Stuck In Magic

by Christopher Nuttall

  The muskets barked as one. The enemy line shivered and came apart, turning into a ragged mass as a number of horses hit the ground hard. The remainder kept coming. I reached for my pistol, all too aware I was running out of bullets, as the muskets fired a second volley. The enemy broke, trying to scatter in all directions. I saw a figure slung over a horse, hands tied behind her back. I swore under my breath. The chief kidnapper was going to get away. I was a good shot, with the best weapon in the world, and yet I was unsure I could shoot out the horse’s legs or put a bullet through the beast’s head. That only worked in bad movies and worse TV shows.

  Fallon waved her hand. I saw light splash around the horse’s feet, an instant before it shuddered to a halt. The rider flew out of the saddle and crashed into the ground. I didn’t need to check to know he was dead. His neck had clearly been snapped by the impact.

  I dismounted and hurried over to the horse. The beast was quivering, struggling against an invisible force. I felt another shiver of disquiet as I pulled at the ropes, undoing the bonds tying the princess to the saddle. They hadn’t cared about her comfort – she would have cramps soon, if she didn’t already –

  but they might have saved her life. The ropes had kept her from being thrown off the horse too.

  The princess stared at us. Someone had stuffed a gag in her mouth, as well as everything else. I did my best to look reassuring as I cut her hands free, the best sign we could give that we were friendly, then helped her remove the gag.

  The bastards had nearly choked her. I looked at the dead men, wishing I could kill them again. They hadn’t had to treat her so roughly.

  She coughed. Fallon offered her a canteen of water. I studied the princess with interest as she sipped the water, then started to massage her limbs. I’d expected, I was discomforted to realise, something akin to a Disney Princess, but Princess Helen was clearly out of her teenage years. I mentally tagged her as being in her late twenties or early thirties, with light chocolate brown skin, dark hair and a figure that was more solid than willowy. She looked tough, I thought. Her arms were strikingly muscular. I had the feeling she would have made a good soldier, if she’d been born in a better society. Warlord Cuthbert – or whoever had ordered the kidnapping – might have made a dreadful mistake.

  “My thanks,” she said, finally. Her voice was stronger than I’d expected. “And who are you?”

  I hesitated, unsure how to answer. “We’re from Damansara,” I said. It wasn’t as if she’d recognise any of us. The monarchy seemed to prefer to pretend the cities didn’t exist. “We heard you’d been kidnapped and came to rescue you.”

  The princess looked surprised, although she hid it well. I guessed she’d been caught by surprise by the sheer speed of our advance too. Her kidnapper had

  probably assumed we’d be too busy fighting Warlord Aldred to do anything about him. And that Aldred would be in no state to protest either.

  “You won the war?” Princess Helen sounded unconcerned, as if the matter was of no import to her, but I could tell it was an act. She was clearly far more intelligent than she wanted to let on. Being her father’s only child meant she couldn’t afford to pretend politic s were something that happened to other people. “What happened?”

  I grinned as I motioned for one of the cavalry to loan the princess his horse.

  “It was very simple,” I said. We’d tell her the full story later, once we returned to the castle. “We came, we saw, we conquered.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Five days after the battle, we returned to Damansara.

  The city greeted us with a massive party. They’d known we’d beaten the warlord before, in a handful of skirmishes, but now the threat from one warlord, at least, was gone for good. The warlord was dead, the remainder of his family put into permanent protective custody; there were other warlords, of course, but they were no longer feared. My men were the heroes of the hour, telling tall tales about how they’d single-handedly won the war when they weren’t dancing in the streets. The old stigma of being a soldier was gone. It was suddenly fashionable to be in the army, or to date a military man; my troops had no trouble, no trouble at all, finding willing partners. I had the feeling things were definitely going to change for the better.

  It was strange, a day after we returned, to attend Harbin’s funeral. I stood in the crowd and watched as aristocrat after aristocrat paid tribute to Harbin as a great war leader and the hero who practically won the war on his own. It was hard to resist the temptation to stand up and point out that Harbin had been a coward and a rapist who’d only led a charge because his own people would have turned on him if he hadn’t, but I forced myself to keep my mouth shut. Harbin was dead. I’d shot him in the back of the head myself. And I’d gotten away with it. There didn’t even seem to be a hint of suspicion there was anything even slightly untoward about his death.

  My eyes sought out Gayle, on the far side of the ceremony. Her face was a blank mask. Harbin had tried to rape her, only to have the whole affair swept under the carpet by heavy bribes and heavier political pressure. I wondered what she was thinking. Did she think Harbin had died well? Or did she think he hadn’t died soon enough? He would have cost her everything, from her reputation to her chance of making a good match, if he’d managed to actually go all the way. If I’d been in her shoes, I would have been plotting Harbin’s death well before some kindly soul put a bullet in him.

