The Kidnapping of Baroness 5

Illustration by Christopher Bing

Her hands were tired from a yesterday of setting broken bones and sewing wounds. Two young sentries had playfully wrestled each other over the edge of a castle parapet, and all their friends and relatives had hovered around while she worked, telling each other frightful predictions of lifelong crippling and assuring her that they had faith in her contracts with friendly spirits and the power of positive healing. They had not remarked that she was using the power of positive bone setting, gluing and sewing.

Occasionally she had remembered to mutter some molecular chemistry to sound mysterious, and once, uncovering some bad damage, she had muttered a genuine prayer directed to luck, fate, the Universal Spirit and the will to live.

Lady Witch let the reins go slack on the neck of her horse and rubbed her wrists. The morning sun seemed too bright. She was feeling a slight headache from the friendly party of celebration that had followed her success. No one feared her in Lord Randolph’s area of command. They knew that Lord Randolph and his towns had her affection.

She remembered Lord Randolph’s ruddy beaming face, and the pretty children of his wives, and envied them. She let her mind drift to plans to improve their genetic line.

Her horse ambled down the weedy green and brown of Route 111, avoiding holes and wagon ruts.

Her guard of four horse soldiers, three of them teenagers, one of them older, upright and handsome, drifted with her, while they sang an old song and tried to complete a memory of the new words someone had made up last night. Before dawn she had curled on a sofa and slept while the new song words were sung. The wandering choral harmony echoed on the edge of memory with a mood of foggy friendship and romance. Reluctantly she tried to plan a day of hard work in her laboratory and breeding farm, and began to brace herself to be stern and mysterious, to keep her workers terrified of her magic.

Their horses turned onto the familiar stunted sage bushes of the old unused turnpike extension and picked their way along a narrow horse trail beside deep ruts of wagon wheels. Crickets sang and blue jays cawed.

The wind shifted. Their horses snorted and then whinnied with nervous excitement. They had scented something unusual ahead.

Instantly quiet, Lady Witch and her party drew rein and looked along the road. The horse soldiers unslung bows and listened. There was no sound except the singing of birds and crickets and frogs. Cautiously the five moved onward and paused again. Ball-like horse droppings and many hoofprints led from Mountain Road, the route to Lady Witch’s land. The new tracks turned east toward the coast and Route 1. Their own horses snuffled and snorted, looking east, and then shifted their interest to nibbling clumps of long grass.

“Last night or early dawn before the ground dried,” muttered the oldest soldier. “But they could have left a detachment behind. Stay on guard.”

Lady Witch dismounted and let her horse munch grass while she looked at the tracks. Many small-hoofed horses, presumably carrying riders. Deep tracks indicated heavy wagons pulled laboriously by cattle. The horsemen had ridden in two bunches, before and behind the wagons.

Her escorts stayed on their horses, guarding her, their arrows nocked in their bows, scanning the trees for ambush. Their horses grazed quietly. “Let’s hope it is just a traveling show and trade,” she said and remounted.

The handsome, older soldier had also been studying the tracks. “If they’re not an honest trader circus, they had plenty of time to loot and swing over to Route 1 to get away south. I count about twenty ponies, two old plough horses, and three oxen.”

“I count three burros,” said a mercenary from the inland plains. “They could be a small part of a nomad army. Where I used to live, pony and burro tracks like this were from an army. They burned farms sometimes, and sometimes in fall took over an area, killed the men, made the women and children work for them and settled in for the winter.”

She imagined possible massacres. The oldest gave a command, and the soldiers galloped away, following the tracks. Lady Witch restrained her horse from following, and watched the horsemen call and point where more hoofprints came up from the old railroad trail and joined the first band. The strangers had been numerous.

Left alone, she felt nervous and watched the forest suspiciously. The older soldier returned, bringing the mercenary recruit who knew of nomads. They briskly traded horses, the officer giving up his own big stallion and trading their saddlebags. “Take the fast lane to Lord Randolph and report this.”

In the distance the other two horsemen stopped and waved and pointed north, then turned onto Route 1, following the tracks.

“The strangers went north on Route 1! Report that. Go!”

The young soldier put the stallion into a gallop.

“What weapons do you have, Lady?” The officer beside her was busy settling leather plates of armor around his arms and torso. The inlaid enamel insignia on his armor revealed that he was an officer in charge of recruitment and emergency supplies.

She was glad to have the most experienced one to guard her. Ahead there could be looters lingering in captured farms. She checked her saddlebag. “Only a medical kit, a hollow tool handle with some tools inside, and some magic.”

“Is any of your magic good in a fight?”

“I can curse them with infertility, make blinding flashes, and conjure up a smoke demon.”

“If they came from so far away they’ve never heard of you, it won’t scare them. Can your demon fight?”

“No. Sorry.”

“I respect your magic, Lady. You have great skill in healing. But if they have never heard of you and you look threatening, one arrow will do for you and your magic together. You should have carried armor.”

