Accidental War Mage

The horse shifted restlessly under me, whickering his discontent quietly under his breath. A draft horse is not quite the same as a destrier, or heavy warhorse, though in the better-bred and better-fed cases, the humble workhorse can often match the proud destrier for size and strength. The draft horse I was riding was the largest and healthiest one we had.

There were several other differences between destriers and draft horses. First, a destrier is accustomed to running, cantering, and moving at speed; a draft horse usually doesn’t plod faster than a walk under human command. It is not that they are not capable of running at all, but simply that they usually don’t do it while pulling a load, or carrying a rider (to which they are simply not accustomed at all).

That brings us to a second difference; draft horses pull loads, destriers carry them on their backs. The draft horse was strong enough to bear the weight of my armor; strong enough, indeed, to pull a heavy mech by himself, given a stout wagon and a well-laid road; but he wasn’t used to having anything heavier than a harness or the occasional mischievous youth perched on top of his back, and he found the sensation mildly vexing.

A third is temperament. A destrier in an unaccustomed job would have been more than mildly vexed; draft horses are bred and trained for calm natures. The draft horse was not spirited, nor was he eager for battle. His phlegmatic temperament combined with a vein of sensible cowardice was something I found reassuring. The horse felt much like I did about the matter: Voluntarily marching into battle was for idiots and fools. (Since I have been known to march into battle by choice, I suppose the draft horse had a higher opinion of himself than I did.)

I was doing just that at the moment. I was riding after the scouts who had tracked Katya’s trail down past the blackberries; almost certainly to battle, even if I was no more of a true warrior than the draft horse. I should explain at this point that the scouts had, on careful investigation of Katya’s trail, found signs of a struggle and of a large party moving through the woods. The trail of trampled and broken underbrush was obvious enough when I happened on the scene, late in the morning; enough so that I gave the cavalry lieutenant a sour look.

How had his scouts not noticed this trail? Were we not in the wild woods, known for everything from witches to barrow-wights? Were the scouts not tasked with aggressively seeking out any signs of potential hostiles? Surely they had ranged out this far a day or two ago. I did not wait for him to come up with excuses; I waited simply long enough for Yuri to sniff and bark twice, telling me that he scented Katya’s familiar scent, old but weak, along the direction of the line of flattened bushes and broken saplings.

I called him a good dog, and he capered about next to me, pleased by the praise, barking happily. The draft horse, over ten times the size of the dog, nevertheless shied away from Yuri nervously before I told him the dog would behave himself and to move along. One thing about horses, even draft horses; they have great faith in humanity and a self-sacrificing nature. The horse obeyed me without complaint, faithfully taking my word that Yuri wouldn’t start trying to bite at his ankles and belly.

In the Imperial Army, complaining is a sacred ritual, observed at least as often as all other religious rites combined. I suspect that mercenaries are mostly coreligionists in this regard, for the muttered complaints of the platoon trailing in my wake blended together as thoroughly and as indistinctly as vegetables in a pot of borscht that has been re-heated for three nights in a row without any fresh additions. Quentin’s company of cavalry started to range ahead on their speedier mounts. Mounted infantrymen, perched on mules liberated from the supply train, trailed behind me and my plodding draft horse.

Perhaps I should explain the mules. I had asked for a band of volunteers to reinforce the cavalry company after the initial report had come back from the scouts, reporting signs of violence. We could not afford the fuel to push our heavy armor company at high speed to catch up to them and make a rescue, and could not possibly move our supply train so quickly. Men afoot, though, could keep pace with the draft horse I mounted myself on – if, that is, they had someone to show them how to move quickly through the woods.

Then Captain Rimehammer pointed out that those left behind could get by, for a little while, having the mechs pull carts on charcoal fuel, sparing some of the smaller mules without slowing down appreciably. The mules were not combat mounts by any stretch of the imagination, but they could be coaxed into carrying men at a fair clip even if they were not battle-trained. The infantry captain promptly “volunteered” those of her men who could sit a horse, and we were off.

That platoon was now being commanded by Fyodor, in spite of the fact that his regular platoon, the artillery detachment, were not coming along; and also in spite of the fact that he was at best an indifferent rider. He was a stoic one, though; his mule complained more than he did.

In fairness to Fyodor’s mule, it had a heavy and awkward burden; while Fyodor himself was by no means fat, he had packed a rocket launcher, and a significant number of reloads, and it was a worse burden than most of the other mules had to carry. Most of the mules complained nearly as much; they were cleverer than my draft horse and no less favorably inclined towards the idea of being ridden towards a battle.

As I would learn later, Fyodor had been inclined to stay with his men, until a certain cavalry lieutenant suggested within earshot of a certain comely acolyte that Fyodor was staying back at the camp with the cowardly hope that said cavalry lieutenant might fall in battle. All I knew at the time was that Fyodor had volunteered loudly and eagerly for the duty, which made him an ideal choice.

It was close to noon when a scout reported in to say they had found a campsite; unoccupied, but with noteworthy features. The scout seemed uncertain about what to tell me as he led me towards the campsite. He thought the campsite had been occupied for several days; and that the force which captured Katya had joined with others at that campsite. After a little bit of hemming and hawing, the scout, showing unusual squeamishness for a trained sniper, said he’d found a pile of singed bones littered around the fire.

Bones that had been gnawed upon.

He suggested ogres. We were in the wild woods, and more tales were told of ogres and witches within them than barrow-wights and weather-wizards. I was inclined to agree with him, based on the apparent success of my diplomatic initiative with the locals; they would have come in much greater force or not at all if they wished to risk the wrath of “Colonel Raven.”

