Wine of the Gods 05: Spy Wars (32 page)

The new girl backed away and tossed a spell at him. Something he had no shield for, but it didn't seem to have done anything to him.

The loose kids were stalking the team, picking up firewood as improvised clubs. Some burning. And the girls being held were squirming and angry. Not the intimidated, frightened children he’d expected.

Edmo threw a stun spell at the magic girl. It hit her shields, and bounced. The
native magic was stronger than he'd realized. A push spell staggered her, then something hit the back of his knees. He lashed out, actually pausing a moment at the sight of the small dragon tumbling away from him.

"Tromp, change the dragons."
The new girl had a little girl's voice, but it was full of command.

Tromp
was holding hands with two other girls. She dropped one hand made an abrupt gesture. Her magic spilled over the battlefield without barrier. Or obvious effect. It wasn't the sort of spell he had any experience with. A chill ran down his spine.
We've badly underestimated these people.

The men looked at her, the little red dragon that was getting ready to attack him again, and then up and around for something more formidable.

They didn't expect dragons in their midst. And for some of them, in their arms. The thrashing, writhing girls started changing.

He watched in disbelief as his men discovered it was difficult to break a neck as pliable as a dragon's. Perhaps if they'd been prepared . . .
But they just weren't expecting the necks they were holding to lengthen, twist and allow the former pretty teenager one was holding to bite their face. Nor for the kicks to turn into clawed grabs.

The dragons' worst problem seemed to be the clothing they were trapped in, but the sharp claws took care of that quickly.

Uhba was holding a girl who stayed a girl. He stopped fumbling at his holster, his hand flashing up to kill her. A loose girl jumped and grabbed his wrist. Uhba tried to backhand her, but she was dangling. The first girl squirmed loose, the second girl released his hand, then a dragon was all over him. Blood spurted and Edmo felt the team bond writhe with the first death.

Girls were forming up in trios all over.
Can they act together?

Edmo lunged, tried to touch Inja.
If we can form a compass . . .

A black and silver dragon leaped at Edmo. His hand fumbled for a second at the empty holster, then darted for the knife. The dragon was too quick and had his arms and legs trapped in four of her six limbs. No, he was stronger than she was. He forced his arms up, then her jaws tightened over his neck and squeezed without puncturing, much. He was bigger than she was, but she whipped her tail around his legs to take him to the ground, and she braced the wrist joints of her wings to keep him from rolling while she choked him halfway unconscious. As his vision dimmed he muzzily thought that for fighting purposes, dragons actually had eight limbs.

"Primo! Bite them! You've got a mouth full of teeth now!"

He resu
rfaced, sucking in a huge lungful of air as the dragon released her bite. He could feel his team, all of them struggling against these creatures. Good. They weren't going to be killed, they could turn the tables on these . . . things . . . they were just little girls, after all. He threw a push spell and it bogged down in a general suppression spell. One! He stopped blocking communications and concentrated on a single spell, a simple spark to hit this creature.

He could hear Tromp was laughing. "Eat them, dragons! Eat them! No, no! Fuck them first!"

His dragon released his neck to eye Tromp, then turned back to consider him. He strained, but the leverage of her wings kept him pinned down. Her muzzle shoved into his face and she inhaled, sniffing.

"He smells pretty good. Maybe he can do it." The dragon had no difficulty with speech. To his horror she started carefully tearing his clothes off with her wing claws, arching her neck up and out of his reach
as he overpowered her arms. He threw slice and fireball, and they both fizzled. He started to roll, but she caught them with an extended wing.

In his limited vision, the magic girl was clutching her head and backing away.
She's about wiped out, any second now she'll collapse and we'll kill these monstrous children.
He forced his arms forward again. Choking should work. Tried to force a spark, a fireball, a push through the suppression.

The girl backed further. "God of War!" Her shrill voice sent a chill through him, and he wrenched, trying to get loose enough to hit this dragon girl, she couldn't weigh but forty kays . . . He tried rolling, now that her wings weren't braced, but she just squeezed her hands and feet.

