Wine of the Gods 1: Exiles and Gods (31 page)

Thinking about it, he moved the crates to the side where his equipment storage was going to be. That way his first house wouldn't be in the way of his second.

He slept there, alone and free, and hungry. Thinking about magic and hunting. In the morning he surveyed the lands to the south, and spotted some herds of large animals. Domestic cows? Or something wild? He set out to discover which, reviewing his selection of spells.

Unnoticeable. Definitely. Slice or fireball? Hard to say, neither was useful beyond about four meters. That was pretty close to get to a wild animal.

The animals were wild cattle, not the plump short horned variety he was used to. These were big, lean and possessed of large horns.

He eyed them from a safe distance. "Lots of steaks and hamburger, right there," he muttered. The nearest cow flung up her head and looked his way suspiciously.
Good hearing.

On the far side of the herd he could see some movement . . . men on horseback, with rifles. They were holding them up as if already primed and ready . . . aiming them and then a volley of shots rang out.

Four cows fell, and the other fifty turned and ran straight at Mikey. He leaped up onto the tractor and banished his unnoticeable spell. They were still coming! He sliced out at the first big cow, then threw a fire ball at a huge bull. Then he put up a shield, and was knocked completely off the tractor as another cow ran straight into the shield. Then they were gone, except the first cow and the bull, and a staggering calf that must have hit the shield and practically knocked itself out. He jumped up and grabbed the calf and found himself fighting with a  critter that weighed more than he did and had hard things on the ten or twenty appendages that seemed to be striking him.

Then it was suddenly jerked away.

"Sorry about that."

Mikey staggered back to his feet and blinked up at the man on the horse.

"We didn't realize there was anyone over here to get trampled."

Mikey looked at the carcasses, and grinned. "Hey, it wasn't how I was planning on hunting, but whatever works."

The man had the wild calf roped and tied off to his horse, and now he dismounted and grabbed the creature. "Heifer, excellent. I expect you'll want her?"

Mikey nodded.
What am I going to do with a cow?

The man threw the critter down and had her legs all tied up in nothing flat. "Can you hold her and drive?" He seemed to assume an affirmative, and transferring his attention back to the carcasses; he simply roped their horns to the tractor. "There you go. Really sorry about the stampede."

"No problem, " Mikey repeated weakly. Fortunately it was mostly a straight shot, all the way back to the Bennys'. If he'd had to do much steering, he'd have given up on the struggling calf.

Vera had met the neighbors across the way, and they all came and exclaimed over the carcasses and the calf. The two families with side by side plots were farmers, or at any rate planning on being farmers, and they knew just what to do.

Wild Thing was quickly put into a pen with their own cattle, and the carcasses attacked with knives and reduced to hide (a bit the worse for wear after being dragged five miles) and chunks of meat. Fire pits for roasts, smokers for jerky, using leaky tents made of the hides over poles, and of course, a steak dinner whipped up on the spot.

The men chatted about hunting, and the women about cooking and preserving food, and the kids – the
other two families had six between them – played with the big colt and named him Foggy.

The farmers considered the Bennys to be woefully lacking in needed skills, but Dan's ability to improvise when spare parts weren't available was approved.

Mikey's ability to hunt, as proved by the lean, mean steaks they were chewing, was considered proven. As a single man, that was fine. But Dan, and by association, Igor, had family responsibilities.

Next thing you knew, they were chopping down trees for a house.

Mikey hated his new axe within four strokes and stepped back to
slice
the tree. Worked like a charm, and he noticed that it fell the direction of the partial cut he'd made.

Branches, dead easy. He was panting and drained by sundown. But happy. Magic. He'd found a use for magic.

That first log cabin was crude, and the fence for the Wild Thing and the dun colt too low. The colt jumped out, and Hastings gelded him "Before he gets you into serious trouble."

The electric tractor was put to good use. The Hastings and Turners had larger and more powerful machines, but were already starting to have trouble getting fuel.

They did the first ground breaking for the Benny's fall garden, and left the rest of it to Mikey and his machine.

Squash, tomatoes, beans, peppers, lettuce, chard . . .

Once planted, they turned back to building, and got up some good barns for the Hastings and Turners, a good equipment shed for Mikey, and a shed for the dun and the wild heifer.