When Yuri reached the campsite, he stopped, and gave me an alarmed look, barking to inform me that he’d scented a second ogre. This news surprised me, since I hadn’t realized he had scented a first ogre, and that the trail of broken and trampled underbrush I’d thought left by a dozen men had been left by a single large man. A few short questions later, I had a good idea of what we were up against.

What did ogres want with a captured human soldier? The bones suggested one ominous reason for taking Katya, but inspecting the scattered bones gave me cause for relief: They looked to be the bones of a horse. I could recognize a hoof, there; and the skull of a horse, very unlike that of a human.

The fate of Katya’s horse, then, was clear; the ogres saw no use in the beast, so cooked it over the firepit and ate it. I could see some bones were singed and had cut marks on them. I stared at the firepit for a minute, contemplating its circular shape. The firepit was deep with ash and ringed with stones. This was not, then, a temporary campsite, but a regular one, used on a routine basis. Had Katya been roasted over that fire, and her bones simply left elsewhere? I looked carefully for any sign that might tell me whether or not Katya still lived, but saw nothing.

I slowly convinced myself that she must still be alive, returning to the way the horse bones had been treated. If the ogres had bothered to butcher and cook the horse, they had an ample meal of meat in them. Katya was a dainty morsel in comparison. If the ogres felt comfortable leaving a pile of bones behind from dinner, they would surely have left all of them there, and I would have found something to recognize – inedible hair, a scrap of clothing, a skull, something.

Yuri smelled her scent – her sweat and fear – in the campsite, and voiced his concerns.

As I dismounted from the tall draft horse, I had to be careful of an overhanging branch; and looking at it, I saw something important, a ruddy brown stain on the branch, contrasting sharply with the lighter brown of the bark. The color of dried blood. Startled, I sat back down on the horse heavily, with a loud clatter of armor. The gelding nearly bucked in sheer surprise at the sudden impact of a heavy mass of steel.

I spent a minute calming the horse and then asked Yuri to come jump up. I caught him and hauled him up, holding his keen canine nose up to the brown stain I had seen on the tree. He growled, letting me know that yes, it was blood; yes, human blood; yes, Katya’s blood. I let him down and stood up in the stirrups, to take a closer look at the branch with my keen human eyes. Hemp fibers clung to the bark, and wear marks, suggesting that rope had been tied around the branch and something heavy dangled from the rope.

“Yuri, is there more blood on the ground down there? Maybe some bits of hemp rope or fiber?”

Yuri barked out a loud affirmative, excited and anxious. It was strong enough that it couldn’t be from earlier than yesterday morning, Yuri told me with confidence.

She had been here! Here, and alive enough to bleed; tied up and hung from the branch, almost certainly. I was deeply relieved she hadn’t been eaten for dinner. Then I remembered that she had been hurt, and bleeding; I was filled again with worry and rage.

Fyodor gave me a strange look, shifting uncomfortably on his mule.

Yuri growled, telling me with the scents as fresh as they were, that the ogres couldn’t have gotten too far; not in such a short time, and especially not on foot. They had, he reminded me, eaten the horse he could smell. Besides, he added in a sudden burst of canine genius, the horse could only have carried one of them at best.

“You heard the dog as well as I did,” I told Fyodor, gesturing broadly. “It’s perfectly clear what happened here. They tied her up and hung her from this branch here. Maybe to torture her. Maybe so she wouldn’t sneak off in the night. Maybe to make sure she wouldn’t be eaten by a bear while they slept.”

He gave me a careful measuring look before shaking his head and setting his mule into motion. The other soldiers followed suit, coaxing their mules into motion, some with more success than others. After several minutes’ ride, Fyodor brought his mule up to my draft horse and cleared his throat.

“Ah, sir, begging your pardon, but all I heard back there was some barking and growling,” he said. “It may be perfectly clear to you, but I must confess to being puzzled, sir. But if you say so, I will take your word for it.”

“Don’t understand dogs?” I said. “I hadn’t figured you for a city boy, Fyodor.”

“I’m not, sir, my family’s estate is a full day’s ride from Khoryvsk, out in the countryside,” he said. “But I can’t talk with animals, and never known anyone who could, sir.”

I stared back at him in disbelief.

He flushed suddenly when he realized he had just called his superior officer a liar by accident. “Excepting yourself, sir.” His face was a study in conflicting forces.

I turned around and took in the faces of the soldiers trailing behind us. We had not been speaking quietly; and by the expressions on their faces, I could see that not a one of them had understood Yuri, either. For the first time, I considered the possibility that perhaps being able to understand animals was something uncommon, even unusual.

I could not help but come to the conclusion that there was something terribly strange in the world if most of the people who talked to animals (which includes most who ride horses, hunt with dogs, or even simply feed pigs) were carrying out what were, in their view, one-sided conversations. That people, as a rule, talk to animals; but not with animals. This seemed very strange to me. Then again, noble humans tended to do the same with non-noble humans, talking to them but not with them.

Having paused in thought to consider Fyodor’s words for a long minute, I brought my attention back to the present. When I had turned around, my horse had stopped, and when my horse had stopped, the mules (being clever enough to know I was in charge of this expedition) had also stopped. I needed to stop thinking about the nature of humanity and nobility and instead focus on the issue of pursuing the ogres and retrieving Katya.

Hopefully, they would return Katya without a fight. If things went badly, many people would die.