Stuck In Magic

by Christopher Nuttall

  Which isn’t a bad thing, I told myself. I’ll just have to build him up later.

  The lunch bell rang. I marched the recruits across the field and into the makeshift chow hall. Rupert hadn’t let me down. The food was very basic –

  rice, meat, stringy vegetables – but there was a lot of it. The recruits had never eaten so well in their lives. I kept up the discipline, preventing a mad rush to the tables and instead making sure everyone had something to eat before allowing them to start. It was something I knew would breed resentment – it certainly had, back home – but it was also something they needed. I ate myself, silently drawing out more training programs. They were going to have to learn to work together – and to trust me – before I put muskets in their hands.

  And we’re going to have to get them lined up first, I reminded myself. Rupert was purchasing a small arsenal, but it wasn’t going to be easy to streamline the design. We might have to pick one design and hire a bunch of craftsmen to churn out hundreds of duplicates. If we all use different weapons and ammunition, it will lead to one hell of a mess.

  I whistled, twenty minutes later. “Back on the field,” I ordered, quietly ignoring the grumbling. “Give me another run around the walls.”

  The day wore on. I showed them how to do press-ups, sit-ups and a dozen other simple exercises I’d been taught in basic. They seemed astonished I handed out press-ups and suchlike as punishments, rather than using my fists, but went with the flow. I smiled behind my hand. Hitting recruits was a serious offence back home … and besides, making them do extra exercises instead helped prepare for war. We marched up and down, drilled with broom handles in place of pikes and muskets, then moved into the chow hall for dinner. They looked tired. I’d kept them very busy. They would go into the barracks, lie down and go straight to sleep.

  And tomorrow we’ll do it all again, I thought.

  “Back to the barracks,” I ordered, once they’d chewed their way through dinner.

  “Get a shower, get undressed, get into bed.”

  I watched them run back into the barracks – they were too tired for anything more than bed – and then waved to Horst and Fallows. The two guardsmen scowled at me as I led them away from the barracks, into the room I’d designated my office. It wasn’t much – I’d have to bed down in the barracks myself, at least until I had a handful of trainees I could trust to stand night watch – but it would do.

  Horst glared. “What were you thinking?”

  “That isn’t your concern right now,” I snapped. I had no intention of getting into an argument. It would just waste time. “What happened to you two?”

  “The captain told us we were being exiled to the garrison,” Fallows said, curtly. “For failing to train you, apparently.”

  I felt a flicker of sympathy. Captain Alder had clearly taken his anger out on the two poor guardsmen. He might not have been able to sell them into slavery, but he’d certainly done the next best thing. Or so he thought. I knew them both. They had experience that could be helpful, if they were prepared to work with me. For me. They wouldn’t like it – they’d been my superiors, only a few short days ago – but it was the best offer they were going to get.

  “You have two choices,” I said. “I’m starting something great here. You can join me, and work with me openly, or you can serve out your enlistment in the ranks and go back to the city when you’re done.”

  The bitterness in Horst’s voice was almost palatable. “Go back to what?”

  “Good question,” I agreed. Horst couldn’t go back to the City Guard. There wouldn’t be many other options either. His best bet might be joining a mercenary band, which would require him to do more than the bare minimum. “Like I said, I’m starting something great here. Do you want to get in on the ground floor? Or do you want to just stay in the ranks until your enlistment expires?”

  “And do you think these … these people can actually fight?” Horst snorted.

  “You knocked them down pretty easily.”

  I swallowed the sharp retort that came to mind – I could knock him down pretty easily too – and leaned forward. “There are no bad men, merely bad leaders,” I said. I’d never been sure it was entirely true – I’d met a few enlisted men who really should have been discharged for cause – but it was close enough. “The raw material is there. I can train them to proper standards before we actually have to go to war.”

  “You hope,” Fallows corrected.

  “I hope,” I agreed. I shrugged. “Look, I owe you two. Here is your chance to be something better, to be something great. Do as I tell you – help me – and

  you’ll go far. Or, like I said, serve out your enlistment and vanish back into the city.”

  “Fine.” Horst conceded with ill grace. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Learn your lessons,” I said. “You taught me. Let me teach you. I’ll be watching for signs of leadership potential. If you do well, if you learn your lessons, I’ll let you teach the next set of recruits. And if you do well at that, you might even go further.”

  Fallows frowned. “Do you think you’ll be allowed to promote us to officer rank?”

  It was a good question, I conceded. I – or, more accurately, Rupert – had a great deal of authority, but there were limits. Officers were selected by the city, which meant they were either aristocrats like Rupert or merchant sons who bought commissions. I doubted either of us would be allowed to select our own officers, but it didn’t matter. The company – the army – was going to be run by its NCOs.

  “No aristo is going to let us become officers,” Horst agreed. “They’ll look down at us and laugh.”

  “You might be surprised,” I said, vaguely. I didn’t really had time to explain non-commissioned officers to them. It was going to be hard enough hammering proper skills into their heads without provoking resentment – or worse. They’d picked up too many bad habits in the City Guard. “Give me time.”