“I have enough to carry.” She felt a headache from lack of sleep, and her eyes strained, looking tor enemy motion among the trees.

He tapped his horse forward into Mountain Road, and they galloped southward over the late summer weeds. Black dirt and old asphalt showed through hoof marks, and the wide wheels of loaded wagons had pressed down the goldenrod and dry grass.

Apprehensively waiting to see the first farm along the way, Lady Witch imagined burnt ruins and corpses. When they rounded the bend she was glad to see the familiar shingled house unburned, and the old neighbor alive forking corn ears in a drying rack. She paused for a deep sigh of relief, then called to him. “We’re following tracks. See anything?”

The old man put down his pitchfork, squinting to see them. “Nope. 1 been up since sunup, me and my nephews. Nobody on the road.”

The soldier raised his voice. “Did you hear anything in the night, like a crowd going by, or wagons?”

The farmer came closer, interested. “Awful loud wind last night. Gusty. Roaring in the pines. If there had been anything, no way I could have heard it.”

“Are you missing anything?”

“Only missing my dog. Off hunting rabbits maybe.”

“Or killed to keep him from barking,” muttered the soldier.

They galloped away, and Lady Witch looked back and saw the farmer standing in the middle of the road, reading the clear story of hoofprints and wagon ruts. His stance showed worry. No old man and wife and two half-grown nephews could have withstood that pack if they had turned aside to loot.

Lady Witch tapped her heels into the sides of her horse, keeping him at a gallop. The cool fall wind went by her face as comfortably as if nothing could be wrong. The next farm looked untouched, and the metal-repairs man was out in his shed by the side of the road, two ends of a broken axle glowing in the forge. He waved and called, “See the tracks?”

“Saw them,” shouted the soldier, not slowing, and Lady Witch looked ahead and shook the reins back to a gallop.

“Who are they?” the handyman shouted after them, but she did not answer. A witch woman should have predicted trouble coming and warned everybody. Best to avoid the question.

The wind was in her face, but there was no smell of burned houses.

She stopped at the entrance to the holdings given her by Lord Randolph, and saw that the wagon tracks and hoofprints had entered and left again.

The gate was unlocked and open. It showed none of the damage that would have been done to it if it had been forced open. Reading the tracks with increasing pessimism, she walked the horse up the steep road. The wagon tracks dented more heavily on the way down. Loaded with loot? She mentioned it.

“We’ll see what they took when we get there,” said the officer. His manner was fatherly. Apparently he did not believe the stories that she was very old, over twenty-five. If he was the sort who went in for disbelief, stories of her powers as a witch probably did not impress him. As she came over the hill she saw glimpses of young workers busily neatening up the yard and repairing fences. Up the hill among the trees a boy tending white goats saw her and waved, but the house workers kept their heads down and kept on working as she and the soldier approached. “Everything is too neat,” she muttered. “They must have done something wrong.”

No one came from her house and laboratory to greet her. They dismounted and Lady Witch led the way into her house. She saw the cook ducking back into the kitchen leaving two plates set on the table near a covered stewpot. Why were they all afraid to face her?

“Come here!” yelled Lady Witch. “Where is everybody? Is anyone dead?”

A small boy escaped from reaching hands in the kitchen and darted to her, shrilling, “Lady Witch! Lady Witch! The demons have taken Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey.”

“Oh no!” Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey were pigs, but of incalculable value, having been made histogenic organ compatible with the human Lords Randolph and Jeffrey of the same name. The two lords of neighboring counties were overly brave, planning to lead in the front of battle in a necessary war and shorten their already short lifespans. They soon might need blood transfusions and replacement parts. For the rescue of all other patients, piglets that were totally compatible to all humans and loaded with human gene improvements had been born few and stunted, and she had just lost the life of the only surviver—sacrificed for the repair of the two reckless sentries.

“Has Baroness 5 given birth? Is she all right?”

“I don’t know! They took her too!” the boy shrilled.

“No!” she ran to the back, but the pens were floored with fresh straw and totally empty. She dashed into her laboratory, startling a boy who was feeding the caged rats. He took a look at her face and fled.

Tears were running down her face. She sat and stared ahead.

A hand touched her arm. It was the soldier, regarding her with a light of eagerness and awe. “Did you repair that radio?”

“Somebody found it in an old cellar. The field reversal hadn’t burned it out.” She rested both elbows and put her face down in her hands. “What are you doing here? Nobody has permission to come in here.”

“I came to tell you there was no blood. The pigs were not killed. The ones who cleaned up the pens and yard told me there was no blood. If the nomads loaded them in the wagons alive, they must have wanted to keep them alive. I thought you’d want to know.”

Her staff should have told her when she arrived, but they had been afraid to face her. She usually used trickery to impress them with the power of her curses, and she had let them see her talking with smoke demons, but it was all just to make sure they followed scientific directions to the dot. She had not meant them to be so cowed and afraid that they could not tell her bad news.

