Stuck In Magic

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Put out scouts,” I ordered, as I limped towards Harbin. I didn’t miss the look of scorn he shot me. He’d been in the saddle since birth. To him, the wild gallop had all been in a day’s work. “If the battle is still going on, we have to find them.”

  “They’re still fighting,” Fallon said, looking up from her chat parchment. “But they’re pinned down in a small village.”

  “Get details,” I said. The local mapmakers were idiots. Half the villages within the region were either unnamed or simply left off the maps. The locals didn’t always name their villages … to them, their villages were simply the village. “Where are they?”

  A scout cantered back, waving his arms. “Over there,” Harbin said. I heard the dark amusement in his tone and scowled. “Or at least something is going on in that direction.”

  I raised my voice as I heard the sound of battle in the distance. “Mount up,” I snapped. I practically threw Fallon into the saddle, then climbed up in front of her. “And hurry!”

  The sound grew louder as we started to move again. I forced myself to think.

  I’d given the rebels several crates of outdated muskets and gunpowder, as well as instructions on how to make more. I wasn’t sure they’d had the time to produce more gunpowder, but a local blacksmith should have been able to start churning out more muskets as well as bladed weapons and other surprises. As long as they were careful, they should have managed to evade detection …

  clearly, something had gone wrong somewhere. I told myself it didn’t matter.

  We weren’t too late.

  Smoke rose in the distance. I took the telescope from my belt and peered towards the battle. The rebels had made a deadly mistake, choosing to turn the town into a strongpoint rather than try to vanish into the countryside. I understood their thinking – the terrain wasn’t really suited for guerrilla warfare, particularly when the overlords started handing out heavy punishments to anyone who dared collaborate with the rebels – but they’d allowed themselves to be pinned down. The forces besieging them looked tiny, compared to the army we’d crushed only a few short days ago, yet its commander clearly knew what he was doing. He’d surrounded the town, dug a shitload of trenches and started to tighten the noose. And his archers were hurling flaming arrows into the town.

  “Skirmishers, dismount,” I snapped, as the enemy army started to take notice of us. They hadn’t heard we were coming, judging by their positions, but they couldn’t possibly have missed us after we appeared near their lines. “Cavalry, stand at the ready.”

  I forced myself to think. I didn’t have the forces to break the siege. My skirmishers could start digging their own trenches, rapidly expanding our lines under cover until we met their lines and tore into them, but … my men weren’t

  trained in hand-to-hand combat. I hadn’t had time to train them as anything more than musketmen. I kicked myself mentally as I glanced at Harbin’s sword.

  I’d been so convinced the days of swordsmen and knights in amour were already over that I hadn’t thought to train my men how to handle a sword. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have had time to do a proper job of it …

  “Form skirmish lines,” I ordered. There were a handful of enemy soldiers within clear view, unaware they were in danger. “Prepare to fire.”

  Harbin swore. I looked up, just in time to see a man stand up and start waving his hands towards us. A tongue of flame shot through the air, turning rapidly into a whip that scorched three horsemen and threatened many more. Fallon let out a gasp of horror. A magician, I realised dully. A living weapon of mass destruction. I heard panic starting to spread through the ranks. My skirmishers were tough, but they weren’t ready for magic. I didn’t know anyone who was, save for the magicians themselves.

  “Muskets, target the magician,” I snapped. There’d be no such thing as accuracy, once again, but – at the very least – he’d be forced to duck. “Fire!”

  The skirmishers fired a wild volley. I saw light flare around the magician, an instant before he stumbled and collapsed. His magic vanished at the same moment. My skirmishers continued to fire, sweeping bullets across the enemy lines. Harbin let out a yell, then led his men forward. I had to admire his nerve, although the risk wasn’t as great as it looked. The enemy had been shocked by their death of their magician, their morale breaking even before the cavalry galloped towards them. They were a terrifying sight if one didn’t have the weapons to stop them in their tracks. I knew, all too well, how the French must have felt when they’d faced the German Panzers for the first time.

  “Cover them,” I bellowed, drawing my pistol. “Keep firing!”

  The din was overwhelming. I was dimly aware of Fallon pressing her hands to her ears as she sunk to the ground, of gunshots barking … the sound echoing through the air in a manner that made it hard to locate the shooters. I tracked Harbin as best as I could, taking careful aim at his head. My heart started to pound.

  I was a good shot, one of the best in my unit, and yet if I got it wrong …

  I pulled the trigger as Harbin crashed into and over the enemy trenches. The pistol jerked in my hand, the noise unnoticed in the racket. Harbin plunged forward, falling from the horse and striking the ground hard enough to destroy all evidence of the shot. A horse stamped on his corpse a second later, crushing his remains into the mud. It would look like an accident, I was sure.

  The locals didn’t have any experience with modern weapons. The bullet would have gone straight through his head and out the other side. Even if it was discovered later, it would be hard for anyone to work out what it actually was, let alone what it had done.

  The battle grew louder. I lowered my hand, carefully making sure no one had seen what I’d done. The combination of smokeless powder and the sheer confusion on the battlefield should have made it impossible, but … I allowed myself a sigh of relief. Harbin was dead and gone and no one could pin the blame on me.

