Accidental War Mage

When the sun set on our first night on the river, we were between towns, the boat captain told us he would rather try to continue through the night than tie up in an area that could be infested with bandits, and the river was high and deep; so we set watches and pushed on through the night.

Sometime late in the night, we slipped by a sleeping toll castle, to the boat captain’s delight; I don’t know exactly where or when, though Ragnar told me that there had been a chain that scraped across the bottom of the boat during his watch. The water had been running high with rain.

During the day, the current ran higher still, and our forward progress slowed to a crawl. Several times during the middle of the day, I looked up from my translation efforts and saw the same man in a dusty blue coat, leading a heavily laden donkey as he walked along the towpath parallel to us. Still, we were moving forward, slowly and steadily, other than a short stop to pay a toll at another river fort. With the river running high, most river traffic was moving in the other direction, though we saw some anchored barges that might have been waiting to be towed.

The next sunset found us near a town, but the boat captain, with gleaming eyes, suggested we continue through the night, forgoing both the comfort and expense of resting in a town. And if there were bandits awake somewhere along the river, well, there was a well-armed mercenary company aboard his vessel, was there not?

We reached Batavis at night. The firebox had operated steadily and continuously, and we hadn’t stopped for any real length of time since Johann’s inspection of the antique arcane engine. I had received several distinct excuses for pressing onward and had thought privately of another: Perhaps after Johann’s assessment, the boat captain was worried that the next time he cut off the arcane engine, it would never relight again, the elemental portal forever sealed.

It was a pity that Johann hadn’t been able to fix it. I had cleaned out the built-up soot, but the services of a master thaumaturge would not come cheaply. Remaking an arcane engine would require considerable power and likely some expensive quantity of orichalcum and other materials. From my brief discussions with Johann, I was coming to understand even a thaumaturge who was generous with his time could not work cheaply, not if an enchantment was meant to last.

“This is the fastest I’ve ever taken the leg from Vindobona to Batavis!” The boat captain beamed at me as he pulled the lever to vent steam, the boat slowing as we approached the confluence of three rivers by moonlight. “Thank you, Colonel Crow. Thank you!”

We must have overpaid for our passage, I thought to myself. Cheating our way past one toll might have expanded his profit margin a little bit, but it would hardly pay for a master thaumaturge. “It’s been a pleasant journey,” I said as the man hugged me. “Peaceful, even. I’m glad we didn’t encounter any difficulties.”

The boat captain released me from his grip. “Where do you want to land?” he asked. Lanternlight from below gleamed off his broad smile. “If we stick to the middle of the river, we could slip by the bishop’s toll house,” he added. “That is, if you wanted to go further up the Istros.”

Batavis sits upon the confluence of three rivers, the Oen and the Ohe joining the Istros together from opposite sides like a pair of mischievous children. The main city lies on the spit between the Oen and the Istros; on the other side of the Oen, there is a monastery, and then between the little sister Ohe and the Istros, there is a small toll fort directly on the water, connected by a narrow fortification to a larger fort on the crest of the hill – the seat of the ruling bishop.

In the distance, I could see campfires on the side of the hill near the castle. Distant glimmers of lantern-light danced back and forth along walltops, showing that the lower and upper fortress were both on full alert with double-duty watchmen on high alert. I pointed to my right.

“Hold here before we approach,” I said. “I think I want everyone awake and ready before we get any closer. There’s a force encamped outside the castle, and I don’t want to walk into a battle with half my men asleep.”

The boat captain’s smile fell off his face, plunging deep into a river of disappointment and shock. He squinted. “I do see fires,” he said. “Now that you have pointed them out.”

Approaching a castle under siege at night is a delicate proposition. After discussing the matter over with my officers, I decided that our approach was best left to daylight. We tied the boat up against the bank, making ourselves ready – a process that involved most of the company taking at least another two-hour nap, as I did not want us to exhaust ourselves unnecessarily.

