FF2dazau1: that's heavy magic you know. Gonna cost.
RivaK: Wrong. Your payment is I don't have Dennis turn you into a sand-lizard, and maybe in five or six years I forgive you.
FF2dazau1: Works for me.
Wizards are arrogant, tough, mean-minded bastards, but they're no match for an infuriated mother. Especially one with a paid-up membership in the Bronze Bra Guild and a husband who just happens to be a mathemagical genius.
"Sorry to leave you, guys," I said as I stood up, "but there's an emergency over at my kid's school. I gotta run."
I had instructed Furo Fykrou to activate the transfer from the women's room around the corner from the conference chamber. Didn't want to make these people nervous by having them see me vanish into thin air.
Stephanie was just leaving the women's room as I got there. She smiled weakly and said something about coffee and long meetings; I nodded and pushed through the door without really listening. Oh, hell, there was some girl playing with her eye makeup in front of the mirror. And no way to tell FF to delay the…
I think she screamed as I was leaving, but I'm not sure. I hope they don't insist on her taking a drug test or anything.
I'd asked for just enough time at the house to make a quick change from suit and pantyhose into something I could really work in. With my arms and legs free and mail protecting vital parts, with my sword Sasulau hanging in her scabbard by my side, I found I could already think better. While I was changing, some other things had occurred to me that might come in handy. I grabbed my cell phone, a roll of aluminum foil, the last two clean white sheets in the laundry hamper, and a can of shoe polish. No time for more-the air was quivering around me already in preparation for the second transfer. I bundled everything into a pillowcase just before my stomach turned inside out and upside down.
I hate time-transfers.
There was no time to throw up as the dingy brown halls of Colton Middle School came into focus around me, though. I tossed the pillowcase full of gear behind me with my left hand while my right drew Sasulau. She came out singing blood and death; I came up crouching, weight balanced, ready to spin, turn, thrust wherever was necessary-
– and found my path to the enemy blocked by kids and teachers. Encirclement strategy, my left boob! I couldn't even get at the tall, mean-looking, half-naked men who were jabbering in the doorway to a classroom. There were teachers diving for cover, wannabe gangsta students trying to act tough, and some idiot drowning out all our words with panicky calls for help on the loudspeaker.
"Move it," I suggested to the kid in front of me, the one who was turning pale green under his dreads and threads while his buddies urged him on.
He didn't seem to hear me, so I repeated the suggestion with a gentle hint from Sasulau. Didn't even tear his jeans, but he gasped, did a leap like a hooked fish, and subsided gently onto the floor. I stepped over him and encouraged a couple of other people to move aside. At least these kids didn't faint-good, the floor wouldn't be too littered when I got to where I really needed to move.
The warriors were bunched up in the doorway. Bad planning; only one of them was free to move against me. That one gave me a nasty grin and lowered a javelin about three times the length of Sasulau, waggling the pointed head suggestively between my stomach and groin.
While he was enjoying himself and waiting for me to shriek and faint, I went under the javelin and planted Sasulau in his thigh. She slid in nice and clean between the overlapping metal scales of his half-armor, protested with a high whine when I drew her out before she could go all the way through. I didn't want to kill the guy, just get his attention.
I had to break two of their javelins, flip a bowman over my shoulder and slightly wound a couple of swordsmen before they figured out that they were no longer dealing with Paper-Pushovers, but it was no big deal; the idiots kept trying to defend the doorway one at a time. No training in palace fighting, clearly.
"Throw down your weapons and get over in that corner!" I snapped as soon as they began looking appropriately worried. I wasn't sure the Sacred Carvings had given them modern-day language comprehension, but my gestures made it clear enough.
Most of the Social Studies class had gone under their desks, fortunately, so they weren't in the way. I didn't see Gene Kruzak anywhere, but Salla popped out from cover behind the computer table as soon as she heard my voice.
"Okay, what are they, and how can I talk to them?" I demanded. I hoped I would get some points with her for not rushing across the room and hugging her like a little kid. I wanted to. I wanted to drag her out of there and to hell with the rest of the school. But she'd stirred up some adult-sized trouble here; she had better help me clean it up like an adult. Later I'd hold on to her for, oh, seven or eight hours, or days, or whatever it took to get my heart rate down to normal.
"I-I think they're Nubian mercenaries," Salla stammered. "Or maybe Libyan. Later than Sixth Dynasty, because the costumes and weapons indicate-"
She was starting to get into Lecture Mom mode already; I cut her off with a chopping motion of Sasulau. "Never mind the ancient history; what do they speak? I need to make a deal with these guys."
Fortunately, it turned out that the Sacred Carvings magic worked just like modern mathemagical transfer equantations, implanting an ability to use and understand the dominant language of the culture you were landed in. Less fortunately, it seemed that the magic had picked up the dominant language as being that of Colton Middle Schooclass="underline" teen-speak. I had to get Salla and the kid with dreadlocks to translate for me. Fortunately the deal I had to offer wasn't complicated: passage to a nice, big, rich planet with a climate very much like their home, with plenty of work for good mercenaries.
"Not," I added, "that you people seem all that skilled to me, but I expect you'll shape up pretty fast." Those that lived. These guys had probably been tough once upon a time, but it appeared-luckily for me-that Salla had called up some kind of elite palace guard detail that hadn't had to do any real fighting for some years. We don't waste a lot of time on ceremonial processions or palace guard detail on Dazau. They'd probably enjoy the chance to get some real work for a change, once they adjusted.
All I had to do then was activate Call Trans-Forwarding on my cell phone and alert Furo Fykrou to pick up his new employees.
"But what am I going to do with a mercenary army?" he whined. "I'm a wizard of peace, not a duke."
"Rent them out to Zolkir," I suggested. "Take a percentage of the rental and give them the rest as salary."
"Umm." He sounded happier already. "Four parts for me, one for them. Or do you think that's too generous? Maybe five for me…"
While he was happy, I persuaded him to activate the transfer, and just in time too; there were sirens wailing in the distance.
I heaved a sigh of relief as the dark, scarred men quivered, became columns of darkness, disappeared. I didn't have a clue how to reverse Sacred Carvings magic so as to send them home again, and neither did anybody on Dazau-Sacred Carvings had been a lost art for so long – but I was pretty sure they'd be happy serving Duke Zolkir. And Furo Fykrou probably wouldn't cheat them any worse than their previous employers had.