Stuck In Magic

by Christopher Nuttall

  The thought tormented me as I made my way up and down the slums, alone in a crowded sea of humanity. My uniform separated me from the poor and downtrodden, my conduct separated me from the other guardsmen and my knowledge and experience separated me from the rest of the city. I’d read dozens of books where the time traveller had made himself a fortune, but … those books mocked me, every time I recalled how easy it had been for men who’d had a friendly author. I had nothing, beyond a handful of coins. There was no way I could convince someone to let me innovate, not when it would take years for them to see any real results. All of the low-hanging fruit had already been plucked.

  There might be another cross-world traveller out there, I thought. I was actually fairly sure of it. Convergent evolution might have led to a written language resembling English, but not an exact duplicate. The letters had appeared, as far as the locals were concerned, out of nowhere. But where is he?

  I sighed as I made my way back to the guardhouse. There were hundreds of stories of great magicians and aristocratic warlords and great innovators, stories that had grown so much in the telling that it was impossible to sort the kernel of truth from the bodyguard of complete nonsense. I had the feeling I

  could spend the rest of my life trying and yet draw a complete blank. It was funny how I’d never realised just how big the world was until I’d found myself in a place without cars and trains, let alone jumbo jets. The flight from America to Iraq had been somewhere around twelve hours. Now, getting from Damansara to half-mythical lands like Zangaria or Alluvia would take months … if I was lucky. There was no way I could afford a trip through the portals. They cost far too much for commoners like me.

  “Welcome back.” Captain Alder didn’t sound pleased. He hadn’t, ever since he’d sent me to the slums. “Report to the briefing room.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, deciding it would be better not to point out that I’d been on patrol for the last three hours. Alone. The guardsmen were never meant to patrol alone. I had a feeling it was intended as more than just a punishment.

  A lone guard could easily be picked off by criminals or rebels, his body left to rot in the streets. “I’m on my way.”

  I walked down the corridor, pausing long enough to pick up a tankard of small beer – it had very little alcohol content, I’d been assured – before I stepped into the briefing room. It was crammed with guards, people I recognised mingling with people I’d never met. I felt eyes following me as I leaned against the wall, sipping my beer. It tasted ghastly, but there was nothing else to drink. The City Guard didn’t seem to have coffee and donuts on tap. We were lucky to get the beer.

  The guards spoke in low voices, sharing notes and rumours as they tried to guess what was going on. I kept my eyes on my beer, while listening as best as I could, but no one seemed to know the truth. Mutterings about warlord activity on the edge of the city’s nominal territory were mingled with rumours about parades and additional duties, perhaps even an expanded deployment into the slums. I suspected it would just make them worse. The slum dwellers hated and feared the guards, seeing them as just another bunch of exploitive bastards. I was the cream of the cream, just for not taking whatever I wanted and harassing their women. It made me feel like I’d been awarded a prize for common decency.

  Captain Alder entered, followed by Storm. The sorcerer’s eyes swept over the room, lingering briefly – very briefly – on me. I felt a rustle of unease passing through the massed guardsmen, as if they were confronting a wild – and rabid – animal. I’d heard so many stories about magicians, and what they could do, that I honestly wasn’t sure of the truth. We were strongly encouraged to have as little to do with the magical community as possible. I suspected it was probably good advice.

  The captain spoke in short, choppy sentences. “Our agents have uncovered a gang of runaway-smugglers and their charges. Hidden in a warehouse. We are ordered to arrest them, then hold them. Their masters will take them off our hands.”

  I frowned. There was something in the captain’s voice that bothered me, a sense that … I wondered, suddenly, if he believed what he was saying. Or … I’d met a bunch of officers who thought keeping information from the troops made them clever, or irreplaceable, but I’d never thought Captain Alder fell into that category. He simply didn’t have much to conceal. And yet … something was definitely a little out of kilter …

  A guard I didn’t know held up a hand, then spoke in an oily voice. “Is there a reward, sir?”

  “Yes, if we recapture branded serfs,” Captain Alder said. “Remember, we have to take them alive. There’s no reward for bodies.”

  I felt my heart sink. Damansara was a magnet for runaway peasants and serfs, who fled the warlord estates in hopes of finding a better life in the city. In theory, they were allowed to claim their freedom if they stayed out of sight for a year and a day; in practice, the warlords demanded their return even if they

  were old and grey. They formed an underclass that lingered under the slums, doing odd jobs and brute labour for employers who didn’t give much of a damn about the law and exploited them. A handful made it, I’d been told. The remainder never managed to leave the slums.

  And yet, the guard tries to ignore them as much as possible, I thought. What’s changed?

  Captain Alder snapped orders, dividing us into squads. I joined my squad, keeping my expression carefully blank. Perhaps the time had come to slip away into the city … I scowled as I remembered my little bag of cash was back in the guardhouse safe. I could rely on the administrators to look after it – as corrupt as they were, they knew better than to steal from the guardsmen – but I couldn’t get my hands on it in a hurry. There was no way I could convince them to give it to me and make my escape before the captain realised I was missing.

  He already had his eye on me.