  I frowned inwardly as I noticed Princess Helen standing next to Fallon, who’d been appointed as her semi-official guide and bodyguard. The princess had spent the last few days asking hundreds of questions, listening to the answers and then asking more questions. I’d met police and military interrogators who were less capable of spotting evasions and half-truths and pushing through them to get to the truth. Rupert had admitted, privately, that he found the princess rather intimidating. It didn’t really help that she occupied a vague spot between being a women, and thus socially inferior, and being a royal princess who was the only realistic heir to the throne. I’d looked up the genealogy. It made very little sense to me, but – as far as I could tell – Helen was the only clear heir. Everyone else … if she died, or was put aside, there was going to be a major struggle for power. The warlords would take sides and the uneasy truce would be shattered beyond repair.

  Right now, too many warlords are stunned by what we’ve done, I thought. But that will change soon enough.

  The funeral continued, until it ended with a parade through the streets. I kept my face under tight control as I mentally listed all the things I needed to do, now Rupert and I had enough power and clout to get things done. Better sanitation, better water supplies … I hoped I could raise newer regiments, armed with better weapons in a bid to stay ahead of the warlords. We didn’t have any hope of keeping them from using gunpowder weapons themselves, let alone magic.

  The secret had gotten loose well before my arrival. I’d just made it worse by proving gunpowder weapons weren’t just a fad. The genie could no longer be put back in the bottle.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as Harbin’s corpse was cremated, then turned to walk back through the streets. The party would go on and on, as if the war was the end of war itself, but I couldn’t afford to believe that it really was the end.

  We’d beaten one warlord; the others would unite against us soon enough, once they had newer weapons of their own. Boris and his peers would have to help me send agents into their lands, armed with the secret of gunpowder and the simple truth the warlords could be beaten. We’d already started to recruit new soldiers from the liberated serfs. Some of them, I was sure, could be sent into enemy lands to undermine their rulers before they started to pose a threat to us.

  A servant met me as I returned to city hall. “My Lord, your presence is requested in the meeting room.”

  I nodded – I’d been forced to endure a number of meetings with the city fathers over the last two days, all of which had veered between insane optimism and deep despond
ency. They seemed unsure if they wanted to keep the captured lands, some seeing it as a chance to expand their own holdings at the warlord’s expense and others seeming convinced it would be needlessly provocative. I wasn’t surprised to note that none of them gave a damn about the serfs who worked the land.

  Given time, that would change. They’d have to realise the serfs were armed now, armed and dangerous. Trying to put them back into chains would merely plunge the city’s military into a nightmarish quagmire.

  My heart twisted as I followed the servant up the stairs and into the meeting room. It was heavily warded, as secure as magic could make it. I wasn’t sure if the wards would keep out something as mundane as a tape recorder, let alone a smartphone, but it would be a long time before the locals had to worry about anything along those lines. I blinked in surprise as I saw Fallon, standing guard outside the door. She wouldn’t have done that for just anyone.

  She smiled at me, charmingly. “Her Highness is waiting for you.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  Princess Helen was seated in a chair, I noted as I entered the room. She stood and looked me up and down, then nodded to a slightly smaller chair. I sat, resting my hands on my lap as I studied her thoughtfully. The princess would never be taken for pretty, but she had a very definite presence. Her eyes flickered towards the far corner. Gayle sat there, her back to us. I guessed she was a chaperone. The princess’s reputation would suffer if she was alone with a man.

  Which makes it harder for her to have any private discussions with anyone, I thought, sourly. They’re deliberately trying to hamper their future queen.

  The princess looked me in the eye. “Where do you come from?”

  I blinked at the question, then shrugged and trotted out the story I’d given Rupert only a few short months ago. A traveller from a far-distant land who’d become a mercenary, then a guardsmen, then finally entered Rupert’s service … it wasn’t entirely untruthful, although I’d made sure to leave out all the interesting details. The princess didn’t seem impressed. She probably heard so much bullshit in her life that she was pretty good at detecting when someone was

  trying to mislead her. I wasn’t lying that badly, but I was fairly sure she wouldn’t see it that way.

  She smiled, humourlessly. “And the truth?”

  I found myself answering the question before my mind quite realised what I was doing. I told her about Earth, I told her about how I’d arrived in Johor, I told her about Jasmine and the Diddakoi and how I’d eventually found myself working as a guardsman before entering Rupert’s service. The words just spilled from my mouth … I realised, too late, she’d used magic. A wave of anger shot through me, followed by fear. The protections I’d purchased from Carver and his ilk hadn’t kept her from enchanting me. If I got out of the meeting alive, I resolved, they were going to regret it.

  It was hard to focus enough to pick my words properly. “You put a spell on me!”

  The princess held up her hands. “Technically, I wove the spell into my words, but the effect is much the same,” she said. She sounded oddly relieved. “Gayle and I had a long chat about you.”

  Her voice hardened suddenly. “They’re going to kill you.”

  I blinked, one hand dropping to my pistol. “Who?”

  “Lord Galley is leading the charge, but there’s a bunch of others.” Gayle turned to face us, her voice grim. “Some of them think you’re a rogue element, a mercenary who cannot be wholly trusted. Others think they don’t need you anymore. And others … they think you have an unhealthy influence over Rupert.

  Father is particularly concerned about your relationship with him.”

