Accidental War Mage

It was not far before we met with friendly soldiers; I had not run that far afield after the enemy weather wizard. They snapped to attention and stammered something incoherent; I told them to go back about their business. I thought to myself that this conspicuous display was a sign of respect for my decision to fortify the camp and prepare for battle in the face of doubts from my subordinate officers.

If Katya had been worried about the other officers making a mess of things in my absence, she had worried needlessly. The other captains had matters well in hand, and the elder Rimehammer simply came and checked over with me to make sure I approved of the captains’ decisions. Resuming the march was out of the question; we had wounded, prisoners, a fortified position, and were collectively exhausted. He did suggest that I give a speech before dinner and wanted me to sign off on dispensing an alcohol ration and a double dinner ration. I agreed with those suggestions readily.

While I was out and about camp, I noticed that some soldiers would turn white at my approach; and that whispers rose up behind me. Stories were being told of my performance on the battlefield when my men thought I could not hear them. According to the first version I overheard, I had chopped off all three heads of one of the great serpents with a mighty swing, vaulted over it into the woods, and screamed to a herd of rampaging bears in their own tongue that my birds would devour their bodies and I would devour their souls; and that the sky had turned black as night, raining with equal parts blood and water afterwards.

Preposterous.

The natives had retreated with much of their force, including at least one wizard and two great serpents (one of those having left behind one of its three heads and several of its dozen legs). The rain washed the blood from the battlefield into gory red streams. Mindful of the risk of disease, I had the bodies dumped into a hastily dug trench, mechs fouling their furnaces burning peat to do the necessary heavy work before night fell. The cool, the damp, the weariness from battle, none of it meant a true halt from work; not unless we were willing to risk more lives for the sake of a little extra rest.

I gave a speech in the mess tent, as promised; I do not remember how well it was received. I tried my hardest to leave them with the impression that I was deeply satisfied with how well everybody had worked together. I was sincere in my praise: This was the first major battle we had fought since bringing the mercenary survivors of the rebel force into our fold, and since I had completely reorganized our force. Many of our officers were commanding troops they had never commanded before; and conversely, many of our troops were following officers they had not followed before.

Many of our soldiers, further, had been using weapons they had not taken into battle before. Many of the arquebusiers, freed from proper imperial doctrine, had left off carrying their forks with them, especially those who had salvaged lighter guns; and a half-squad of pikes was simply too few of the long and cumbersome weapons in one place.

For all that they had been rearmed and reorganized, they had acquitted themselves well. True, the foe had thought they would take us by surprise, and they had not; their attempt at a sudden first strike had been hampered by the birds. But the foe had come in numbers, on their own home turf, backed up with weather magic, powerful serpents, and men whom most of my soldiers seemed to have genuinely mistaken for actual bears in the heat of the moment. (And, after burying the bodies, for magical shapeshifters.)

In spite of all those things, we had few of our own to bury compared to the foe. And by that, I was impressed. What I held myself back from saying was that I was still not sure if our mission would come to anything at all. I had found myself strapped to a raging bear when the general had been recalled, and had driven the bear forwards whenever it seemed I might be prepared to fall off. My accidental impersonation of an officer had spiraled out of control.

I was acting well outside of my orders, even the highly irregular ones that General Ognyan Spitignov had issued. I felt sure General Ognyan Spitignov had meant for us to stay in Avaria, and that his commanders had meant for him to bring his whole army back with him when he was recalled. Our journey was as much motivated by my desire to stay ahead and away from people interested in arresting or executing me (such as the late and unlamented Ivan Ivanovich Romanov and his mysterious correspondent “I.V.T.”) as it was by any desire to accomplish something useful on behalf of the Golden Empire and our undying emperor sitting on his throne in the city he called Rome-on-Tanais.

I had exceeded my authority by a large enough margin that the Ministry of War might consider my subordinate officers traitors for failing to mutiny against me. Was I willing to put a small army of men, women, and the odd dog at risk of death in battle just to have a chance at keeping my own neck clear of the noose? By the time I finished my speech, my smile felt forced; inside, I was no longer celebrating our survival, but wracked by guilt over the mortal danger I had brought to my comrades.

I had nearly even managed to get a dog electrocuted, I reminded myself, as Yuri begged shamelessly for table scraps. There is something about seeing animals suffer in ways they struggle to comprehend that cuts at you, even when war has numbed you to most human suffering. I grappled with my conscience as I packed in dinner, my smiles feeling more forced as the meal went along.

After dinner, I spent some time talking with prisoners. Or trying to talk with prisoners. Most of them were not well-educated and spoke only their impenetrable native dialect with a few words of Gothic and other languages used for trade. They were also remarkably uncooperative when it came to explaining why we had been attacked. I gathered that they viewed us with hostility; and that the “white wizards” had told them where we had camped and that we had great riches for the taking; but learned little else. I suspected they knew little else.

The one weather-wizard we had captured (one had escaped my wrath and another had been killed) had learned Latin with a Romanian accent and Polish with a Gothic accent. In spite of her greater vocabulary, questioning her gave me little more information. She was the one who had worn a gray cloak. She was surprisingly young, and I got the sense from her answers that the gray cloak was the mark of a novice who hadn’t yet earned the right to wear white and call herself a white wizard.

She was quite talkative, but most of what she said was useless. Grandiose threats; pleas for release; offers of mercy if released; a lengthy string of insults; and then, after a crow interrupted our conversation to complain about how quickly the dead bodies were buried (I told it off and shooed it away), she curled up into as small of a ball as her bonds allowed and babbled terrified nonsense for the rest of the time I was there.

Ragnar told me later that after I left, they were able to get her to stop babbling in terror. Once calmed, she expressed a very different attitude, one that was very cooperative and humble.

When Katya and I were at long last curled up in our tent together, she asked me what the great General Mikolai was thinking about now. I didn’t say anything for a while. Holding her in my arms, I recalled that this woman was one of the people whose lives I was putting on the line in place of risking a line around my own neck. My conscience was relentless, and after a minute of guilty reflection, I admitted to her that the “great General Mikolai” was feeling very doubtful at the moment of both his purported greatness and the utility of his mission.

Even as I said that I remembered that Katya was also someone whose ideals and sense of patriotism approached fanaticism. Would she shoot me if I told her the whole truth? I believed that she loved me, but I did not want to test that love against her sense of duty to the Golden Empire. Whichever force won out in that test could break her heart, and if it was duty that won out, it would leave a bullet in mine. What could I say to her further without provoking that test?

She took my moment of silent concern over whether or not she would be trying to kill me in the near future as a continuation of my concern over the value of the mission, and gave one of the longest speeches I had ever heard her make, whispered quietly enough into my ear that only I could hear. (Well, Yuri, being a dog with very keen hearing parked right outside our tent, could also hear Katya, but I am not sure Yuri understood her very well.)

“Fighting rebels in our own lands is good. Bringing the fight to them is better. Cutting off their money is best. We have enemies, and those enemies give money to rebels because it is what the rebels need most. The rebels use mercenaries to fight. Those mercenaries will not fight if the money is interrupted. The rebels impress and train unhappy people. Training and arming people takes money. Cut off the money, and the rebels must become bandits to keep fighting. Then nobody likes them and they lose.”

She punctuated her whispered speech into my ear by nibbling said ear. I conceded aloud that she had a point, and my conscience eased up enough to tell her she had raised my morale back up. Her response to that was mostly non-verbal and pushed our conversation through a hard turn on the topic of things of mine raised up by her, and shifted into a thorough demonstration of our appreciation for one another’s continued survival and affection.