4. Waterpower #5
"Hezekiah Yoder place, Weissbruck Road, yessir." He rolled to his feet and started pulling on his shirt.
"Anno. Doamna beatsu, Ladislu clear." The call ended.
That had to come from Vladi and Hiram. They were bad examples, or so the older men grumbled.
Lukaz finished dressing, made certain his boots were laced properly this time, and slung his belt and holster around his hips.
Mindful of the squeaky tread, he crept down the stairs and out of the house.
He'd left his long blade and other things in the pickup.
The sky grumbled to the east as jagged blue-white shapes flashed under the clouds.
Light, cold rain fell on his head. He got into the truck, drove to the gate, let himself out, then closed the gate once more and headed west. It wasn't far, only two miles.
Were the beasts game-based or something else, and how many?
Who was the magic worker, or did they have one?
He signaled his turn and went a quarter mile, then killed the lights and turned onto a farm drive.
No one currently lived at the home place, but the family still farmed the ground and kept the house and farmyard tidy.
"... All trapped in Riverton." Groans followed Cahway's words. The big dog seemed larger in the darkness, his stainless-steel false teeth gleaming in the dim glow of a dying yard light. "Wrecks on both roads. Petruyah is Healer on the other Hunt, Raabe the magic worker."
Lukaz moved to stand next to Copper. "Salrou, sorcerer?" Copper signed.
"Anno. Not Hunt trained yet."
"We're it. Support as can."
But— He swallowed his protest. The Lady and Defender provided. "Anno."
Rasi gestured toward the east. "Two, possibly three, look like the green aliens in the new space-raider game. Not sure origin. We," he gestured to his Hunting partner, "scout."
Cahway snarled something very quiet and glared at Rasi. Lukaz and the others pretended not to notice. More loudly the Familiar said, "We're the second hunt. Cimbrissa will try to join us as Healer if she can. More weather to the southwest."
Petru grumbled, "Happy Thursday," and caught two rude hand signs in return.
"I hunt with," Matias the Younger gestured to Petru, who nodded curtly.
"Agreed. Salrou and Copper, you two, we scout. Follow," Rasi ordered, and the others began to move. Five Hunters to three constructs ... Not ideal.
At least the rain had softened the grass and leaves, hiding the sound of their steps.
"This way," Cahway called, speeding into a trot.
The others formed a line behind the scouts.
Copper couldn't run as fast as most Hunters, so Lukaz stayed with him.
Thanks be the older men had shotguns as well as long blades.
They should be able to hold their own until magic workers arrived.
Indeed, the lead Hunters entered a wooded area, then disappeared. Copper hissed something, and magic flowed out. "Three cameras, two face fence," he whispered.
Lukaz gestured understanding and drew a little power from his focus.
He sent it out and caught two other cameras, glitched one.
They couldn't blind them for long, lest alarms sound.
The woodlot hid them from the others. "Obscuret occuli.
" He sent the spell ahead and clenched his teeth against an oath.
Five cameras on the fence ahead. "Problem ahead," he signed.
Copper gestured understanding and they continued through the small, tangled woodlot.
"Szent Mihael!" erupted from ahead of them.
Copper surged into a run and Lukaz matched his pace.
They leaped a half-fallen fence and almost landed on one of the creatures.
"Copru' porci," pig crap, Lukaz gasped, throwing himself to the side mid-jump.
Oof. He landed hard, lost his footing on the wet grass, and rolled, then flowed to his feet. "Hab's." I have it.
The blue lump with legs hissed and bounced toward him.
A shield swirled around it, making it hard to see.
He started to draw his revolver, then caught himself.
Not with Hunters behind the thing, and so many cameras.
A pop of Copper's magic pinged off the thing's shield, but a stick on the ground passed through.
Lukaz slid the long blade out of its sheath and closed with the beast. As Copper guarded his back, he sliced down through the thing's shield and lopped off an arm-like appendage.
Green-black blood flowed, hissing onto the grass.
He swirled the down cut into a sideways slice into the thing's side, below the spurting wound. The blade bit.
"Haoooooorr!" the thing screamed, a round, flowing sound. Another slice, then stab, and the thing fell over, shuddered, and collapsed in on itself like a deflated balloon.
