Stuck In Magic

by Christopher Nuttall

  The castle shook again. The space between volleys was growing longer. I’d told the cannoneers not to shoot off all their powder and balls, just in case we needed to make a fighting retreat to Barrow or Furness. And yet … I shook my head. The battle was over. It had been over from the moment we’d broken the walls. They should have surrendered. Right now, there weren’t many people left to surrender.

  I met the warlord’s eyes, trying not to wince. This was not a man who accepted, even for a moment, the possibility of defeat. This was not a man who’d surrender, no matter how much he told himself it was just for tactical advantage. He wouldn’t so much as pretend to give up, although it would save hundreds of lives. He had a wife and a family and if the fighting continued, they’d be killed. Or worse.

  “The battle is over,” I said. I doubted it would make any impact at all, but I owed it to myself to try. The warlord was doomed. The shattered castle was clear proof his power had been broken beyond repair. “If you surrender, you will be treated well.”

  He snarled and raised his sword. I saw his point. No one was going to ransom him. His former subordinates would sell out for the best terms they could get, while the remainder of the warlords carved up his territory between them …

  they’d wage war on us, I was sure, but it would be too late to save Aldred from defeat and destruction. The best he could hope for was his family being allowed to go into exile, but it wasn’t likely to happen. His former peers wouldn’t want his son to grow up into a future thorn in their side. They’d probably have the entire family quietly killed.

  “I mean it,” I said. “You can take your money and go into exile and …”

  Aldred lunged at me. He really did know how to use his sword. I blocked his first swing, more by luck than judgement, but he just kept coming. I thought I was stronger, although it was hard to be sure. His blows kept hacking through my defences, my hands aching as he crashed his sword into mine time and time again. A man of honour, I reflected, would have kept fighting with an unsuitable weapon, even though it meant certain death. I wasn’t that much of a man of honour. I pointed the pistol at Aldred – his eyes went wide as he realised I was going to deny him a honourable death – and pulled the trigger.

  His body crashed to the floor and lay still.

  “It’s done,” I said. I looked towards the other men. None of them had moved, perhaps fearing the wrath of the winner if they tried to intervene. “Surrender

  now and you get to live.”

  They bowed their heads, then went to tell their men to surrender. I allowed myself a moment of relief, before issuing orders of my own as the fighting died away. The noble prisoners would be kept in the camp, under heavy guard, while we decided what to do with them; the soldiers and guardsmen would be invited to join our army, unless they were guilty of war crimes and atrocities. It was going to be a legal headache to sort out. Back home, there were no excuses for war crimes; here, merely following orders would be enough to get a free pass.

  Besides, saying no to the mad dictator back home is a good way to commit suicide, I reflected. I’d met too many people who thought they could deter war crimes … without realising it was pretty much impossible without a force both able and willing to come down on the perpetrators like a ton of bricks. And you’d get your family slaughtered as well.

  I shrugged – maybe the worst of the worst would make a daring escape before we had to make some decisions about them – and then grinned as Rupert stepped into the room. He shot a sharp look at Fallon, who winked at him, then turned to me.

  I smiled at his expression. He looked like someone who’d been convinced he was about to lose a rigged game, only to come up trumps after all. I understood.

  If we’d lost the battle, it would have been wise for the pair of us to loot the war chest and start running. We certainly wouldn’t have been welcome back home.

  The thought surprised me. When did Damansara become home?

  “We won.” Rupert looked at the throne and the body, perhaps making sure it really was Aldred, then sat on the floor. “What now?”

  I looked through the window. The castle was effectively ruined. It would take weeks, if not months, for it to be repaired. I figured we could turn it into a garrison, if we wanted to expend the time and effort, or simply tear down the remnants and leave it as nothing more than a pile of rubble. It wasn’t as if Kuat was still impregnable. We’d proven it wasn’t, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  “Now?” I shrugged. “We finish liberating the rest of the slaves, chase their former masters into exile if they don’t want to fight and be killed, then scatter garrisons throughout the lands as we raise troops for the next war. We won. It’s over.”

  “And start arguing over who gets what,” Rupert predicted. “They’ll already be dividing the lands up, back home.”

  “As long as they remember the serfs aren’t serfs any longer,” I said. I was pretty sure the serfs were arming themselves with everything within reach. They couldn’t expect mercy if they fell back into enemy hands. “They won’t agree to put down their guns and trade one set of masters for another.”

  Fallon pulled her chat parchment from her pocket and frowned. “My Lord, we just got orders to remain in Barrow and wait for Princess Helen.”

  Rupert and I looked at each other. A moment later, we started to laugh.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Well, at least they’re not demanding we give back the castle to a dead man,”

  Rupert said, an hour later. We’d spent the time dictating messages to Fallon, then listening as she repeated their messages back to us. “That would have been awkward.”