Edmo surged up, and screamed as the dragon's claws bit in. She snapped her jaws around his neck and choked him again. No, it wasn't him, it was one of the team. The dragons had most of his men pinned down. Kids were swarming over another figure, and someone, Amgo, was still on his feet. A piece of his own self shriveled as Ugsi died. He caught a glimpse of the little red dragon dropping out of the air . . . Ijma ripped out a piece of the Team's soul as he died. He couldn't feel, he couldn't feel too many of the Team.

"Mine's dead. No fair!" One of the dragons whined.

"Come get this one."

The dragon leapt into the air and swooped down on Amgo. Edmo heard a faint scream as he blacked out.

He resurfaced, weird erotic dreams about a dragon . . . There was a dragon on him, he was, he couldn't be! Someone was laughing as he blacked out again.

He surfaced, to see a warrior in armor, riding a huge black stallion. He was looking around in perplexity at what had become a dragon orgy.

Edmo would have giggled if he could have breathed. Didn't the God of War know about orgies? He needed to terminate himself, it was their duty to never be taken, never give out information. He tried to pass that on to the team. The dragon's jaws tightened and his mental discipline slipped away into blackness and ecstasy.

He surfaced again.
Lots of people were coming, slowing in consternation, milling about. Voices penetrated the darkness.

"Well, Nil. I hope these men fit your required criminal characteristics, because I doubt the girls will release them."

"Can we have one for questioning?"

His dragon raised her head and snarled at that.

He could feel what was left of his team; their distress and horror overwhelmed his training. "By the One! Save us!" He tried to throw a spell. Push quivered in the air as the dragon turned and this time her jaws bit deeply.

Summer 1365

Ash, Kingdom of the West

Lefty only thought he'd been appalled by the dragon orgy. The dragon dinner was much, much worse.

"Did you hear him? 'By the One.' These must be from that One World the Earthers are fighting." Elegant's clear voice rose over the ripping and gulping.

"Why this attack out of nowhere? All the kids are sure they didn't give them cause. That these men grabbed them and threatened their lives." Happy hadn't been in the meeting, but she, like every magician in Ash, had heard the children.

Lady Gisele was bent over Swish. "Stabbed. I've got it, she'll be fine.
"

Delight had her own daughter gathered up in her arms. "Whoop was hit with a stun spell! Are they Mages?
"

Beck Butcher looked around in disgust. "
Hardly! The question is, what were these men up to?"

"They wanted to destroy all the
native magic. Ash must have looked like a good place to start." Lefty stepped over to the Auld Wulf and took the thing he was holding out.

"The laser pistols differ from the Earther's in detail. Unicorn symbol on the handles." The Auld Wulf's voice was cold and hard. "Why did they pile them over here?"

"Did they want to capture the children alive? Just kill the adults?" Answer frowned back at the bloody meadow.

"Only eigh
teen of them, but if they were trained commandos . . . I need to teach the kids to be more vicious."

"They did very well. I'll never snip about your training program again;
only one child was seriously injured. They all knew how to block, how to back away, how to break a grip."

The Auld Wulf snorted. "Enough of them knew how to shield, that the men must have thought their spells couldn't work.
I think you'll find there were some sudden breakthroughs among your youngsters, tonight."

Answer looked around at the huddled girls being anxiously checked by their mothers. More than a few were rubbing aching heads. "Indeed."

Lady Gisele left the injured girls to their mothers and leaned over one of the few intact bodies. "Interesting X chromosome; it's been a long time since I've seen this variant of the witch/wizard gene." Her forehead crimped suddenly, as if with a head ache. "I can't recall where I've seen it, though."

Lefty looked around. "Rufi'll have my hide for not finding out more."

Dydit chuckled suddenly. "Can I watch when you report to Rufi that a serious attack by the One was just defeated by a pack of randy teenage dragon girls?"

The Auld Wulf looked around the clearing. "This isn't a good way to convince anyone we're harmless. What's better now? A completely mysterious disappearance, or should we make it public, but make it sound like the whole village of two hundred barely held off
eighteen attackers?"