Then the farmers introduced the poor city folk to the concept of "haying".

Mikey spent every morning charging batteries so he could mow, rake or bale in the afternoon.

The Turners and Hastings were proud of their protégées, and a larger barn was built.

Then there was firewood.

Collecting acorns, as a flour extender. "Just this year, we'll have plenty of wheat next year."

Berry picking and canning jelly happened. Mikey avoided the process as much as possible, and started building his house. He started small, with what he decided would eventually be his library. A roaring fireplace, absolutely necessary. Four walls, with the windows mostly high up for good reading light, but leaving plenty of room for book shelves. One larger window to take in his favorite view.

On inquiry, he found glass almost impossible to find, and searched through his father's books for information. The purest quartz sand possible and heat it till it melted. There were various additives to help clarify less than completely pure silica, none of which he had, or had any idea how to get. Spells for the heat and the levitation so it would cool smooth and not stick to anything. He practiced on pure sand, shattering a lot of glass until he built a rocky beehive shaped oven he could heat, and stack with glass so it could cool down slowly.

The first glass he produced was awful, but he made thick blocks he could fill his high windows with, and with three times the trouble, a bunch of small panes for his big window. The distortion was bad, but the window was weather tight. He finally unpacked all of his books and turned the old crate wood into rough shelving so all his books were out and he could find them.

This winter he would be studying magic.

And improving his glass.

They called it High Top Road, and 'his' family, the Turners and the Hastings were the only families living there as the winter slowly set in. It was not very cold, and the dun and the wild heifer kept grazing, as they enlarged the pastures and the gardens produced an abundance of squash and tomatoes.

Hunting had gotten a lot more difficult, as the local cattle migrated south and the deer learned about the new predator. The mounted hunters he had encountered on his first hunt lived down the Scarlet River, a mesh of siblings and cousins and in-laws that were all horse mad and had brought lots of brood stock, both bovine and equine.

By heading due west, or even north-west he could avoid the ranchers and stalk the slowly migrating cattle under his unnoticeable spell. He practiced stun and sleep, but didn't want to feed more cattle through the winter. He'd just see about catching some yearling heifers next spring. In the mean time, they had plenty of meat, and had preserved a whole lot of it. In late December he managed to get some wild birds, for the holidays, and they got together with the Turners and Hastings around a bonfire and sang the old carols.

None of them ventured as far as town. The big church that had gone up was, according to who you believed, a revival of the True Religion or the New Religion.

None of them felt good about the fiery denouements of the Old Gods, in favor of some disembodied Creator that the Preacher was fond of. What was there to denounce? Nobody actually worshiped the old gods, did they? Mikey was even less comfortable when the human users of magic were added to the denunciations. So they celebrated at home and settled down to a nice quiet winter, with a little snow, frequent rains, and an early spring.

The electric tractor got a workout then, as Mikey plowed his flattest stretch and planted his perennial wheat amongst the rocks. They all helped each other, and at some point Mikey was astonished to realize that not only was he working hard and completely honestly, he was enjoying it.

Well, not the rock picking, perhaps. He gradually assembled long, contour following heaps of rock, and with some more digging and piling, the start of something that might eventually be some hybrid of terracing and stone walls.

Vera produced a little brother for the Kipper and Mikey and Igor tried to pick up the slack in the garden for a bit, but were chased out of her kitchen when they tried to relieve her of that burden.

The wild cattle migrated back northward as the grass sprouted, and he stunned and then charmed two heifers. They never calmed down like Wild Thing had, and he regretfully ate them both. He'd have to start with fairly young calves, and handle them regularly or it just wasn't going to work. 

Kipper was riding, a little, the dun yearling, just bareback with a loop of rope from one side of his halter to the other for reins. Dan rigged up a pair of leather hoppers to lay across his back, and the pair of them were given the chore of hauling ripe veggies from their extensive gardens to her mother's kitchen.

Wolves raided a few outlying farms, and Mikey joined the hunt for them. Fifty miles to the west he found a boy living with wolves, and suggested that if the boy didn’t want his four legged family killed they should move further and never raid farms again.

The boy scowled. "You shouldn’t have been able to see me."