  I led them back to the barracks and pointed them to their bunks, then headed for mine. It had been a tiring day, all the more so because I hadn’t realised how hard it was going to be until I’d started. There were just too many things that had to be done, all by me. I would have killed for a couple of friends with actual experience. I’d disliked my first set of instructors and yet … I would have been glad to see them now. They would have been very helpful.

  And while you’re wishing, I thought, why don’t you wish for the Lost Regiment?

  The thought made me smile, even though I knew the Lost Regiment would have looked suspiciously at me. They’d certainly have no idea what to make of Damansara. And yet, they’d probably do a far better job. A thousand men, with a far better understanding of how to produce their tech … of course they could do better. The gap they had to close wasn’t so wide. They could have taken the city, hammered out a 1860s tech base and set off to conquer the world. And they could have done it too.

  I smiled, then started to compose a list of things I needed to do tomorrow.

  More drills, more exercises, more practice … I was going to need to train Horst and Fallows as quickly as possible, just to give me time to work with Rupert.

  He needed to learn how to handle his men before he tried to lead them into battle and got them all killed. It would take time, time I wasn’t sure I had, to prepare him for the role. Really, I’d be happy to let him take the credit as long as he stayed out of the way.

  And as long as no one outside the army realises what he’s done, he’ll probably be quite happy too, I thought. That really won’t be a bad thing.

  On that note, I fell asleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  If you watch a movie about young men becoming soldiers, you will almost inevitably find yourself watching a training montage of clumsy oafs becoming skilled men. You’ll watch days and weeks compressed into a few minutes, with problems smoothed out almost before you notice they were there. I’d never liked

  such montages, because they are often
dangerously deceptive. The real world is rarely so obliging.

  And yet, three weeks slipped by almost without me noticing.

  We fell into a routine, of sorts. I put the recruits through their paces, time and time again, and expanded the training routine as they learnt to obey orders.

  I divided them into groups and made them compete, or work together against other groups. They got better over time, as I had expected, although I wound up expelling two men to the guardhouse for gross incompetence and outright malice.

  A couple of others tried to challenge me, when they found the training a little too rough: I knocked them both down, then spoke encouragingly to them. They weren’t doing too badly, given that I’d put the entire program together from memory and improvised to cover the gaps. I’d known recruits who’d done a lot worse.

  I smiled as I led them into the training hall. The muskets lining the walls were the latest in military technology, which wasn’t saying much by my standards. The pistol I wore at my belt – sooner or later, I’d have to show it to the gunsmiths – was a far more accurate weapon. They were crude, imprecise and – even after a few hours of practice – I hadn’t been able to load and fire the weapon more than twice a minute. We were going to be firing in rows, taking turns to fire, reload and fire again, just to maintain a steady rate of fire.

  And the smoke was going to be appalling.

  As long as we put out enough musket balls, I thought, it shouldn’t matter.

  I sighed, inwardly. I would have sold my soul for a dedicated gunsmith. I had a friend who’d spent his entire life quietly stockpiling the tools to make guns, so he could arm himself when – if – the government confiscated his giant arsenal of firearms. I wished he’d been with me. He would have been very helpful. I’d heard of terrorists in caves hammering out AK-47s. If I could have done that, we could have pumped out enough firepower to take the world.

  “This is a musket,” I said. I doubted they’d seen firearms, let alone handled them. The weapons had yet to take off. “Your musket is your best friend on the battlefield. You are going to take very good care of your musket and, in exchange, it will take very good care of you. You will learn to fire it, to clean it, to have it ready at all times … you will even take it to bed and sleep with it.”

  I ignored the sniggers. “And when it breaks, you will fix it,” I added. “I’ll be teaching you how to do that too.”

  The musket felt uncomfortably fragile as I held it up. I’d ordered bayonets for the men – they could become makeshift pikemen if the enemy got too close – but I’d left them off. They had to get used to carrying the muskets, before I let them march around with edged weapons. There would be just too many injuries.

  I’d tried to arrange a permanent healer, but it was simply too expensive. The chirurgeons – the closest thing the locals had to doctors – were little better than butchers. I knew more battlefield medicine than they – I’d nearly killed one for not observing proper sanitation – and I hadn’t done more than the basics. Calling myself a medic would be stolen valour, only worse.

  “You will get used to firing the muskets as quickly as possible,” I said. “We won’t worry too much about accuracy, at the moment. The idea is to put out as many bullets as possible and let them impale themselves on our guns.”

  There were more sniggers. I rolled my eyes, then talked them through loading, firing and cleaning the musket. They took the weapons as Horst and Fallows handed them out, then did their best to follow me. They were almost completely unfamiliar with even the concept of firearms. I had to rebuke one trooper for peering down the barrel and another for pointing his musket at one of his comrades. I drilled them mercilessly, hammering the laws of firearms safety

  into their heads and handing out punishment duties for those slow up on the uptake. I didn’t want to lose anyone to accidents, not when we might be going to war at any moment. Rupert had told me, in confidence, that the political situation was deteriorating. It added a certain urgency to our efforts.