  Probably. There’d certainly be no dispute that he’d led his troops into the fight and died bravely.

  And he’ll be hailed as a hero, I thought, as the fighting started to die down.

  His family would get more mileage out of his death than they’d ever gotten out of his life. It just isn’t fair.

  I snorted at the thought – the world wasn’t fair – and watched as the enemy troops started to break and run. My skirmishers advanced, shooting at the enemy backs; a couple of men fell but the remainder kept running until we lost them completely. The last of the shooting died away as the cavalry took possession of the trenches, horsemen slashing their swords through the handful of surviving

  soldiers. I shuddered, even though it suited me to have them blamed for Harbin’s death. And I doubted they’d have been allowed to survive for long regardless.

  “Sir.” Harbin’s deputy – I thought he was called Lucas, although I wasn’t sure

  – saluted me. “I beg leave to report that we have taken the trenches and scattered the enemy.”

  “Well done,” I said. I meant it – and not just because the confusion had given me enough time to rid myself of a problem. “Put out a line of scouts, make sure the enemy doesn’t have another force within striking distance.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lucas said. He sounded a lot more reasonable than Harbin. “I’ll see to it at once.”

  I allowed Fallon to send a message to the communicator within the half-destroyed village, then walked across the remains of the battleground. Bodies lay everywhere, as always; a number had clearly been cut down when they’d been trying to surrender. I grimaced, making a mental note to address the issue later. The magician’s corpse lay on the ground, his body faintly odd to my eyes. It wasn’t something I could put into words. I counted the wounds – four hits, out of thirty shooters – and then walked on to Harbin’s body. His skull was a shattered mass, blood and brains leaking onto the ground. There was no trace of the bullet, no hint of what had happened to him. As far as I could tell, I’d gotten away with it.

&nbs
p; Alas, poor Harbin, I thought. I knew him.

  I put the thought firmly out of my mind as I started to issue orders. Harbin’s body – or what was left of it – would be put aside for his family, while the other bodies would be buried within the remains of the trenches; the former serfs, starting to emerge from their town, were left strictly alone. I spoke quickly to their leader, another of my agents, who explained there were a whole string of revolts either underway or about to break out. I hoped it shattered the warlord’s lands, although I feared the worst. The vast majority of the revolting serfs wouldn’t have the weapons they needed to take out the castles and fortified homes, not before it was too late. I’d have to do something about that, but I had no idea what.

  “We’ll have to continue the offensive,” I said, finally. If we won quickly, we should have enough time to consolidate before the other warlords decided it was time to stop us and formed an alliance to do just that. “I need a list of every skilled man under your command.”

  Fallon waved to me as the former serfs hurried away. “I just heard from Kyra,”

  she said. “They’re on the way, but they won’t be here for a few days.”

  I nodded. I’d expected as much. The army would be a great deal slower than the mounted cavalry. And once they arrived … I mentally reviewed the maps I’d seen.

  We weren’t that far from the warlord’s seat. His castle was meant to be huge, the largest in the country, but I wasn’t impressed. We should have enough gunpowder and cannons to take down his walls and smash his castle into rubble, if he didn’t surrender. I would have talked truce, if I’d been in his shoes.

  It would take longer than he had to put together an army that could do more than slow us down.

  Particularly if serf revolts are breaking out all over, I told myself. That’ll make it harder for him to call on help from his clients.

  “Tell them to hurry, but not to take risks,” I said. If the warlord was thinking, he’d hit our supply lines. We couldn’t afford to be thrown back on what little we could carry with us. “And send a message to the city. Tell them we need more supplies.”

  Fallon nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  I watched her go, then turned my attention to assisting the serfs. They’d done remarkably well, although they would have been screwed if we hadn’t come to their rescue. I watched grim-faced men carrying bodies to the graves, while the women prepared food and planned for a mass evacuation if things went badly wrong. I told myself they’d be fine. We’d carry on the offensive, straight into the heart of the warlord’s territory. And that would be the end.

  And Harbin is gone, I thought. I took no pleasure in killing, particularly shooting someone in the back, but I wasn’t going to waste time mourning him either. Without him, things will be a great deal smoother.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Harbin is dead?” Rupert looked conflicted. “I … what happened?”

  “He died well,” I said. “He died in the midst of the fighting.”

  It was true enough, I supposed. He had been leading a frontal attack into the enemy defences when I’d put a bullet through his skull. I’d written detailed reports of his death, trying to establish an unquestionable narrative as quickly as possible; I’d flattered the dead man in ways that would make Saddam Hussein blush. I had a feeling that, here, the reports would be regarded as nothing more than his due. Harbin’s family had been trying to paint him as the victor of the first engagement ever since they’d realised the battle had been a decisive victory.

  Rupert frowned, unconvinced. I kept my thoughts to myself. Rupert knew – had known – Harbin. He knew Harbin had been a coward at heart. He knew … I wondered, idly, if Rupert would guess the truth. A smart man might quietly keep it to himself, silently relieved Harbin had bit the dirt before he’d had a chance to really screw us; Rupert was smart, I knew, but his experienced was very limited. He might blow the whistle without realising it would do more damage to the war effort than anything Harbin could do.