"I’m a Mage. You glow like one, too. If you send the wolves away, you could come and live in the town."

The boy growled. "My father would find me, come and claim me. Never. Never again."

"What’s your name?"

But the boy slipped into the brush and disappeared.

The wolves weren't seen again.

The hunting party had to be satisfied with driving the wolves off.

"Teach them to fear man," a sheep rancher growled.

Mikey made lots of glass jars and glass stoppers that minimized the amount of bees wax they needed for canning. He was quite proud of them, and sold as many as he had time to make.

In the late spring the second shipload of colonists arrived. And the accumulated news from the Old World.

The political maneuvering sounded pointless and unimportant.

The crime reports barely touched the apparent feud between Organized Crime and an old god.

The burnings of magic users alarmed only a few.

The society news was completely meaningless.

The rumors of looming war with any of four other polities seemed empty.

The colony turned back to important things, like the three widows and their six daughters who had bought nine shares, every single one on or just north of High Top. The rumors whispered that they were witches. The matchmakers, delighted at such a balancing of the majority male colony statistics, got right to work.

Mikey rather hoped they weren't going to build their house on the very top. He didn't like the idea of  anyone looking down on him, like they were sneaking around behind him.

But he really didn't have time to worry. He was too busy looking through his father's books for something to deal with the bugs that were all over the garden, and eating his wheat sprouts.

He and Igor did go around the hill and introduce themselves, neighborly-like, but got a bit of a cold shoulder.

"If they are witches that means they won't ever marry. Anyway, we're introduced and all. I hope they're friendly. We lucked out with the Turners and Hastings, I hope our back neighbors are half the friends the front ones are." Mikey shrugged.

They rode the tractor back to the Bennys' houses and reported in.

"Lady Best and her daughters, Muddy and Salty. Lady Driven and her daughters, Last, Puddle, and Rippled. Lady Motivated and her daughter, Vapor."

Vera giggled. "I'll bet those aren't the actual names on their birth certificates. They're just playing at being old fashioned witches with their silly names."

"How old are they?" Kipper asked, looking a bit hopeful. The Turners' and Hastings' kids were a bit heavy on males in her age range.

"Umm, Last looked about sixteen, and Vapor was maybe two. The other four are in between. Maybe you and your mother should go over, you can borrow the tractor if you want."

"I should take over some fresh vegetables." Vera handed the baby to Dan and started assembling lunch. "You two men might have looked a bit scary." She smiled up at her brother-in-law and shook her head. "I remember thinking I was in trouble the first time I saw you, poor Igor. And Mikey, all you need is a knife clenched between your teeth to look like a vicious pirate."

"Me?" Mikey tried to look hurt instead of complimented.
Pirate? Me?

Kipper liked the idea too and called him Captain Black, despite his brown hair.

His regular hunting trips continued, and he started bringing home calves as they started looking old enough to wean. He bought milk from the Hastings regularly for them, but there simply wasn't enough grain to supplement the grazing. Petting and taming the calves was added to Kipper's chores, and by mid-summer she had six of them following her around like puppies.

The day before the Summer Solstice, a rather uncertain Lady Best walked around the hill to inform him that the Pyramid of High Top would be holding a meeting on the crest that night, and that they would appreciate not being disturbed.

He nodded. "I'll bunk with Igor for the night. No problem."

She blinked a bit in surprise. "Err, because we . . . umm, sorry. I had my arguments all lined up."

Mikey grinned, hesitated. "Well, I mean, I understand the importance of a Solstice to you, and tonight the mountain belongs to you."

She opened her mouth and hesitated. "Umm. Thank you. Both for your honesty and your understanding. For your respect."

Mikey shrugged. "Hey, it costs nothing, is very valuable, and tends to get returned. Happy Solstice, Sister Best."

Of course he and Igor wound up at Dan and Vera's for dinner, and after planning the enlargement of their house and admiring Kipper's training Foggy to pulling things – the yearling was clearly a draft horse – they slept in the barn and started the foundations the next morning.

Lady Motivated came by in the afternoon. "I wanted to thank you for not, well, either laughing at us or being deliberately disruptive. We moved here because we couldn't seem to ever be left alone for a single night. We were tired of hiding."