She called them all together. They denied seeing anything. Gently she asked the boy, Billy, “Why didn’t anybody see them take the pigs?”

Billy danced with eagerness. “The demons were out in the wind, howling, and everyone was down in the old kitchen, where we had the doors and windows barred and a big fire in the fireplace to keep the demons from coming down the chimney. I heard the demons fighting the pigs. The pigs squealed and fought and crashed against the walls, but Cook would not let me go look. Can I help you go fight demons and put them back into bottles?”

Lady Witch raised her voice and projected it at the half-open door. “Whose turn was it to lock the gates at night and stand sentry? Send for him. The gates were unlocked!”

When the teenager arrived he was sullen. “Yesterday your smoke ghosts got loose. They turned into fog and floated through the woods getting bigger and making faces. Then they started roaring and shaking the trees. We locked ourselves in the house. I didn’t know the demons were going to roar and beat on the house all night, and keep us locked in.”

“That was just fog and wind,” she said impatiently. Then she wondered if she should argue. Her smoke demons were only a heavy smoke that coiled in rounded shapes and webbed to itself and stayed swaying around the bottle until she put out the flame. The likeness to demons relied on the power of imagination. If her staff had seen huge smoke shapes in drifting fog, their awed stories could improve her fame. She resolved to send these people back to Lord Randolph before their imaginations went berserk. Better to accept a new staff offered by Lord Jeffrey.

But it would be better to let them believe in their fog demons—better to not contradict their stories. She apologized, “I’m sorry. All my power was diverted to Lord Randolph’s fort. I was using up all my spells to hold death away from the two young idiots who deserved their bad luck. Nothing was left to hold back the demons.” Still crowding at the doors and windows, young men and women nodded vigorously and agreed in deferential tones. “Yes, yes. It’s not your fault, Lady. They got out of their bottles and grew very big. They roared and shook trees. We came here and barred the doors. They beat on the walls and shutters all night.”

She gestured to the man to continue his excuses for leaving the gates open. He continued with more confidence, “I know about demons; my cousin was an exorcist. She specialized in demons. Your demons broke the door to the animal stables and took back your demon pigs, and left hoofprints. Demons leave hoof-prints.”

Again everyone she employed nodded agreement.

Their lack of reasoning infuriated her. Smoke and fog leaving hoofprints? Demons using wagons and leaving wagon tracks? She took a deep breath to yell at them all. The older soldier moved between her and the man.

“Were they the kind of demon whose hoofprints look like goats or like ponies or like horses?” he asked gently.

“Like ponies!” the man replied, but his glance darted around the room from door to window as if seeking escape from sudden doubts.

“Good. They were in league with some passing nomads who put the pigs into a wagon. We can follow that trail. The demons are not likely to be out in sunshine.”

“I’m going to help you get Lord Randolph back!” Little Billy danced with eagerness.

Only children volunteered. The older ones held them back and muttered about smoke demons. She could have ordered them to come with her, but if they were unwilling and frightened they would be useless. She ordered three fresh horses. Somehow she must get back the two boars and Baroness 5, before she gave birth. The nomad thieves would be so startled by what would issue forth from the great sow that they could panic and kill all the sow’s offspring, and cause the failure of her medicine plus years of delay in her research. In a very few years another generation would age and die and friends whom she had promised to save would be gone.

The handsome older officer of recruitment, the little boy, and Lady Witch followed the track of the nomad band, galloping past farms and long deserted store buildings and empty churches to a crossroads. There was an inn at the crossroads that usually welcomed travelers with the aromas of breakfast or lunch. Now there were no welcoming aromas and all doors were open and silent.

With an arrow nocked and ready, the soldier sidled his horse up against the wall and listened. No sound. Little Billy slid down from his saddle. He ignored their fierce gestures for caution and ran into the inn. “Innkeeper Roger, Innkeeper Roger, Lady Witch is here hunting the nomads.” There was no answer to the shrill childish calls going through the rooms of the inn, but there was a thump, whispers, and rustling from the hayloft above the stable and feet on the creaking ladder, and at last the innkeeper and his daughters appeared, brushing hay from their clothes. He was pudgy and beginning to age at about twenty-two. They were twins still growing. They whispered, “Are they gone?”

The soldier was impatient, “We’re following their trail. They are long gone.”

The older of the two girls said politely, “Your permission, Lady. We must go see what the thieves have taken.” The two girls ran to the inn, and let out shrieks of rage. “Pappa! They took all the kegs of wine.”

He remained looking up at her, absently combing straw out of his hair with spread fingers. “Can you do anything for us, Lady?”

“Not until we catch up. How long since they were here?”

The innkeeper looked at the Sun. “More than an hour.”

The soldier snorted. “By the time we catch up they will be having a party with your wine.”