  I let him consider the matter as I watched the army marching into Barrow.

  Rupert had pushed the men hard, but it had still been several nervous days before the troops had hove into view. We’d liberated the town and the surrounding farms, but the rebellions further away had either stalemated or simply collapsed. The serfs didn’t have the firepower to win in a hurry, nor the supplies to keep their former masters penned up until they ran out of food and surrendered. I’d drawn up plans for systematically smashing the fortified manors and tiny castles, one by one, but I was all too aware that would be taking my eyes off the prize. The warlord had refused to surrender or even consider asking for terms.

  “I suppose he died well,” Rupert said, reluctantly. “And his family will be pleased.”

  “They’ll credit him with winning the battle,” I said. It might even be true.

  The charge had certainly broken whatever was left of the enemy morale. “We’ll name a castle or something after him.”

  Rupert smiled, rather thinly. “Let’s not go that far.”

  I grinned, then left him with his thoughts and headed over to assess the marching army and reorganise the struggle. The makeshift logistics system had held up better than I’d expected, although we were still on a shoestring. We simply couldn’t source most of what we needed from the liberated territories, not in a hurry. I had no doubt blacksmiths and craftsmen, free of the prying eyes of their former masters, would start churning out cannon and muskets and

  everything else, but that would take time. I’d done what I could to kick off assembly-line manufacturing, rather than tiny little cottage industries … I shook my head. It was going to take years for the idea to really catch on. The craftsmen had been strongly against it right from the start.

  Fallon smiled at me as I passed her tent. “The city has promised reinforcements,” she said, holding out her chat parchment. “And they’ve declared a day of mourning in honour of Harbin’s death.”

  I nodded. It stuck in my craw to honour a man I knew to have been a rapist, a rape-enabler, a tactical disaster and all around entitled piece of shit, but it was a small price to pay for keeping the truth buried. By the time it came out, if it ever did, there would be so many people invested in the lie that the truth would hopefully be lost without trace. I doubted anyone would even come close to guessing the truth. The muskets were so inaccurate that even if someone realised Harbin had been shot in the back, they’d assume it was a hideous accident rather than deliberate murder. The best shot in the musketeers, bar me, couldn’t have been sure of hitting the broad side of a barn …

  “We’ll hold a parade in his honour, when we get home,” I assured her. “Right now, we have to continue the war.”

  Fallon bowed her head. It occurred to me, an instant too late, that she might have realised the truth. Women tended to be very perceptive, much more perceptive than men gave them credit for. Women’s intuition was nothing more than the subconscious mind putting together clues the conscious mind couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge. Fallon certainly knew what kind of person Harbin had been

  … she certainly knew I’d had excellent reason to arrange a little accident for him. And … she might have access to magic she could use to dig up the truth.

  The thought hadn’t occurred to me, when I’d shot the bastard. The only upside, as far as I could tell, was that the battlefield had been contaminated by the other magician. It might made any sort of forensic activities difficult.

  They might not even figure out what actually happened, I told myself. There was no need to panic. Not yet. Even if they work out he was shot, they’d have problems understanding precisely how it happened.

  I tasked Fallon with a handful of messages, then continued marching through the ever-growing camp. The cannoneers were emplacing their weapons, preparing the town to stand off an enemy counterattack; the infantry were digging trenches, in some cases churning up the enemy trenches we’d destroyed, and assisting the locals to rebuild their town.
I was mildly surprised the former serfs were cutting down trees and fixing the damage, although I suppose it was a way of demonstrating their new ownership. I hoped it would last. We could, and we hopefully would, kill the former masters – or, at the very least, drive them into exile – but the city fathers were already arguing over the proper distribution of the spoils of war. I hoped that didn’t get out of hand. The serfs would be happy to work with us, I was sure, but not trade one set of masters for another.

  And they have better weapons now, I reminded myself. Anyone who takes them for granted is going to regret it.

  I kept myself busy as more and more reports came in. The revolts were spreading, some serfs taking up arms while others simply downed tools and walked away from the land. Hundreds came to join us in Barrow, while the remainder started to head back to the city. They’d probably find it a great deal easier, now we’d scattered the patrol and shattered the warlord’s grip on his southern lands. The city wouldn’t be sending any more serfs back to their former masters, not now. They’d voted to abolish the whole cursed practice shortly after our first victory.

  Horst met me as I started to walk back to the command tent. “The men are ready to continue the offensive.”

  I nodded, silently pleased that Horst and his peers had come along so well. I’d worked hard to keep them in line, rewarding the ones who did well and busting the failures – or bullies – back to the ranks, but I was still uneasily aware the system was very far from solid. I needed more experienced NCOs … I didn’t have them. There was something so ramshackle about the arrangement that my old drill instructors would have been utterly horrified, then start screaming for me to be court-martialled and kicked out on my ass. And yet, I had to admit it was working better than I’d expected. Victory had a habit of encouraging people to paper over the cracks in the edifice.