attention, but please, give us a chance. We’ll work hard, and keep our mouths
shut, and do whatever else you might require of us.”
Her gaze flicked to Avilla and then Cerise as she said the last part, and I
wondered how much she’d put together. The witches certainly weren’t
advertising their relationship, but that kind of thing can be surprisingly hard to
hide. Had she guessed?
I tried to keep my face impassive as I thought that one through. I wasn’t
actually going to make the pair of them run some gauntlet of obscure
perversions to earn their keep, of course. But the fact that Beri was willing to
go that far actually said good things about her. She was perceptive enough to
realize just how bad her situation was, smart enough to recognize potential
salvation, and practical enough to do whatever it took to convince a powerful
stranger to save her. A girl like that could be handy to have around, as long as
she was on our side.
By then they were both helping Avilla with the cleaning, which only
added to my distraction. A guy could get used to that kind of thing.
“I notice Tina hasn’t said anything,” I commented. “Why is that?”
“She’s just shy,” Beri began, but Tina put a hand on her arm.
“I’m not all smart and stuff like Beri, milord,” Tina said hesitantly. “I
asked her to talk for me. We’ve been friends forever, y’see. But I listen good,
and I can work really hard. Um, an my boobs are still growing, an the sheriff
always said my blow jobs were the best in the village?”
I sighed, and patted her on the head. “I can make a girl’s boobs grow as
big as I want, Tina. I‘m good with that kind of thing. Ah, is it common for local
sheriffs to expect that kind of service form village girls around here?”
“Of course,” Beri replied matter-of-factly. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Lovely. Alright, girls, I’ll go along with Avilla’s audition idea. Do a
good job between here and Lanrest, and I’ll consider keeping you on
permanently.
67
“Thank you, milord!” They both curtsied enthusiastically.
I chuckled. “You’re welcome, girls. But I’m not actually a lord, so you’re
going to have to stop calling me that. Just ‘sir’ will do.”
Really, I was tempted to tell them to call me by name in private. But just
because Americans have a pathological aversion to class distinctions doesn’t
mean the rest of the universe agrees, and I was pretty sure violating the local
customs that much would just cause trouble. They were probably going to be
confused enough when I didn’t beat them or force them to have sex with me.
“Done!” Avilla announced happily.
I looked down to discover she was kneeling at my feet, having just
finished washing the blood off of them. The top two buttons of her dress had
come undone at some point, and the position afforded me a breathtaking view
of her cleavage. I looked away quickly.
“Great. Where’s that other change of clothes, then?”
Cerise chuckled, and pulled a bundle of cloth out of one of the bags.
“Here you go. Still worried about an attack?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I suppose I could fight naked if I had to, but it would be
rather embarrassing.”
Well, it was a better excuse that ‘I’m trying really hard not to get an
erection while your girlfriend is sitting at eye level with my dick’. That would
really be embarrassing. Not to mention hazardous, if Cerise decided to get
jealous and backstabby with those knives of hers.
I looked up from pulling a fresh pair of pants on to find Avilla pouting at
me.
“What?”
But she just sighed, and turned to the pot of water. “Nothing, master. I’d
better get these clean before the water cools.”
“You’re the expert. Alright, time to get some work done. As often as you
girls end up in nothing else I’d better put warmth enchantments on your cloaks
first.”
Neither had complained much about the cold, but their eyes lit up at that.
68
I spent the rest of the afternoon on little projects like that, while the storm
raged on outside. After the girls were taken care of I made a few extra warmth
cloaks to share among the wounded, and did another round of healing. Then I
sat down to do some more experimenting.
It was easy enough to levitate a little disk of stone above my hand, but
enchanting it to fly around was surprisingly tricky. After some experimentation
I realized that the control problems were basically the same as trying to make
an aircraft fly solely on vectored thrust, which is the kind of complicated
problem I could easily spend days or even weeks trying to solve. Since I was
looking for a faster way to transport the refugees that didn’t seem very
practical, although I resolved to come back the problem in the future. Being
able to fly would be amazingly useful.
I played around with other ideas for a bit, looking for one that might
work. Stone golems pulling stone wagons? Amulets enchanted to ‘heal’ fatigue
continuously? Levitation spells on the baggage? Most approaches turned out to
be impractical on examination, either because they’d require too much
enchantment time or because they needed an effect my sorcery didn’t want to
provide.
Eventually I decided to let that problem stew for a bit, and turned my
thoughts to weapons and armor. So far I’d been pushed way too hard in all of
our fights, and I could easily have lost one. Any real power gamer will tell you
that if the outcome of a fight is in doubt when it starts you’ve already screwed
up, so I was determined to find a better way to deal with giant monsters.
Force fields had proved invaluable so far, but keeping one running often
took more concentration or mana than I could spare. Force blades were
devastating at close range, but their lack of mass made them a lot less useful at
a distance. I needed substantial improvements on both, and a bigger mana
supply, and a way to make myself more durable, and some defenses against
being surprised, and...
I reigned myself in before the list could get too long. One problem at a
time, Daniel.
Some experimenting with the power tap enchantment I’d come up with
revealed that the rate it generated mana was determined by the size of the
object it was tied to. So my tiny little amulet might last for centuries, but its
energy output was relatively modest. If I wanted a real power source I’d need
69
something bigger.
Fortunately that was an easy problem to fix. I could conjure stone easily,
and with a constant power source metals were possible as well. So my new
amulet was a thick bronze disk about three inches in diameter, suspended from
a braided rope of copper threads. I took the time to work out a proper on/off
switch for this one, as well as a remote cutoff just in case an enemy got hold of
it one day. It weighed a couple of pounds, enough to be a bit uncomfortable,
but I’d live. The extra weight meant it delivered more than ten times the energy
of the original version, and there were all kinds of things I could do with that.
For starters, I could enchant it to surround the wearer with a force shield
on command so I wouldn’t have to do that myself. I carefully constructed a
substantial energy reservoir to hold the shield up against any sudden flurry of