  The squads formed up, collected their weapons and marched onto the streets. I hoped someone was watching the guardhouse, ready to send a runner to alert the runaways that we were on the way. It wouldn’t be that hard for the people-smugglers … my thoughts ran in circles as something struck me. The runaways might not have a pot to piss in, but the smugglers were quite wealthy. They could easily afford to bribe the guardsmen to look the other way. And yet, we were heading out to bust their chops. It made me wonder, as my eyes sought Captain Alder, just what had changed. And why?

  It was a warm evening, as always, but I felt cold as we marched into the poorer reaches of the city. The crowds scattered in front of us; men and women, rich and poor, running for their lives as though the hounds of hell itself were after them. I felt cold, remembering the days when Iraqis and Afghanis had done the same, not so much scared of us as what the insurgents would do to them, and their families, if they thought the locals were being a little too friendly with us. Here, we were part of the city and yet … I fixed my eyes on the squad leader’s back, trying to keep my racing thoughts under control. The warehouses at the edge of the poorer quadrant were abandoned, were supposed to be empty. I hoped the runaways would have had the sense to station lookouts, to run for their lives if – when – they saw us coming. There were just too many of us to fight.

  The warehouse loomed up in front of us, a surprisingly large and blocky building. I guessed magic had been involved in its construction, although there was no way to be sure. The City Fathers had hoped Damansara would become a popular stop along the trade routes, a hope that might not have been misplaced if the warlords hadn’t taxed the lifeblood out of convoys heading to and from the city. It was hard to be sure how many of the horror stories about the warlords were actually true – I doubted they kidnapped and ate children, let alone sacrificed them to the dark gods for power – but it was clear they were nasty bastards, too stupid to see when they were on to a good thing. From what I’d heard, they were so determined to cling to their power that they wouldn’t let anyone else have a shot at it. No wonder the runaways wanted to flee.

  “Surround the building,” Captain Alder orde
red, curtly. He carried a club in one hand and a shield in the other. “Squad Five will go in through the rear door and flush the runaways towards us.”

  I groaned, feeling disturbingly unarmed as the squad took up position. It had been a long time since I’d done any sort of crowd control duties and that had been with my friends and comrades at my back, men I’d trusted with my life.

  Here … I was all too aware there were guardsmen would put a knife in my back, if they thought it would earn them a pat on theirs from the rapist’s family. My skin itched as I saw the fifth squad making its way around the building. There weren’t many ways in or out. Captain Alder might be a corrupt bastard, but he wasn’t wrong. If the runaways were in the building, they had no choice. They had to charge us when the shit hit the fan.

  “Remember the reward,” the squad leader muttered. He was the oily bastard who’d asked the captain earlier. “Don’t let them get away if you want a share.”

  I looked up, sharply, as a crashing noise rent the air. The fifth squad were making their entry, breaking down the warehouse door and crashing inside. I braced myself, unsure what was going to happen. Hard entry was always difficult and dangerous, even with modern weapons. If you had to take the people inside alive, there were limits to what you could do to shape the battlefield. Here, they didn’t even have grenades. I had an idea for using gunpowder, but …

  The door exploded outwards. A mass of people – almost all men – boiled towards us, waving sticks, knives and a bunch of makeshift weapons. I read desperation in their faces as they charged us, determined not to let us take them into custody. I didn’t really blame them, even as I dropped into a combat stance.

  The runaways didn’t have anything to look forward to, when they were returned to their former masters. At best, they’d be hobbled and put back to work. At worst …

  A man crashed into me, swinging his stick in an arc that would intersect my head. I raised my club to block it, then kicked him in the chest. He grunted, but didn’t go down. I cursed under my breath as he staggered – he was a farmer, tougher than the average guardsman – and smacked him in the side of the head.

  He fell to the ground, blood staining his hair and pooling on the cobblestones.

  I felt a flicker of guilt, even though I knew he’d meant to kill me. He hadn’t been given a choice.

  The guardsmen wobbled under the sheer fury of the attack. I saw a handful of guards knocked down themselves, men who would have been killed if the attackers had taken the time to do it properly. They didn’t want to kill the guardsmen, they just wanted to escape before it was too late. Another man came at me, fists raised. I banged my club into his clenched hands, then again into his stomach. He folded and crashed down. I stepped over him, fighting beside two more guardsmen as the stream of runaways seemed to grow stronger and stronger.

  We were being pushed back by sheer weight of numbers. I had a vague impression of a man with a scared face, stabbing a knife towards me; I saw a woman tearing open her shirt, the sight distracting a guardsman long enough for her to stick a blade in him. I turned, just in time to see her break through the line and run.

  I hoped she made it. Her victim would be lucky to survive long enough to make it back to the guardhouse.

  Not that the local doctors can do much for him, I thought. Magical healers could work wonders, literally, but they cost too much for the average citizen.

  The doctors – they called them chirurgeons – were probably better described as butchers. It would probably be safer to keep the poor bastard well away from them.

