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.