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.”