Mikey nodded, and walked back down the road a bit with her. "Look I know the various magic users haven't always gotten along. I don't see any point to it. I'm a mage."

Motivated looked startled. "Oh. Goodness, I hadn't even realized. I'm afraid I don't know much about mages."

"I'm not a very strong one. My father, err, well, there were problems and I never had a Compass. About all I do is glass, and a bit of hunting magic. And charge batteries."

She giggled at that. "Oh dear, and we spent so much time wondering how you kept it charged with no windmill in sight. Did you leave the Old World because of persecution?"

"No. I wasn't really afraid of exposure, I don't have any rites, no Compass, no Orgies. So no job either, mind you. Moving here has been wonderful, I can use magic and just not mention that that was how I did something, and everything is fine. Mind you, I could do without that Church of the Creator. I refuse to believe the Creator of all this beauty is so vindictive and cruel."

And it was beautiful. The lush green grasslands were dotted with groves of trees, and wildflowers were blooming and to the west it seemed like he could see forever. The slim brunette walking with him helped improve the view as well.

They chatted about various of their different magical traditions, finding a large amount of overlap, and it just seemed natural to invite her up to see his library, and somehow they wound up in bed instead of reading.

"I like this. Sleeping surrounded by books." She nestled up against him, content.

He nestled right back, grinning like a loon, most likely. He hoped he hadn't been too obviously amateurish.

She finally got up, and books were read, and the construction of the house admired. He volunteered himself and Igor to help with their own house raising in a few weeks; they were apparently still living in tents.

In fact, all the neighbors came, and three houses and a barn were built around the meeting corners of four of their parcels. Other neighbors from further north drifted in and were recruited, and food appeared and was consumed during a break, and polished off after the roofs went on.

As the youngest of the 'widows', Motivated garnered a lot of masculine attention. Last and Muddy, the oldest girls, both claiming to be seventeen, scooped up a lot of the remaining ogles. Heck, Lady Best and Lady Driven were fine looking women too.

Igor was getting a fair number of return ogles, Mikey hauled him aside and informed him of the known dangers of deflowering a virgin witch. Igor laughed, and nearly flattened him with a friendly swat on the shoulder.

It seemed like every family that had emigrated had brought at least one unmarried brother along, and there were plenty of single men who had emigrated alone as well. A group of them were sizing up the witches.

Mikey caught Motivated's eye and grinned. "Don't hurt them
too
badly."

She snickered, but glanced toward Last and Muddy. "I hope they don't try anything with those two, they know they aren't trained well enough yet."

Mikey nodded, contemplating another piece of chicken. However good, he simply didn't have the room for it.

"I didn't believe any number of people could build three houses, even small ones, in a day." Lady Driven walked over and sat on an unused log.

"Well, you ladies had the foundations ready, and the logs cut." Gerald Gibson, a married man from a knot of farms a few kilometers north, eyed the three cabins. "I guess with those straight cuts, I'll have to take your being witches seriously."

Mikey started to open his mouth and take credit, but Motivated elbowed him.

"Oh yes, and after we magically felled them, we went around magically putting saw marks on half of them." Lady Driven chuckled. "It's taken us four months of off and on work to get to the point of being ready to raise the walls."

"They did go up nice and fast." Igor said. "We've got lots of practice now."

Mikey nodded. "How are the rest of you doing?"

They all had houses up already, and there was some chatter about needing barns, expanding plowed fields and pastures. They were all interesting in Mikey's wild cattle.

"The oldest is just a yearling. I figure to breed her this fall to Harvy's beef bull and see what the result is. I suspect that they'll just be a stop gap, until the domesticated herds are big enough that we don't need the wild ones."

That got a fair amount of nods.

"I suppose I could catch more calves, if anyone's interested?"

They all were, and Mikey was kept busy, between harvesting, haying and cutting firewood, and putting in the fall crops again.

With more children around, they petitioned for and got a small parcel to build a school on. Several others went up as well, but the witch children came across the hill and attended theirs. Sally Turner taught the littler children, and Lady Best the older, and except for the most stormy days, the school was open for nearly all winter, and the kids were expected to read a little bit every week the rest of the year.