Accidental War Mage

I slept poorly that night. It was chilly and lonely, and I could feel the beginning of a headache coming on before the first time I fell asleep. My dreams did not help; the most pleasant of them was one where I and several young noblewomen stripped ourselves of our clothing and then were interrupted by an attacking mech that, for some reason, looked like Misha, one of the other steam knights from the squad I had been assigned so long ago. (He, Gregor, and Ilya all featured in my dreams that night; I had plenty of time that night to reflect on my dead comrades.)

That dream at least had a pleasant prelude; the next one started with shoveling headless bodies into a mass grave and ended when I woke up Yuri with the noises I was making. It was neither my first nor last time having that particular dream. I will never forget that little Wallachian village.

I don’t know whether or not Katya also slept poorly that night.

Vitold was irritatingly cheerful when he brought my breakfast in the morning. I was in a foul mood. My feet ached (from dancing), my arms ached (also from dancing), my head ached (from drinking surprisingly strong punch), and my heart ached (because of the rift that had opened last night between Katya and myself). Tea (with sugar and cream, since we were in the midst of prosperous civilization), eggs and toast (with butter), and even sausage (which Yuri eyed hungrily). I thanked him automatically and ate methodically as he filled me in on how the morning had gone. (I had slept in a little bit. Unsurprising, given the circumstances, though a poor example.)

The rampage of Katya’s men in the night had not gone unnoticed. It had, miraculously, not been blamed on us. Yet. However, it was stirring a panic among the noblefolk of Dab, and they were worried. Worried enough that some of them had already contacted us, seeking to hire protection beyond what the town guards could offer. The other mercenary companies in town were probably entertaining similar offers. I was surprised by how quickly news and rumors had spread – I had thought that in a very large town like Dab, with so many people that most do not know each other’s names, it would take a while before word of the shootings spread widely.

Dab may have been too large for most to be able to hear urgent news from a single town crier calling loudly from the center of town, but it had newsboys and two or three weekly publications. The targeted assassinations of more than a dozen prosperous members of society in the streets of the city presented a significant opportunity for profit to someone who owned a printing press and was willing to set type by lantern to rush out a news-sheet, and in a great city like Dab, there could be two or three such people, competing with each other to be the first to spread the news.

There was, in fact, a nobleman already waiting for me as I ate breakfast. After Vitold told me that, I wolfed down the rest of breakfast quickly, and hastily changed back into the fancier jacket I had been wearing the previous night. I was, I reminded myself, supposed to be the commanding officer of a presently-unemployed mercenary battalion, and as such, having noblemen beating down my door looking to hire me was something I should be happy about. Yes, we had arrived in the town in disarray and in need of some time to recuperate, but I should be starting to sound quite eager to get to work.

The noble rose to his feet when I entered the room. He was tall, with sandy hair, the sort of ambiguous shade that is either the light blond of a young man or somewhere in the range of light brown to dark blond starting to gray with age. After noting the wrinkles around the corners of his eyes and reminding myself that nobles tend to be a bit less worn out by the years, I decided it was probably the latter.

“Sorry for the delay, your lordship,” I told the noble. “I am apparently in great demand this morning.”

He smiled for a moment at the word ‘lordship’ and then his face smoothed back over. Evidently, I had used the wrong form of address, but he hadn’t been offended by it. “Colonel Raven. I’m glad to make your acquaintance.” He shook my hand. “I need your help.”

“So I was told by my officer, but I’m afraid he didn’t provide any detail beyond that.” I sat, gesturing for him to sit back down. “I should warn you, though, we’re a front-line combat unit with serious firepower, most of which we aren’t allowed to use in town. If it’s bodyguards you want, we might not be the best choice.”

“I don’t need more bodyguards.” He paused. “Well, I do need more bodyguards, too, I suppose, but as you say, your company is rather large for such a job. What I’m worried about is a full-scale assault on my facilities.” He hesitated, then lowered his voice, speaking softly. “Can I trust you to keep quiet?”

I nodded.

He kept his voice very low. “Six of the victims of last nights’ shootings were my backers. They had just contracted with me jointly for a major job. I’ve reviewed what the news-sheet says about where and when they were shot, and if the people who did that are willing to expose several teams of sharpshooters like that, they can hire themselves a small army to assault my facilities. I wasn’t sure who I could trust, but then someone reminded me you were at the festivities last night, and I was able to find people able to vouch for your loyalties.”

“Surely, if the backers are dead, the project is, as well,” I pointed out. “Are you sure you can afford to hire us on a hunch?”

“They weren’t the only backers, and their estates will be bound to fulfill their obligations regardless. I may even be able to get some of the others to shell out a little extra to cover my expenses, but I’ll be hung before I let myself get intimidated out of an honest contract.” With that fiercely whispered declaration, his voice returned to a normal volume. “My complex isn’t here in Dab. It’s a short trip by rail, but not far enough for me to fool myself that it isn’t in danger. I have a load of ores scheduled to leave here tomorrow morning, and I can arrange for some extra cars to be added to the tail of that train easily enough.”

