Wine of the Gods 03: The Black Goats (13 page)

He'd brought wood, but there was a limit to what he could carry, and he was going to run out fast.

Of course, the road might not touch a lake again, so that didn't actually matter. The lava lands had a few tough bushes growing in cracks, a scattering of fast growing grass where the surface had weathered a bit or collected windblown sand and dust.

He finished off fish he'd cooked the night before, for breakfast, and headed east.

The smooth lava lands ended in a long low ridge of weathered ashstone a dozen miles across. He found segments of the Old Road crossing it, sometimes exposed, more often buried under the volcanic deposit. "Nearly a thousand years old." His voice sounded deep and masculine, so he kept talking.  "And no sign of wear and tear. Maybe the Dark Ages came on so fast there wasn't time for it? Sounds a bit unlikely though."

He descended to another stretch of black lava. Seventy miles across to another ashstone ridge. He found the Old Road again, and spent three days walking the boundary between ash and lava to the south. There were no cross ridges or breaks. As far as he could tell, the ridge went south for hundreds of miles. He crossed it, forty miles wide, and cut diagonally north east across another long strip of lava. "They must follow big fault lines." He muttered. "First the ash covered everything, then the land along the faults sank and lava flowed in and covered everything. How strange."

They brought the horses they'd captured from Father Favio's Century down from the high valleys before the cold weather set in. They picked and chose and argued amiably about them, and the Auld Wulf, Harry and the Sheep Man finally decided to take eight teams and wagons south on the last trading trip of the year. They'd only bring a single wagon and team back. The Sisters of the Half Moon and some of the Crescents went with them, with Harry's boys and Question.

Harry, who was still spending an awful lot of time sleeping, suggested that this was an excellent learning opportunity. The youngsters were gleefully taking the reins as they pulled out.

With Question not grasping power, Particular and Opinion needed a third to lead them in the basic exercises. Never had been brought along to fill out the triad of Crescent Moons. The Half Moons, Justice, Idea and Kindly, were watching the younger pair closely; they were way too young, and way too eager to advance further. Or at any rate, they were
boy-crazy.

Question held the reins of the last team, her father showing her how to position her hands.

"Of course, with only two horses there's nothing to it. Four horses are a bit trickier, and six takes some good reining to not scrape corners or get your wagon stuck as you turn."

"Show me!" she could
feel
the horses' mouths through the reins, feel their eagerness to be on the road. These were good horses. A mare and a gelding. Question hoped that they were the team they'd keep.

"You'd have three reins in each hand, left reins in your left, right in your right, but between separate fingers. So you are steering each pair of horses. To turn a corner, you'd hold the lead pair straight until they were a length into the intersection. Then, if you were turning right, you'd twitch your right pinky and turn the right-hand horse, and the cross rein would turn the left horse. The middle pair, they can't turn yet. You hold them straight until they're a length out in the intersection, then turn them, holding your wheel pair straight until your wagon is far enough out to swing around the corner. Then you turn the wheel pair."

She looked at the four reins in her hands. "I think I'll practice with a single pair for a while."

Her father chuckled. She'd been a little afraid that without his chain he'd turn out to be an evil wizard, like the ones in the stories and histories. The most famous wizards were from Scoone, a country in the far east. They'd even had Wizard Kings, and huge Wizard Wars. And everyone was
quite sure that they had been evil. The people of Scoone had killed them or thrown them out, and she'd heard that the last of their descendants had been killed in the Auralian War.

But her father was even more relaxed, and probably hadn't ever been near Scoone. And her mother had stopped finding something else for her to do when she wanted to spend time around him.

She practiced turns as they wound through the hills, the horses putting up with her good-naturedly, as all they were doing was following the other wagons.

They would avoid Wallenton, where the horses or gear might be recognized, heading twenty days further south to the desert town of Havwee. The town served a wide-spread regions of mines, and Answer had sent a list of minerals she'd like to stock up on.

They stopped in their usual camping spot, barely off the road where it crossed a stream.