  I grinned. Fallon giggled. The city fathers had been shocked, according to her, when they heard what we’d done. They hadn’t even realised we’d continued

  the offensive, even though it had been part of the plan. Going on until we hit something so hard we had to stop made perfect sense, as far as I was concerned, and we’d kept going until we won the war. Warlord Aldred’s former subordinates might try to declare independence, or try to offer homage to another warlord, but it didn’t matter. Right now, they lacked the firepower to do more than irritate us. The rebel serfs would keep them penned up until we could smash their castles one by one. Kuat had fallen. I had no doubt the others would be even easier to destroy.

  Rupert smiled, tiredly. “We still have orders to wait for the princess,” he said. “By then, hopefully, the council will have decided what they want us to say to her.”

  “They do keep changing their minds,” Fallon agreed. She glanced at the parchment. “Right now, they’re asking about securing our new territories.”

  I unfurled a map and studied it thoughtfully. “We’ll position scouts along the roads leading to the neighbouring warlord territories,” I said. The nightmare was a united advance on multiple fronts, perhaps three or four armies heading straight to the city, but I doubted the warlords would manage to coordinate such an offensive. They’d need to build a modern army first, giving us time to tighten our defences and send more agents into their lands. “If they start an attack, we’ll know about it.”

  Fallon wrote a message on her parchment. I felt a shiver running down my spine as the words faded and vanished, as if they’d never been. I’d never had that reaction to radios or computers … I frowned as Fallon read the reply out loud.

  To my eyes, the chat parchment was blank. It was hard not to feel we were being conned. We’d busted an insurgency cell, back in the Middle East, whose leader had faked messages from a multinational network to keep his subordinates in the fight. I knew Fallon wasn’t lying to us and yet it was hard to believe she could see something I couldn’t.

  I turned my attention back to the map. “We’ll place a garrison here, just to make sure someone doesn’t try to take it from us, then split the army and deploy cannoneers to the rest of the castles. If they surrender, they can leave without a fight; if not, we can blow their walls down and they can die in the ruins. The qui
cker we eliminate them, the better.”

  “The city fathers want you to detach half the army and send it back home,”

  Fallon said. “I think they’re getting worried.”

  “We can do both,” I assured her. “And thank you.”

  Fallon nodded, dropped a curtsey and hurried out the room. The communicators had taken over a handful of chambers, although personally I’d have preferred to keep them in the camp outside the walls. We were still searching the castle with the aid of the former servants, liberating prisoners from the cells, capturing records and logging every last item of value within the walls. The latter would probably have to be sent to the city, although I was pretty sure a number of smaller items had already been pocketed by my men. I sighed, inwardly. I didn’t want to encourage looting and yet … it wasn’t going to be easy to stop. Few, if any, people had qualms about stealing from a dead warlord. God knew he’d been stealing from everyone within his reach.

  Rupert smiled at me, then winked. “She has a crush on you, you know.”

  I scowled. It had been a long time since I’d lain with anyone and right now, in the flush of victory, my body was instant on reminding me just how long it had been. Fallon was young and pretty and … I cut off that line of thought before it could go any further. She was young enough to be my daughter, more or less, and she’d grown up in a society I didn’t really understand. It would be safer to visit an upper-class brothel, when I returned to the city, although that carried risks of its own. The last thing I wanted was a fantastical STD.

  “I’m sure she’ll get over it,” I growled. I cleared my throat as I studied the map. “What do you think the princess actually wants?”

  “Aldred wanted her to tell us to go home, disband our army and let him kick our backsides a few times,” Rupert said. We’d found the warlord’s private letters, along with everything else, when we’d searched his quarters. It was strange to realise that a man who’d had no qualms about twisting the king’s arm – he hadn’t been even remotely subtle about it – had also been a patron of the arts and a moderately gifted poet himself. “What she wants? I don’t know.”

  I nodded as I turned my attention to organising the aftermath of the war. I didn’t really want to send a sizable chunk of the army home, even if they took a route that just happened to take them past a number of castles that needed to be reduced if they refused to surrender, but I didn’t have a choice. The city fathers had to be thinking we were dangerously loose cannons, although we’d won the war. They might not be openly churlish about it, not when public opinion would be firmly on our side, but they’d certainly do something to clip our wings. It was just possible they’d order us to concentrate on raising and training new recruits while giving combat commands to more reliable officers.

  The hours went quickly. I checked the pile of captured gold – it looked like a dragon’s hoard – then arranged for it to be returned to the city under heavy guard. I allowed a detachment of former serfs to raid the warlord’s armoury, taking a few hundred swords, spears, crossbows and suits of armour that looked hopelessly outdated, along with thousands of arrows. It amused me to discover that the warlord had actually had his very own cannon, although he’d made no attempt to put it into service. The design was badly outdated, but it could still have hurled a cannonball into the city’s walls. I was sure his neighbours would be building up their own forces as fast as they could.

  Fallon caught me as I returned to the castle, after inspecting the troops. “We have orders to send the aristocratic prisoners back to the city,” she said.

  “They want them back immediately.”