  “Your muskets will be inspected every day,” I informed them, once I thought they had the hang of it. They hadn’t fired a single shot, not yet. “Anyone with a dirty musket will be required to spend his free hour cleaning it. Anyone with a broken musket will be paying for a new one.”

  I ignored the groans running through the room. I’d hired a proper accountant to collect the men’s wages, which I’d convinced Rupert to raise every time the men completed a training cycle, and keep the money safe under heavy guard. It was a more trustworthy system than the local banks – apparently, they did everything they could to convince people to put their money into the banks and then worked hard to convince their customers not to take the money out – although it was fraught with risks. I’d threatened the accountant with a slow and painful death if anything as so much as a single cent went missing. I silently blessed whoever had introduced numbers and double-entry bookkeeping to this world. It made keeping an eye on the accountant so much easier.

  We might have to set up a more trustworthy bank, I thought. The wealthier citizens kept most of their money at home, making it harder to convince them to invest. But that’ll have to wait for a while.

  I marched them out of the fort and onto the firing range. My old instructor would have been outraged if he’d seen it, but it would have to do. I’d stuck poorly-carved wooden shapes the far end of the range, intending to symbolise advancing infantry and charging horsemen. They weren’t that detailed, but they didn’t have to be. We were going to be blowing them to hell repeatedly.

  Besides, I didn’t want to remind anyone that we were training against cavalry.

  The warlords were probably watching us.

  “Watch carefully,” I said, after outlining the rules of range safety. I hefted my musket, demonstrated how to load the weapon, took aim and pulled the trigger.

  There was a loud BANG, followed by a cloud of smoke. I gritted my teeth. The musketmen were likely to be blinded by their own firing, at least as long as the smoke lasted. I wasn’t sure what could be done about that. “Now, in pairs, try it yourselves.”

  I forced myself to remain calm, wishing – not for the first time – for modern weapons and trained instructors. The recruits were eager, particularly after what I’d shown them, but the muskets were completely new. I watched as they tried to fire, then scrambled to reload. It was painfully slow. A troop of cavalry charging towards them might overwhelm their position before they managed to fire a second round … I told myself, firmly, that sheer volume of fire would be enough to stop the horses in their tracks. It would, too.

  The men were disappointed when I called a halt to the shooting and formed them into lines for battlefield drill. The concept was simple enough, although –

  like so many brilliant ideas – harder to execute than it looked on paper. One row would fire, then kneel to reload while the second row fired; the second row would then kneel too while the third row fired … I hoped, given time, that we’d be able to pump out six volleys within a minute. And yet, the smoke was going to be a real problem. I reminded myself this universe had magic. Perhaps there were spells to generate wind, to blow the smoke away from our eyes.

  “Good work,” I said, finally. They’d picked up the idea very quickly. It would take days – perhaps weeks – of practice before they did it instinctively, but I was fairly sure it would come in time. I’d spent the last three weeks drilling them to take orders. “Now, back to the barracks for our pre-dinner run.”

  I allowed Horst and Fallows to take command – they were coming along well, although I was afraid to leave them unsupervised for too long – and headed

  towards the officers’ quarters. Rupert was living there permanently, learning his trade – in theory – from Harris. I pitied him. Harris wasn’t my idea of a good commanding officer, or anything really. He certainly hadn’t shown anything like as much care for his men as Rupert, let alone the average West Pointer.

  I’d met conceited newly-minted off
icers who thought they knew everything who’d been more thoughtful than our general. I couldn’t wait for Rupert to take his place.

  Rupert was waiting for me in the stables. “Sergeant.”

  “Sir,” I said. Our working relationship was a little odd. I could give him advice, but only in private. Thankfully, he wasn’t trying to exercise direct command over the training units or it would have gotten a little sticky. The recruits weren’t stupid. If they saw an officer who didn’t know what he was doing, they’d hold him in contempt. “Did you have a good day?”

  “It was interesting,” Rupert said. I was fairly sure that was a lie. I’d advised him to study logistics, on the grounds he was a better organiser than a tactician, but logistics were boring right up until you realised your war effort depended on them. “And I’m looking forward to our ride.”

  I followed him to the horses and mounted up. I’d let him teach me how to ride, local style – it wasn’t something I’d mastered back home – in the hopes it would let him keep some of his pride. The aristocracy were all expected to be master horsemen, including the younger women. Rupert was pretty good at riding, even though he’d never considered joining the cavalry. And he wasn’t a bad teacher either.

  The air smelt cleaner as we cantered away from the garrison and the city beyond.

  We weren’t allowed to re-enter the city, not without special permission. I was fairly sure Rupert was bored. Normally, the aristocracy could come and go as they pleased, but Rupert’s enemies would make sure he kept his distance. I’d done what I could to offer friendship to him, at least in private, although it wasn’t easy. We had grown up in very different societies. It was easy to forget, until it suddenly wasn’t.

  I shook my head as I kept riding, allowing him to correct me from time to time as I surveyed the lands around the city. Damansara’s precise borders beyond the walls were a little vague, something that made no sense to me until I realised it gave the warlords a considerable amount of influence over the city without having to make their hostility so overt no one could avoid taking notice of it.