  The fighting ended, almost as suddenly as it had begun. I looked around, spotting a handful of guards lying on the ground. The follow-up units were advancing, scooping up the prisoners and shackling them. Captain Alder seemed oddly amused as he snapped orders, directing me and the other uninjured guards to help sort out the prisoners. I eyed him darkly, feeling my temper fray. The captain looked pleased, even though at least five guards were dead or so seriously wounded they would probably not survive the night. I had no idea why he was so pleased.

  I kept my thoughts to myself as we searched the warehouse, flushing out a handful of runaways who’d tried to conceal themselves rather than join the flight. It was a crafty tactic, I conceded, and it might have worked if things had been different. I couldn’t fault the runaways for assuming the guardsmen would do as little as possible. God knew I hadn’t been very enthusiastic about the job. I hadn’t wanted to arrest people for the crime of running away from their masters …

  It hit me as we started to escort the prisoners back to the guardhouse. It had been a set-up. The runaways had been deliberately abandoned by the smugglers, left for the guardsmen … they’d been left in a place that could be made inescapable, with a little effort. They might as well have been tied up and left for the taking! Captain Alder, I realised suddenly, had been working with the smugglers all along. He’d arrested the runaways, ensuring he’d collect the reward for sending them back to their masters … I felt sick. I hadn’t thought much of the captain, particularly after he’d let a rapist go, but … this was bad. It was one thing to do as little as possible, in hopes of a quiet life.

  It was quite another to actively do evil. And sending slaves back to their masters was evil!

  And yet, what could I do about it?

  Chapter Thirteen

  My gut churned all the way back to the guardhouse.

  I was complicit. There was no getting around it. I’d played a major role in trapping, catching and shackling the runaways we were marching to their doom.

  The citizens on the streets booed and jeered, shouting mockery and insults at the runaways … as if they were any better than the prisoners. I cursed myself, again and again, for joining the guard. I could have done something else, if I’d wanted to earn money. It wouldn’t have been that hard to sign on as a bodyguard or … or something, something other than a guard. I felt dirty, as if I’d done something irredeemably wrong. And – in truth – I had.

  The guards laughed and joked, chatting about how they planned to spend their share of the reward. I hated them, hated them more than I could say. This wasn’t policing. This was slavery. The prisoners had fled oppressive masters and come to the city in hopes of a better life and now they were going to be sent back, because the city didn’t care enough to even try to protect them. And I was complicit. There was no way I could tell myself that I had only been following orders, no way I could tell myself that I’d at least tried to uphold my standards of justice. I hadn’t been the one who’d let the rapist go. I couldn’t blame myself for that. But this?

  I could have hit the deck and claimed I was knocked down, I thought. It would have been easy to let someone hit me. I knew how to take a punch. It would have been a gamble – the runaway might have stabbed me while I was defenceless, or merely kicked me while I was down – but I owed it to myself to take some risks. And instead I did nothing.

  “You want to join us for drinks tonight?” Fallows slapped my back, hard enough to sting. “You can even pick a girl or a boy and take them upstairs …”

  I didn’t want to do anything of the sort – I really didn’t want to spend any time with them – but I knew I should. I’d had an idea. I could free the runaways myself. I could tell them to flee into the warrens before they were sent back to their former masters. And I’d need an alibi. I’d need people who could bear witness I’d been in a bar, surrounded by my fellow guardsmen, rather than alone in the barracks.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be glad too.”

  Fallows winked at me as we reached the guardhouse, spoke briefly to the officer on duty and headed out for the night. A dozen other guards joined us, chattering loudly as we made our way down the streets and into the nearest bar.

  I tried to conceal my disgust. It was crammed with guardsmen, spending their ill-gotten gains. There was singing and dancing and girls in skimpy outfits, eying the half-drunken men to see who’d give them the most for doing the least.
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  I felt my stomach churn as a half-naked man stumbled past me and out onto the streets, where he collapsed in a heap. Fallows laughed, then led the way to the bar. I said nothing as he ordered several pints. The drunker he was, the

  better.

  “It’s been a good day,” Fallows said. “The reward money will keep us going for years.”

  I kept my face impassive as I pretended to drink, spilling a little of the booze down my shirt to suggest I was already halfway to being drunk. Fallows didn’t notice. He was waving at the girls for more alcohol, then flirting with them in a manner that suggested he was already drunk as a skunk. I slipped him my tankard, swapping it for his empty one. He was so drunk he didn’t notice.

  Whatever they put in the beer, I didn’t want any of it in me.

  “I’ll find a girl,” I said, with a shameless wink. “See you back at the barracks.”

  “Cheap rooms upstairs,” Fallows said. “I …”

  His head lowered, then hit the wooden table with an audible thump. I stood – he wouldn’t be in any danger, not surrounded by his fellows – and weaved my way through the crowd, heading for the rear door. I’d marked it the first time I’d visited. It was right next to the stairs leading up to the brothel. Anyone who saw me would assume – I hoped – that I was going upstairs, rather than sneaking out into the darkened streets. I pulled my hood up as I stepped outside, allowing the darkness to envelope me. I was hardly the only person who fitted my description in the city, but there was no point in taking chances. If someone saw me and gave a proper description, it was just possible my superiors would start asking questions. They might been deeply corrupt, with a willingness to do anything for gold, but they weren’t idiots.