Lady Witch felt forlornly that she should have warned them all somehow. She offered an excuse. “I was away from home, and when I returned my pigs had been stolen. It will interfere with my magic. I must get them back.”

The innkeeper stayed looking at her, still absently combing his hair with his fingers. “I heard the pigs squeal in both wagons, but I did not know they were your magic pigs, Lady. What becomes of the magic if they are eaten? What becomes of the lords whose names they carry?”

“God knows,” said Lady Witch. “I must get them back. The Baroness is about to give birth.”

“Give birth to what, Milady?”

“Do not meddle in magic,” she replied sharply. “I must be with her when she delivers or there will be—ah, something happening.” She made a vague gesture indicating nothing in particular and avoided his inquiring gaze. “I am not here to attack the nomads. Lord Randolph is sending soldiers from the fort for that. I need to be by the side of The Baroness when she delivers, to complete the Magic.” She made the word sound mysterious and important. But it was important. Was there no one else in the Solar System doing research on prions? Did they all think that the shortening of life on Earth was only a radiation effect from the time the magnetic poles reversed and would wear off? It was not wearing off, and the level of knowledge was dropping as each generation was given too short a time to pass on more than survival skills to the next generation. With five years delay most of her friends could die. She braced herself for danger. “Get me something to wear that looks like one of the nomad women. I must get into their camp.”

They brought her a brown dress. She tied it to the saddle. “Let’s go! Hurry!”

The soldier had watered the horses and was splashing water over his head and arms. He rose, dripping, and mounted.

The girls came out and passed up water bottles. “We hope you hit them with lightning, Lady Witch.”

She could make no promises of what she could do against armed men, so she was silent. The innkeeper apologized, “I would like to go with you to fight but I have to stay and protect my daughters.”

Again they galloped down the turnpike extension, enjoying the level footing of weeds over underlying cement that let their horses run smoothly. Later and closer to the ocean they stopped at a looted farm and helped the family pick up the wreckage of their doors while they listened to their description of the nomads who had just left. Their hens and eggs had been taken, the milk cow had been driven away and some of the garden tools and all of their good clothes and best pots had been loaded into their own wagon and driven off with their horse.

The soldier helped them rehang the barn door on its hinges and listened to their story of barricading themselves in their house and hearing the thunderous bursting of the front doors. The house had been invaded and plundered but not one of the family had been hurt or killed, which put a better aspect on the looters.

Excitedly discussing it, the farm family collected eggs laid in stray corners and invited Lady Witch and the soldier to sit at their table, and promised a big tomato omelette breakfast with corn pancakes and butter.

Billy was hungry and eager, but Lady Witch wanted to push on and catch up with the looters. The family agreed to shelter the little boy and let their nine-year-old boy volunteer to guide Lady Witch on a shortcut to get ahead of the nomad army, now slowed by the weight of loot.

The boy guided them away from the road, down a muddy bank of high reeds and into a great saltgrass marsh. The horses protested and walked carefully down a slope of yielding roots to where a small rowboat lay anchored on drying sand. The sand was as hard and flat as a road. The boy gestured them to follow and began to run. They trotted, following the track of hard damp sand. The dampness became puddles then a stream. They followed the sand path downhill. Dark banks of wet roots became higher on each side, and the marsh spread out before them to distant shores of trees. Toward the sea the shore road was hidden by trees. Ahead, puddles widened into shallows of salt water, reflecting banks and sky. The horses advanced into the bright blue shallows with careful steps, found the bottom was hard sand and began to trot again. The boy had run ahead and around a curve; the horses rounded the curve, galloping, and passed him, their hoofs splashing.

Water deepened to the horses’ knees. The horses stopped, snorting uncertainly, looking out on a widening bay.

Lady Witch and the officer of supplies drew rein and looked around. To their right the lad waved, waist-deep in another stream. They turned to it and the horses trotted uphill again, snorting and splashing in the shallowing water. The banks were walls of roots populated by small scuttling crabs, they made cool shade against the hot sunlight and a wall they could not see over.

The boy climbed a bank and put his head over the edge. They stood up in their stirrups for height and looked over. They were almost at the edge of the marsh. Ahead, stands of thick bushes and high pines cut off the view of the sea. In the silence, a redwinged blackbird sang a high trill, a cow mooed, a calf bawled, a pig grunted. High voices called directions.

The lad signaled caution. They dismounted and led the horses up a damp sand track. The sun shone hotly on their backs and heads, and the wind shifted toward their faces and brought them a slow rumbling of ocean waves and the aromatic smoke of pine twig fires starting.

They put their heads together for quiet talk. “They are starting campfires,” mumbled the officer. “Dinner next. You had better move fast, Lady.”

Startling them, one of their horses whickered interest in the smell of strange horses. There was an answering whinny from the direction of the nomads’ encampment. Lady Witch and the soldier gently held the horses’ nostrils to silence them. The soldier handed the reins to the boy and murmured, “If they both start talking to the camp horses, we’ll be under a pile of nomad soldiers. Take them back home.”