  Her lips twisted in distaste. “The rumours have been spreading for weeks,” she added, after a moment. “You don’t so much have his ear as you have your hand on another part of his anatomy.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. They thought Rupert and I were lovers? The local attitude to homosexuality had always struck me as odd – being a top was fine, being a bottom was not – but I didn’t swing that way and, as far as I knew, nor did Rupert. There was no way to be entirely sure, of course. I hadn’t seen him spend much time in the brothels, but that proved nothing. He was rich and well-connected enough that he could probably get anything he wanted, just for the asking. He wouldn’t have any trouble finding someone who was discreet …

  “It doesn’t matter what they believe,” Princess Helen said, briskly. “All that matters is that they intend to get rid of you.”

  “Ungrateful bastards,” I muttered, heedless of who might be listening. My mind started to race as I considered what to do. Could I round up my troops and launch a coup? I doubted it. The units that might be loyal to me personally were garrisoning the occupied lands … there was no way I could get them back in time before the hammer fell. “What do they think I want to do?”

  I shoved the question aside as I forced myself to think. I’d kept my salary in my office … I could go back, get my hands on it, then grab a horse and run. I knew a lot more about the lay of the land now. I could try to head west, to see if I could find the other cross-dimensional traveller, or simply see if I could make a name for myself in another city. They’d know what I’d done for this city. They might take me on, now I’d proven myself. It would be a great deal easier if I didn’t have to explain every little detail to minds that had been ossified by disuse.

  A thought struck me. “Does Rupert know?”

  “As far as I know, no,” Gayle said. “There aren’t many people who know.”

  I looked at her, sharply. “How do you know?”

  Gayle met my eyes, an unusually forward gesture for a young aristocratic woman.

  “I have ears,” she said. “And so do some of my friends.”

  “It’s astonishing what people will say in front of you, if they think you’re just a young woman with nothing between her ears,” Princess Helen said. Her voice was cold, but there was a hint of anger that shook me. The princess was hardly a teenager, yet there were still people who treated her as a child? “It is sometimes useful not to be taken seriously.”

  I nodded, slowly. Gayle and her friends might come from rival houses, but … it struck me, suddenly, that young women would have every interest in pooling information. They had so little power of their own that they needed information to make the best use of what they had, to gain some influence before it was too late. Their families might be rivals – Rupert and Harbin really had been rivals

  – but they still needed to work together. I felt a pang of pity. It wasn’t fair. Gayle and her peers could have been so much more.

  “Thank you for the warning,” I said, finally. I briefly considered going straight to Rupert, but … it would be pointless. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to choose between his family and me. I thought he liked me – and I’d done my best to become a father or older brother figure to him – but he wouldn’t put his family ahead of me. “I …”

  “Come with me,” the princess said. “Let me hire you.”

  I stared. “You want me to come with you?”

  Princess Helen let out a sigh. “My father is a good man, but he is weak. He doesn’t have the military force to bring the warlords to heel. His forces simply cannot stand up to them in open combat, which means that – as long as the warlords work together – they can humiliate him any time they like. When I take the throne, it won’t get any better. They’ll keep blocking prospective husbands, which means I won’t have a heir of my own. That needs to change and, thanks to your victory here, I might have time to actually make things change.”

  “And you think I can do that for you,” I said. I wasn’t blind to the simple fact she had interests of her own, but … they meshed with mine. For the moment.

  It was difficult not to believe her warning about the city fathers, not when Gayle backed her up. I knew them well enough to believe they’d try to put a knife in me, as soon as I outlived my usefulness. “Do you think they’ll let me go?”
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br />   “I’m planning to depart tomorrow, before they start pushing for me to leave,”

  Princess Helen said. “You’ll join me in my carriage. I’ll tell them, once we’re on the way, that you have agreed to enter my service. Your former master will be compensated and the remainder of the city will breathe a sigh of relief.

  As far as they’ll know, you don’t have the slightest suspicion they’re going to kill you. They won’t think of you returning to extract revenge at some later date.”

  “And if you want to,” Gayle added, “please remember that I helped you escape before it was too late.”

  I looked at her, thoughtfully. “If you don’t mind me asking, how do you two know each other?”

  “We exchange letters regularly,” Princess Helen said. She winked at me. “We don’t talk about anything secret or sensitive, not as far as any of the menfolk can tell. But we can develop relationships that come in handy from time to time.”

  I frowned. I had a feeling that wasn’t the whole story. I also thought I

  wouldn’t never know the rest of it. But it didn’t matter.

  “I want to invite a few people along, later,” I said. “Is that possible?”

  “Fallon has already agreed to join my service,” Princess Helen said. “The others … you might have to recruit them later, once you’re safely away from the city.”

  I nodded, thinking hard. The princess was telling the truth. Probably. I knew Gayle well enough to understand she’d have some interest in repaying the debt she owed me, even if it meant risking a clash with her father or brother. And …

  the city fathers really were a bunch of ungrateful bastards. I had no trouble at all believing they’d turn on me the moment they thought they didn’t need me any longer. Telling lies about my relationship with Rupert would probably make it harder for him to object, later. Bastards.

  My mind churned. I didn’t have to go with her. There were other options. I had enough money to go almost anywhere I wanted, from Zangaria to Heart’s Eye.