While they batted ideas around, the Mayor chivvied the girl dragons into order and they all flew off. Lefty suspected she wanted the girls gone before anyone started thinking about dragons that raped, killed and ate people.
He
certainly didn't want to think about a dozen hungry teenage dragons. He frowned. Only ten dragons in the sky. Had the boys fled? Probably a good idea if this was standard draconic mating behavior.

Lefty, Harry and the Auld Wulf collected gadgets from the . . . leftovers.

The witches lifted chunks of ground and they shoved the remains into the holes before they let it down again. Someone said something about returning in the morning to bury whatever they'd missed. Their voices quieted as they escorted the reduced, and rather shocked, group of teenagers back to the village, or in Nil's case, back to his tower, walking backwards as he herded all the goat boys. Reluctantly, as he was eyeing the huge black horse.

Because the Auld Wulf hadn't left, he was kneeling by a bush.

"Little Rustle, what on the World have you done? Overloaded and overstrained yourself, it feels like. What did you do?"

Never and Dydit swapped looks and kept quiet.

The light little girl's voice answered. "I figured I'd better sneak down and make sure nobody got hurt. When those men came, I used a light warp, and went down and took all their laser pistols." The girl inched partway out from under the bush and the Auld Wulf touched her forehead briefly. Her shoulders relaxed. "That feels better. I tried to block all their spells."

"Ah. Tromp thinks she did it all."

"Well, she did a lot. She broke the human spell on the dragons." Rustle looked down and away from him. "At least two men ran off south."

"And you did something else you don't want to tell anyone?"

She hunched her shoulders, and stared at the ground. "I changed their essences to dragon. I thought the girl dragons might attack them like they always pick on their brothers."

"You changed their essences."

Lefty bit his lip.
She's only twelve!
The Auld Wulf's shoulders were shaking. Was he laughing?

"I've been studying the dragons, but I never ever did anything to them. But I figured them out. So I knew what to do. And they killed them all."

"Little Rustle, you are just a bit scary. Come out from under this bush, and let your parents take you home."

She crawled the rest of the way out, and staggered a bit as she stood up.

"You've seriously strained your brain, little witch. You eat well and get a lot of sleep for the next few days." He was a faint gleam of starlight on silver hair and beard, and then he was gone altogether, and the horse too.

Never swooped down to grab Rustle and realized she was crying. "Are you hurt? No? Honey, armed men sneaking around in the night and attacking people need to be killed."

"Even Answer won't give you much grief over them." Dydit stroked her hair.

"But I didn't even know who they were. Or why. Maybe we scared them. I don't think they'd ever fought magic people before. And I made the dragons want to kill them. And Answer said I had to ask her before I did anything to a live animal.
And never ever even think about doing something to a person."

"What a list." Never murmured. "Catching up for all those years of being so good?"

"Scared people run away, they don't snatch children and threaten to kill them. I think Answer will understand." Dydit scooped her up and headed up the hill. She was crying harder than ever. "What, Rustle?"

"And His hair’s all white. He'll be too old for me," she wailed, and buried her face in his shoulder.

Never and Dydit stared at each other.

Lefty somehow managed to keep his face straight. "Well . . . she's almost thirteen. About on schedule for hero worship to turn into Puppy Love."

Never winced. "Rustle, it will probably be at least ten years before you are given permission to advance. You should decide then who's too old or too young."

"Yes. Ten years from now. Maybe fifteen." Dydit headed up the hill. "Twenty."

Lefty shook his head. He turned and followed Nil and Goat Boys, trotting a bit to catch up.

They were excited and planning a horse hunting expedition first thing in the morning. "They must have ridden here, and tied the horses somewhere. So, I figure, finders, keepers, right?" Joffe looked from Nil to Lefty.

Lefty looked around at the quiet night. "Losers, weepers. But we get to examine all the tack and keep the papers. I think I must have dreamed all this." He turned into the gated courtyard where the corridor was attached. "Rufi is not going to believe it. Whatever plans we had, it's now up to pure chance. I have no idea what they'll think about their Action Team disappearing."