The lad began carefully turning the horses, a hand alertly near their nostrils to avoid more sound while Lady Witch unslung her magic kit from the saddle.

She put on the brown clothing while the officer, sweating and pink in his heavy leather armor, went back to the last puddle and knelt and splashed water over his head and down his neck. He was a good-looking man, with reddish hair that curled close to his head when wet.

Sunlight was hot on her double layer of clothes. She walked back to a deep salt puddle, laid down in it and let it soak her back, then rolled over and put her face under. It was cool and clean in her mouth and nose and eyes. She got up with cold wet clothes clinging to her skin and suddenly felt chilly and exhilarated.

With a wild laugh she took the lead, running. The officer ran behind her, looking at her figure in the wet clothing. The sand path rose toward the surface of the marsh, the banks shrinking lower, not enough concealment now. They ran bent over in a hot shallowing ditch, then went up on the side on hands and knees to enter a thicket of bushes. The stems grew too close together and would not let them in. Making cautioning gestures that warned of listening sentries, the soldier pointed to the opening of a rabbit trail, like a low tunnel through the bushes. He slung his bow and sword well back on his shoulders and forced his way into the trail, leaning against the bush stems and bending them, crawling on elbows and knees. She tucked up her long skirt to let her knees work and followed, dragging her magic kit, crawling with forearms and elbows and knees over scratchy twigs and hard roots.

A change of wind brought her the sweet smell of a well-started wood fire. Fear returned. However fast she crawled, it was only crawling, not fast enough! What if Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey, the two boars, were being killed and cut into pork roasts? What if the pregnant sow, Baroness 5, gave birth and her offspring terrified the viewers into killing them all?

She ran her head into the soldier’s boot. He had stopped. He reached a hand back where she could see it and gestured with one finger. She followed the gesture, turned aside through the thinning bushes and cautiously crawled to a green barrier of goldenrod and weeds. She parted the greenery and looked out at the nomad encampment. Near them oxen munched at the weeds. Under the cool shade of tall trees a natural carpet of orange pine needles extended in a mile of shade camp ground. Covered wagons were already parked, spaced far from each other.

Children were running to bring water and breaking dry pine branches for the campfires, while a few women and many girls, garbed in scanty mixtures of furs and colorful clothes, were unpacking pots, setting up grills for cooking, bracing long poles and building porchlike extensions to the covered wagons.

“Where are the men?” she whispered.

“They expect attack,” he whispered back. “Probably back laying ambushes.”

She made an effort to see it from the nomad viewpoint. They were used to being followed by enraged property owners who wanted their possessions back, and occasionally they could expect to be attacked by a small army owned by a local military boss, mayor, police chief, Lord Something, Baron Something, King Somebody. There was no local government without a fort and a small army and a military leader with a title. From long experience of being attacked the nomads were ready with ambushes and counterattacks.

The officer whispered. “What’s your plan?”

“I’ll walk in alone and make sure the Baroness is all right, then tell them to return her and Lord Jeffrey and Lord Randolph. If they give me any trouble I’ll curse them with infertility and nightmares.”

He shifted uneasily and looked at her. “Not much of a plan. They’ll just think you are a spy for Lord Randolph and do whatever they do to spies.”

“Can you think of anything better?”

He looked away from her, back to the camp, and spoke reluctantly. “I can’t stop you. If you get into trouble, just whistle, and I’ll walk in and claim they’re all surrounded by a vast army and I’ve come to negotiate terms of their surrender.”

“Not much of a plan.”

“No worse than yours,” he replied, “Give me a good-bye kiss in case we both get killed.”

She was surprised by his effrontery but pleased by his air of tired wisdom. At his age and experience, perhaps twenty-two, suddenly finding his hair greying, he could see death coming and had no fear of death in war. He knew that life was brief and sweet. In the bushes they tried a short kiss, found it comforting, and hugged.

From the camp came a deep elephantlike squeal followed by a peculiar string of grunts. The pregnant sow, Baroness 5, was beginning to give birth. “Uh oh! My patient calls.” Lady Witch detached herself and ran toward the grunting. Ahead she saw a brush enclosure being raised higher by children piling branches. Inside it, behind a small watching crowd, she heard a man laughing and a female voice that chanted, “Soo soo sooo.” Another squeal abruptly ended in contented grunts.

As Lady Witch forced through a small crowd of women she heard a male scream of frightened profanity and knew what she feared had happened. All her hurrying had not been fast enough. A man rushed by. “Oh my god! Sorcery!” People backing away bumped into her and stepped on her feet. She pushed by them, in a panic to protect the sow, and stumbled into the clear center of the crowd. She felt deep relief and gratitude for her good luck. On the ground before her was the huge sow and her first piglet, unharmed.

“Sorcery!” “Unnatural!” The ring of people backing away stared in horror.