"In the name of the One who purifies the waters and souls, be cleansed if the Lord wills," Copper commanded, sprinkling blessed basil over the remains before Lukaz could take the blood.
Lukaz looked away, shutting down his magic sight.
The shape hissed, then blue-green fire washed over it.
Only a bit of flattened grass remained, and a small, solid blob resembling melted metal or plastic.
"Move," Copper signed, pointing toward where the other Hunters had one of the three things cornered.
The two magic workers hurried that way. A third shape lay on the dirt beside a farm drive, dead.
Lukaz stopped and "tapped" it with magic to get a sense of the thing. "Quaessri?" What is it, Copper asked.
"Transformation, unintended. Sorcery." The world spun, and Copper grabbed his arm, supporting him. "I know, draw from my focus," he grumbled as things steadied.
"You've had that lecture too?"
Behind them, blue-green light flared, and they heard yelps and a hiss of surprise. "Donnerwetter!" Rasi exclaimed, but quietly. He stood from a crouch and sheathed his Hunting blade as his partner sniffed the thing, then backed away. "What think you?"
"Salrou says is unintended transformation by a sorcerer. Concur." Copper squatted down beside the remains. "Looks like ... one of those new blue plastic things some chemicals come in?" He drew his utility knife and flipped it over. "Huh. Even has a label."
Lukaz read it over his shoulder and bit his tongue to stop the words he wanted. That ... might explain the stream problem, at least in part. The Hunt had crossed properties almost onto the rental farm.
"We need to get gone," Cahway growled. "This field is posted, and the sheep over there are getting nervous."
"Why? We're not Ottomans or Scotsmen," his partner drawled. The Familiar stared up at the stars as the other Hunters rolled their eyes or groaned at the ancient joke. Ja, but if Rasi wasn't being a wise ass, they had end-of-the-world kinds of trouble awaiting them.
Lukaz returned to the second thing. He took a basil pouch out of his pocket and opened the top.
"In the name of the Great God and His Son, the mighty healer of all ills, be cleansed if the Great God wills.
" He closed his eyes against the bright flare.
When he looked again, only a bit of plastic and paper remained, less than from the first creature.
He picked it up with two fingers and followed the others.
On the way he caught sight of Copper messing with one of the cameras on the fence.
The sorcerer snorted as he slid something back into the box and closed the base.
"Cheap but fancy looking, and they didn't lock and re-code them the way the security update requires," he said, teeth bared in a cold smile as he caught up with the others.
"Too bad water got into three of them and shorted the memory cards. " Matias gave him a thumbs up.
Once back at the cars, they lowered tailgates and opened trunks.
"Here. My sister-by-marriage has been baking again," Florian said, offering Hiram a paper bag.
The big mechanic took a bun and cookie, then passed the sack to Matias.
The dark-haired deputy pulled out a cookie, sniffed it, and took another before handing the bag to Petru.
Florian waved a bar cookie. "She found a cookbook on the take-one table at the library and it followed her home. "
Lukaz popped the top off the repurposed can of Christmas mints and passed it the other way. It now held beef sticks, jerky, and dried sausage sticks. "Commercial cure, not ours," he warned them. The other Hunters helped themselves anyway.
"Is the heritage breed market still good?" Matias inquired after he had several chugs of diet soda and the second cookie.
"Anno, sir. We've sold three-fourths of the piglets from the Large Blacks already, half to conservation breeders, half to pork raisers.
The other breeds' litters are half sold, mostly for weanling or three-month pickup.
Three butchers and a restaurant have put deposits on yearlings.
" His father wasn't comfortable with asking the full mature price for very young pigs, in case something happened to them.
The deposit system worked better for everyone.
Matias' eyes got bigger and bigger with each word, and his lips pursed in a silent whistle. "Wow. Do you think the market is saturated, or will be soon?"
Lukaz drank more water and wagged one hand.
"Maybe locally, sir, but maybe not? Several of the larger specialty butchers speak of starting mail-order heritage-cured pork sales, if they can sort out the permits and shipping.
There's a lot of the country that's not good for pasture pigs, or that doesn't permit them, like that state that banned all wild-looking pigs. "
Florian stared, then blinked. "Wild-looking pigs banned? That might be a new low for stupid regulations." Matias-the-younger gave him a look that suggested Florian needed to get out more often, or so Lukaz guessed.