Question had turned the reins over to her father some time ago, but leaped out to unhitch and lift the harness off "her" horses. They drank deeply before she pegged them out to graze, and she brushed them while they munched the oats she brought them. They rubbed their big heads on her to get to the itchy spots and otherwise got a great deal of attention.

When she got back to the fire her father handed her a sizzling stick of lamb chunks and a roasted ear of corn. "Named them yet?"

"Nope. I don't know them well enough," she informed him. "Besides, we'll probably just sell them in a few days. So it's silly to name them." Even though the bay mare had a kite-shaped star and the gelding was a soft brown all over like the chocolate they occasionally bought in Wallenton.

There weren't many dishes to wash, so she crawled into bed early and slept until dawn.

The next day got really boring as they hit the plains. Her father took the reins, and her mother leaned on him and half-dozed, the horses following the next wagon without fuss. She napped herself, in case she needed to stand watch that night. The crossroads were busy, this time of year, and as she'd thought, they had company, two merchant trains and several travelers on horseback. One of the horsemen eyed them, especially Particular.

Particular was the prettiest of the three of them, and had started dressing to show off, even though her mother told her repeatedly that she wasn't to lose her virginity until she'd completed the Crescent Moon training. Question thought she was dumb.

Question considered the horseman dispassionately. "He does have pretty good conformation," she admitted. "Much more sensible than flirting with the farm boys or Tivo."

Particular glared. "He's not a horse! Why don't you grow up?"

Thinking back to how that wine had made her feel about the scout, and worse, what she'd tried to do, Question shuddered. "Yeach. I'm
not
going to
ever
grow up. Forget it."

Opinion snickered. "You'll change your mind. Wait till spring. I bet it'll hit you then." She craned to look at the horseman. "He's nice and tall, Parti."

"Look at his hair!" Particular sighed. In the firelight it looked either black or dark brown, with red highlights that might be the fire, or might be the hair. The man had taken off his broad-brimmed hat and untied the thong that held his hair bunched at the nape of his neck. It curled as he shook it out, and combed it. Particular sighed again, and throwing a quick look at her mother, moved to the fire to help the cooking. She managed to be on the horseman's side of the fire rather often.

Worried, Question sat up most of the night and made sure Particular didn't try sneaking off.

The horseman was up before them, and off down the road.

She wished he hadn't been headed south, but then he'd be traveling faster than they would, so most likely they wouldn't see him again.

The next twenty days were uneventful, A few dust clouds showed the movement of men or animals, but always at a distance. They kept a watch at night, and had no alarms. Away from camp, Never led Opinion and Particular through the Crescent Moon exercises every evening, and Question watched, trying the meditations, but failing entirely at collecting power. Dry lightning flashed along the mountain front, but no rain fell.

She spotted her father, watching the
lightning, and looking thoughtful. He started telling her about some scientific theories about storms and lightning that she'd never heard before. Her mother often got him talking about various natural phenomenon. He was better than a book.

The twenty-fourth day they wound down a steep grade to the Karista River. The rocky ground sprouted stunted willows on both shores and multiple gravel banks and small islands. The river was at its lowest point now, in the late summer, and they forded it easily, if tediously, as the river spread out into a multitude of channels. Even so late, there was enough water that the horses waded hock deep in a dozen spots.

"For two-thirds of the year, travelers have to go upstream and use the ferry," her father told her.

Once across they turned upstream and made it to Havwee by mid-afternoon. The third largest city in the kingdom, it had massive rock walls, and almost no sprawl outside them. Question wondered if there were actually bandit gangs large enough to threaten a city, or if the last war, more than fifty years ago, had been so bad that no one had yet dared live outside the protective walls.

There was a backup of people entering the gates, and the men walked forward to see what the hold-up was. Her father came back with an amused snort. "They're still looking for their lost prince."

"What lost prince?" Question asked.

"Ah, it's a silly superstition of the royals." The Sheep Man leaned comfortably on the stationary wagon. "They think the first-born ought to serve in the army—well, lead it actually—and the second son is the true heir. They've got this big ceremony, see? The first son is supposed to toddle up and grab this big shiny pretty spear, and ignore the crown, which is up over his head and out of reach anyway.