“Sorcery” required good staging. If they fear it, add it to your advantage. Lady Witch reached into her kit, held up both hands and rubbed two objects together. One burst into a blue flame and the other into a yellow flame, and the light grew to a great dazzle.

Women ran and children screamed.

She added her howl to their screams. “Acetaldehyde, ketone. Baroness, turn again human and give birth to the blessed princess.”

The enclosure suddenly was emptied of people. They watched from beyond the piled bushes. She threw the flares at the entrance to prevent return of the crowd and knelt at the side of the huge pink sow, who was again squealing and grunting and pushing and giving birth, now garishly lit by the blue and yellow magnesium flares she had salvaged from beached powerboats.

The sow’s first issue lay waving his small arms, a healthy human baby, his placenta clinging like a red plastic bag around his legs. The placenta was from his own human tissue and had given him the equivalent of a human mother inside the sow. It had sent out hormones to force the sow and her piglets to accept proximity to human tissue.

“It was a baby!” someone was calling to newcomers beyond the thorn fence.

Various voices called, “Witchcraft! Demons! We have been cursed! Tell the sorcerer. A demon baby from a pig!” People were running toward the flares, asking what was happening. Some of their voices were male, deep and dangerous. A few minutes were left before the bright flares died and let the crowd back in the paddock and some man decided that the answer to all oddities was to kill them. She picked up the baby, cut the cord long and stripped off the rest of his placenta like peeling off a pink plastic package. She wiped the baby with the damp cloth of her dress and cleaned its smooth pink skin.

The infant boy took a deep breath and howled for a mother’s warmth.

“Soo soo,” she soothed and stood up, cradling him. He put his thumb in his mouth and went silent, looking at her with wide watchful eyes. This one carried some very unusual genes and also was a clone cross of the human males Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey and, as such, she had hoped he would inherit both kingdoms, but he did not show the right birthmarks to prove he had been fathered by either of them. He could be raised as an orphan, like Billy. He looked intelligent.

The flares fizzled out and the crowd surged in. She was surrounded by nomad children and young women breathing wonder, awe, and fear of witchcraft, and in male voices, angry attempts at explanation from those who did not believe in witchcraft and did not believe a pig had given birth to a human child. A drunken man tried to force his way to the front to kill the child and the others held him back. “Kill the demons,” repeated one drunken voice, while another male voice soothed drunkenly, “Only a fake. Don’t worry. Only a fake.”

“Quiet!” Lady Witch raised her voice over the noise. “I must try to turn the Baroness back to a woman while she gives birth. I must save her next child from being a pig forever. Please let me do my work.”

The crowd was ready for a show. They quieted and stared at the sow, waiting to see it turn into a human woman. Lady Witch muttered chemical formulas and felt the great belly to see which shape of bulge was nearest. Then she was busy helping push and then pull. Some of the crowd gasped in horror and others cheered as she pulled out another completely human infant. This one was a female, a clone-cross between her own genes and some dry tissue of a very famous scientist.

Some of the audience decided this was intended to be a magic show, and clapped. The cheering and clapping repeated more loudly when she cleaned this new baby and held her up, like a rabbit from a hat. “The Princess!”

While they clapped, the sow grunted and very easily gave forth four small shoats that were natural pigs, and those began to suckle. The babies heard the sucking sounds and began to whimper and grope the air with lips and tiny fists. They were hungry. Lady Witch laid the babies up against two of the many nipples.

There were gasps of protest from the audience and growls and threats from a few men. In their morality, babies should not suckle sows. Distraction was needed. Lady Witch called out. “We need a volunteer to tend to the babies. This sow is Baroness 5, my captive. She was a Lady Baroness whose real name I keep secret. I turned her to a pig when she disobeyed me. I am sorry for it now, and I am sorry I can’t change the enchantment. The babies need to be cared for. They need someone to make sure that the sow does not lie on them. Can anyone volunteer to help the babies?”

“Real babies.” “A little princess.” Whispers spread among the women. They lost their fear and moved toward the babies with smiles, and bent toward them, cooing. There were noises from the back of the crowd and barked demands to clear the way. Two leather-armored men with short swords and leather shields shouldered through the crowd to Lady Witch and grabbed her arms in a hard grip.

“The Sorcerer wants to see you,” one barked.

She stiffened up as tall as she could and glared at their hands gripping her arms and switched her glare to their faces.

A woman screamed, “Ricci! Don’t get her mad. She’ll turn you into a pig!” The crowd agreed and pointed at the evidence, and the soldiers stared at a row of four suckling piglets and two suckling human infants, and understood. They let go of her arm and stood back. One said, “Uh... your pardon, Lady Sorcerer.”

Lady Witch guessed that the other one was dangerous, for he backed away slowly, his sword gripped tightly in a warding position and his eyes as round as marbles.

The sorcerer-healer of these wandering people had made them too fearful of his magic. This nomad might go berserk from fear and attack her. She smiled at him, “I’m called Lady Witch. Please show me the way to your sorcerer.”

