Accidental War Mage

Peat fires are terrifically smoky. I felt like I was painting ARMY RIGHT HERE in great big letters of smoke across the sky every time we fired up the mechs on a peat load.

Charcoal loads, due to the lower fuel density, need more frequent reloading than coal, but burn more cleanly, and at a similar temperature. Peat loads not only needed more frequent reloading than coal, but required adjustments to the boilers, careful attention in operation, and more frequent cleaning. It was inconvenient and difficult, but good hard anthracite coal, glossy and black, was in short supply and best reserved for an occasion of combat. We had only a small reserve remaining from our Ruthenian supplies, and only slightly more of the brown coal we’d scavenged locally in Avaria.

We pressed on from dawn until dusk each day, and a little beyond; as fast as we could drive the men and machines. I was as eager to put miles between us and the desecrated barrow as I was to get us onto proper roads before the winter passed and mud arrived. While I wasn’t familiar with the area, my experience had always been that springtime meant deep mud. Luckily, the weather had taken a turn for the colder.

The cavalry lieutenant claimed the cold snap was the chilly vengeance of disturbed barrow-wights haunting us; that he had dreams of the undead chasing after us, ghostly fingers drawing frost out of the air with the chill of the grave. His superstitious nature had been reinforced by the episode with the undead. While I disliked the effect of his stories on morale, I could not bring myself to chastise him for spreading the stories under the circumstances. As far as he knew, they were true; and I was not sure they were not true myself.

I carried the dead king’s warhammer on my toolbelt, opposite from the bronze sword. Its pale silvery-white metal stayed bright as polished steel, even though I didn’t polish it; its gleam was marred only by the frost that collected on it in the cold air. My luck-stone, too, was collecting frost; after Katya managed to catch her arm in the cord while sleeping one night, I had begun to take it off before turning in; and with it being cold when I picked it up in the morning, from the night air, I didn’t feel like putting it on next to my skin, so it went on outside my shirt, where it collected frost.

They would even frost overnight inside our tent if I wiped the frost off them before going to sleep. Katya’s rifle didn’t frost at all, I suppose because she oiled it regularly; with the two of us packed tightly together in there, we stayed warm enough ourselves. I didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that I stopped sleeping in the big command tent after Katya’s return, and neither did anyone else. If anything, it made the command tent a better command facility; the watch officer no longer worried about disturbing my sleep if he didn’t intend to and my sleep was only disturbed if there was something that couldn’t be handled by one of the other officers.

The older Rimehammer cousin, Felix, who I had promoted to executive officer of the battalion, was not as talkative as Ragnar; but he was very good at getting people to listen to what he had to say, and took his position as second in command outside of combat very seriously. It was as if by hoarding his words, he made each one as precious as gold by means of scarce supply.

Not even the supply colonel (in his new role as supply lieutenant) was immune to the power of this effect; it didn’t stop him from drinking to excess while off-duty, but his episodes of blustery insubordination and attempts to exert his former colonel’s authority would halt abruptly with one or two sharp words from Captain Rimehammer.

Felix’s written reports were another matter; whatever reservation he had about speaking too many words aloud, he seemed to have an unlimited eagerness for written documentation. His notes and reports were meticulous, detailed, and might have run us out of paper by the end of the trip if not for the fact that he had made a very thorough accounting of supplies and consumption rates and arranged for the manufacture of more paper. (The supply colonel was not happy at the repurposing of some of the cooking equipment into a paper press.)

To be more precise on the subject of interruptions, soldiers under my command disturbed me late at night exactly twice in the days following my brush with undeath and Katya’s return to camp. The first time was not what you might expect; not some bold or drunk or desperate soldier seeking his commander’s attention on an urgent problem. It was the red-headed soldier in my sleeping bag who woke me up with a protest I couldn’t quite understand. She was at least halfway asleep and speaking directly into my armpit; which is not nearly as good at hearing things as my ear; and, moreover, was close enough to her mouth to impede proper diction. The only thing I could make was a tone of complaint.

“What did you say?” I asked, reasonably, shifting around to unmuffle her mouth.

“Hammer too cold. Throw away,” she mumbled incoherently.

I wasn’t convinced she was awake, much less being reasonable, so I shut my eyes and worked on getting back to sleep.

“What you need a hammer for anyway?” She said this clearly and distinctly.

“Alright, I’ll leave it elsewhere tomorrow night,” I promised.

Looking around in the dim light of stars filtered through the fabric of the tent, I spied a canteen that was likely the real source of her discomfort – it was cold and hard and had moved during the night. Likely, she’d rolled onto it while asleep, woken up, and gotten confused.

