Free Wine of the Gods 03: The Black Goats by Pam Uphoff Page B

running away. He kept catching her, and making love to her like a man, and then she'd run away again, still laughing this odd deep  . . .
    "What are you doing, Scout?" The Sheep Man took his forefinger off Lefty's forehead.
    "What?" he blinked and looked around. He was standing in a deep green meadow dotted with flowers. Sheep were milling about stupidly, baaing their odd deep baas . . .  "Oh no." He was stark naked, and looking down he saw he had the whole works. Just starting to sag. "Oh no. Not sheep!" And a worse thought. "Where's the Brown Girl?"
    "I don't know how you two got ahold of that stuff, but I'm not used to my own daughter come crying to me because she can't seduce a eunuch. I sent her home last night, sobered up and hung over." He frowned down at Lefty. "As I ought to have left you. But I want you alert and hearing what I'm telling you." He pointed back toward the forest. "You go get your clothes back on and go home. And," he leaned real close, "if I ever catch you fooling with my daughter until she's a good deal older, you're going to be right back in the same condition you were three weeks ago. Do you understand that?"
    "Yes, sir!" he squeaked. Very sober, he even agreed. His eyes fell from the old man's face, but hung up on the chain around his neck. That odd metal . . . Memory clicked into place suddenly, and he backed away. "You're a wizard." His hand went to his forehead where the man had touched him. No wonder he was sober. "But you're chained, you shouldn't be able to do magic."
    The Sheep Man curled a lip. "Chains just restrain talent. A truly strong talent can't be completely fenced in." He smiled unpleasantly. "But chains do make a body invisible to Them."
    "Them?"
    The man just pointed. "Git."
    He got.
     
    ***
     
    Oscar  flinched as the pebble hit his bare arm, then looked to see if anyone else had noticed. Tivo, Theo, Fossi, and Fiber all had their noses in their books. Harry had insisted that they at least read during the summer, which Oscar thought was pretty silly. Mind you, some of the stories were pretty interesting, but Harry always wanted to talk about them. Forcing them to think, he said.
    Oscar put a scrap of paper in to mark his place and slipped out the front door.
    Bran was waiting impatiently, and hustled him across the street and down the alley. "We are in so much trouble!"
    "What now? C'mon, it's been weeks, and I haven't hardly seen the goats."
    "They're pregnant, you idiot!"
    Oscar staggered over to the side of the road and sat down. "Old gods. I thought you blood mages had something for that."
    "We do. Don't you listen to what's going on around you? It was that wine! Lady Gisele and the Auld Wulf cooked it up between them as a joke or something. It had a apro, afro. . . something to drive people wild with desire. Why do you think we . . .  and those goats must have gotten some or something." Bran grabbed Oscar by the collar and hauled him up until they were face to face. "Every. Single. Woman. In. The. Valley. Is. Preggers!" He released him and Oscar thudded back down.
    "There were four of us, only one bottle . . . " Oscar protested.
    "It's been six weeks. They haven't had their monthly. Blood mages are very conscious of that, you know?"
    "And they sent Juli and Fava home from the party before it got wild, so they know, all your kin must know. . . "
    Bran nodded. "They've been frowning at me, and I've seen some of them looking at you too."
    "So the girls haven't said anything?"
    "Not a word." He tossed a nervous look around. "Juli's scared, because of those goats. What if they aren't natural? What if, what if the babies . . ."
    Oscar gulped. "It doesn't work like that, it can't work like that. The, the essence of an animal can only impregnate its own kind."
    "Oh yeah? How do you explain mules, then?" Bran challenged him.
    "Horses and donkeys are almost the same thing."
    "Those goats, who knows what their basic essence is? They were laughing at us. I don’t think they are