To seem less threatening she turned her back to his round-eyed glare and smiled at a strong girl who was cooing at the babies. “You have a good heart. I choose you to help the babies while I am away.” She saw a plump young woman also leaning over the babies from the other direction. “And you have experience. Help her. Don’t let anything harm the babies. I trust you.”

The two nomad soldiers had been whispering to each other. The one who had not been afraid raised his voice, “Come with us. The Sorcerer wishes to see you.” He pointed.

“And I wish to see him.” She avoided seeming to be a prisoner by walking rapidly in the direction he had pointed, letting the soldiers follow. The crowd trailed, chattering excitedly and hoping for new wonders.

As they passed the nearest campfire she smelled sizzling pork chops and saw a large caldron with chunks of meat, carrots, turnips, and potatoes beginning to boil. All her fears returned. “I hope my two enchanted boars are still alive,” she said loudly to the two soldiers and the crowd following. “One is called Lord Randolph and the other Lord Jeffrey. They were stolen from me last night when The Baroness was taken.”

“Pigs! The boars are men turned to pigs!” There were multiple exclamations of dismay, and some of the men ran, calling warnings at each cook fire against eating pork from any pig stolen the night before.

The two nomad soldiers brought her to a tentlike building covered with leather, fur side in. She pushed through a double flap. It was darker inside except for orange and white parachute silk draped around the dais, making a bright background of color for the sorcerer. He was thin and wrinkled, wearing a vest of furs turned leather side out and gold chains with pendants of symbols. “Is this the witch?” he demanded of the nomad soldiers. “She doesn’t look like a witch.”

Lady Witch began to strip down to her whites. The soldiers looked at her nervously. “She came into camp somehow and turned two newborn piglets into human babies,” said the calmer one. “She said the sow was a human she had turned into a pig. That’s witchcraft. She’s a sorcerer.”

“Everybody saw it,” said the other, nodding vigorously and sweating. He watched Lady Witch throw the brown clothes down and stand in the shining white uniform, shaking her long hair loose, and he backed up against the door flaps and halfway out. “She’s a tech too! Look out for weapons!”

“Stand outside, both of you!” barked the sorcerer. They obeyed eagerly.

Alone, the skinny man looked at her appraisingly. “You are a biotech! I’ve found one! The locals down the coast talked of Lady Witch living up this way doctoring and not getting old, and I heard lies about enchanted pigs and demons. I didn’t believe them.”

“Believe them,” she said.

He laughed. “I don’t believe lies. You’re a biotech. Those pigs are laboratory animals. That’s why they say you are a good healer. Genetics and tissue culture. That’s what I was looking—” He tried to laugh again but choked and coughed pathetically.

She saw a pattern to his motions, the crying and crouching and wincing of a child being hit, crying disguised by habit as coughing, pain felt as illness. The unlucky man was trapped in a childhood trauma of being beaten. She restrained herself from wanting to release him from it.

He straightened up and glared. “How long will it take you to teach me your foolery?”

“I don’t teach my secrets!” she snapped. How could one teach biochemistry and genetics in their short lives? If a girl started to bear children at twelve years old she would die of senility at twenty-five with only three children produced and the youngest only eight. A boy occupied himself with helping the aging olders and learning work skills and fighting.

She liked the sorcerer for being clear-headed about what biotechnology had been all about. Many laboratories had been working on life extension. She herself had been in safe work, transplanting helpful thymus tissue and prion resistant genes from carnivores to herself. But many of her friends were researchers who had suspected prion viruses to be the killer, and complained that the prion viruses they studied worked too slowly to affect mice. She felt guilty on behalf of friends and researchers who had committed a possible great error and accident that no one knew about. New faster prion viruses could have been loosed with the magnetic pulse that burned out all safety controls.

The sorcerer should have been a young man. He was probably only twenty-four years old. He snarled, “You had better try to teach me. I’m master here. You will be a prisoner here until you obey me!”

She replied loudly and slowly, with deliberate clarity. “I will be a prisoner here for a very few days until I finish changing all your people into pigs and you have no one left to obey you.”

Certain bulges of listening audience leaning against the outside walls of the tent jerked and vanished, and the soft thudding of footsteps ran away.

She jerked a thumb at the tent walls, “They have sense enough to fear magic.”

The old man glared at the walls. “It’s a bluff. Fools, cowards!”

“Better cowards than pigs,” she said loudly toward the remaining bulges of listeners leaning on the leather walls. “Now for our deal. You may keep one of the enchanted children. He is a great general reincarnated. But you must return the Baroness and the two boars and all the horses and the cow and the wagons and carts and tableware and casks of wine your people stole last night and this morning.”

He rose and stamped around in a circle, trying to straighten his bent legs. “What do I want with babies who are really pigs or pigs who are really lords?” he snapped, wincing and creaking, “If you are really a biotech, I want the secret of eternal life!”