It turned out that the old bishop had recently died, and there was a dispute over succession. The local cathedral chapter had elected a replacement; a replacement had then also arrived, claiming appointment on authority delegated by Rome. The first presumptive bishop held the castle; the second presumptive bishop was outside, with a small but not insubstantial escort of knights and men-at-arms from his older brother’s duchy.

The knights were steam knights of the grand Teutonic style, which is to say that they were not men in humanoid steam suits; they were men in heavy armor with headless eight-legged steam-horses to carry them. There was also a mech, distinctively lacking a smokestack and therefore powered by an arcane engine instead of a coal boiler.

With the value attached to the letters of credit issued by the baron and the uncertainty I attached to his willingness to eventually redeem them directly, I had come to the conclusion that our clear priority was exchanging the letters of credit for cash rather than seeking mercenary employment. A well-placed imperial noble might be willing to treat them at close to face value based on superior leverage to compel full payment from the baron. Logically, the best place to find such nobles was the court of Emperor Sigismund II.

However, if an opportunity to earn a better sum fell into our lap before arriving at Oenipons, I would be remiss as a mercenary commander (and therefore less plausible) if I did not at least try to take advantage of it. I also reasoned that it would be imprudent as a military commander in unfamiliar territory to approach the lower fort without being prepared for a hostile reaction.

I write this, therefore, to clarify my reasoning behind approaching the lower fort with my battalion arrayed in such a manner as to display our wares to best advantage. In retrospect, it would have been wiser to send a messenger ahead inquiring as to our prospects for employment rather than approaching directly.

We approached the lower fort arrayed in parade formation. I stood at the front of the boat, my steam knights (and mechs) lined up behind me. As it was essentially a flat barge, the soldiers in the lower fort would be able to see us clearly and see that we were not in a hostile posture. After all, assaulting the riverine wall of the lower fort was not an easy enterprise, and had we been hostile, we would have begun by reducing the wall with our artillery from a distance.

The soldiers in the lower fort reasoned differently. We were an unfamiliar force, heavily armed and approaching them; there were hostile foreign troops besieging the upper fort; therefore, we must be approaching to attack. Our boldness in not firing guns during our approach was perhaps some kind of trick. They opened fire when we were about two hundred yards away from the fort, arquebusiers firing in a ragged undisciplined volley that lasted a dozen tense heartbeats.

At that range, it was not accurate, but it did not need to be to cause harm; I heard the screams of at least two wounded men.

As I was front and center, I attracted a disproportionate share of aimed attention, and somewhere between ten and twenty bullets bounced off my armor, protective enchantments flaring with turquoise light. I squeezed my eyes shut. I could picture the runes on the inside of my armor, silently mouthing the words they spelled out. The armor would hold; and hopefully, the men on top of the wall would fire straight at the most protected target in their line of sight.

To the aft, a loud hiss announced that the boat’s engine was now leaking steam. The soft splash of the boat captain diving off the rear of the boat into the safety of the water was barely audible, but it was impossible not to notice that the boat was completely out of control as it spun sideways in the cross-current of the Ohe merging into the Istros.

Behind me, I could hear the crackle of scattered return fire as the boat careened slowly towards the fort, losing steam pressure and therefore usable power as it went. If I didn’t do anything, then we would crash sideways into the wall of the fort, then slowly drift away in the current as the soldiers in the fort continued firing.

Possibilities flashed across my mind.

“Hold your fire!” I shouted, gripping the forward railing. “Someone grab that tiller and straighten us out!” To the right and left of me, my mechs gripped my arms. Turquoise light flared brightly in my peripheral vision.

Ahead, the first arquebusiers had finished reloading. They began to fire, a steady hail of bullets that could not be considered a volley by any reasonable standard.

“Hold your fire!” I shouted again, my voice distant in my own ears as I hoped that my soldiers wouldn’t be the only ones who listened to my plea. Through my armor, I gripped the railing tightly.

For a moment, I thought the soldiers of the bishopric had heard me; their fire began to falter. In the tower overlooking the outer walls of the lower fort, the dark circle of a cannon’s muzzle rolled into view. Then it vanished in smoke.