Nevertheless, the hammer (as shiny as it was) probably didn’t need to be crowded into our small tent with us. Two people were a tight enough fit even without our gear, and I really had no practical use for the hammer; just an irrational worry that if I took my eyes off it, I would see it again soon. In particular, I worried I would see it in the hands of a deadly undead warrior-king. Rationally speaking, since he hadn’t caught up with us yet, he probably wouldn’t ever catch up with us; either he was bound to his tomb or smashing him into little bits had gotten rid of him for good.

The second time I was disturbed in the middle of the night was later in that same night. I awoke to the sound of Lieutenant Fyodor Kransky (the artillery lieutenant) nervously swallowing as he walked towards our tent. He breathed in deeply, as if to shout, then paused. I guessed that he was working up the nerve to wake me. His unease was surprising; I had thought he was among my boldest officers. The cavalry lieutenant was superstitious; Vitold was prudent; two of my captains were old men, old enough to no longer be so bold; and Ragnar had signed a contract in blood. I had not given Fyodor a reason to fear me.

“What is it, Fyodor?” I asked, starting to rummage around in the tent, locating my boots.

I assumed that whatever business he had with me, it would be important; and it was unlikely I would be able to deal with it from inside the warm snug tent with a winsome woman snuggled up with me. Given the weather outside, donning some clothing (boots in particular) seemed necessary.

He startled, as if surprised I had known he was there. He swallowed again, steadying himself before answering my question.

“Ah. Sir, we’ve captured a spy.”

In spite of my head start, Katya awoke so quickly and completely at the mention of espionage that I think she could have beaten me out of the tent if the tent had more room, and if I hadn’t already been blocking the exit. The tent wasn’t large enough for me to pull my boots on comfortably without being already half out of it, but Katya was fully dressed and peering eagerly over my shoulder before I stood up.

By the time I arrived, the spy had already confessed, identified his employer, and detailed his mission. Several times. From the parts I heard as I came into earshot, he was working for … Emperor Koschei himself? The Castillian Inquisition! Perhaps Emperor Leon? No, obviously Emperor Sigismund II. And his mission was to … assassinate King Janos? Poison General Spitignov? Steal our secret recipe for hardtack? Track us through the swamp? Sabotage our mighty mechs? Flush out treasonous activity by Cimmerian conspiracists intent on overturning the Golden Empire from within?

Fortunately for him, none of his confessions were clearly understood (much less believed) by his interrogators. In his terror – an understandable state, given that he was tied up and several enlisted men were waving around pointed and heated objects in a threatening manner at the direction of the elderly captain of the heavy armor division – he had reverted to his native language and was speaking at an incredibly high speed (and pitch). While I assessed the situation, he started getting creative. I don’t think there is a Purple Pants Syndicate or an Order of the Divine Machinists’ Trade Union, but the spy confessed to working for both of them.

I do say fortunate, because the old captain (in truth, middle-aged, but this is old in an army in the field) had very little sense of humor, and would have taken those last claims as an attempt at levity. Attempts at levity were, in his book, a capital crime. However, he had managed to reach the rank of captain in the Imperial Army without ever having to learn any of the dialects of Gothic used in the Holy Empire.

“Stop waving those around for a minute,” I said firmly, in Latin. If the man was educated, which I suspected was the case, he would understand that.

Then I repeated myself in Ruthenian – stiffly accented Ruthenian, deliberately trying to ape an accent that I thought a mercenary from the western cantons might have. I hoped this would be a subtle reminder that we were supposed to be a rag-tag mish-mash of several wrecked mercenary companies welded recently into a single entity. After the hot pokers and sharpened knives were whisked away, the man stopped confessing for long enough to take a deep breath, and I switched to my best approximation of Gothic. I had never practiced it aloud, only read it, so I had little faith in my pronunciation.

“I have trouble believing you are on that many payrolls,” I told him. “You’re not nearly well-fed enough for that.”

His eyes bulged, and he started to jabber out a series of apologies and abasements.

“Save it for later. I’m sure this is all just a simple misunderstanding,” I said, switching back to Latin. I wasn’t quite sure how to say ‘misunderstanding’ in Gothic.

“However, we do need to understand the reason for your presence in our camp.” I untied his hands and handed him a biscuit.

“Fyodor? Bring me tea,” I said. “Two cups.”

The man eyed the biscuit with a combination of wariness and hungriness.

“It’s not poisoned. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.” I crossed my arms and waited.