She sneered at him. “Eternal life? Even if I don’t turn you into a pig, you are not likely to live more than another day. The forces of Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey already surround all exits from your camp. Only I can persuade them to let your people live.”

A breathing presence at the door that she had thought was one of the nomad soldiers turned out to be a large bellowing man hung with swords and shiny armor too small for him. He was bellowing at the sorcerer. “What’s this mess you have gotten us into? You senile fool! You led us here with your fortune-telling! You said it would be safe to conquer and settle! No resistance, you said!”

“General,” quavered the skinny old man. “There are no armies. Lord Jeffrey and Lord Randolph are only some pigs looted from this madwoman and added to our herd. They can’t surround anything.”

“Pigs?” the general bellowed. “Our scouts say Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey are generals of forts north and west of here and have horse armies larger than ours. And I think we have camped on a dead-end point of land. You led us into a trap.”

She spoke soothingly, “There is no danger if you do not shoot first. Just give me an honorable escort without weapons to cart my pigs and drive the other animals back to the farms they were taken from, and I will tell the two lords not to war on you.” She hesitated, fear again cramping her heart. “My two boars were taken last night. They are called Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey and are very important to the lords of the forts. They must be treated with respect and spoken to politely.”

The nomad general turned pale and thoughtful and wiped traces of grease and gravy from his mustache and mouth. “I do not ask the name of every pork rack I eat,” he growled uneasily. He put his head out of the tent and bellowed an inquiry and found out that the two boars were still alive.

Happy, she thought of adding to her success by rescuing the farm family’s stolen chickens, but the odor of barbecued chicken was already strong in the air of the camp. It was not worthwhile to ask.

A lookout arrived, galloping, and reported that he had seen at least 150 mounted soldiers approaching from two or three miles back on the road and they would have already arrived at the last crossroads and be blocking the single road out. The camp outside was already changed in sound, the sharp commands of soldiers organizing a defense.

The general stepped outside into the shade of the pines “What about the marsh?” he snapped. “Send scouts to find a way out through that marsh.”

She whistled and the officer of supplies and recruiting rose from the bushes with his hands up peaceably and his enameled armor shining with his insignia. “You are surrounded,” he said. “We will accept terms of surrender. Our policy is to give citizenship to immigrants if they get work on farms and join the army.”

The old sorcerer straightened, smiling, then turned and glared at the nomad general like an angry hawk. “What do you mean I led you into a trap? Lady Witch has promised she will protect us. Her promise is good. We can settle here. I prophesied that this would be a safe place and I was right. I’ve been looking for this place all my life!”

The general nodded and sighed.

With the officer of supplies riding a recaptured horse ahead, Lady Witch triumphantly returned, riding in the first wagon with Baroness 5, leading a herd of recaptured cows, horses, and pigs.

They met the army of Lord Randolph and Lord Jeffrey drawn up in battle formation at the other side of a clearing, just past a long bowshot from the nomad soldiers in the trees.

She was glad to see the round pink face of Lord Randolph, as usual taking unnecessary risks by riding around the front line. Randolph, laughing, shouted that he was being attacked by a herd of cows, his own officer of supplies, and a beautiful witch. The officer of supplies and recruitment shouted back that fear of their great army had forced the nomads to surrender, and he and Lady Witch had given their word that the army would not attack them if the nomads returned the local loot, gave back hostages, and settled peaceably for the winter. He galloped forward and rejoined his troops.

She let him explain and led the parade of recaptured animals and loot onward. Past the horse army she was met by a crowd of eager farm families running forward to welcome back their cattle. Little Billy was with them, joyous and important, boasting that he lived in Lady Witch’s house and saw her do magic every day.

He was outshouted by the young nomad herdsmen shrilly claiming that they could have won the war, except for the unfair use of magic. They had surrendered only because a dangerous woman sorcerer had appeared in the middle of their camp and threatened to change them all to pigs, and had changed two newborn piglets into human babies to prove that her pigs had once been Lords.

The farm families did not believe that their Lady Witch could do this, and goggled as two young nomad women in the lead wagon held out the infants they carried, and then held them down to the side of the fat sow, where they nursed side by side with the piglets.

Beside the wagon, Billy asked to drive and she gave him a hand up. She passed him the willow switch, but he was worried. “Lady Witch, was my mother a pig?”

She had wanted everyone to believe he was only a normal human orphan, but it was too late for that. After the people had seen the origins of the two new babies in the charge of Lady Witch they would understand the sudden appearance of any unexplained babies.

Billy’s brows were down and his mouth unhappy. She understood his fear. She had to give them all a story with strength and interest and glamour.

“No, my little scout, your mother was a lioness, and that is why you are so brave.” And that was not completely a fairy tale, for carnivores had genes of resistance to prions. And one set of her experimental genes had been from a lion.

Billy was trying to roar the whole way back to their farm and laboratory.