  “I’ll see to it,” I said. The warlord’s wife, mistresses and remaining children had been kept under guard too. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, we could do with them. I didn’t want to execute them in cold blood and yet, leaving them alive would cause all sorts of problems in the future. “And then …”

  She stopped as the chat parchment vibrated in her hand, more proof – if I’d needed it – that the original concept had come from my world. Or one very much like it. “Sir … the princess has been kidnapped!”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Her carriage was waylaid.” Fallon didn’t look up from her parchment. “They took her and rode off …”

  I led the way back to the throne room and ran to the map table as she gabbled out more details. The princess had been within the dead warlord’s lands when she’d been attacked and taken by a band of … of who? I shuddered as the implications dawned on me. The warlords had refrained from insisting the princess marry one of them – willingly or not – because there’d been a near-perfect balance of power. Anyone who tried to take the princess, and thus the crown, would be promptly targeted by the others. But now, with Aldred dead, the northern warlords might just try to snatch the princess, force her to marry one of them and declare themselves the heir to the throne. I felt sick. If they took her, if they raped her, she’d have no choice but to marry the rapist. It would be the only way to preserve her reputation.

  Bastards, I thought. What sort of fucked up society forces a woman to marry her rapist?

  “If they take her …” Rupert’s thoughts were clearly going in the same direction. “We have to save her.”

  I ran my eye down the map, silently calculating the possibilities. The mystery kidnapper would have sent cavalry, perhaps even mercenaries, rather than coming in person. He would have wanted to maintain a degree of plausible deniability, even if everyone knew what had happened. I did my best to think like a total shithead intent on taking the princess – and her title – by force. If I’d been trying to do it, I would want to get the princess to my castle as quickly as possible. We’d heard a report that Warlord Cuthbert had moved to his castle on the border … it wasn’t much to go on, but it was all we had.

  “If she’s being taken to Cuthbert,” I said as my finger traced a road on the map, “they’ll have to gallop down here.”

  It made sense, I decided. Cuthbert was the strongest warlord in the north, now we’d crushed Aldred. He might just think he could get away with kidnapping the princess and marrying her by force. Any of his peers who wanted to do something about it would have to fight their way through our territory first … he might just get away with it, if we gave him the chance. I had no intention of letting him get away with anything. The city fathers might not give much of a shit about the princess, or the throne, but Cuthbert was already a threat. He’d be much more of a problem if he wound up with royal authority as well as his own considerable forces.

  “We’ll stop him,” I said. The idea of saving a royal princess was appealing.

  “Rupert, you stay here and get the army ready to secure the border. Fallon, you’re with me.”

  Fallon didn’t object as she followed me down the stairs and out to the campsite.

  My skirmishers were already to go, the cavalrymen leaping into their saddles as we hurried towards them. I noted with some amusement that the common-born skirmishers and the aristocratic cavalry were actually getting along, now they’d won a victory together. Harbin would be rolling in his grave. I smirked at the thought as I barked orders, then climbed onto the horse myself. Fallon sat behind me as we raced away from the castle, her arms wrapped around my chest. I did my best to ignore her.

  My mind churned as I picked up speed. My logic made sense, yet … what if I was wrong? It wasn’t as if the kidnappers had to go down the main road, even if it was the quickest route to the border. Hell, Cuthbert wasn’t the only suspect.

  I couldn’t see any of his subordinates kidnapping the princess without his approval, which wouldn’t come, but what about the southern warlords? They’d have to admit what they’d done eventually, once the marriage was duly solemnised, but by then it would be too late. The princess would be theirs and everyone would pretend there’d never been anything wrong with it.

  Sweat prickled down my back as we galloped onwards. I’d studied the map carefully. If we picked the
right crossroads, we should find ourselves ahead of the kidnappers … I tried not to think about the dangers of someone else taking the princess. What if it had been a serf faction? They had motive to hate the royals too, without any compelling reason to keep the princess alive. I’d heard horrifying tales of what happened to aristocrats who fell into commoner hands.

  The viciousness was appalling. And who could really blame them, when the aristocrats were so relentlessly savage to their serfs? They didn’t even see the serfs as human.

  We reached the crossroads and swung around, cantering south. My heart started to race as I mentally checked the timing, again and again. There was just no way to be sure … we could have missed them, or gone the wrong way, or simply set off on a wild goose chase. What if … I wondered, suddenly, if we were being lured into a trap. The princess’s life didn’t mean that much to the warlords.

  They might just feel it was time to partition the kingdom between them and to hell with the legitimate royal family. Alexander the Great’s successors had

  done pretty much the same thing.

  I heard a shout ahead and raised my head. A handful of horsemen were galloping towards us. I snapped orders, sending the cavalry ahead while the skirmishers hastily dismounted and formed a line. The enemy troops – they had to be hostile, now the remainder of the aristocracy were cowering inside their castles

  – didn’t slow down. I gritted my teeth as they crashed through the cavalry, punching through the gaps in their formation rather than trying to stand and fight. They didn’t have much of a choice – the terrain on each side of the road wasn’t good for horses – but it was still alarming. There was a very real chance we’d kill the princess, completely by accident. I was entirely sure everyone would assume it had been deliberate.

  “Target the horses,” I ordered. I’d already told the skirmishers what to do, but I wanted to be sure they understood. “Fire!”