the Veronians are right, that it was the actual rape that did it?" She blushed. "I expect you're too virtuous to try it, aren't you?"

He flushed and looked away. "I'm not virtuous at all."

Verse snickered. "How many men have you murdered, how many women have you raped?"

"I've killed bandits." He told them stiffly. "But that's not murder.
I was furious when those Veronians tried . . . I nearly did murder one of them."

Whoop
blinked. "Wow. But you didn't. And I'll bet you never raped anyone, either, did you?"

The silence strung out a bit. The
witches boggled.

"Two," he s
aid stiffly. Stared holes in the floor. "There was this wine, I umm, I was, umm."

Rustle
shook her head. "Oh. That wine. We know all about that wine, and the problems it has caused. Have you ever been seriously tempted to rape, otherwise?"

"It was unforgivable."

"If there is such a thing as truly unforgivable, then we are all damned. Without forgiveness and mercy, life would be a cold hard place." Rustle winced.
I haven't ever forgiven
. "I think you need to be a bit merciful and forgive yourself."

Gre blinked away tears. He took a deep breath and leaned back against the door. It fell open and dumped him on the floor.

It was a small library, Rustle realized as she stepped around Gre. Book shelves lined the room, but her eyes were drawn to the table in the center. A scatter of open books surrounded a women, fallen asleep, her head resting on her arms. She stirred, and raised her head. Rubbed her eyes. Exotic dark eyes in a spectacular face. She looked young . . . but she'd been trapped in here for a thousand years . . .

"Whoooarrr yaaah?" she stood abruptly, "Haow baaad hisss hit?" she pushed past
them and out the door, out to the Courtyard. She started around the bleak ruins, and slowly slumped.

Rustle
took her elbow, and steered her to a bench. The woman sat and stared at Rustle, wide brown eyes looking shocky and wild. "Haow lungh haaas it bean?"

"
One thousand years." She enunciated carefully.

The woman's eyes sought the ruins again. Tears leaked down her
beautiful face. "Oone thousant . . . Oone. . . " She took some half sobbing breaths. "Dhay arrrr haaaall daid, arrnt dhay?" She clutched at her short curly brown hair.

Oscar and Bran galloped in from the rubble, slowing as they approached.

Oscar tried slow clean enunciation. "Two other sealed buildings."

Bran whispered, "You know what she is, don't you?" And louder, "Lady Gisele. The Auld Wulf. Harry. Alive."

Her head jerked around and tears flowed. "Harry? Where?" She stood up as if she'd dash off that second.

"Across the ocean."
Rustle pointed east.

The woman stood slowly, look
ed deeply into Rustle's eyes, then she nodded. "I see it." The quality of the light changed, somehow. Instead of the stark desert light, something softer, greener . . .

Gre's eyes traveled beyond the Courtyard and he blanched
, no doubt at the sight of green hills backed by forested mountains, and more distant towering rocky mountains and remote snow capped peaks . . . his eyes dropped again, he turned, and gawped at the simple village street. Rustle closed her eyes for a moment, and smiled. She walked out into the courtyard as the villagers gawped at the newly arrived building.

She spotted her father and waved. He vaulted over the wall and dashed across the courtyard.

"I believe we've just woken up the Goddess of Mercy, D
ad. Please don't do anything too silly."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He relaxed slightly, and allowed
Rustle to lead him over to the goddess.

More people were crowding in
to peer over the broken wall. The Auld Wulf strode across the courtyard, grinning. "Mercy! Welcome back."

"Yhou! Volvgang Oldham! Uf all de people
I nefer wanted to shee again!" The Goddess pointed a finger at him. "You . . . " Her eyes widened as she looked beyond him. "Harry!" She brushed past the huge man and threw herself at the old man. Harry slumped, and suddenly the spear looked more like a cane. Then he dropped the spear and wrapped his arms around her.

Gre cleared his throat. "Excuse me, but, could anyone tell me where we are?"

1374 Spring

The New Lands

Jin Genero, the Governor of Desolation Territory by virtue of being the Land Grant Holder of the Province of Gemstone, kept his body and head turned to the spectacle in the corral where three men were breaking some feral horses they'd rounded up. A couple of the horses had the buckskin color and strips on their legs that indicated they had some real wild horse in their ancestry, and Jin didn't give the men much of a chance of turning them into decent mounts. Especially considering their training methods.

Lucky Strike was a boom town, and luckily for him, had located themselves far enough south to be across the border and into Gold Rush Territory, and thus the responsibility of
the king and his army.

Jin's kids were glued to the rail. For the trip to Lucky Strike, Jina was dressed like a boy, and if one of these out-of-control assholes even looked
at her the wrong way . . . She was fifteen, and he was so glad she was more interested in horses than men. Old Gods take pity on the fathers of daughters. Even stripy legged horses were better than boyfriends.

But out of the corner of his eye he wa
tched a horse of a different sort.

A spectacular metallic golden palomino, that he'd swear he'd seen eighteen years ago.
Ridden by the God of Peace. The tall gelding stood motionless, ears back, and pinning whenever anyone came near. A hind foot was cocked, not in relaxation, but in a desire to kick something. The dampness around the horse's bit was tinged with blood and the noseband was brutally tight.

And now his observation time was rewarded. The same tall golden youth he remembered walked out of the Miner's Bust.

"All right. I'll stay a few days. Your people better show, though." 

"They will." The other man practically bowed. Salt Massis, closest thing to a mayor the gold rush town had.

Oh shit.

And Jina looked around at the voices, and spotted the golden horse. She straightened and took a step to see him better.
Oh shit.
Jin froze, eyes on the corral, trying not to attract the man's, the god's, attention.

The Golden One flicked a glance her way. "Here, boy, take my horse around to the stable, put him in a
good
stall."

Jina bobbed her head and took the rein. The horse shivered a bit, pinned its ears, but followed without trying anything.

The god and the man shook hands, and the god walked back inside. Jin breathed a sigh of relief and hustled around to the barn.

Jina and the hostler were both looking dubiously at the palomino gelding. He was utterly phenomenal, from his dished face to his sculpted muscles. Unfortunately the horse was collected up, tense and sweating; he looked like a snake about to strike.

"Do you have a standing stall you could put him in to unsaddle and unbridle him?" Jin looked the animal over. Trouble in a pretty package. No doubt about it. He had spur scars, and scars around the corner of his mouth. "That bridle looks painful guy. Why don't you let us take it off?"

An ear twitched his direction, and when Jina handed him the rein, he walked toward the barn trying to not tighten it and pull the bit. The horse stepped out reluctantly, and even more reluctantly walked into a rather tight narrow stall. He balked halfway, ears still pinned, shivering.

"OK, that's actually a good place to stop." Jin told him. "Let me get the saddle." It had a breast band and second cinch, so it was a bit nerve racking getting it off the walking time bomb. The horse's tall withers were rubbed raw by the ill fitting saddle. Jina and the Hostler stayed well back while he was close to the horse, but the hostler shuffled forward to take the saddle, and hand over a rope halter as soon as Jin stepped back.

Jin tied the halter around the horse's throat, then reached for the noseband. The horse crouched, and the skin around the muzzle wrinkled back in the equine version of a snarl. "I'm going to take it off, guy." The horse relaxed a little. Unfortunately the buckle had to be pulled a bit to unfasten, but the horse just quivered. He unbuckled the throat strap and reached for the horse's ears, then had to step up on a stool the Hostler scurried up with as the horse raised his head up out of reach. He eased the bridle over the horse's ears and let the bit drop from the horse's mouth.