“Well, if you’re sure enough to hire us, and the rates are agreeable, I’ll be happy to take the job,” I said. I wish I could say my decision was part of a deeper plan, but his proposal simply sounded like an opportunity that a real mercenary colonel should be eager to jump on, and I didn’t see any good reason to turn down the offer of employment.

The last train I rode on took me from mechanic to steam knight officer. This train took me from a man posing as a mercenary to a real mercenary. Whatever can be said about the legitimacy of how we ended up in that situation, the truth of the matter is that we were being paid for our services as soldiers on a contractual basis, and that made me a mercenary as surely as any of the sellswords we had impressed into our company. This train ride was much shorter, but the transition was no less unsettling because I had the time to reflect on the transition consciously.

The captain of the heavy armor and Yuri were my two companions at the table in the first-class cabin our status as senior officers commanded. The infantry captain felt the need to supervise “certain lieutenants,” the Swedish captain was dealing with paperwork in the corner, and Katya was avoiding me. As far as my two companions went, Yuri, as I mentioned before, is not a very talkative dog (which I think is due to the fact that he was raised by a very temperamental man), and the older man had mastered the art of taking naps. I am given to understand this is a skill that good soldiers usually learn. I could not have arranged for hours of uninterrupted contemplation intentionally, but by sheer luck I had it.

I was not sure which bothered me the more: My transition to a genuine mercenary, or the fact that I had secured the job because my own subordinates had gone on a murderous rampage. Being hired in anticipation of an attack by my own army seemed somehow dishonest. I had never considered the possibility, and I cannot imagine that Katya did when she ordered the sniper attacks, either.

If I had my way, I would not have become a soldier at all, but no son of the Golden Empire has the choice to avoid military service. I only “volunteered” when and where I did because the alternatives tended to involve getting shot, arrested, or both, and even then I might have risked it if that little old grandmother hadn’t convinced me I could manage to avoid the worst of the army if I volunteered.

This had seemed like a smart choice until I made the mistake of wearing the wrong dress uniform one day and found myself mistaken by a madman for an experienced steam knight. I hadn’t wanted to kill or die in the service of my country; now I was promising to kill or die for a fistful of coin. I was a little disturbed, and then more disturbed by the fact that I was only a little bit disturbed. Shouldn’t I be horrified?

Vitold’s comments came back to me. If I simply sold off the mechs and walked away from this, I could set myself up easily enough in a new life. Some homicidal maniacs might want to kill me even if I did so (the general himself; Katya, who though near and dear to me certainly had enough blood on her own hands to qualify; also perhaps Captain Winslow and the mysterious “I.V.T.” from Colonel Romanov’s letter), but it could hardly be riskier than continuing to fight on a professional basis.

Doing so, though, felt like a betrayal of the men and women who had placed their trust in me. I could perhaps take a couple of people with me; Vitold, for example. But what of the rest? What if the Gothic manufacturer’s fears were founded and he was attacked? What about the Rimehammers, who through a local had made a financial investment (albeit a risky one) in me? What about Katya? What about the old veteran captain dozing quietly in front of me?

What about the mission I had claimed for my own? According to everything I had been taught in the army, Wallachia was a small and poor country with no real prospect of standing on its own, and the most the rebels could accomplish would be to advance the designs of the Golden Empire’s imperial rivals. If they became independent, they would soon enough be a vassal of the Magyars or the Turks, or a puppet of one of Leon or Sigismund.

Perhaps they could weaken the Golden Empire enough for the Sultan or the Lithuanians to smell an opportunity. I would dislike to see the horrors of war visited on my home village, or (more realistically) on the other villages not unlike it in the border regions of the Empire. I may not have had Katya’s fanatical fervor in service of the state, and I may not have wanted to join the army, but I did have some love for my homeland and the people living in it. I nearly convinced myself that my declared mission of disrupting the stream of foreign money and weapons funneled into Wallachia was a contribution to good even if it was self-assigned.

In the end, I decided that I would continue on as if everything had been part of some great plan from the start. With, I hoped, as few massacres and murders as possible staining my hands with blood. This hope brought my mind back to Katya. I did not want to see the events of the night after the party repeated; I also did not want her to stay angry at me. My love for her felt uncomfortable.

I wasn’t sure which sensation felt worse – the guilt I felt for the unseen deaths of several innocent members of local high society or the empty feeling of Katya not being with me. Intellectually, I knew the former seemed like it should be more important, but I still loved her (even if I felt horrified by the blood on her hands). If she stayed glued tightly to my side, she wouldn’t have been able to surprise me with large numbers of civilian deaths. I had to have her back, I decided. Not only for the sake of our happiness together, but for the sake of anyone else who might be in the line of fire the next time she thought she had a mission involving murder.