"This shows that the tradition is right, and the boy is stuck in the army, and his little brother gets the throne," her father scratched his chest thoughtfully. "Actually I suppose the older boy is the lucky one. Being a king involves lots of paperwork and putting up with whining nobles and mewling peasants. It gets to where you don't know who to have beheaded first."

"So how did they lose a prince? Was he kidnapped?" Question clicked at the horses, and they leaned into their harnesses to move the wagon forward. Her father strolled alongside.

"No. See, a king wants to marry his son off to a powerful noble's daughter, so the father-in-law will support his grandson when he becomes king," he snorted. “Of course by then he's usually dead and the title is held by some jealous cousin or other, but they pretend it's going to work."

"But, the nobles all think the first-born should become king. Don't know why, only one kid is going to get the crown, they ought to pick the best . . . Well, anyway what they do is first marry the crown prince."

"The king's second son."

"Right. Marry him to a commoner. A big strong healthy lass, who gets to be a princess for a couple of years, until she's had a son, hopefully also big and strong and healthy. Then they divorce, the former princess gets a ton of money and a lesser title and lots and lots of penniless nobles courting her."

"I see. And then the crown prince marries that noble daughter, and
she
has the second son."

"Exactly."

"Pretty neat. Which prince did they lose?"

"The first one. Seems the crown prince was a bit of a rake when he was younger. Says he must have a bastard out there somewhere, because the boy that was supposed to be his first-born climbed right over the spear and grabbed the crown."

Question giggled. "I'll bet all the nobles are pissed."

"Yep."

"So, what are they doing up there?"

"The King's Magician foresaw that the lost prince would travel to Havwee this month. So the imperial troops are looking at every boy between five and twenty years of age, to see if he's the prince. They've a thing the mage made to sort out the kids that
might
be the prince. They've got six boys so far."

"Umm, Dad." The wagons had been moving up as they spoke, and their lead wagon moved up opposite the imperial troops' little camp. "Doesn't Harry attract the lost and wandering?"

"Oh. Crap." The Sheep Man hustled up toward the lead wagon as a brilliant flash shot up into the sky.

Justice kicked off her shoes and jumped down to get her feet in contact with the ground. Kindly, Never and Idea were doing the same. Question's hands itched for her bow, but as driver of the last wagon she needed to be ready to drive, one way or another. She backed the team until the wagon crowded the strangers behind her. There was, barely, enough room to turn.

There was a bit of yelling up forward, and she could hear her father.

"They're not going to hurt him, Harry!"

After a moment she saw the Auld Wulf walking back and climbing up on his wagon. She hadn't even seen him leave it, and he had his sheathed sword in hand. With some grumbling and inconvenience and sharp comments from some imperial officer, they shifted their wagons behind the imperial encampment and camped.

Fossi and Harry were missing from the lead wagon.

"Fossi was the seventh kid to set off the geniton." The Sheep Man paced as he spoke. "I didn't realize the King's Mage was trained and powerful enough to make something like that. The wizards of Scoone had detection magic like that. This apparatus detects royal blood."

"Well, probably some peculiarity on the Y chromosome." The Auld Wulf grinned at the Sheep Man's glare.

"Seeing how the royal family gets around and has been for generations, it's hardly a surprise it's finding so many possible princes."

The Auld Wulf chuckled. "Knowing Harry, Fossi's just about to find his real father. Should be fun. We
are
going with them, aren't we?"

"Of course we are," Harry stomped into camp. "Well, some of us are. You witches don't need to . . ."

The witches all indignantly protested the very possibility of not sticking with Fossi all the way to Karista.

"And back, if this King's
Mage picks one of the other boys."

The imperial troops didn't much like the size of the following they were accumulating. The Ash group sold all their goods, half the wagons and teams, and agreed to transport three other families whose children had been chosen, and loaded up on food and other supplies.

They stayed another week before the imperials packed up and headed home with their prizes. Eight young men, ranging from Particular's horseman, who was nineteen, to an eight-year-old delinquent who was already putting on airs and demanding that everyone call him Prince Piph.