The biscuit disappeared very quickly. A few crumbs were ejected along with a cautious expression of limited gratitude. I pulled out a handy prop.

“This is a very special hammer. I want you to look at this closely for a minute.”

The man peered at it. He licked his finger, then started to try to rub off the frost from the head with it, I think to try to read the inscription. His finger stuck fast, unsurprisingly, and he let loose with a stream of curses. This was ideal. I couldn’t have hoped for a better turn of accidental foolishness. I then deceived him in the best way possible, using nothing but the truth.

“Quiet. If you utter a knowing falsehood while in the grip of justice, things may go badly.” A true enough statement, if slightly misleading. “This hammer is very dangerous,” I added. Also true. I had seen it wielded very efficiently. “I would hate to see your arm freeze off.” I really would hate seeing that. I didn’t expect to see it, but technically, I was still being truthful.

I stared at him for a long moment before “You should tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when answering my questions. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said the man, soberly and in stiff ecclesiastical Latin.

Some of the soldiers were starting to look bored and restless. After assigning them the mission of scouring the area for any companions, equipment, or tracks the man might have left behind, I questioned the man carefully. He admitted to having left behind a cart outside of our camp; and that when caught, his intentions had been to load said cart up with a quantity of our provisions and machinery, which would keep him fed both in the short run and earn him money once he’d made another visit to civilization. He’d worked as a salvage mechanic in the armies of the border lords in the Holy Empire a few times and knew the parts would fetch a pretty penny.

Had he not been convinced that he was under the compulsion of the threat of having his arm frozen off if he was evasive, I probably would not have gotten the full story about his employment history; he had been fired twice, both times on suspicion of theft. The second time had involved being fired at, as well; that particular employer had owned a pistol with gold inlay, and upon recovering it, felt gripped by an immediate need to make sure it was still working by loading it and firing it at the would-be thief.

“You don’t appear to be very good at thievery,” I remarked. “Would you work for them again if they would have you?”

He would, he admitted. A few good solid imperial marks would go a very long way towards keeping his bellybutton and spine at a safe distance from each other. Marching all over the country and having to work in mud, rain, thunder, and artillery fire was not his idea of a good time, but the lords weren’t too picky about who they hired. They always needed more men who knew which end of a wrench to whack a malfunctioning machine with. He started waxing rhapsodically on the subject of the regularity and quantity of military chow, and I felt pity well up in me.

Okay, I should have known that if he was a decent worker, he would have been able to find his desired civilian employment, but faced with a hungry and unemployed man wandering around in a war zone, who wasn’t actually my enemy as far as I knew, I made the decision that felt natural.

“Look. We don’t pay as well as a prince. Mercenary payrolls aren’t as regular or as reliable as all that. But I’d be willing to give you a second chance. We need mechanics, too, you know. Just keep in mind, we know you have sticky fingers, and you know that you aren’t any good at getting away with it. Close your eyes.”

I muttered some ominous-sounding gibberish and splashed hot tea over his stuck hand which he jerked back reflexively. Then he opened his eyes. After discovering his finger still attached, he thanked me profusely for my mercy and swore undying loyalty, honesty, and diligent workmanship.

“So did he say who he works for?” Katya couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer.

“He works for us, now,” I said.

This earned me several incredulous looks. I hefted the warhammer thoughtfully. The incredulous looks disappeared, diplomatically pointed elsewhere or replaced by simple concern. The story of the hammer’s origin had been spread very rapidly by the cavalry officer. The lieutenant’s ghost stories often featured the wilderness, and various elements of those stories kept attaching themselves to the story of how I had obtained the hammer.

“Ragnar?” I waved over the Swedish lieutenant.

“Yes, sir?” Ragnar maintained a steady face.

“Our little friend here is joining your cousin’s section as a mechanic. Basic grade. See that he fills out the appropriate paperwork.”

As my fingers absently traced patterns in the frost on the warhammer, whimsy struck me. I beckoned the lieutenant closer and handed him the hammer.

“It’s a rimed hammer,” I said under my breath in Norse, by way of explanation, “and it is yours now, Mister Rimehammer.”

There was a flash of lightning in the distance, then a crack of thunder, and the flurries of snow turned to light rain. Ragnar’s eyes widened and he stammered out a very formal and stiff expression of thankfulness.

“Also, your cousin should know that our little friend here has a history of trying to make off with inventory, which is what brought him creeping into our camp in the first place.” I said this in Norse as well, still speaking quietly so as not to be overheard.

Ragnar’s expression of surprise was replaced with a sour look.