Having constructed a justification for why my relationship with her was for the greater good, I stood up and went from car to car to search for Katya. She might be the death of me, but until then, I would keep her close to me. If she killed me, perhaps I deserved it. I reached the end of the train without finding Katya. Staring out the back end of the train held my attention for a little while.

It may have been early summer, but it was not unpleasant at all; and less stuffy than the cabin. Inevitably, though, my mind turned back to Katya. I went back over the events of the night. Katya had departed the room during my first dance, what she had seen upsetting her enough that she didn’t want to watch. Then she had done something else at the party; she hadn’t left immediately, simply gone elsewhere for a little while. Perhaps upstairs to the library, though I did not peg her for a literary type; I know there had been a number of worthies gathered there, including the fathers of at least two of the young women I had danced with that night.

Then she had sent a message – through one of our host’s servants – to Quentin that she was feeling indisposed and that he shouldn’t wait up on her account. She had taken one of the horses from her carriage and ridden with good speed back to our barracks, rounded up several sniper teams, and posted them in key locations in the city with a list of targets.

She hadn’t wanted to talk to me more than the minimum necessary yesterday or this morning, and I hadn’t pressed her on it. My hands were full with organizing our deployment. Did we want to leave some of our own behind to look after our base of operations, or hire someone to look after them in our absence? Did we want to bring all of our mechs? Was it a good idea to sell off some of our materiel before leaving? We ended up bringing almost everything. The artillery, the mechs, horses, all came with us, and we sold most of what we didn’t feel like bringing.

We left behind an empty-looking office with a lieutenant, a single lonely cannon, a stray acolyte, and a handful of men to look after the place. I also left Fyodor a fast horse and told him that he might need to use it if the notables of the city figured out who was really behind the sniper attacks the other night.

Katya, I remembered, had been in charge of the horses, and had seen them aboard the train. I had seen her get on the train. That I hadn’t seen her inside any of the cars suggested several possibilities. First, she had left the train while it was in motion. Second, she had managed to pass me without my noticing it. Third, she had hidden herself amidst the cargo. I gazed back along the tracks, thinking. Katya had disappeared on me before.

At the manor house, she had gone out through the window and up to the roof. In the deep forest, she had left unhappy with me and I had found her up a tree, where she had climbed to escape trolls who had already injured her severely). And after the party in Dab, she had gone up to the rooftops to shoot people. There was a pattern there. When Katya was in distress, she went up to escape from it. People usually don’t look up, something Katya was well aware of as an experienced sniper.

I climbed up onto the roof of the caboose, Yuri watching anxiously below, and looked towards the front of the train. She was perched on the roof of a car near the front of the train, rifle across her lap. I thought about climbing quickly back down and leaving her privacy to think in, but thought better of it. She had not come to me to close the rift between us; I needed to go to her or I would lose her for good. The train ride was most of the way done in any event, so she’d already had plenty of privacy in which to reflect and come to her own conclusions.

I carefully crawled my way towards her against the strong headwind of our forward travel, Yuri’s anxious and increasingly distant whines reminding me what a bad idea it was to run around on the top of a moving train. The roaring wind made conversation impossible, so I didn’t try; I just sat down next to her. She tensed, looking over at me. I waved at her (a sort of silly gesture when you’re sitting next to someone), and then looked out at the Gothic countryside.

Several moments passed, and then she leaned against me a little, relaxing. I put my arm around her, and we watched together as our destination came into sight, the train slowing. Once it had come to a stop, it was quiet enough to hear, and she spoke.

“I asked the others about Ilya. The ones who knew him.” Her voice was flat.

“Do you want to talk about him more?” I asked, equally quietly.

She paused, considering, and came to a decision. “I do not want to talk about him right now,” she said. “I … loved him then. I really did. He is dead now.”

“Are you angry at me?” I said.

“No. Yes.” She sighed. “I am a little bit angry at you. They looked pretty. The one you were dancing with first, and the ones you were with when you left.” Katya gestured at chest level. “And I can not dance with you the way they did.” She tapped her artificial leg.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll get used to the new leg, someday, and I promise you that when that time comes, I’ll try my hardest to show you a better time on the dance floor than I showed any of them. Just so long as you don’t shoot me first,” I added, trying to get her to laugh. Laughter dispels anger, or so my mother told me once.

She tensed and turned towards me. “Mikolai.” She cupped my chin in her hand, turning me to face her directly, and looked straight into my eyes. She wasn’t laughing at all. “I promise I will not shoot you. I will not shoot you if I want to. I will not shoot you if I am ordered to.” She paused. “Unless I miss someone else and hit you by mistake,” she amended. “I like you very much.” A hesitation, then, as quietly as I had ever heard her voice get, words I hadn’t heard from her before: “I love you.”